"We didn't sign up for the constant hum"
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For the last five years, a loud hum has been a continual backdrop to birdsong and the occasional barking dog in the village of Dresden, New York state.
Coming from the nearby Greenidge Generation power plant, which had been mothballed for years before, the sound has angered some local people.
"It's an annoyance," says Ellen Campbell, who owns a house on Seneca Lake a short distance away. "If I sit out by the lake, I would rather not hear that.
"We didn't sign up for the constant hum."
The issue here in Dresden, a village of about 300 people surrounded by winding country roads, single-track rail lines and farms growing grapes and hops, sounds like a familiar story about the tension between nature-loving locals and economic development.
But their annoyance is also a signal of something less expected – policies of US President Donald Trump meeting resistance from people in the rural areas whose votes drove his return to the White House.
And the cause? Bitcoin mining.
An energy-intensive process that relies on powerful computers to create and protect the cryptocurrency, Bitcoin mining has grown rapidly in the country over recent years.
We are chewing up resources like crazy:
According to estimates by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), Bitcoin mining uses up to 2.3% of the nation's grid.
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The noise generated by massive data centers and bitcoin mining operations is a nuisance appearing in more and more areas.
I think there are arguments pro and con about the spread of data centers to support the cloud and spread of AI applications. I think the expenditures of energy to mine bitcoins is among the least defensible of these arguments. IMHO, bitcoin mining is the consumption of energy to create a product that has no physical purpose and exists only to satisfy the whims of those who would divorce themselves from civil society. I include the present POTUS among those people.
Big Al
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I can't imagine why an imaginary currency needs so much energy.
