Development for Bitcoin to reduce CO2 footprint

[konfuzius5278]

I have again a very very cool article, but again in german ( I dont read english news  )

For those guys who can understand the joke and how near we are to collaps with climate , they will change mind. I forget about it but it open my mind to do non comfort choices for the CO2 reduction:

https://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/klimawandel-den-absturz-kann-man-nicht-wegdiskutieren-kolumne-a-1271315.html

[konfuzius5278]

Very actual ENGLISH article in a science magazine that descripes that the actual arctic melt is actual as expected for 2090 (!!!)  

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1029/2019GL082187?referrer_access_token=gif7B3jxrlxKX5XghEFo1MOuACxIJX3yJRZRu4P4eruQZUBUWJDPFZF94DV9GaH13SVhl7o9BSrpCCjFd9XCvk87MqQN_rOa7zNjzSfT3EyEk-pBnnCivDMbXpI6xSuZY9VC6t1b9t1pxp8zOux4oQ%3D%3D&

Everyone must do something. And if NEW Bitcoin is only 80% safe its worth sparing 30000 kt CO2 a year  

We are not heading in a global crisis people will die of. We are IN a global crises.  

[BTCCoaster]

An ideal solution to make sure BTC has a viable future would be the emergence of 100% renewable energies which leave a minimal carbon footprint. Roll on

[konfuzius5278]

An ideal solution to make sure BTC has a viable future would be the emergence of 100% renewable energies which leave a minimal carbon footprint. Roll on

Please read complete thread about problems renewable energies.

And even that you could better use to maybe drive a car or use for producing company.

[franky1]

I dont understand why people like to concentrate to the specific case of BTC energy consumption which probably is much less then the banking sector + electronic payment processors like VISA consumes.

world wide refrigeration of bottles of Pepsi uses more electric than bitcoin..
the only benefit of Pepsi is that a few hours after consuming it you can make your toilet water yellow

[Machine Funk]

Should we not be thinking of reducing the CO2 elsewhere? How about the way the parts for miners and pc's are made? How is the metal smelted? How is the gold for the terminals and conductors mined? What about the trucks, planes, and buses that transport all these parts? I am pretty sure the CO2 gases produced from making the raw materials far outweigh the CO2 caused directly from mining?

[HeRetiK]

Should we not be thinking of reducing the CO2 elsewhere? How about the way the parts for miners and pc's are made? How is the metal smelted? How is the gold for the terminals and conductors mined? What about the trucks, planes, and buses that transport all these parts? I am pretty sure the CO2 gases produced from making the raw materials far outweigh the CO2 caused directly from mining?

I wouldn't be so sure about miner production carbon footprint far outweighing the carbon footprint of mining itself, but it might be a quite signficant portion of it.

For perspective here's a study from 2011 according to which "as much as 70 percent of the energy needed to make and operate a typical laptop computer throughout its life span is used in manufacturing the computer" [1]. With mining hardware having a much shorter lifespan than your average consumer laptop that impact is definitely not to be underestimated, even assuming efficiency improvements in hardware production since 2011.

[1] https://phys.org/news/2011-04-factory-energy.html

[Ucy]

Has research been done on the number of people mining with green energy? Why do you think clean energy is bad for mining?I think we should be talking about the reduction in dirty energy usage and not try to eliminate energy usage completely.
Proof of  stake is not an option. It encourages elitism which is
against satoshi vision.

We probably should be looking at making mining more decentralized, energy efficient, very affordable, profitable for small miners and remain PoW (or PoW+PoS)

[Chris!]

IMO the b.s. needs to be debunked once and for all. How much power does the USD consume? I need to order a roll of nickles, a roll of dimes and a roll of quarters. How much does that cost to mint, circulate and actually get into my hand? With such an outdated concept of moving metal around a country, it's obvious without looking into it that fiat takes a hell of alot more energy than anyone realizes. Does anyone care though? Of course not! Because it serves a very important purpose. Bitcoin has an even greater purpose and will be using power to do so.

