A simple move that would ban selling fossil power plants for cryptocurrencies mining purpose BUT allowing to do so for the carbon-neutral energy would be a win-win for both sides and will help the transition from carbon-heavy energy.
What you really want instead is a non-mined cryptocurrency.
Take wind turbines: they've found that harvesting wind actually increases the temperature in an area. Do enough of this, coupled with channeling the energy into heat-producing machines, are we sure this isn't gong to contribute to global warming at scale? Not to mention the harm to avian wildlife, as the turbines kill 5 birds per year each on average.
Next you have the externalized costs of building the infrastructure. Producing the wind turbines, the power plant, and the GPUs. Is all of that really getting offset?
I'm very optimistic about the potential for cryptocurrency to change the world, but I'd like that to be for the better. And when we have emerging proof-of-stake platforms that have much less of an impact on the planet because they don't by design rely on energetically inefficient ways to secure their networks, I really don't understand how we can argue that proof-of-work cryptocurrencies have any place in the future.
That's some anti-renewable energy FUD I hadn't seen before... Yes, we're sure that won't cause global warming. Wind turbine operation doesn't produce greenhouse gases or meaningful change the Earth's albedo.
Also, I assume wind turbines cause some emissions during manufacturing. Not sure going gang busters and making a ton to power bitcoin mining would be great for the planet.
Yes, this is exactly what I'm talking about. If we're building wind turbines to replace energy usage that serves a purpose, that's wonderful! Building new infrastructure for energy production so that we can pass it to a bunch of computers that piss it away is still wasteful. Even if it's less wasteful than burning coal to power those computers.
Bitcoin and proof-of-work were revolutionary, but now that we have better cryptocurrency technology, we should be moving away from it.
Your misunderstanding seems possibly intentional. I'm very much in favour of renewable energy as an alternative to nonrenewable energy. I'm just not in favour of wasting energy for very little purpose.
Build solar/wind energy to replace fossil fuels? Great! Obviously I'm in favour of that. Built an insane amount of infrastructure for producing renewable energy so that we can piss it away? That seems incredibly wasteful!
Even if renewable energy is much better, there are still externalities to producing energy.
The authors note very clearly that isn't a global rise in temperature and would be offset by the effects of GHG reduction. Furthermore the wind farm cost is "one time". The effects of GHGs are cumulative.
See:
https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/false-claim-wind-tur...
What I'm saying is that it's still wasteful, and not cost-free if we're producing insane amounts of energy that don't need to be produced in the first place.
It is easier to argue that the bitcoin energy expenditure should be turned off. That would lower energy demand and prices and we're now in a regime where that makes running carbon-burning plants less attractive and they'd get turned off while any renewables that bitcoin is using would become available.
And if I could snap my fingers and replace all the GHGs with wind I would and I wouldn't care about your concerns. And you're trying to argue that I can't make that comparison but I absolutely am. The issues you're bringing up aren't 1% of the problem that we have with GHGs so worrying about perfect renewable energy or overall dropping demand is so much less right now than worrying about getting off GHGs. The localized 0.5C surface warming of wind in that paper just isn't worth talking about at this point.
But it isn't totally perfect! Surely you must agree?
No. I. Do. Not. Care. About. Perfection.
This is what I've been arguing the whole time. I'm not saying we shouldn't try to replace more impactful energy production with sustainable energy production. I'm saying we shouldn't be using energy on something as wasteful as proof-of-work, when we can have blockchain technology without it, because that energy production doesn't come without impact no matter how much the proof-of-work supporters and beneficiaries try to greenwash it.
The question is, how do wind turbines ensure that more energy radiates from space onto the earth? I consider this scenario highly unlikely.
There might be some positive impact by spurring more innovation in renewable research but I don't think it's possible to make such an analysis in a 2 paragraph Hacker News comment.