Energy, blockchain, tech...
Pollution, greenhouse gases, global warming, fossil fuels, meat consumption, hole in the ozone layer, so many! So many different factors and issues that Millenials have to deal with! So many things I and my generation need to concern ourselves with... and there isn't even a consensus of opinion about the topic because of so much misinformation, propaganda, no fact checking and lack of foresight to see that technology evolves and things get more efficient!
Some people don't believe in global warming, some people believe in it, some people think renewable energy sources are the fix, some people think renewable energy sources aren't the fix, some people get shitty statistics from the internet, some people don't... well, I'm not here to discuss any of this, people go crazy over this stuff! Just look at Bitcoin and all the other PoW coins we got out there... people go crazy over PoW energy consumption...
Bitcoin's Proof-of-work (PoW) is very energy dependent, miners consume large amounts of energy trying to solve complicated math problems trying to find the next block in the blockchain, the first that solves the problem gets to produce the block and mine it, getting Bitcoin in return. A large portion of that energy is "wasted" because only one out of all the miners gets to produce the block, so the rest of the miners wasted energy away for nothing... But is it for nothing?
PoW works in a way that the energy spent solving those complicated math problems keeps the chain secure, keeps the chain 51% proof, is this the best way? Well, I would say that it isn't the best way, but it sure prevents a 51% attack, the incentive structure prevents any attack from any bad actor...
A better way, in my opinion, and this is just an opinion, no one truly knows, would be with PoS, DPoS or a mix of PoW with PoS with chain-lock like Dash has. But no one truly knows, PoW should be given a chance!
We are talking about a whole financial system running on a blockchain, we are talking about owning our own money, we are talking about freedom from the government and financial liberty in the case anything goes wrong, of course, this system is going to spend lots of energy... it's a revolutionary system! A revolutionary system that not many understand, especially the "older generation"...
"It's to energy-wasting", "It's causing global warming", "It wastes lots of energy for nothing", "You guys are ruining the world!" "It wastes as much energy as Manhattan" "Ban it!" - These are the sort of things any cryptocurrency enthusiast hears from the the non enthusiasts, these are valid assumptions, but they are also wrong!
Studies say 70% of the mining is done through renewable energy sources, I'm not sure if it's 70% but I'm sure capitalism's competitiveness makes it so a large portion is done through renewable energy sources. If this is, in fact, true then Bitcoin mining is driving demand for renewable sources, making it so the renewable energy sources sector gets huge funding from Bitcoin miners, effectively having more money to spend on improving those techs to brake the Shockley-Queisser limit. And it's not like Bitcoin mining is the only thing spending lots of energy! There are far more energy spending things in this world...
Creating fiat money wastes lots of energy, maybe we should ban fiat... Mining gold from the ground spends lots of energy too! Maybe we should ban gold, oh wait, the US did that in the 30s stealing gold from every citizen (Try to do that with Bitcoin and you won't have any chance US, it's all digital and encrypted!) Cars spend lots of energy too, maybe we should ban them and start walking our sorry asses from city to city. Oh wait, computers spend lots of energy too, and the internet with their huge data centers also spend lots of energy! And it's only going to increase... China internet data sector is supposedly going to increase their power consumption by two-thirds by 2023, this will delay their plans to decrease smog and carbon emissions, maybe we should ban data centers from the world?
Turn off Facebook, Youtube, Amazon, Netflix, Google? Go back to the stone age where we bash stones against each other? Or maybe the dark ages where the only light we had was candlelight! Or maybe not even that... candles are too environmentally damaging, let's go with moonlight... No? You don't want this? Me neither, I approve the expansion of data centers because it's something needed!
There is a huge difference between needing and wasting, and that's what the naysayers don't get, most naysayers don't understand why we need cryptocurrencies because they are mostly from developed countries with "more or less" stable economies! So, to them, this is wasting energy, because they don't understand what is like living in a country with extremely high inflation and an unending depression/recession, living without any alternative to their national fiat coin... they don't understand why we need cryptocurrencies, why we need an alternative system to our current financial system, and if they had their way we would be screwed if/when the whole world's economy goes under, because we wouldn't have any safe-haven to store our value!
