InwardContour
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June 30, 2014, 11:19:34 PM |
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The cheapest type energy by far is nuclear power. It is also one of the cleanest forms of energy.
I really do not understand why the "green lobby" does not push nuclear power more
Probably just ignorance mostly. Lots of people have irrational fears of things they don't understand and associate with death instead of cleaner and more efficient energy. The green lobby seems to be "well educated" on things like global warming and the effects of other energy types
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halfawake
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July 01, 2014, 01:32:05 AM |
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The cheapest type energy by far is nuclear power. It is also one of the cleanest forms of energy.
I really do not understand why the "green lobby" does not push nuclear power more
Probably just ignorance mostly. Lots of people have irrational fears of things they don't understand and associate with death instead of cleaner and more efficient energy. The green lobby seems to be "well educated" on things like global warming and the effects of other energy types I'm about as much of an environmentalist as one gets, but I must admit I get rather peeved at my fellow environmentalists who hate nuclear power and wind / solar. There's always something to object to power plants, but why are you really objecting to a solar power plant installation in the desert? Yes, I saw this happen. It saddens me greatly, the continual NIMBY attitude that it seems a lot of environmentalists have does nothing but ensure that we'll keep on being powered by fossil fuels.
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BurtW
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July 01, 2014, 01:56:22 AM |
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I'm about as much of an environmentalist as one gets, but I must admit I get rather peeved at my fellow environmentalists who hate nuclear power and wind / solar. There's always something to object to power plants, but why are you really objecting to a solar power plant installation in the desert? Yes, I saw this happen. It saddens me greatly, the continual NIMBY attitude that it seems a lot of environmentalists have does nothing but ensure that we'll keep on being powered by fossil fuels.
I think water is the number one concern in the desert and PV installations do require some water. I have a buddy who is involved with very large scale PV installations. He told me the following story about having to solve the following string of issues: PV system would get dust on it reducing the output. Solution: wash them periodically. The water run off from the washing caused weeds to grow, when they got high enough they shaded the collectors reducing the output. Solution: periodically bring in goats to eat the weeds. The goats somtimes chewed on the wires causing failures reducing output. Solution: they were noodling that when he talked to me. And so it goes....
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InwardContour
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July 01, 2014, 01:59:22 AM |
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The cheapest type energy by far is nuclear power. It is also one of the cleanest forms of energy.
I really do not understand why the "green lobby" does not push nuclear power more
Probably just ignorance mostly. Lots of people have irrational fears of things they don't understand and associate with death instead of cleaner and more efficient energy. The green lobby seems to be "well educated" on things like global warming and the effects of other energy types I'm about as much of an environmentalist as one gets, but I must admit I get rather peeved at my fellow environmentalists who hate nuclear power and wind / solar. There's always something to object to power plants, but why are you really objecting to a solar power plant installation in the desert? Yes, I saw this happen. It saddens me greatly, the continual NIMBY attitude that it seems a lot of environmentalists have does nothing but ensure that we'll keep on being powered by fossil fuels. I think most environmental want more solar and wind power to be used. This is why they try to get regulations enacted that make it more expensive to produce "carbon" power so that wind and (especially) solar energy can better compete
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halfawake
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July 01, 2014, 04:45:55 AM |
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Mining uses an insane amount of energy. I honestly hope governments do crack down on people doing this (at least those who aren't powering it with their own PV setup). This really is the biggest problem with bitcoin in my opinion, it's a huge energy hog. I think most of the things about bitcoin taking over would be great, but this is definitely not one of those aspects of bitcoin that are a positive. (Yeah, I know, the fiat system also uses a tremendous amount of energy, but we really should be striving to do better than them, rather than merely not as bad.)
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BTC: 13kJEpqhkW5MnQhWLvum7N5v8LbTAhzeWj
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Collider
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July 01, 2014, 06:15:28 AM Last edit: July 01, 2014, 06:26:04 AM by Collider |
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The whole "mining is a huge waste of electricity" motion is just completely wrong.
Mining currently uses between 105MW and 150MW. However, the act of mining is the act of keeping the Bitcoin payment system alive and secure.
Do you know how much electricity all the banks in the world use for their "services" to the people? Hint: It is most likely much more.
Regardless of the above, many miners use renewable energy sources for mining, as in most areas it is simply cheaper.
The example of WA state with 2-4ct/kWh for commercial use is just one example, but it clearly shows that unsubsidized renewable energy can be far cheaper than any coal / gas plant.
Many miners also get hosting in Iceland, having the benefit of 100% renewable energy there plus extremely good conditions for free cooling (my miner has an intake temperature of 18°C in the summer).
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ernie-
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July 01, 2014, 06:24:55 AM |
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The whole "mining is a huge waste of electricity" motion is just completely wrong.
Mining currently uses between 105MW and 150MW. However, the act of mining is the act of keeping the Bitcoin payment system alive and secure.
