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The environment claim is total bs. Crypto uses 0.5% of global energy supply. It's beaten by things such as residential television use, and only the wasted light

The environment claim is total bs. Crypto uses 0.5% of global energy supply. It's beaten by things such as residential television use, and only the wasted light from outdoor lighting (0.85%). It's also the only time that people try to blame an energy consumer for the sins of energy producers. The environmental damage of energy is caused by coal plants, not how many people are watching the simpsons at the same time.

wiseowise 4y ago
> It's beaten by things such as residential television use, and only the wasted light from outdoor lighting (0.85%). TV usage is a contribution of billions of people. Same with outdoor lighting. Both are necessary, unlike Bitcoin.
- hailwren 4y ago
  No, it's not outdoor lighting @ 0.85%. It's only the waste from outdoor lighting. Outdoor lighting is far higher. [1] But now we're playing a game where you tell me the thing you like and the things you don't like and I can either present a counterargument of things I like and don't like and we can both get mad that we have different preferences... Or, we can design a system that allows people to have different preferences without trying to regulate our preferences on each other. The math: (residential power %)(lighting %)(lighting % wasted) (21)(.13)(.35) = 0.9555% (oh, it was higher than I remembered) 1 - https://www.darksky.org/light-pollution/energy-waste/#:~:text=IDA%20estimates%20that%20least%2030,plant%20875%20million%20trees%20annually https://www.darksky.org/light-pollution/energy-waste/#:~:tex....
  - Aunche 4y ago
    "Mostly by lights that aren't shielded." Overall, the lighting is still necessary, it's just not as efficient as it could be. By that standard, over 99% of Bitcoin mining is waste because because most of the power goes into solving artificial difficulty. The only people who genuinely care about PoW are miners and a handful of enthusiasts. I'll generously estimate that 1 million people fall into this category. So you have a million people using .5% of the world's electricity just for one of their interests. Contrast that with the billions of people who enjoy videogames or outdoor lighting.
    - md2020 4y ago
      > By that standard, over 99% of Bitcoin mining is waste because because most of the power goes into solving artificial difficulty. This is circular reasoning. The difficulty adjustment is part of the protocol, and the purpose of the protocol is to secure the network from attacks. You might think that’s useless, I don’t.
    - hailwren 4y ago
      > Overall, the lighting is still necessary, it's just not as efficient as it could be Yes, and the completely fixable loss in efficiency has a significantly greater impact on our consumption than the entirety of cryptocurrency yet I have yet to see someone complaining about the perils of unshielded lighting.
- tasuki 4y ago
  TV and outdoor lightning aren't necessary. I don't have a TV, and I know astronomers who are very much opposed to outdoor lightning. Bring your own light! See the stars!
  - wiseowise 4y ago
    > TV and outdoor lightning aren't necessary. General populace would disagree.
einpoklum 4y ago
> 0.5% of global energy supply. 1. You mean consumption? 2. That's _huge_. Incredible. I just hope it doesn't rise further. 3. References for your claim that more energy is spent on TV use than on crypto mining. 4. For every person mining crypto, there are, oh, maybe 1,000 people who watch TV? 10,000?
- hailwren 4y ago
  1. Pedantry but long term energy storage isn't really a thing. consumption is more or less supply > Results from EIA’s 2015 Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS) show that televisions and related peripheral devices—such as digital video recorders (DVRs), video game consoles, and streaming devices—consumed 7% of the electricity used in American homes in 2015 [1] quick edit: I derped the math. I think American residential is 21% so that's ~1.48% of total supply. You'd need a 33% efficiency increase in residential TV efficiency to match the energy saved by abolition of crypto. That's without taking into account that crypto is on average produced from _more_ renewable energy than the average. 1 - https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=37032 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=37032 2 - https://hbr.org/2021/05/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-actually-consume https://hbr.org/2021/05/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-actuall...
  - einpoklum 4y ago
    (1.) Ok, as long as I understand what you mean. (2.)-(4.) According to this page: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/electricity-consumption-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/electrici... US electricity consumption is ~1/6.5 of global electricity use (and the ratio has probably dropped since 2017). So, 7% of electricity used in American homes is ~1.48% of total US electricity consumption, but only 0.23% of total consumption. Granted, TV is in wide use throughout the world, but not nearly as much as in the US, I believe. So instead of 6.5, let's divide by... say... 2.5 instead? That's about 0.5% of total consumption. Similar to crypto then :-)
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]

wiseowise 4y ago

> It's beaten by things such as residential television use, and only the wasted light from outdoor lighting (0.85%). TV usage is a contribution of billions of people. Same with outdoor lighting. Both are necessary, unlike Bitcoin.