Also, these estimates are all over the place because it's impossible to calculate. Even if you assume everyone has the same ASIC, how can you tell where they all are and what type of power they're using? What percentage is solar, hydro, wind? You'll never hear that. It's all burning coal to make electricity to mine bitcoins. It's a mirage to sway the general public into thinking that bitcoins are for criminals, it's bad for the environment or whatever other FUD.

Does anyone remember when the internet was going to use the entire world's power? I think we turned out okay, and the internet is pretty useful IMO.

[erikoy]

Well, there are many reason that one can reduce the CO2 production but we cannot say that it is only bitcoin that could be the reason for this. Whether there is bitcoin or not the sole reason to reduce CO2 production is to save mother earth and this is to produce electricity that could be use in household that limits and minimize the CO2 production. As OP stated those are the example of lesser CO2 production electricity generator in the likes of solar power panel, geothermal, windmills, and water pressure like in those rivers with high current.

[konfuzius5278]

Has research been done on the number of people mining with green energy? Why do you think clean energy is bad for mining?I think we should be talking about the reduction in dirty energy usage and not try to eliminate energy usage completely.
Proof of  stake is not an option. It encourages elitism which is
against satoshi vision.

We probably should be looking at making mining more decentralized, energy efficient, very affordable, profitable for small miners and remain PoW (or PoW+PoS)

Read the thread complete I answer already.

[konfuzius5278]

IMO the b.s. needs to be debunked once and for all. How much power does the USD consume? I need to order a roll of nickles, a roll of dimes and a roll of quarters. How much does that cost to mint, circulate and actually get into my hand? With such an outdated concept of moving metal around a country, it's obvious without looking into it that fiat takes a hell of alot more energy than anyone realizes. Does anyone care though? Of course not! Because it serves a very important purpose. Bitcoin has an even greater purpose and will be using power to do so.

Also, these estimates are all over the place because it's impossible to calculate. Even if you assume everyone has the same ASIC, how can you tell where they all are and what type of power they're using? What percentage is solar, hydro, wind? You'll never hear that. It's all burning coal to make electricity to mine bitcoins. It's a mirage to sway the general public into thinking that bitcoins are for criminals, it's bad for the environment or whatever other FUD.

Does anyone remember when the internet was going to use the entire world's power? I think we turned out okay, and the internet is pretty useful IMO.

Again pointing on others is like kindergarden  

Edit: I am not interested in Sathoshi Vision. "Team Sathoshi" (I think it was a team) is dead for 10 years now.

[HeRetiK]

Just a thought, for anyone who like me doubts that a secure, permissionless alternative to PoW will be found:

What if one were to create a PoW based alt coin that automatically pays part of the block reward to an environmental organization offsetting PoW-caused CO2 emissions?

The problem is of course finding consensus on which organization to support, but IMO that's probably easier to solve than the double-spend problem as the incentives are less mis-aligned. At worst you would have a developer-based "dictatorship" where devs would decide on which organization to support, but that still wouldn't be much different from alts where a predetermined, transparent percentage of newly issued currency goes into a dev fund, only it would be a CO2 fund instead.

As for which environmental organization to support, there's already a couple of well-vetted non-profit organizations that help people off-set their air-traffic-caused CO2 emissions on a voluntary basis such as atmosfair: https://www.atmosfair.de/en/

In theory one could also try to get this into a Bitcoin hard fork but let's not kid ourselves.

What would be everyone's thought on this?

[konfuzius5278]

Just a thought, for anyone who like me doubts that a secure, permissionless alternative to PoW will be found:

What if one were to create a PoW based alt coin that automatically pays part of the block reward to an environmental organization offsetting PoW-caused CO2 emissions?

The problem is of course finding consensus on which organization to support, but IMO that's probably easier to solve than the double-spend problem as the incentives are less mis-aligned. At worst you would have a developer-based "dictatorship" where devs would decide on which organization to support, but that still wouldn't be much different from alts where a predetermined, transparent percentage of newly issued currency goes into a dev fund, only it would be a CO2 fund instead.

