To conclude from my perspective:
Yes, if price shoots up 200 fold within a year, Bitcoin's total energy consumption will be much higher by the end of that year but your conclusion of a 1:1 relationship is ignoring so many factors that it most certainly does not even hit the right order of magnitude.
This isn't mindless extrapolation. This is concentrating on the primary market driver.
Cost of mining will tend to gravitate to the rewards of mining.
In a decade's time, when (the few) people who can afford it have invested in expensive ASIC mining rigs and paid them off, and the bitcoin price has stabilized at $10,000 to become a major world currency:
(a) cost of mining will be mostly power costs, not capital costs
(b) investing in bitcoins won't make easy money anymore.
So I think we will approach a 1:1 relationship. At least, it will definitely be in the same order.
I think the calculation you gave is important in understanding the problem, but only looks at at small time window during the initial stages of Bitcoin. In the long term I think the picture will approach a different steady state.
It's funny, you tried to explain it again again, and still people still refuse to accept it.
"1:1 relationship is ignoring so many factors that it most certainly does not even hit the right order of magnitude."
Yet he does not list a single factor.
Yes, incentives are there, almost all of the mining awards will go to pay for the power costs. However, all this money must come from the bitcoin economy, and pass trought exchanges, since plants don't accept bitcoins yet. This will push the price of bitcoins down, and in this way the energy problem will be solved.
