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Topic: Debunking the "Bitcoin is an environmental disaster" argument. - page 10. (Read 5036 times)

legendary
Activity: 2828
Merit: 6108
Jambler.io
A different, more intriguing approach to the question, taking the analogy with gold to a different point.
Very interesting.

This project was developed a very long time ago, but they did not start implementation, since the catch is that it needs a colossal infrastructure (as opposed to mining farms, which can be installed on site).

Mining is a 24/7 business, that's why there are no miners mining only on solar while not being connected to the grid for night time.
The same will be with this plant, nobody will want to mine it there even if you give them 2 cents energy, without another power source to keep them running nonstop, and with the batteries cost blowing the price higher than traditional power it won't attract anybody.
jr. member
Activity: 43
Merit: 6
When new technologies appear, they often have an impact on the environment. Developers at the time may not consider these factors. Bitcoin is no exception. Bitcoin is a powerful tool. In fact, Bitcoin has also gained in finance. Great progress has been made. In essence, Bitcoin is not harmful to the environment, but the production resources of Bitcoin are very large, and the mining farm requires a lot of computing power and electricity to operate. Consuming energy is harmful to the environment, but the creation of fiat currency also pollutes the environment, but I believe that with the passage of time, although Bitcoin is not environmentally friendly now, I think there will be better in the future Way.
legendary
Activity: 1722
Merit: 1630
Bitcoin is not an environmental disaster. Before it comes to Bitcoin, there are so many things that are really detrimental to the environment. People and companies are really aware of this actually. But they still insist on accusing Bitcoin of being the most harmful thing for the environment.

For example, it's been proved that banks are consuming too much energy (even more than Bitcoin) and really harmful for the environment also. But people don't want to mention it. They are only aiming to blame Bitcoin for something. Why are people like this?  Do they still have problems on absorbing cryptocurrencies?  Are they afraid of Bitcoin for real?
legendary
Activity: 2114
Merit: 15144
Fully fledged Merit Cycler - Golden Feather 22-23

This project was developed a very long time ago, but they did not start implementation, since the catch is that it needs a colossal infrastructure
I really don't like this project: it is heavily impacting on the local ecosystem.
Also, bear in mind that the true benefit is when bitcoin turn into an antieconomic project economic because miners can profit from it. The perfect example is the Vulcano in El Salvador. Producing Electricity from the volcano is trivial, but it is not trivial to distribute it to the nearest users. IF miners utilise that electricity right on the spot, immediately the project is viable.

Your project, on the other hand, does not depend on miners to be profitable: it could sell the electricity to a city, or a farm to be profitable, and nothing would change.
legendary
Activity: 1456
Merit: 5874
light_warrior ... 🕯️
People, does anyone have $ 60 billion? [we will talk about the project of a penzhinskaya tidal power plant with a capacity of 100 GW] I just look at the capitalization of BTC, and I understand that this is not so much money for a project of such a scale ... the point is that the implementation of this utopian idea would forever put an end to the "anti-ecological" discussions. There is one unique place on our planet where the sea level varies ±15 meters, and this is the ideal place to build a tidal power plant.

This project was developed a very long time ago, but they did not start implementation, since the catch is that it needs a colossal infrastructure (as opposed to mining farms, which can be installed on site). Is your mining equipment outdated? No problem, as can switch to liquid hydrogen production (Elon Musk would have turned over in his coffin if he was dead and if the key players in the Bitcoin industry would sell him fuel for Bitcoins). Tell me, am I not a psychopath?

legendary
Activity: 3220
Merit: 5630
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Quote
This sterile corporate speak is of course a euphemism for the following: “I see no value in Bitcoin and hence consider all costs associated with its production and maintenance wasteful.”

Sometimes everything essential fits into one sentence, and I believe the author has captured the very essence of the whole anti-Bitcoin agenda. When it comes to Bitcoin, I think there are several categories of people :

  • Those who fully understand what Bitcoin is and how it works, and what the benefits of a decentralized cryptocurrency are - and I believe there are very few such people, in a percentage of less than 10% including those who are for and those who are against.
  • Those who understand to some extent, but still are very cautious and very susceptible to media mainstream propaganda that continues to successfully promote the agenda "Bitcoin is bad for the environment."
  • In the end, those who are very smart and intelligent, perfectly understand what Bitcoin is, are aware that the impact of crypto mining is actually negligible - but they represent a global financial elite that defends the system they have built for centuries in every possible way.

