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Researchers have calculated, or approximated, the cost of creating bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies. Then compared said cryptocurrency costs vs the cost of real actual mining for minerals. Mining bitcoins etc requires more power then most actual mining such as actual gold. An average bitcoin-dollar, or if you will a dollar worth of a bitcoin, is calculated to require about 17 megajoule of energy, while digging up a dollar worth gold requires 5 megajoule. Aluminum is still a lot more expensive then most of the cryptocoins to produce as it requires a massive 122 megajoule to create a dollar worth of.
The Carbon dioxide creation due to cryptocurrencies mining is also estimated to be between 3 and 15 million tonnes, between January 2016 and June 2018. But a Chinese bitcoin emits four times as much CO2 as a Canadian one, so it is highly dependent on the form of energy used. I didn't find any comparable numbers to how much CO2 is created from the production of Aluminum, Gold or other metals.
Quantification of energy and carbon costs for mining cryptocurrencies
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-018-0152-7
Bitcoin Will Burn the Planet Down. The Question: How Fast?
https://www.wired.com/story/bitcoin-will-burn-planet-down-how-fast/
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday November 20 2018, @01:15PM (5 children)
Worth pointing out that gold might not have been as environmentally clean and pleasant to mine 4990 years ago when it started.
Its kinda like going software engineering about code maturity when comparing some COBOL from the 60s to todays javascript framework of the week.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 20 2018, @01:25PM
> ??? going software engineering
Best to stick with car analogies...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 20 2018, @02:56PM (2 children)
Thats what Ive been saying. Crappy javascript wastes far more energy than crypto, but there is no mention of that by these same people. I can undersrand legitimately being concerned by both or neither, but only one means you are ignorant or malicious.
I just optimized some code that went from about 10 hrs to do something down to 10 minutes in a day. If the pc was normally using about 0.3 kW, thats going from 3kWh to 0.05 kWh of energy consumption for the same task just by using more clever algorithms. Imagine if that could be done webwide just by the same people who complain about crap like this being less lazy or paying a bit more.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday November 20 2018, @06:54PM (1 child)
That's helpful, if the computer is setup to take advantage of said efficiency.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 20 2018, @11:15PM
I'm not sure what situations you are imaginign when it wouldnt be. Either it would be performing other useful tasks instead, performing less energy intensive tasks, or turned off.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 20 2018, @07:10PM
Difference being, that COBOL from the 60s may have had three or four self-taught programmers look at it from the time it was written until today, usually only when someone had a complaint about something. The latest javascript framework is published on multiple sites like GitHub, GitLab, etc. collaboratively developed by a large multi-national group of coders with diverse backgrounds from academically educated, through decades of experience in real world code development and maintenance, as well as plenty of the self-taught variety.
And, even with the huge difference in the human factors side of the equation, if that COBOL has processed a few billion transactions over the last 50 years without any significant user complaints, it's probably still "more mature" than the latest group-think project with 1000x the development hours invested in it to-date, mostly because it's addressing one specific problem, instead of trying to be all things to a wide audience.
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