Regardless of this, energy spending is only going to keep increasing world-wide with better techs and the expansion of technology, we don't need to stop technology, we need to embrace it and make our energy production and consumption more efficient!
Renewable and nuclear are both great energy sources that can shift the world into low CO2 consumption if done right. They might be a great investment for the next couple of decades. Uranium mining companies like Energy Fuels, Cameco, NexGen Energy, Uranium Participation for example.
Nuclear is the centralized energy production of the future, it's bigger, produces lots of energy, but it's also prone to attacks. It is very hazardous if good precautions aren't in place, but if everything goes smoothly (which normally does) it is the best and most efficient centralized energy production humans have. I've also seen some studies mentioning that if we rely on it too much it might cause desertification of the lands prompted by the increased water temperatures that run through the reactor, I think this is what is happening in France... and that's why we need to mix it up with renewable energy sources!
Renewable is the decentralized way of producing energy, it's smaller, produces less energy, but because everyone can do it it's a lot more decentralized and less prone to attacks. A combination of both is what, in my honest opinion, is the future...
A centralized and decentralized system where we get central nuclear energy production and a renewable energy production grid where everyone can be a producer, everyone can be a consumer, everyone can be a prosumer(consumer+producer), this is what cryptos like MWAT are trying to do...
MWAT is a cryptocurrency launched by RED one of the biggest and fastest-growing energy companies in Romania, MWAT aims to remove intermediaries from the energy industry effectively connecting producers and consumers directly and allowing energy trading, democratization and staking for energy rewards. The only thing producers need are small pieces of hardware to count their energy production, a combination of hardware and blockchain is always good! And this crypto might be a great buy for a long-term hodl. I'll talk about it in more detail in the future.
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Question of the day: Do you think PoW will be around in the future? What about PoS? Maybe both having their own niches and working together in a interblockchain kind of way?
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I agree with almost everything you wrote, but a little phrase in the introduction confuses me... How is meat consumption a bad this g thrown at millennial's back?
Also, nuclear energy is way too dangerous and risky to become our main source of energy... I bet for solar energy, just the little surface of the Earth (compared with the huge perimeter of the sun) receives more from the sun energy on a daily basis than the amount the while planet needs for a year of human a activity
Yeah that part was a little confusing, I've changed it, shoved isn't the expression I should have used... What I was trying to say is that there are many issues nowadays that my generation needs to fix, meat consumption is one of them, it's been increasing more and more and, from what the experts say, it increases global warming by quite a lot.
There are more than 300 nuclear plants world-wide, China is increasing the number of nuclear power plants and so is the US, the dangerous part is lack of maintenance in the power plants, fukoshima happened largely due to bad construction and lack of maintenance. I don't consider them that dangerous if they are properly used. I wouldn't rely on nuclear only ofc, but I do think we need a central energy production facility so we get a steady reliable energy production. Also, Uranium will soon be used in nuclear reactors for space exploration, which make it a great buy for that too...
There are 2 issues with solar power atm:
The first one is storing the energy, solar power isn't a stable source of energy so that energy needs to be stored, to store it countries have been using hydroplants, but it's kind of hard and not many countries have the hydroplants needed to do that, my country actually does and if connected with Europe it would store a lot of the energy but it seems France doesn't want to put high end electric cables to connect Spain and Portugal with the rest of Europe (at least this is what I've heard but don't quote me on this).
The second issue with solar power is that limit I mentioned, it's a limit that needs to be surpassed if we want to actually rely on solar power, there have been a few studies done with new materials that show that that limit is very near to be surpassed, but so far no Proof of concept has come forward, which can mean that it is still far away. What that limit does is that only 30% of the solar energy is actually captured by the solar panels, this decreases the potential for solar power quite a lot...
I think nuclear power gets a really bad rep when it's actually not that wasteful and not that polluting if used correctly. But hey, I'm not an energy engineer, I would have to do lots of research, read lots of studies and talk with some big guys in the nuclear vs renewable energy field to actually develop a good strong opinion that I could defend.
I study chemistry, I told you for sure... Nuclear is a harmful process towards the environment, nuclear reactors byproducts are extremely difficult to get rid off and they're currently just being dumped on the ocean...