If there's one thing we could learn from all this, it's that those who control the mainstream media shape public opinion - especially things that the average person has a hard time understanding, and Bitcoin is in the category of such things.
legendary
Activity: 2114
Merit: 15144
Fully fledged Merit Cycler - Golden Feather 22-23
Nic Carter is again on the Environmental side of Bitcoin with this new article for Bitcoin Magazine:


THE BITCOIN ENERGY DEBATE IS A MODERN REPRISE OF THE GOLD RESOURCE COST DEBATE


Quote
The debate over the resource cost of gold is critical in understanding the present-day fixation with Bitcoin’s energy costs.

Quote
AND THE ANSWERS REMAIN THE SAME...
Long before we had the Bitcoin energy debate, we had the gold resource cost debate. The contours were similar: the costs associated with gold refining and extraction were a waste; they were too great relative to a mere fiat standard in which notes could be printed for virtually nothing. Why bother with gold, impassive and unwavering in its supply dynamics, when you could have the cheap and highly configurable paper standard instead? The critique hinges on figures computed by economists finding extremely high resource costs associated with the gold standard. Infamously, in his 1951 essay “Commodity-Reserve Currency,” Milton Friedman criticizes the gold standard on these grounds, calculating that 1.5% of GDP would have to be devoted to the production of gold under a full reserve standard, an estimate he revises up to 2.5% in 1960.

The approach is interesting. He recalls us that many economists demonstrated that mining gold has a cost, but this cost is what preserves the system to grow out of control, events that also bears huge, hidden costs:

Quote
Quite similarly, today the most strident anti-Bitcoin voices fixate on its resource costs — and specifically its energy consumption. As with gold, the critics allege that Bitcoin’s resource burden is not just too high but entirely a waste, because to them Bitcoin offers no perceptible utility relative to other monetary and payment systems. As with gold, the constraints imposed by Bitcoin make no sense to westerners raised on a diet of monetary tinkering and steady debasement.
<...>

The debate over the resource cost of gold is critical in understanding the present-day fixation with Bitcoin’s energy costs. The rhetoric is the same; only the names and the jargon are substituted. Today’s critics talk in calm, worried tones about Bitcoin’s concerning ESG characteristics. This sterile corporate speak is of course a euphemism for the following: “I see no value in Bitcoin and hence consider all costs associated with its production and maintenance wasteful.”

A different, more intriguing approach to the question, taking the analogy with gold to a different point.
Very interesting.


member
Activity: 62
Merit: 13
Quote

A new study by CoinShares questions the criticism that Bitcoin mining is harmful to the environment, and estimates that three-quarters of mining operations are now powered by renewable energy.

Cryptocurrency investment and research companies have concluded that this makes the blockchain industry "more renewable than almost every other large industry in the world."

CoinShares estimated in its report that 74.1% of Bitcoin mining operations use renewable energy.


I do not agree that Bitcoin is the fuse that detonates environmental problems and causes environmental disasters. If I am a mine owner, my wish is that the price of Bitcoin will rise and the cost of mining will decrease. This is in line with the relevant policies of the government where the mine is located. Maybe It will cause carbon emissions problems in the early stage, but as time goes by, it will become more and more inclined to clean energy, such as wind and hydropower. Bitcoin mining will not be criticized for using too much electricity. If you want to make a comparison, the energy loss of the banking system is greater than that of Bitcoin.

