Bitcoin Forum

Just wondered what cost to environment of all these computers using power to mine bitcoin until all coins are mined.  Has anyone come up with any estimates?

Global warming is a hoax! It has never been this cold in Europe before... So please add more miners, it might get warmer next year.

yep

there was an article on it, someplace......but GW is a hoax..move on

Besides being false (ever heard about the ice age?), this doesn't mean a thing. We could very well have a global warming and have very low temperature in Europe. The climate in Europe is heavily influenced by the Gulfstream and a lot of other factors.

Yeah, I'm sure there is a article that the internet is a hoax, somewhere in the internet.

That being said, the current financal system doesn't run without a cost either.

Someday we can settle down on Greenland again :)

@Birdy, You're completely right.Global warming is something real, I cannot deny that. I just don't think we will notice any effect in our lifetime.
 The funny thing here is that all the comps crunching BTC will only account for 0.000001%(give or take some) of all energy consumption worldwide. . I don't think BTC is using more energy than an average banking corp.

I also think there is too much worry about the CO2 emissions and too less about the stuff that is really important right now (e.g. too much fishing, fish populations are collapsing right now)

In Spain we will have the clodest summer until 1816 http://www.hoy.es/20130529/mas-actualidad/sociedad/verano-2013-frio-lluvioso-201305291010.html ¿Golbal warming? nope, that was for money ¿We havent to do nothing? nope, the UV hole is bigger every time but not for hot, the problem is the radiation.

There are thousands of charts "proving" and "disproving" global warming all over the internet...
Also the belief in global warming changes with every too cold or too hot season at your local place (no kidding, over 20% of the people seem to change their minds when the season is hotter or colder than usual), thats not how it works. It's called global for a reason.

The BBC ran a story on this that may be of interest (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22153687). Seems like we're not that bad, bitcoin is consuming 0.025% of the US household electricity supply apparently. Not sure if these numbers are accurate.

If you don't believe climate change is real, come on down to the good old southern united states. Every summer we set a record high temperature. 10 years ago in the part of the southern us i live in, it would get in the low 90s at most. the last 5 years, that number has rose to last summer, a high of 107 degrees Fahrenheit plus humidity. you don't know what global warming is until you step out of your house and immediately feel dizzy woozy and nauseus. we've had record draughts in my area every year for the last several years. Global Warming is real. Scientific fact, not fiction. The bright side is that the plants seem to absorb alot of the excess carbon dioxide. but the heat is so immense it kills most of the plants during the summer.

The energy consumption of the mining is indeed a lot. Anyhow, the other option is to continue with the global corrupted banking (slavery) system, which gives power to the hands where there's already power. That makes it an incredibly conservative system of power distrubution. Conservative power distribution leads to the maintenance and protection of existing business. What is the existing business?

I'd say the existing business is
a) war
b) oil
c) coal

Now let's talk about the global warming caused by Bitcoin mining...

The bitcoin mining also is a system that equilibrates its costs (consumption) along with the price of bitcoin if I understand correctly.

...and along with the challenge of mining new coins ..which increases over time untill it's virtually impossible.

I would guess a lot. A ton of carbon footprints. It's not just all these miners, you got a/c units that pull a lot as well to keep these miners cool. But then you got more and more semi's, vehicles on the road. In legal states, you got legally licensed in door grow operations, that pull massive electric. But what I can say from, a person that knows what he is talking about, the filters at coc/coal power plants, restrictions are getting hardened, and filters are becoming more advanced to basically, what gets released into the sky is vapor. For power produced by dams and wind mills, probably has no effect. This is really a great topic to speak about. People will disagree and will agree at what is happening, with proof or not. I am guessing this is a biased subject? I think bias is the correct term, if not, I apologize.

Global warming is the biggest pump and dump scheme of  our times. Rising temperatures have stalled for 15 years despite rising atmospheric CO2 levels.

http://www.collective-evolution.com/2013/04/15/scientists-baffled-as-report-proves-global-warming-has-stopped/


Now they have to call it Climate Change instead. It is absurd to think we can predict global climate change or what the costs vs. benefits might be in the longterm.

Oh nice, you've found a article to "prove" it's hoax.

Well here is a chart "proving" it's not:
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/indicators/weather-climate/temperature.html#fragment-2

Like I said, there are thousand of charts&articles about this. Sadly it's more politic than science.
Climate analysis is so complex that it's easy to create "proofs" for every opinion.

I don't know why a lot of people start with assuming that there is no influence whatsoever though, when the amount of CO2 in the air, doubles, triples etc.

Forecasters can't ever predict the weekly forecast correctly..

That chart shows the same thing.  No increase in average global surface temperature over the last 15 years. Rising CO2 is one factor affecting climate among many.
I agree it is politics and funding that drive the discussion more than science.

Far less than your bank. Exponentially less than all banks. Next to infinitely less than all banks, money transmitters and llikes put together.

That's like zooming in at 1940 til 1950 and saying "look it's global cooling!!!"
You can do this with Bitcoin charts too. Do you want the price to go up or down? (Just look at all those fancy charts in the speculation forum :D Remember, coloured bold lines are better arguments!)
The trend is important.


