Topic: Bitcoin and global warming - page 13. (Read 3019 times)

Briefly The whole global economy is based on the source of the mining and burning energy that has been stored on Earth for millions of years. Bitcoin is based on one thing that is reliable in life so so I know about this

their is an ICO that is focused in making our environment clean and is concern in protecting the environment such a great project that is more meaningful and great for profiting in trades.. its the Earth Token much broad than ecobit i saw this in the alts section and with this bitcoin community can be both rich in money while having a clean environment, hence i was not promoting but the idea is really good try checking it

The amount of energy used in mining Bitcoin is a valid issue that should be addressed head-on and there are many ways we can mitigate this challenge. One, if possible the source of the energy should be renewable as much as possible like those coming from the sun, wind, water and even geothermal since these are considered to be greener and have less impact on the environment. Second, we need to support the research on finding new technology (or improving the existing ones) so that mining equipment are requiring less power and along this line there are already some companies or business racing to be the first to introduce the products on the market.

We have to remember that Bitcoin mining is an economic activity just like any ordinary business all around us and it is requiring electricity to run and be successful. Well, the same thing with any other industry so this is nothing unique to Bitcoin. We are then hoping that sooner or later a better technology can be introduced that can be run with less power requirement and that renewable energy sources would also be accessible by the whole industry.

Does anyone know/have any figures about the total power consumption that bitcoin requires currently? It should be high I'm sure, and should also go even higher in the future. However, compared to other industries, where does bitcoin rank exactly? I would assume bitcoin's power consumption still ranks lower in comparison to most of the business sectors.

If energy isn't used by Bitcoin it will be used by something else. The whole economy is based on infinite growth, so it'd be extremely altruistic to reduce energy consumption for the greater good. What's really needed is clean energy research.

This subject has only surfaced very recently and i think it could be a big problem in the future as bitcoin price surges (and hashrate along with it). Right now it is estimated that it costs over a thousand dollars to "mint" a bitcoin, its an insane amount of electric power.

For this reason i believe PoS or DPoS might be the best approaches in the future (or something better will be invented)

I do think this will be addressed in the future. It's not talked about much yet, but if this blows up and the social justice warriors get a hold of it, Bitcoin will have another reputation problem in its hands. This would give governments around the world another excuse to tighten mining regulations, or ban Bitcoin altogether. I don't think its impact is significant in the grand scheme of things yet, but at the rate the consumption is going, it will only take a few years.

I should also note that this is yet another area where Bitcoin falls behind other alts. Some openly use energy efficiency and green initiatives as selling points. They're not a threat now, but they could very well be in the future.

Why would that create chaos? Are you talking about banking the unbanked?

How is whatever you said related to switching from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake?

The idea of switching into a cryptocurrency payment may sound good, but the drawbacks are highly toxic especially when it comes to hacking and scamming due to its nature. You may be right that the process of making fiat and gold mining harm the environment but if we adapt the system of payment into digitalized forms, this would create chaos into the economies of countries around the world. We may lessen the the impact of pollution around the world slowly, but in an economic perspective this would destroy markets and may cause hyperinflation in some countries.

You could say it about everything.

Gold mining is causing global warming and is harming environment.
Money printing is causing global warming and is making rain forest to disappear.

...


We would have to go back on the trees.. .

The whole global economy is based on mining and burning energy resources that have been stored within the earth for millions of years. Bitcoin is based on the one reliable thing in life: greed. It is foolish to expect people not taking the shortest (-sighted) route to monetary wealth. That is why I am suspicious about crypto energy projects.

I think our main problem is the huge electricity expense induced by mining and its noxious effect on the climate. This is, to my mind, the only serious argument against Bitcoin.
Alleviating the electricity expense should be one of our priorities. If we do not do it for the sake of the Earth (which we really should) we should at least do it selfishly because governments will not tolerate this forever and they will be right. The more the exchange rate increases, the worse it gets, of course.
Some solutions exist though: first there is proof-of-stake, of course. This technology may be too young to be deemed reliable enough but we should at least start considering it.
If we do not like proof-of-stake I think we could drammatically decrease the electricity expense by stopping monetary creation now. Nowdays Bitcoin is famous enough to remain secure even if miners earned transaction fees only. And if as a whole there are 16.5 M coins instead of 21 M, this does not make much of a difference. That is even good for holders. To make miners agree with that solution, they must be compensated for their lost income.  More precisely, active miners must be compensated because they have already bought ASICs. Futures miners do not need to be compensated. Since mining is a competitive industry, future miners will make no profit on average, whatever the reward scheme. To compensate active miners we could decide that the next 2016 blocks yield, say, 100 new coins and then 0 forever. Everybody would win and the Earth above all!
There are probably many other solutions and I wish the community cared a little more about this fundamental issue.