As for which environmental organization to support, there's already a couple of well-vetted non-profit organizations that help people off-set their air-traffic-caused CO2 emissions on a voluntary basis such as atmosfair: https://www.atmosfair.de/en/

In theory one could also try to get this into a Bitcoin hard fork but let's not kid ourselves.

What would be everyone's thought on this?

Thats a really good idea. But not Altcoin new creation. there are many social project not supported. Simply 1 BTC of the Block reward goes to CO2 fund like DEV reward.

Some other idea to change POW algo to something useful like SETI or the idea of Medicoin. Buit this not really work

[franky1]

As for which environmental organization to support, there's already a couple of well-vetted non-profit organizations that help people off-set their air-traffic-caused CO2 emissions on a voluntary basis such as atmosfair: https://www.atmosfair.de/en/

In theory one could also try to get this into a Bitcoin hard fork but let's not kid ourselves.

What would be everyone's thought on this?

1. people already pay more for aeroplane tickets due to increased 'taxes' due to climate taxes
2. donating funds to atmosfair.?!? did you even see what they bought with it. they made a motel/youth hostal.
seriously. if they wanna help the co2 'offset' thy should be planting rainforests or solar farms. not doubling their money making motels

[HeRetiK]

Thats a really good idea. But not Altcoin new creation. there are many social project not supported. Simply 1 BTC of the Block reward goes to CO2 fund like DEV reward.

Yeah, but good luck with getting the devs, let alone the miners on board with that

Also that's the faintest of an idea with not much thought put behind it, so there's probably other reasons why such an approach might be problematic. Still, maybe this idea gets ahold of the right people and gets turned into something useful down the road.

Some other idea to change POW algo to something useful like SETI or the idea of Medicoin. Buit this not really work

Yep. Using PoW for "useful" calculations appears to be a fruitless approach at trying to eat your cake and have it too.


---


franky1's post is unfortunately completely beside the point but I'm still curious about a few things:

1. people already pay more for aeroplane tickets due to increased 'taxes' due to climate taxes

Kerosone is tax exempt on an international level:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_fuel

Living in an European country I never paid any taxes besides various unrelated airport fees and VAT (YMMV, maybe some European countries have an environment tax, but I'm not aware of any in my country of Austria). Going by train within Europe is often 3-5 times more expensive than going by airplane (which is pretty fucked up if you think about it).

The US seems to pull in all sorts of taxes, but non related to the environment:
https://www.travelzoo.com/blog/information-air-fees-taxes/

So which taxes are you referring to and in which country? Serious question, I couldn't find anything.

2. donating funds to atmosfair.?!? did you even see what they bought with it. they made a motel/youth hostal. [...]

Did you even look at which projects they are supporting?

https://www.atmosfair.de/en/climate-protection-projects/

Which hostel are you talking about? O.o

Atmosfair is just an example, but one that has been very well vetted by both governmental bodies (BMU) and trusted, well known NGOs (Stiftung Warentest), supporting only projects that follow stringent standards (CDM-Gold-Standard):
https://www.bmu.de/themen/wirtschaft-produkte-ressourcen-tourismus/tourismus-sport/nachhaltiger-tourismus/tipps-zum-nachhaltigen-reisen/
https://www.test.de/CO2-Kompensation-Diese-Anbieter-tun-am-meisten-fuer-den-Klimaschutz-5282502-0/
https://www.goldstandard.org/

I've only recently heard from them but from what I've found about them so far that's about as vetted and transparent as you get.


That being said, to repeat:
1) atmosfair is just an example
2) even if there are countries that charge an environment tax on aviation that's a wholly separate issue from trying to reduce PoW's CO2 impact.

[Chris!]

Again pointing on others is like kindergarden  

I couldn't agree more. Any news pointing out fabricated CO2 emissions (of an extremely useful network) is distracting newbs front the fact that this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. If they don't believe it yet, that's not really my problem.