Quote

According to the latest report provided by Galaxy Data, Bitcoin's energy consumption is much lower than that of the traditional banking system and the gold industry. In the past few days in the turmoil caused by Tesla CEO Musk, the discussion around the use of cryptocurrency energy has been very intense. However, Galaxy Data, established by former hedge fund manager Michael Novogratz, used data to prove that the traditional banking system and the gold industry actually consume more energy than the Bitcoin network.

legendary
Activity: 4186
Merit: 4385
anyway..
back to the topic

.. where were we
oh yea "bitcoin energy disaster"

debunked:
1. if we remained solomining GPU. the electric combined from residents in their basements in non-renewable area's would he higher than the current state where most ASIC farms have great deals with renewable electric companies which the asic farms set up in those regions as far back as 2014

2. if asics themselves were not invented. then the watts/hash would be far far worse
asics evolve to be more efficient in power/watt
legendary
Activity: 4186
Merit: 4385
stompix. i was debunking YOU
YOUR version of the scenario where YOU provided limited scope of numbers
and then you went in 2 anal directions.
first sayin aggressively how im wrong becasue its 3 hours all year
then going opposite by showing the different production rates of 3 months
all without realising you were missing the general point

now please be a polite gentleman that does not want to be a drama queen about silly numbers you play hide and seek with
and just say
"ok i get the point. the CONTEXT is about capacity should always exceed demand. so that the excess can be stored"
and then move on
..
and no.. dont even start a new drama that people should never update their electrics in their house. or never update their central heating because "stompix says $6k is evil"

for people that do suffer from multiple day blackouts. they are willing and need to pay the money needed for the convenience.
i only suffer maybe 1 2 hour blackout a year when local maintenance is done or a bad storm so my convenience is valued at about $100 for 20 years

for areas with frequent more substantial issues
heck most companies would pay the initial outlay and then set a electric per kw rate so they get ROI
heck even governments do grants for the initial outlay of utility upgrades
legendary
Activity: 2828
Merit: 6108
Jambler.io
sorry but you are debunking yourself

you said january had 0.6X(with blackouts for a week) and february had 2.x(no blackouts)
so the assumption is normal demand per month without blackout experience would be 2.X

however now
you said its only 3 hours per day throughout the year.. debunked because u said febuary was more then january and now you are saying june is more then february..
kinda impossible to have more in february and even more in just in its only ever 3hours of sunlight
(where do you live... arctic circle?? dark side of the moon)
 
if your going to use a scenario.. stick with it

Franky...it's not a damn scenario it's what happened in Germany at the beginning of the year.
It does not claim it's not a possibility, it's reality!

So if you think you can debunk something, try debunking data from the german grid:
https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&stacking=grouped&interval=month&month=01
https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&stacking=grouped&interval=month&month=02
https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&stacking=grouped&interval=month&month=06

Please tell those morons that they don't have a clue how solar panels work and how much solar exposure Germany gets and according to you the sun definitely needs a citation in court to shine more on the fatherland.

And btw, yeah Germany is at the arctic circle:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Germany#Potential
but recent battery backups. like the tesla home charger system are not expensive and can be integrated and priced in with a new build house, oh and they have more capacity than my silly outdated backup

So from 100$, we went to 6000$ which with good old coal would mean 180 000 kwh, which at  3.381 kWh per household per year means recouping just the battery in 50 years. Send me the bill, please!

Today I am reading California want his citizen to switch off air conditioning during afternoons to “help the grid”, or the EU willing to ban fossil fuels car sales from 2030. Wondering where they will source all that energy….

Yeah, brings a lot of nostalgia from when I was young.
Hot water between 5 and 9, controlled blackouts at around 9 in the morning and 6-7 afternoon when we needed the power to feed the industry, gas pressure in winter so you could cook some fries in about 2 hours because we needed gas for fertilizer to grow those potatoes..

At least I was used to it, for some in the western world it will come as a shock.
Wait till you will only have internet access for browsing between 8 and 22 to save the planet and your smartwatch will only allow you to tap it to show the hour 10 times maximum a day to save power, more is wasteful behavior that shall not be tolerated!


legendary
Activity: 4186
Merit: 4385

and if you think its impossible
well countries spend hundreds of billions making dams to store multiple months of excess winter water for use in summer months
so flip the scenario
they can spend hundreds of billions on storing summer electrical energy for winter
This is something that need good planning and implementation over decades.
Today I am reading California want his citizen to switch off air conditioning during afternoons to “help the grid”, or the EU willing to ban fossil fuels car sales from 2030. Wondering where they will source all that energy….

