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Bitcoin miners revived a dying fossil fuel plant – then CO2 emissions soared

theguardian.com

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Re: Bitcoin miners revived a dying fossil fuel plant – then CO2 emissions soared

#61

Post by amptorn »

lowkey wrote: post #59
amptorn wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a world of untapped energy that is only restricted by isolation. So you could entirely run bitcoin without increasing global energy output, if that makes sense. No? Using previously untapped energy for Bitcoin, or for anything , does, in fact, increase global energy output.

Increasing global energy output isn't a negative, provided that energy output is clean energy. In fact, developing our ability to produce and use energy is virtually synonymous with the development of human civilization.

Yes, actually it is negative, due to the emissions and waste involved in setting up energy production in the first place. That negative has to be offset by using the energy to do something useful.

Re: Bitcoin miners revived a dying fossil fuel plant – then CO2 emissions soared

#62

Post by md2020 »

neaanopri wrote: post #6
scottiebarnes wrote: post #2

Everyone wants to ban bitcoin mining, but nobody wants to tax carbon emissions and end industry subsidies.

Let's tax stuff in proportion to the value it provides to society Since crypto is used for crime and pyramid schemes, zero value so infinite tax = ban

I highly value a world where free expression isn’t effectively curtailed by private payment processors acting as censors on behalf of governments. Governments change, and it’s only a matter of time until this is used against you and people you agree with, if it hasn’t been already.

Re: Bitcoin miners revived a dying fossil fuel plant – then CO2 emissions soared

#63

Post by tenuousemphasis »

Tarsul wrote: post #34
tenuousemphasis wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While we're picking and choosing who gets to consume electricity, let's get rid of video gaming, casinos, porn websites, etc.

no. But please tax luxuries especially wrt their externalities.

So like a carbon tax?

Re: Bitcoin miners revived a dying fossil fuel plant – then CO2 emissions soared

#64

Post by throwaway73838 »

D13Fd wrote: post #48
throwaway73838 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s make it simple. Let’s say you live in a house in a place where the sun never shines and have ten dollars. One electricity costs one dollar. But you spend your ten dollars on a wireless solar mining rig that lives in the desert ten thousand miles away. Now you’re using this power, that previously only cactuses could use, to generate Bitcoin. You take the Bitcoin via the net, and buy electricity with it in your h…

Another instance of adding bitcoin where it is unnecessary. Using your example, you live in a place without sunlight and you buy a solar mining rig far away. You then use that power to do literally anything that generates money, including just straight selling it to someone or feeding it back into the grid. Then you use that money to buy electricity in your home. Boom! You've "move[d] energy around the world wireless…

You’ve missed the point. What are you going to do with the solar power in the remote desert? There are no people within hundreds of kilometers. You can’t just mail them the electricity. That’s where Bitcoin comes in, because you can fully utilize that power and then ‘mail’ the output via the internet.

Re: Bitcoin miners revived a dying fossil fuel plant – then CO2 emissions soared

#65

Post by throwaway73838 »

ben_w wrote: post #50
throwaway73838 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s make it simple. Let’s say you live in a house in a place where the sun never shines and have ten dollars. One electricity costs one dollar. But you spend your ten dollars on a wireless solar mining rig that lives in the desert ten thousand miles away. Now you’re using this power, that previously only cactuses could use, to generate Bitcoin. You take the Bitcoin via the net, and buy electricity with it in your h…

Spending money is a different thing to transmitting power. If everyone does what you do, then you get one of two effects depending on which unwritten assumption you prefer: 1) if the conversion rate from joules of sunlight to number of bitcoin remains constant, then (first 1 then 1 million) people have more bitcoin than they did before, but the immediate actual production of electricity in your local area is exactly…

No, you’ve missed the point. The money represents energy. You can’t get a bank loan if you only have 10 dollars. You can get a bank loan if you have an income. The Bitcoin enables you to access money that you could not before. This enables you to invest in better uses of electricity and more efficient means of using it in your home town.

And let me put it to you like this - when you turn on your power, what do you do with it? Well, you use it. You heat your home with it. You cook with it. You turn on your lights with it. What’s the difference if you make money with it? You’re using that energy. It’s really quite simple - in my example, you’re simply using unusable energy, and converting it into money, which you can use to do work.