Do you know how much electricity all the banks in the world use for their "services" to the people? Hint: It is most likely much more.
Nonsense, the comparison between mining and the banking network is specious. You don't have to mine fiat the power consumption of the banking system is to provide the layer above the currency, the accounting, recording, lending, usury, and other services. Bitcoin still needs those infrastructures as well, it's just that it's not widely accepted so that part of the infrastructure is currently quite small, but growing every day. If Bitcoin becomes mainstream and adopted by banks and credit card providers, you wait and see how much total power is used then!
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Collider
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July 01, 2014, 06:26:23 AM |
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The whole "mining is a huge waste of electricity" motion is just completely wrong.
Mining currently uses between 105MW and 150MW. However, the act of mining is the act of keeping the Bitcoin payment system alive and secure.
Do you know how much electricity all the banks in the world use for their "services" to the people? Hint: It is most likely much more.
Nonsense, the comparison between mining and the banking network is specious. You don't have to mine fiat the power consumption of the banking system is to provide the layer above the currency, the accounting, recording, lending and other services. Bitcoin still needs those infrastructures as well, it's just that it's not widely accepted so that part of the infrastructure is currently quite small, but growing every day. If Bitcoin becomes mainstream and adopted by banks and credit card providers, you wait and see how much total power is used then! Mining uses a miniscule amount of energy compared to all the wasteful use of electricity in the United States alone. How come the electricity consumption per capita is more than 2.5* that of Germany? If everyone of the 318m US citizens would reduce power consumption by only 10% (easily achieved by switching lightbulbs...), it would save 25 700 MW of generation capacity alone. You can do all the bitcoin mining of your hearts´content with that, and then some.
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ernie-
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July 01, 2014, 06:31:49 AM Last edit: July 01, 2014, 06:59:05 AM by ernie- |
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Mining uses a miniscule amount of energy compared to all the wasteful use of electricity in the United States alone.
How come the electricity consumption per capita is more than 2.5* that of Germany?
If everyone of the 318m US citizens would reduce power consumption by only 10% (easily achieved by switching lightbulbs...), it would save 25 700 MW of generation capacity alone.
You can do all the bitcoin mining of your hearts´content with that, and then some.
And how long do you think it will be before the bitcoin mining network is up to many gigawatts of power consumption, with nethash growing by 60% each month? If only MegaBigPower keeps up with their 50PH/s per mth. expansion plans, that will require a new nuclear power station every 18months. http://www.coindesk.com/megabigpower-launches-global-franchisee-network-add-50phs-per-month-bitcoin-network/
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Collider
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July 01, 2014, 06:44:57 AM |
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If only MegaBigPower keeps up with their expansion plans, that will require a new nuclear power station every 18months.
In a first stage they want to build 10MW of capacity until 2015 and are planning to build one up to 50MW facility. You probably might not know this but assuming exponential difficulty growth is obviously a fallacy (aslong as there isn´t exponential price increase in Btc). There is a very real limit to difficulty, and it is Btc price, power efficiency, power price, available hosting facilities, hardware price and some other factors. Regardless, compared to my example, Difficulty could increase atleast 171 fold before being the same amount that can easily be saved by some energy efficient appliances in the household in the US alone. It really is a TINY usage compared to wasteful electricity usage in the US, let alone globally.
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Ayers
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July 01, 2014, 09:14:10 AM |
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can energy be redirected to do useful things? maybe i'm speaking bullshit i know lol
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ernie-
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July 01, 2014, 09:20:03 AM |
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can energy be redirected to do useful things? maybe i'm speaking bullshit i know lol
Its mostly waste heat, so that can have uses.
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Marlo Stanfield
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July 01, 2014, 12:27:34 PM |
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Mining uses a miniscule amount of energy compared to all the wasteful use of electricity in the United States alone.
How come the electricity consumption per capita is more than 2.5* that of Germany?
If everyone of the 318m US citizens would reduce power consumption by only 10% (easily achieved by switching lightbulbs...), it would save 25 700 MW of generation capacity alone.
You can do all the bitcoin mining of your hearts´content with that, and then some.
And how long do you think it will be before the bitcoin mining network is up to many gigawatts of power consumption, with nethash growing by 60% each month? If only MegaBigPower keeps up with their 50PH/s per mth. expansion plans, that will require a new nuclear power station every 18months. http://www.coindesk.com/megabigpower-launches-global-franchisee-network-add-50phs-per-month-bitcoin-network/This picture is mind blowing. Wow, bitcoin mining has come a long way. It's almost ridiculous at this point. How much further are we going to see this go?
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BurtW
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July 01, 2014, 03:45:16 PM Last edit: July 01, 2014, 04:00:44 PM by BurtW |
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There is a very real limit to difficulty, and it is Btc price, power efficiency, power price, available hosting facilities, hardware price and some other factors.