well not decades..
.. but then again we are talking about city planners. who if given authority to plan.. would take that long.
but practically it can be done in alot less time.
(see how fast california got all the covid testing and PPE.. .. months not decades)
they can create factories to produce a new product in months.. (vaccines, PPE , test kids, PCR labs)
so anythings possible

im pretty sure it doesnt take a decade to facilitate a new car design or a new washing machine design

..
again it doesnt have to be some super megawarehouse for the nation..
it can be city level battery farms each made concurrently in months
plus also having local factories for power-walls to be built on masse

..
the reason why car manufacturers lobbied politicians for 2030 at the earliest is a deeper conversation involving many aspects like:
current leasing terms being 10years
also making the fabricator machines costs alot. but if they wait out 5+ years for other to design them. they can just rent/lease them. meaning save money transitioning
so its about delaying the transition purely to be capitalistic in cost saving
other deeper things are involved like the whole scheme of 'carbon credits'
if they can sell carbon producing cars now and charge people carbon credits
that money then can form grants to pay for the transition without affecting company profits

yep coal and oil refinaries know there is limited unmined resources left that wont be available in 50 years.
so yea they know they have to transition to renewables by 2070 at the latest
so if they can promote that carbon kills the planet and get consumers to pay carbon tax. that tax can be used as grants to pay for the transition to renewables at no cost to the company..
ingenius right..
pretend coal/oil is evil. when reality is they know they are running out of coal/oil anyway

(hint: the real planet killer of human climate change is the water cycle, not the carbon cycle.. rain forests are called rainforests and not carbon forests for a reason)
legendary
Activity: 2114
Merit: 15144
Fully fledged Merit Cycler - Golden Feather 22-23

and if you think its impossible
well countries spend hundreds of billions making dams to store multiple months of excess winter water for use in summer months
so flip the scenario
they can spend hundreds of billions on storing summer electrical energy for winter
This is something that need good planning and implementation over decades.
Today I am reading California want his citizen to switch off air conditioning during afternoons to “help the grid”, or the EU willing to ban fossil fuels car sales from 2030. Wondering where they will source all that energy….
legendary
Activity: 4186
Merit: 4385
sorry but you are debunking yourself

you said january had 0.6X(with blackouts for a week) and february had 2.x(no blackouts)
so the assumption is normal demand per month without blackout experience would be 2.X

however now
you said its only 3 hours per day throughout the year.. debunked because u said febuary was more then january and now you are saying june is more then february..
kinda impossible to have more in february and even more in just in its only ever 3hours of sunlight
(where do you live... arctic circle?? dark side of the moon)
 
if your going to use a scenario.. stick with it

.. so i was guessing that winter had like 3 hours. and summer had like 8hours
so try to make up your mind.

dont hide stats to make half a case requiring people to guess.. and then cry that they got numbers wrong because you suddenly now want to reveal numbers
,,
anyway if you want to knitpick the exact numbers fine.. be anal
i was trying to play into your small scope of numbers.. purely for conversation..

but disregarding the numbers...the point is.. and the context is this
HAVE MORE CAPACITY THAN DEMAND,. STORE THE EXCESS

as for comparing my belkin surgeprotector+battery backup from 20 years ago as a reason to think things wont work

i guess you are missing the evolutions of battery tech..
yes my 20 . ill highlight TWENTY YEAR OLD backup is good for a fridge, freezer, PC, laptop, cordless phone, wifimodem for 8 hours
so no its not the silly lil phone chargers you pretend it to be
and for under $100 more i could have enough for other household applience of convenience
so not really breaking the bank to save off brownouts

but recent battery backups. like the tesla home charger system are not expensive and can be integrated and priced in with a new build house, oh and they have more capacity than my silly outdated backup

so lets take this example
if i included all meal cooking. deskfans, ventilation, heating, lighting (all normal use stuff) IT devices. kettle kitchen appliences i could consume 2kwh a day myself
so just a tesla powerwall would be good for 7 days
much more then my 8 hours of essentials

so here is the thing
national grids wont have to store all excess power centrally. it can divvy out 7 days excess to peoples own powerwalls and then only need to store the remaining days it captured in summer

and if you think its impossible
well countries spend hundreds of billions making dams to store multiple months of excess winter water for use in summer months
so flip the scenario
they can spend hundreds of billions on storing summer electrical energy for winter
legendary
Activity: 2828
Merit: 6108
Jambler.io
the assumption of needing say, in your case the monthly demand is 2.24TWh

Never said that. I said that in February those panels managed to get only 2.24. In July they got 8twh.
So you see that the figure is not 1/8 of the capacity is more like 1/16  Grin

new build houses cost say $120k... battery backup from belkin is like not even $100
so sell the houses for $120,100..