Re: Bitcoin miners revived a dying fossil fuel plant – then CO2 emissions soared

#66

Post by rsynnott »

tenuousemphasis wrote: post #30
zbrozek wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't obvious that mining goes away at any cost. Personally I'm in the "do both" camp. Have a simple carbon tax, but also find some inoffensive way to get rid of the mining. Both sound hard.

While we're picking and choosing who gets to consume electricity, let's get rid of video gaming, casinos, porn websites, etc.

When was the last time you bought an incandescent lightbulb?

Re: Bitcoin miners revived a dying fossil fuel plant – then CO2 emissions soared

#67

Post by ben_w »

throwaway73838 wrote: post #65
ben_w wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spending money is a different thing to transmitting power. If everyone does what you do, then you get one of two effects depending on which unwritten assumption you prefer: 1) if the conversion rate from joules of sunlight to number of bitcoin remains constant, then (first 1 then 1 million) people have more bitcoin than they did before, but the immediate actual production of electricity in your local area is exactly…

No, you’ve missed the point. The money represents energy. You can’t get a bank loan if you only have 10 dollars. You can get a bank loan if you have an income. The Bitcoin enables you to access money that you could not before. This enables you to invest in better uses of electricity and more efficient means of using it in your home town. And let me put it to you like this - when you turn on your power, what do you do…

No, you have missed the point.

Money, any money, even cryptocurrency, simply does not do what you think it does.

If you want stuff then invest in that specific stuff — you should only be investing in or building a financial network when that in particular is what you need, not when you want something else like “electricity” or “food” — and if you’re really going to call out the $10 as a serious number, at that level food is a higher priority than any of the equipment you’d need to take part in even a low-cost digital payments and micro-financing system like M-Pesa (it’s not just banks that do loans!), you certainly shouldn’t be considering paying for random hardware to be installed in a different continent (which is implicit in your scenario)

Re: Bitcoin miners revived a dying fossil fuel plant – then CO2 emissions soared

#68

Post by ben_w »

throwaway73838 wrote: post #64
D13Fd wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another instance of adding bitcoin where it is unnecessary. Using your example, you live in a place without sunlight and you buy a solar mining rig far away. You then use that power to do literally anything that generates money, including just straight selling it to someone or feeding it back into the grid. Then you use that money to buy electricity in your home. Boom! You've "move[d] energy around the world wireless…

You’ve missed the point. What are you going to do with the solar power in the remote desert? There are no people within hundreds of kilometers. You can’t just mail them the electricity. That’s where Bitcoin comes in, because you can fully utilize that power and then ‘mail’ the output via the internet.

That shows a lack of imagination on your part.

If you can afford to put PV + compute + internet in a random distant desert, you can afford to put pure PV in a specific and well chosen bit of desert that has people and houses and power lines and an existing internet connection in it. Which means you can sell the power it makes to those specific people right there.

It is, if anything, slightly easier to install PV on the rooftop of a complete stranger in a community in a desert than to install the same quantity of PV in the middle of nowhere the same distance from you.

Bonus points: installing PV on someone else’s roof and selling the energy it makes to the person under the roof is a tried and tested business model.

Second bonus: unlike crypto mining where your equipment becomes rapidly obsolete, PV keeps going with minimal degradation for decades.

Re: Bitcoin miners revived a dying fossil fuel plant – then CO2 emissions soared

#69

Post by abruzzi »

neaanopri wrote: post #6
scottiebarnes wrote: post #2

Everyone wants to ban bitcoin mining, but nobody wants to tax carbon emissions and end industry subsidies.

Let's tax stuff in proportion to the value it provides to society Since crypto is used for crime and pyramid schemes, zero value so infinite tax = ban

while I don't necessarily agree with the extreme negative view of crypto (though I definitely don't have a positive view), this is already a commonly practiced thing called Pigovian taxation:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax

Re: Bitcoin miners revived a dying fossil fuel plant – then CO2 emissions soared

#70

Post by kcplate »

jhgb wrote: post #27
throw3838 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They recycled old power plant. That is a huge CO2 offset, building new plant would had huge emmisions.

False dichotomy; they could have done neither. NOT operating an old coal plant NOR building a new plant would have produced zero emissions.

Pretty sure the only way to have produced zero emissions was to not mine the bitcoin at all. Old or new plant, or consumption of power from the existing grid would have produced some level of emissions, although Montana tends to have pretty high renewable energy from hydroelectric.
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