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The article is undermined by its arbitrary focus on crypto. The premise is that crypto mining drives consumption for power, and power production results in "he

by throwaway20875 6y ago

The article is undermined by its arbitrary focus on crypto. The premise is that crypto mining drives consumption for power, and power production results in "health and climate damage". Are we going to police consumers of power now? Will we invest our time and energy in determining the "good" and "bad" consumers of power. Or are we going to invest our time and resources in building out a sustainable, clean, and efficient power production infrastructure to replace the ancient one we have? Ctrl+f 'nuclear': 1/1 found.

ufo 6y ago
Yes, reducing energy waste is an important way to tackle the environmental externalities of energy production. For example, in cold countries one of the major efforts for helping with climate change is to encourage buildings to use better insulation, to waste less heat during winter.
sadfinger 6y ago
This is right. It is useful to know how much electricity production costs in health and environmental output. It is useful to know how much of bitcoins value is the electricity cost. We can put a value on environmental harm caused by total electricity usage. But, using these and suggesting that we can accurately measure the cost of cryptocurrency now and in the future compared to how the money/value would otherwise be spent is a distortion. The same reasoning can be used to make anything that stores value or does not have an obvious output look disproportionately harmful. It could be useful to compare cryptocurrencies with themselves. I am a little interested to see how they factored cryptocurrency's optimization to use the cheapest electricity possible. It disproportionately favors storing value from electricity that would otherwise be wasted.
pwinnski 6y ago
If you're not just reacting to the focus on crypto mining, but actually interested in the answer to your question, then the answer is yes. In fact, energy efficiency[0] is a large area of focus, especially with regard to ongoing climate change[1]. You might have noticed a shift in things like light bulbs building standards and so on. We've made progress[2], and so it is really hard for people celebrating that progress when they see a sudden boom in energy use to create wealth for a very tiny subset of people, a boom in use that threatens to undo all of our progress and then some. 0. https://www.energy.gov/science-innovation/energy-efficiency https://www.energy.gov/science-innovation/energy-efficiency 1. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/09/why-investing-in-renewable-energy-is-good-for-the-environment-and-society/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/09/why-investing-in-rene... 2. https://www.nrdc.org/experts/sheryl-carter/ramping-energy-efficiency-key-address-climate-change https://www.nrdc.org/experts/sheryl-carter/ramping-energy-ef...
- throwaway20875 6y ago
  >a boom in use that threatens to undo all of our progress and then some Then we're back to policing people's energy use. There will be little ROI in going down this path, and a huge opportunity cost. This is all not to mention the incentives driving crypto. We have many smart minds engaging in this realm - imagine if those same minds were allocated, via a better economic system, to improving our energy production and distribution. Addressing that dilemma is real policy. Unfortunately, in the West we play whack-a-mole and end up with policies to address the effects of prior policies.
jf22 6y ago
The worst kind of criticism about scientific papers is when people say "but the paper that didn't study this topic, didn't study this topic!" Would you expect a paper on COVID mortality also discuss heart disease and ALS? Of course not.
- throwaway20875 6y ago
  >Would you expect a paper on COVID mortality also discuss heart disease and ALS? Of course not. Power consumption and power production are simply directly related. Your clumsy attempt at an analogy here really misses the mark. The root cause of this issue is our power production isn't clean enough, and therefore consumption drives pollution. What do you address first - the demand or the supply? It's quite simply amazing to see so little ability to grasp anything beyond immediate consequences of a problem, particularly on a site like this.
  - jf22 6y ago
    Perhaps you are extending the discussion far past the point I was trying to make in a single sentence. Discussing things with people on hacker news is frustrating because people like you extend the argument to way way way past the point at hand. All of a sudden we are talking about clean energy deployment, not that BitCoin mining is using a lot of power and resources.
- effie 6y ago
  The paper has no perspective on electric energy consumption of other activities, there are many more with similar or bigger consumption (ad industry, MIC, etc.) and still advocates regulating specifically cryptocurrencies. The window of opportunity, attention span and resource for effective regulating economic activity is limited. We should focus on the (few!) important polluting classes such as transport and power production, not hundreds of minor consumer classes such as cryptocurrencies or aluminum producers. Focusing on minor issue, cherry-picking contorted arguments and advocating targeted policy is not how respectable scientific paper should look like.
  - 6y ago

ufo 6y ago

Yes, reducing energy waste is an important way to tackle the environmental externalities of energy production. For example, in cold countries one of the major efforts for helping with climate change is to encourage buildings to use better insulation, to waste less heat during winter.