Franky, we're talking about a country with 500Twh a year, a country that went dark for 7 days, you're talking about charging phones.
Let's suppose I power up my oven, rated 3300W how long will your 100$ battery last, would it be enough to at least defrost a pizza?
How many of those charges would be needed to power up aluminum plant?

remember your scenario is "only 3 hours of sunlight"

It's 3 hours peak sun median, all the summer power will need to stockpile all that energy till winter, it's not one period of blackout and then 3 hours, it's 3 hours median a year, with more in the summer and less in the winter. Got it?
All you need is to build 100 times the needed capacity of solar panels, again send me the bill, already Germany is paying 30cents/kwh, no need to make it cheaper, let's add more costs.
legendary
Activity: 4186
Merit: 4385
Simple problem, the last "Dunkelflaute" lasted 7 days, just this year the power generation of solar panels dropped to 0.69 TWh in January compared to 2.24 TWh in February which as you can guess it's not that sunny either.
So rather than having 7MW of spare, you will need 56MW.
Good luck with that when doing it for the whole country, and don't forget to send me the bill for all those batteries.  Cheesy

new build houses cost say $120k... battery backup from belkin is like not even $100
so sell the houses for $120,100..
i dont think house buyers going to cry over a $100 spend when buying a house
..
remember your scenario is "only 3 hours of sunlight"
so yea to cover 24 hours. you need 8x
with some redundancy hense i say 9x

this means in summer that extra 1 produced is going to battery store. and every day for 3 months of summer
so thats then 90*1
so if there is a blackout of 8 per day.. the battery are good for over 11 days based just on the 3 months of last summers excess store

..
ok let me translate that to your latest numbers
the assumption of needing say, in your case the monthly demand is 2.24TWh
which is <0.0031twh per hour
lets imagine in summer there is 8 hours of good prime light
so needing 0.01twh per hour in summer (to be 3x demand to cover instant use and 2x evening and night portions of day)
i know your thinking 'but that would be a dilemma in winter..'
so have 0.0093twh per hour for 8 hours in summer(0.0744 produced)
=0.0031 instant consumed
  0.0031 stored for the 4hours morning and 4 hours afternoon offpeak
  0.0031 stored for the 8hours of night

and store the 0.065twh excess each day for redundancy
so that in the 3 months of summer its storing 5.859TWh (2 months excess for winter)
legendary
Activity: 2828
Merit: 6108
Jambler.io
thats where solutions come about
if a city requires say 8MW a day (0.33mwh per hour)
but only gets 1MW for 3 hours(0.33mwh per hour)  because the sun doesnt shine for 24 hours to get the full 8MW a day

well the simple solution..
have enough solar to produce 3mwh per hour. and have battery storage facility to store the spare 7mw not used in that 3 hour of prime daylight

Simple problem, the last "Dunkelflaute" lasted 7 days, just this year the power generation of solar panels dropped to 0.69 TWh in January compared to 2.24 TWh in February which as you can guess it's not that sunny either.
So rather than having 7MW of spare, you will need 56MW.
Good luck with that when doing it for the whole country, and don't forget to send me the bill for all those batteries.  Cheesy




 
legendary
Activity: 4186
Merit: 4385
Yeah, geothermal has a rather limited area, but all types do to an extent, there are areas where solar is just useless, and efficiency on average of 3hours per day )

thats where solutions come about
if a city requires say 8MW a day (0.33mwh per hour)
but only gets 1MW for 3 hours(0.33mwh per hour)  because the sun doesnt shine for 24 hours to get the full 8MW a day

well the simple solution..
have enough solar to produce 3mwh per hour(10x demand) meaning in 3 hours it has enough for 30hours of city demand(9MW). and have battery storage facility to store the spare 8mw not used in that 3 hour of prime daylight