The upper limit is calculated in this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=281279.0Based on $100 per BTC and $0.10 per kWh the electrical cost break even point is about 179.7 PH/s. Adjusting for $600 per BTC (x6) and $0.02 per kWh (x5) would give us 179.7 * 6 * 5 = 5,391 PH/s. The same thread assumes 0.8 J/GH so: 5,391 PH/s = 5.391 * 10 18 H/s 0.8 J/GH = 0.8 * 10 -9 J/H (5.391 * 10 18 H/s) * (0.8 * 10 -9 J/H) = ( 5.391 * 0.8 ) * ( 10 18 * 10 -9 ) ( H/s * J/H ) = 4.3128 * 10 (18-9) (J/s) = 4.3128 GW World power production from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_generationis about 2311.4 GW. So Bitcoin would use about 0.1866 % of world electrical output in this maximum build out scenario. BTW in the above scenario the difficulty would be 753,000,000,000
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brenzi
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July 01, 2014, 06:53:22 PM |
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[...]
Mining uses a miniscule amount of energy compared to all the wasteful use of electricity in the United States alone.
How come the electricity consumption per capita is more than 2.5* that of Germany?
If everyone of the 318m US citizens would reduce power consumption by only 10% (easily achieved by switching lightbulbs...), it would save 25 700 MW of generation capacity alone.
You can do all the bitcoin mining of your hearts´content with that, and then some.
This statement is just very shortsighted. Minuscule is only bitcoin's market cap compared to the world's whole economy. [...] = 4.3128 GW World power production from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_generationis about 2311.4 GW. So Bitcoin would use about 0.1866 % of world electrical output in this maximum build out scenario. BTW in the above scenario the difficulty would be 753,000,000,000 That is today, at 600$/BTC. Let's assume 6000$/BTC and you'll already be using 1.866% of the world's elecricity use but still be a minuscule economy. (directly following from the calculation above) This by the way also means hidden cost of the bitcoin network paid by everybody because of increasing electricity prices due to increased demand.
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BurtW
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July 01, 2014, 07:25:52 PM |
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Google on Thursday shed some light on its energy consumption, which worked out to about 2.26 million megawatt hours of electricity in 2010. ( http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2392654,00.asp) also ( http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-09/google-releases-its-energy-consumption-numbers-revealing-260-million-watt-continuous-suck) ( 2.26 * 10 12 Wh/y ) / (24*365.25 h/y) = 257 MW Direct electricity use of the Internet is probably around 10% of total electricity consumption, said Jon Koomey Research Fellow at Stanford University but he immediately added that the number does not tell us very much. ( http://www.techthefuture.com/technology/how-much-electricity-does-the-internet-use/) Current minimum consumption of the Bitcoin network (it is probably more than this due to AC needs and the use of less efficient older hashing units): From https://blockchain.info/charts/hash-rate lets call it 120,000,000 GH/s (1.2 * 10 17 H/s) * (0.8 * 10 -9 J/H) = ( 1.2 * 0.8 ) * ( 10 17 * 10 -9 ) ( H/s * J/H ) = 0.96 * 10 (17-9) (J/s) = 96 MW Let's double it. Still less than Google at the current time. We should surpase Google for sure.
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Our family was terrorized by Homeland Security. Read all about it here: http://www.jmwagner.com/ and http://www.burtw.com/ Any donations to help us recover from the $300,000 in legal fees and forced donations to the Federal Asset Forfeiture slush fund are greatly appreciated!
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BurtW
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July 01, 2014, 08:20:52 PM |
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I have just updated my thread here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=518111.msg7626097#msg7626097where I show what would happen if the growth in hash rate over the last one year period (23.45% per adjustment) were to continue at the same rate for one more year. It shows that something (price or growth in hash rate) must give before the end of the year. You can also see the current power and energy numbers and most importantly for this thread the projected energy and power consumption if the growth in hash rate were to be maintained for just one more year. Don't worry it can't and it won't.
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Our family was terrorized by Homeland Security. Read all about it here: http://www.jmwagner.com/ and http://www.burtw.com/ Any donations to help us recover from the $300,000 in legal fees and forced donations to the Federal Asset Forfeiture slush fund are greatly appreciated!
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ernie-
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July 01, 2014, 09:20:35 PM |
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The guy is clearly wrong, he claims the Bitcoin emission trend is decreasing. Then he quotes the nethash as 95PH/s yet it's already hit 145PH/s a week ago. Trying to compare Bitcoin mining with physical mining in the real world is obviously a stunt and an attempt to distract and uninformed reader. There is no relationship between the two processes other than they both use the word "mining'. What he fails to grasp is the exponential growth in bitcoin mining power consumption.
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ernie-
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July 02, 2014, 09:11:59 AM |
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I think one way to slow the growth is reduce the block reward from 25 coins to just 1 coin per block, there is no way the BTC price will jump 25 fold to compensate as more then half the coins are already mined so there is no shortage of supply, and no reason for that much fiat to enter the market.
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