Or encouraging cheap and nasty fuels to be used to an even greater extent.
I'm pretty sure miners don't pick and choose when they mine, to coincide when there's going to be 'wasted surplus energy' otherwise. They just add on to the demand on the grid, around the clock.
They almost sound like Buddhist monks re: meat eating, from the way you phrase things!
I didn't read the GP ascribing morality into that statement. They're simply saying that the energy consumption is a market effect -- if it wasn't in the miner's self-interest to mine, they wouldn't.
Miners don't really want to use energy only when it's at a surplus though. Because the equipment is expensive and due to the difficulty increasing it's only viable a short time. So this is an argument that also doesn't really fly (and draws attention to another issue; the e-waste)
It is not just about what you alone can "mine", your participation is only made possible by ALL the miners burning electricity to keep the global state of the network. Without that combined wasted energy and CO2 generation there is no system for you to "benefit" from.
Anyway, you didn't tell us if you have stopped eating meat.
Mining farms are by nature located in areas with cheap electricity, ie. where supply exceeds demand. So it isn't taking away energy from other consumers. For example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20194135
You are certainly right.
However I am under the assumption that you only mine where electricity is cheap. If you are not stealing it, there is only nuclear, wind, water and sun produced energy left => Miners are kind of forced to use environment friendly energy.
Oh boy, someone on the Internet wants me to calm down because I point out that they are making a lazy point. Sheesh, tough crowd!
Whether you realize it or not, you can want to not burn fossil fuels, but if there's a profit to be made doing it, believe me, enough miners will bend their morality to make a profit. You act like everyone involved in this experiment has pure intentions. I'd argue that's untrue.
Would you make the same argument for driving a gasoline-guzzling truck? People have the right to tell you whatever you want, but you also have the right not to listen. In this case, I don't think the onus is on you, the individual consumer, to turn down their mining operation. It's problematic when something so wasteful is done on such a massive scale, as is the case with large corporate/state mining operations that are behind significant emissions..
If mining was doing "sink a bunch of power from renewables when the grid can't absorb them", that would be acceptable.
The problem is that mining is turning on fossil fuel plants which would otherwise be unprofitable to sell electricity from--which is disastrous for the environment.
Everything coming out of Cruz's mouth should simply be assumed to be wrong, deceitful, and/or harmful in any combination.
You're assuming that miners are paying the full cost of the energy they're using, which is not the case - see all the mining operations in places with subsidized energy, i.e. everyone else is paying some of the price, not to mention the externalities.
It doesn't help to think of CO2 pointlessly added either since I don't think mining is pointless. Now if they kept their existing setup but tweaked it so they still do all the computation but never submit any successful blocks, or just kept buying hardware and setting it on fire, then I guess I'd agree that seems pointless and wasteful (even if inconsequential compared to the giant ball of fire that's currently severely underutilized), but only because it's entirely and obviously unprofitable. Since "waste" by other metrics is so subjective I try to only consider the best proxy I can think of, which is cost and benefit figures. I don't put efficient LEDs in my house because I buy into the environmentalist argument of trying to live while using less energy personally, or live while "wasting" as little as I can, but because it saves me a significant amount of money. Similarly I don't stress out about "waste" if I go to sleep but forgot to turn some lights off because although I still have to pay for it, it's not very much. Even when the cost is high, like buying a lemon car, I don't feel bad about waste having to get rid of it and get a different one but about the extra cost.
The only way to affect miners is probably with economic consequences, rather than environmentalist philosophy. Maybe less CO2 would be added if the mining costs were higher, maybe not, and in any case I still have no idea how to price in the rise in CO2 due to a ton of SHA hardware cranking away, independent of whether it's powered by solar panels or water or coal. You'd have to have some sort of sensor on each unit (and the units involved in its manufacture -- put one over my mouth while you're at it) to capture its CO2 output at each moment of time (since it might not always be on due to repairs or whatever), and then you'd have to price the cost of each bit of output somehow, and who should pay it at what times.
> This is not true. Miners are sophisticated business enterprises that select mining farm locations carefully based on access to cheap power and natural cooling.
I'm pretty sure miners don't pick and choose when they mine, to coincide when there's going to be 'wasted surplus energy' otherwise. They just add on to the demand on the grid, around the clock.
They almost sound like Buddhist monks re: meat eating, from the way you phrase things!
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