hailwren 4y ago
No, it's not outdoor lighting @ 0.85%. It's only the waste from outdoor lighting. Outdoor lighting is far higher. [1] But now we're playing a game where you tell me the thing you like and the things you don't like and I can either present a counterargument of things I like and don't like and we can both get mad that we have different preferences... Or, we can design a system that allows people to have different preferences without trying to regulate our preferences on each other. The math: (residential power %)(lighting %)(lighting % wasted) (21)(.13)(.35) = 0.9555% (oh, it was higher than I remembered) 1 - https://www.darksky.org/light-pollution/energy-waste/#:~:text=IDA%20estimates%20that%20least%2030,plant%20875%20million%20trees%20annually https://www.darksky.org/light-pollution/energy-waste/#:~:tex....
- Aunche 4y ago
  "Mostly by lights that aren't shielded." Overall, the lighting is still necessary, it's just not as efficient as it could be. By that standard, over 99% of Bitcoin mining is waste because because most of the power goes into solving artificial difficulty. The only people who genuinely care about PoW are miners and a handful of enthusiasts. I'll generously estimate that 1 million people fall into this category. So you have a million people using .5% of the world's electricity just for one of their interests. Contrast that with the billions of people who enjoy videogames or outdoor lighting.
  - md2020 4y ago
    > By that standard, over 99% of Bitcoin mining is waste because because most of the power goes into solving artificial difficulty. This is circular reasoning. The difficulty adjustment is part of the protocol, and the purpose of the protocol is to secure the network from attacks. You might think that’s useless, I don’t.
  - hailwren 4y ago
    > Overall, the lighting is still necessary, it's just not as efficient as it could be Yes, and the completely fixable loss in efficiency has a significantly greater impact on our consumption than the entirety of cryptocurrency yet I have yet to see someone complaining about the perils of unshielded lighting.
tasuki 4y ago
TV and outdoor lightning aren't necessary. I don't have a TV, and I know astronomers who are very much opposed to outdoor lightning. Bring your own light! See the stars!
- wiseowise 4y ago
  > TV and outdoor lightning aren't necessary. General populace would disagree.

einpoklum 4y ago

> 0.5% of global energy supply. 1. You mean consumption? 2. That's _huge_. Incredible. I just hope it doesn't rise further. 3. References for your claim that more energy is spent on TV use than on crypto mining. 4. For every person mining crypto, there are, oh, maybe 1,000 people who watch TV? 10,000?

hailwren 4y ago
1. Pedantry but long term energy storage isn't really a thing. consumption is more or less supply > Results from EIA’s 2015 Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS) show that televisions and related peripheral devices—such as digital video recorders (DVRs), video game consoles, and streaming devices—consumed 7% of the electricity used in American homes in 2015 [1] quick edit: I derped the math. I think American residential is 21% so that's ~1.48% of total supply. You'd need a 33% efficiency increase in residential TV efficiency to match the energy saved by abolition of crypto. That's without taking into account that crypto is on average produced from _more_ renewable energy than the average. 1 - https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=37032 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=37032 2 - https://hbr.org/2021/05/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-actually-consume https://hbr.org/2021/05/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-actuall...
- einpoklum 4y ago
  (1.) Ok, as long as I understand what you mean. (2.)-(4.) According to this page: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/electricity-consumption-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/electrici... US electricity consumption is ~1/6.5 of global electricity use (and the ratio has probably dropped since 2017). So, 7% of electricity used in American homes is ~1.48% of total US electricity consumption, but only 0.23% of total consumption. Granted, TV is in wide use throughout the world, but not nearly as much as in the US, I believe. So instead of 6.5, let's divide by... say... 2.5 instead? That's about 0.5% of total consumption. Similar to crypto then :-)
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]