I can see that you're thinking in solar panels placed on Earth surface, that's why you say it's somehow inestable source of energy. But actually it's quite the opposite, there's no more stable and reliable source of energy that solar radiation. What you think about it being a raw technology with no solid concepts yet available for practical us very true tho, but the speed of development is proportional to the budget of the research, and solar energy don't get what it needs to be a reasonable alternative for our society.
Construction of said solar panels are not exactly environmentally friendly endeavor either.
Nuclear byproducts, if handled correctly, requires much less space than the massive landfills for everyday trash.
Not saying solar can't get there one day, but nuclear is currently the more viable option for mass usage.
And then the hurdle with energy storage. Let's be real, battery technology has not nearly advanced as fast in the last century.
As for maintenance, I'm not sure which requires more time and money...one plant versus its equivalence in panels, etc.
The issue is that there's not which s thing as a 'proper' nuclear waste method, waste disposal is a fancy term for a process in which we dilute the hazardous substance into the environment to such a low concentration that it ends up being harmlessly to a living organism. The issue with nuclear waste products is that they just keep being radioactive for too much time... And the rate at which they are generated prohibits a proper disposal since they just will end up accumulating reaction in our planet soil, waters, and atmosphere.
I know that solar power is not the cheap or convenient option, but is the only one that is both long-term sustainable and environment-friendly. Of course, I'm not against the development of nuclear technology as a source of energy. For instance, when there are major power shortages because of natural tragedies or some other kind of massive problem, you could use nuclear reactors as a quick response measure. What I'm against is with the constant and generalized use of it, since a environmental low-cost operational mechanism is theoretically impossible.
Don't get me wrong, it's not like I'm a green planet extremist or anything, is just that only when you have a direct contact with the damage it can cause you can realize it's not such a good option.
It's great to exchange opinions with you, best regards.
Mais um artigo de excelência repleto de tópicos bastante pertinentes, especialmente nos dias que correm em que a eco iniciativa está cada vez mais em voga. Infelizmente temo que na sua grande parte, esteja a ser usada como bandeira para motivos eleitorais.. tens assisto à campanha que se tem feito para as próximas eleições? Uma autêntica fachada infelizmente... só espero que um dia não seja tarde de mais... mas a haver mudança, terá de partir da iniciativa individual e por consequência a adesão das massas... muitos parabéns e obrigado pela qualidade informativa com que nos brindas diariamente ;) abraço
Infelizmente nao é diariamente, não tinha paciencia para escrever todos os dias um post destes e tbm tenho dado uns toques no JavaScript, deixa la ver, se me conseguir orientar com aquilo nas proximas ferias de Verão começo um projecto para fazer um jogo em cima do STEEM...
Tenho visto as camapnhas elitorais tenho, é uma vergonha, pelos vistos se nao tivermos barragens a agua nao evapora xD Aquele bloco de esquerda e sempre uma maravilha ahahah devem querer desertificar o Alentejo outra vez. E ainda pior é o facto de o estado estar a garantir retornos até 10 anos a pessoas que façam quintas solares em Portugal, filhos, o retorno nao devia ser garantido, devia ser mercado livre e nao mercado financiado pelos impostos... enfim
Lançar um jogo em cima disto seria Top, tens alguma ideia já definida?
Ja tenho ideia mas para isso preciso de aprender javascript bem aprendido, vou começar agora a universidade daqui a uns dias, deixa ver se eles começacam com javascript... iria facilitar a minha vida muito, se nao vou ter de fazer nas proximas ferias de verao, o que ainda esta muito longe
Energy will continue to evolve towards the needs of its users as renewable options and technology advance. I had read that bitcoin network is already using less power than previous years despite the increase in hash rate.
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This is so right! And not many people understand that, technology advances and energy advances with it, my father still thought that Solar Panels were expensive as hell and that they didn't provide much energy at all, now that he has seen the statistics he want to buy one... All tech advances to fill the holes they had previously.
Whenever I hear that Teslas are burning up without a reason I always say: "They will fix those issues with time, nothing is perfect at the beginning"
It's like Bitcoin, things are evolving, some faster than others, but they are evolving, and sooner or later it will expand and become better in terms of energy efficiency and tech.
Haven't read that yet, will search it.
Wonderful updates you share here thanks for sharing those
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