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We Need an Energy Miracle (2015)

theatlantic.com

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Re: We Need an Energy Miracle (2015)

#21

Post by Caveman_Coder »

melling wrote: post #12
noncoml wrote: post #3

All this cryptocurrenty craziness doesn't help either. I don't understand how the HN crowd that is usually so pro-environment, is also happy with the tons of wasted energy from crytptocurrency mining.

You derailed the entire point of the article by taking a tangent into a completely different, essentially irrrelevant, discussion. “Bitcoin's electricity consumption as a percentage of the world's electricity consumption 0.09%“ How about Bill Gates and Terrapower trying to build a new generation of nuclear power in China? https://qz.com/627113/bill-gates-says-china-is-the-best-plac...

TerraPower is interesting, especially since it recycles previously enriched uranium. On a side note, as far as the future of nuclear power goes, I'm more interested in LFTR designs and I think Flibe Energy is going to someone to watch here in the near future.

http://flibe-energy.com/

Re: We Need an Energy Miracle (2015)

#22

Post by layoric »

openfuture wrote: post #16
noncoml wrote: post #3

All this cryptocurrenty craziness doesn't help either. I don't understand how the HN crowd that is usually so pro-environment, is also happy with the tons of wasted energy from crytptocurrency mining.

It's still young technology and the energy efficiency will improve with the lightning network or proof of stake or different concepts like filecoin. The societal gain from these technologies is potentially very large and will hopefully realign interests in the direction of saving the environment rather than bailing out businesses.. But the most sane definition of money is actually energy imo Also comparing the energy…

> Also comparing the energy cost of printing physical money with mining cryptocurrencies is favorable to CC's iirc.

Really? Last I checked, taking the averaged of the top 10 most efficient mining setups, BitCoin network was pulling 9GW+.

https://twitter.com/layoric/status/906087502414352384

Another model here showing 18 TWh annual usage, that's still an insane amount of power.

https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption

Proof of Work (and BitCoin in particular) is so damaging, really hoping another currency takes over that doesn't use so much power for 4 transactions per second..

Re: We Need an Energy Miracle (2015)

#23

Post by llukas »

melling wrote: post #14
llukas wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption I beg to differ - currently just Bitcoin mining uses as much energy as country of Iceland - anything consuming energy on a scale of entire country (even small one yes) is environmentally significant.

“Bitcoin's electricity consumption as a percentage of the world's electricity consumption 0.09%“ By definition 0.09% is not significant. Eliminating it would not significantly impact climate change.

Please do not move goalposts - I wrote "environmentally significant" not "significantly impact climate change".

I don't think our technology is so advanced that producing 18TWh of energy per year can be done without impact on environment.

Re: We Need an Energy Miracle (2015)

#24

Post by Nomentatus »

melling wrote: post #19
Nomentatus wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excellent. Please send me a check for this insignificant amount, at current wholesale (business consumption) rates.

What does the amount of money have to do with anything? If someone found a way to reduce the $20 trillion US deficit by 0.09%, and someone said that it’s not significant, would it rate the snarky “well, then send me a check for that amount”? Would you optimize a program by refactoring a function that used 0.09% of the execution time?

Yes, I often have done such refactoring. It's hard to get that last 20% of speed, much less last 5% without making a large number of small changes in code, usually after getting accumulated trace results (however presented.) .1% = one in one thousand. Keep stacking up those improvements and you do get somewhere, and often you'll easily find one hundred very small improvements in a day (10% altogether!) if it's green code, along with the bigger inefficiencies to fix. Not to mention that ignoring a presently-small inefficiency is predicting that future use won't swell that into a problem - which can be most unwise. Also, looking for tiny improvements gives you a good chance to stumble upon larger improvements you'd missed earlier. Optimize much?

Re: We Need an Energy Miracle (2015)

#25

Post by ekianjo »

layoric wrote: post #22
openfuture wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still young technology and the energy efficiency will improve with the lightning network or proof of stake or different concepts like filecoin. The societal gain from these technologies is potentially very large and will hopefully realign interests in the direction of saving the environment rather than bailing out businesses.. But the most sane definition of money is actually energy imo Also comparing the energy…

> Also comparing the energy cost of printing physical money with mining cryptocurrencies is favorable to CC's iirc. Really? Last I checked, taking the averaged of the top 10 most efficient mining setups, BitCoin network was pulling 9GW+. https://twitter.com/layoric/status/906087502414352384 Another model here showing 18 TWh annual usage, that's still an insane amount of power. https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-…

> Really? Last I checked, taking the averaged of the top 10 most efficient mining setups, BitCoin network was pulling 9GW+.

And where is the comparison vs physical money? You know, with trucks moving around every day, and the cost of insurance, special facilities, salaries, etc...

Re: We Need an Energy Miracle (2015)

#26

Post by glibgil »

noncoml wrote: post #3

All this cryptocurrenty craziness doesn't help either. I don't understand how the HN crowd that is usually so pro-environment, is also happy with the tons of wasted energy from crytptocurrency mining.

Mining is a placeholder for the real resource which is useful computation. There will be an economy based on distributed electricity and distributed computation eventually

Re: We Need an Energy Miracle (2015)

#27

Post by wbl »

Caveman_Coder wrote: post #21
melling wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You derailed the entire point of the article by taking a tangent into a completely different, essentially irrrelevant, discussion. “Bitcoin's electricity consumption as a percentage of the world's electricity consumption 0.09%“ How about Bill Gates and Terrapower trying to build a new generation of nuclear power in China? https://qz.com/627113/bill-gates-says-china-is-the-best-plac...

TerraPower is interesting, especially since it recycles previously enriched uranium. On a side note, as far as the future of nuclear power goes, I'm more interested in LFTR designs and I think Flibe Energy is going to someone to watch here in the near future. http://flibe-energy.com/

Totally OT, but have they cracked the corrosion issues?

Re: We Need an Energy Miracle (2015)

#28

Post by Animats »

And we got it. Wind power works, is cost effective, and scales well. Solar power works, is cost effective, and scales well. Battery storage works, is starting to be cost effective, and scales well. Fracking works, too, until that level of reserves runs out.

Energy has moved down the priority list of problems.

Re: We Need an Energy Miracle (2015)

#29

Post by aoeusnth1 »

hughw wrote: post #17
zedadex wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand how the HN crowd that is usually so pro-environment, is also happy with the tons of wasted energy from crytptocurrency mining Iirc that's one of the points of proof-of-stake. PoS is nearly analogous to PoW in its platform implications - potential for centralization due to resource costs and so on - but doesn't rely on burning through processing power to be secured.

Paul Sztorc argues that PoS will burn as much electricity as PoW [1]. Buterin answers here [2]. [1] http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/pow-cheapest/ [2] https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Proof-of-Stake-FAQ#doe...

That's not an accurate characterization of his argument (in [1]) about PoW vs. PoS. It's not about which one will burn more or less electricity - his point is that each burns an equivalent amount of economic value, be that electricity, capitaltime, liquidity, etc. PoS tends to burn less energy but compensates this by burning exactly as many dollars worth of capitaltime and liquidity.

My disagreement with this analysis is twofold:

- The capital that PoS burns has been created by switching to PoS. It's measured in ETH, and it's that extra value that hn commentors are referring to when they snidely remark that PoS is a good way to deflate your currency.

- The negative externalities of power consumption for PoW are both murderous and civilization-threatening. PoS has basically zero negative externalities.

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