sadfinger 6y ago

This is right. It is useful to know how much electricity production costs in health and environmental output. It is useful to know how much of bitcoins value is the electricity cost. We can put a value on environmental harm caused by total electricity usage. But, using these and suggesting that we can accurately measure the cost of cryptocurrency now and in the future compared to how the money/value would otherwise be spent is a distortion. The same reasoning can be used to make anything that stores value or does not have an obvious output look disproportionately harmful. It could be useful to compare cryptocurrencies with themselves. I am a little interested to see how they factored cryptocurrency's optimization to use the cheapest electricity possible. It disproportionately favors storing value from electricity that would otherwise be wasted.

pwinnski 6y ago

If you're not just reacting to the focus on crypto mining, but actually interested in the answer to your question, then the answer is yes. In fact, energy efficiency[0] is a large area of focus, especially with regard to ongoing climate change[1]. You might have noticed a shift in things like light bulbs building standards and so on. We've made progress[2], and so it is really hard for people celebrating that progress when they see a sudden boom in energy use to create wealth for a very tiny subset of people, a boom in use that threatens to undo all of our progress and then some. 0. https://www.energy.gov/science-innovation/energy-efficiency https://www.energy.gov/science-innovation/energy-efficiency 1. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/09/why-investing-in-renewable-energy-is-good-for-the-environment-and-society/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/09/why-investing-in-rene... 2. https://www.nrdc.org/experts/sheryl-carter/ramping-energy-efficiency-key-address-climate-change https://www.nrdc.org/experts/sheryl-carter/ramping-energy-ef...

throwaway20875 6y ago
>a boom in use that threatens to undo all of our progress and then some Then we're back to policing people's energy use. There will be little ROI in going down this path, and a huge opportunity cost. This is all not to mention the incentives driving crypto. We have many smart minds engaging in this realm - imagine if those same minds were allocated, via a better economic system, to improving our energy production and distribution. Addressing that dilemma is real policy. Unfortunately, in the West we play whack-a-mole and end up with policies to address the effects of prior policies.

jf22 6y ago

The worst kind of criticism about scientific papers is when people say "but the paper that didn't study this topic, didn't study this topic!" Would you expect a paper on COVID mortality also discuss heart disease and ALS? Of course not.

throwaway20875 6y ago
>Would you expect a paper on COVID mortality also discuss heart disease and ALS? Of course not. Power consumption and power production are simply directly related. Your clumsy attempt at an analogy here really misses the mark. The root cause of this issue is our power production isn't clean enough, and therefore consumption drives pollution. What do you address first - the demand or the supply? It's quite simply amazing to see so little ability to grasp anything beyond immediate consequences of a problem, particularly on a site like this.
- jf22 6y ago
  Perhaps you are extending the discussion far past the point I was trying to make in a single sentence. Discussing things with people on hacker news is frustrating because people like you extend the argument to way way way past the point at hand. All of a sudden we are talking about clean energy deployment, not that BitCoin mining is using a lot of power and resources.
effie 6y ago
The paper has no perspective on electric energy consumption of other activities, there are many more with similar or bigger consumption (ad industry, MIC, etc.) and still advocates regulating specifically cryptocurrencies. The window of opportunity, attention span and resource for effective regulating economic activity is limited. We should focus on the (few!) important polluting classes such as transport and power production, not hundreds of minor consumer classes such as cryptocurrencies or aluminum producers. Focusing on minor issue, cherry-picking contorted arguments and advocating targeted policy is not how respectable scientific paper should look like.
- 6y ago