Yes, you can take a look at who is financing the research and know what the result will be :/

If you want to know the truth about Global Warming / Climate Change, follow the money.

We have had people lobbying us about this heating effect for years, mostly as they get paid to do so.

Some of them are paid to prove it happening, by making nice graphs and highlighting places that are getting warming - because they now have buildings around them - and didn't 20 years ago!

We have had governments agreeing with these people, not only because the same governments pay them, but also to justify all the extra carbon taxes we have all had to pay in the last few years.

Now that the taxes are real, the governments are not so interested anymore, and I guess it doesn't help that the sun has moved into a cooler sun spot period, meaning its going to be damn cold for the next 11 years or so.

However, this isn't the end of climate change, prepare for a whole new range of taxes when the sun takes a turn and starts belching out more heat - by 2030 we will all be talking about how climate change is coming all again to a new generation! ;)

Not cynical, just a realist!

The money is on both sides.
Those "disproving" global warmings are mostly influenced/paid by the industries that don't want it to be true.

If you think you "know the truth" you are blinded.

But it's not that important anyway, there are more important environmental problems to solve right now and all this focus on global warming isn't helpful for those.

The climate is always changing, and it can be argued that we are now in a time of warming.  Being able to attribute it to energy consumption is yet another debate.

The mining of coins is actually playing an important of function in keeping track of the transactions between bitcoin users.  This use of energy isn't much different then the energy banks use to process each their own transactions.

Climate change is not a hoax  ::)

However, BTC network is now officially the fastest supercomputer on the planet in terms of Gh / S

http://money.cnn.com/2013/05/23/technology/enterprise/bitcoin-supercomputers/index.html

$200 000 a day in power consumption is a lot.

Someone is working on a solar powered BTC miner though  ;D

Looks like their hashrate might be a bit slow...


http://www.inhabitat.com/wp-content/uploads/snapper_before.jpg

I think like everything else, the weather pattern goes in waves and cycles. I think the fear of global warming is a lot worse than the actual problem itself could eventually be.

Ha ha. You do realize that solar panels are undergoing the same process as PC's. They are becoming cheaper and more efficient at an exponential rate...

It is actually quite impossible to predict the global warming because too many unknown parameters have to be assumed and are not really known. Despite of that the influence of the parameter to each other is unknown to as well as the direct influence to the whole system, like is is proportional, integrative, logarithmic, exponentional, etc.

So everyone can simulate a scenarion based on whatever he wants and maybe right. But nobody knows for real until the time has come.

Yes, it is a hoax. But it also doesn't matter to add more miners since the CO2 has nearly no influence to the climate.

I miss the 90's. Bad music but good weather in Europe. ^^

This gets said a lot, but there isn't much proof of it being true.

Would you happen to have any indicators demonstrating it?

As I see it, the energy companies are gaining from the eco taxes as much as the government, so who has money to make from the climate change story not being true - and are willing to pay for lobbying to alter the story?

car industries, coal/oil/gas industries, logistic companies... in short every industry that produce a lot of CO2 or has a high energy conspumption rate.
They all are hit directly or indirectly by regulations to protect from CO2-emissions/higher energy costs.
They all have valid (financal) reasons to do this.
In my country the car lobby is lobbying against some CO2-regulations right now.

Well, technically he is correct, just a question of defintion of "what matters"/what is "good"/"bad".
If you think the preservation of our species is irrelevant, then yes. But most of us are born with a concern for our species, so it does matter to them.

Big oil has been behind many wars and is also behind much of the disinformation regarding climate change,

They do NOT want to pay CO2 taxes.

Just google "big oil and climate change"  ;)

EDIT: please google the above and read what you find :)

and it all leads you back to the beginning of it being a bunch of people being paid to tell you that global warming is happening! :)

Car manufacturers don't care about climate change because it gives them a reason to sell a small car for more money!

The energy utility companies are making huge profits thanks to carbon taxes! They are also now able to make bigger money from green energy subsidies, which are being paid for by these carbon taxes, so they win twice! ;)

Contrary to what the climate change lobbyists are telling you, the only people who don't want climate change to happen are the general public who are having to pay for it all!

We are the ones who have to pay higher energy prices, higher fuel prices, and higher prices for replacement equipment because now its more green!

Often the green companies are others than the oil/coal/huge car companies. E.g. in my country the big car companies are still trying to lobby against everything that reduce CO2, because they missed the boat of creating more environmental-friendly cars ( http://www.spiegel.de/auto/aktuell/streit-um-co2-grenzwerte-merkel-uebernimmt-position-der-autolobby-a-902162.html , sorry it's in German as this is from my country )
Whether or not human made climate change is true, there definitely are lobbyists to deny the change. Contrary to most of the other stuff about this topic, this is a fact.

Wondering how heats generated by all GPUs in cryptocurrency network affect on global warming  ;)

Not a lot, but overall heat produced as side-effect of most things we use (lamps, engines etc.) and for the purpose of it (heater etc.) should have some influence (probably still small though).