[franky1]

aeroplanes are not taxed on the gallons of kerosene.
passengers dont pay an extra separate fee

the ticket prices increase to cover extra costs incurred by the aviation industry
and one example of the 'tax'  is the corsia agreement

in the uk without things actually being a 'tax'(vat) we define them as a tax if the price has increased due to government policy.
EG sugary drinks have increased in price. not due to VAT.. but due to a 'sugar tax'
plastic shopping carrier bags are now 5p/10p.. w call that a tax
so excuse me if you took the word 'tax' too literal, thinking it meant vat. but any price increase due to government policy directly or indirectly we consider a 'tax'

..
as for atmosfair wasting money making a hotel/motel/lodge thing rather than reducing co2 via tree planting or other environmental methods of co2 absorbtion
https://www.atmosfair.de/en/die-letzte-und-klimafreundlichste-lodge-des-climate-treks-in-nepal-oeffnet-ihre-pforten/

as for bitcoins co2 reduction.
compare today to 2012's GPU era. imagine if ASICS nevr got invented and we were at 50exa via GPU's
the crypto industry IS ALREADY dealing with the co2 issue.
first moving from CPU to GPU in 2010. then moving from GPU to asic in 2013..
the thing is that debates like climate change/co2 and even war on drugs is they are designed to be a never ending battleground used as an excuse to already/eventually introduce government controls.
take war on drugs. first cannabis, that got legalised, then cocaine, that then become less life threatening due to 'narcan' so now we are hearing everywhere about fentanyl... its just a debate that has no end as even if efforts are being made. goalposts are moved to just continue the battle

in short. even if we moved out bitcoins intrinsic valu of PoW costs and made bitcoins value pure speculation with zero underlying cost of production (imagine scenario of gold being mined for zero cost). then bitcoins value would decline. but not only that the co2 battle would just move onto counting the distributed ledger costs per full node, thus no end to the debate

[HeRetiK]

the ticket prices increase to cover extra costs incurred by the aviation industry
and one example of the 'tax'  is the corsia agreement

Interesting, I wasn't aware of the Corsia Agreement, thank you.

so excuse me if you took the word 'tax' too literal, thinking it meant vat. but any price increase due to government policy directly or indirectly we consider a 'tax'

I'm not taking the word "tax" too literal, it's just that the Corsia Agreement apparently isn't having people "pay more for aeroplane tickets" yet as it's been only obligatory since the beginning of this year with the obligations being:

As of 1 January 2019, all carriers are required to report their CO2 emissions on an annual basis.

It's a start, but mere reporting is not exactly the "taxation" that you claim it to be. I fly on a fairly regular basis and have yet to feel the impact of the Corsia Agreement on my wallet. In fact I see cheaper and cheaper flight routes popping up all over to place. It may just by weird anecdotal happenstance but I call bullshit on your claim of people paying even remotely enough on plane tickets to offset its environmental impact.

..
as for atmosfair wasting money making a hotel/motel/lodge thing rather than reducing co2 via tree planting or other environmental methods of co2 absorbtion
https://www.atmosfair.de/en/die-letzte-und-klimafreundlichste-lodge-des-climate-treks-in-nepal-oeffnet-ihre-pforten/

So you found one project of literally dozens that you personally think is a waste of money. Good on you.

..as for bitcoins co2 reduction.
compare today to 2012's GPU era. imagine if ASICS nevr got invented and we were at 50exa via GPU's
the crypto industry IS ALREADY dealing with the co2 issue.
first moving from CPU to GPU in 2010. then moving from GPU to asic in 2013..

Which is a complete bullshit statement and having been around long enough you should know better.

The only thing that moving from GPUs to ASICs did was that mining from 600W worth of GPUs changed to mining with 600W worth of ASICs.

in short. even if we moved out bitcoins intrinsic valu of PoW costs and made bitcoins value pure speculation with zero underlying cost of production (imagine scenario of gold being mined for zero cost). then bitcoins value would decline.

On that I agree with you. Which is why I would neither move away from PoW, nor try to use PoW's work for "useful calculations" but rather introduce a CO2 fund that works similar to the developer funds of other alts.

[konfuzius5278]

Its really like this 600 Watt GPU or 600 W ASIC....