two ways to achieve this
warehouse centrally the battery store
or
have houses that have their own battery system that take on 8x of its 'need' in the 3 hours. so that the house has the excess for the rest of the day.
(much like cars charge up/fill up on fuel in the morning for use the rest of the week)
if your the type of person that only fills a car enough for one hours use and returns to refill with fuel/charge every hour. shame on you

there is no need in 2020 that people need to be connected to a national grid that only creates and supplies in the same minute of its creation

i personally dont have my computer connected direct to the national grid power supply.
i have a battery backup surge protector box that has 8 hours of battery store. inline between my devices and the wall.
(shameless plug, for once) ive had my belkin protector for 20 years and has lifetime warrenty
that way im always with power
UK doesnt suffer from many brownouts or blackouts so some think its unneeded but i have always had it just incase

ive previously lived in apartments with "night storage" heating. they warmup(charge) the bricks at night and slowly release heat during the day

im surprised new housebuilds dont include atleast battery backup as part of the design
legendary
Activity: 2828
Merit: 6108
Jambler.io
Bitcoin is very environmentally friendly and does not require a lot of energy when we compare it with other miners such as Gold miners, oil miners and other miners.

Ok, let's stop all the bitcoin mining for 1 year, how many do you think will die because of that?
Let's stop the oil industry for 1 month! War-z was heaven compared to what will happen.
How about we stop that comparison just for the sake of finding something that consumes more than the bitcoin network?

What’s weird about the whole story is that this whole situation actually shows that Chinese miners have actually used mostly renewable energy, and if I’m not mistaken such green energy sources don’t exist anywhere in the world given that of the top 10 such dams as many as 5 are located in China, while a third of all large hydropower plants are also located in China.

It's called propaganda.
If you look at how the coal and oil mining industry and on the other side the so-called renewable energy are throwing figures around you will have quite the headache as nothing would make sense. Add a bit of data from the nuclear industry and you realize one thing, everyone is lying to protect their interest.
What's bitcoin fault in this? None, it was caught in the middle of a stupid discussion and now everybody is trying to fight for their interest, quite normal after all it's all about money, some go for a reason, some start throwing around figures they know are fake because they know the others can't disprove with them.

I could claim to know that bitcoin burns 80% of coal-generated energy or 90% of pure eolian wind.
Nobody could come up with a claim other than studies that correlate, extrapolate, and mastu...let's leave it like that, data, nobody could come with solid figures to disapprove any of those scenarios because there is simply no data.

As you said, is weird, of course, it is!
Till now everyone was saying all that Chinese hashrate is coming from hydro, 60% of it is clean!
Now miners are moving to Kazakhstan which could barely power 5% of the entire hashrate with all their hydropower they produce in that country and with the rest coming from fossils and suddenly.. we're greener! Of course it's strange because it's impossible!!!!

It's one of the two:
a) either the mix previously was far more polluting with more coal burned in China and they were lying
b) the energy mix was perfectly clean and ....this whole thing is a lie!

And the most annoying thing is the duplicity here, this mini council comes with those numbers, good, we have renewables, etc.
Yet when it comes to press releases, they make this kind of claims:

Quote
Once all of Marathon’s purchased miners are delivered and fully deployed, the Company’s mining portfolio will consist of 33,560 state of the art ASIC miners, generating 3.56 EH/s. As a result, the Company will be consuming approximately 100 MWs of power, the maximum amount available at the Company’s data center in Hardin, MT.

1/3 of their hashrate is getting deployed at a datacenter power by coal, yet...they seek renewables. Bs!
hero member
Activity: 1414
Merit: 574
This is the real reason, masked under the idiotic ESG moratorium of a "polluting industry".

Yup, I couldn't agree more. I really hope this drama ends soon, because BTC is a viable invention for future financial solutions.  If a lot of people shout that BTC is not environmentally friendly, it's just a rant.  Even gold, which is an investment asset that has been trusted for a long time, also damages the environment.  If you want very real evidence without thinking hard, just look on google "project freeport Indonesia" how mountains turn into ravines just because they want to dredge the existing gold.
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