I'd assume that they were going to use carbon-generating fuel, and that someone somewhere would already run a mining rig. IE: It's murky.

If they were going to heat using an electric space heater, it's a wash.

If they were going to heat using natural gas, but the electricity comes from nuclear, it's lower carbon.

If they were going to heat using natural gas, and the emissions are higher. BUT, if they were going to run the mining rig anyway, and they've merely turned off the gas heat, the emissions are overall lower.

They could heat with an electric heat pump with can be 2.5x more efficient than an electric heater.

Which is really interesting because electric space heaters are 100% efficient.

Yes, heat pumps use 1 watt to apply 2.5 watts of heat to a room (by using the outdoor ambient air as an energy source).

(Apologies if you already know this.)

Heat pumps work by moving heat, they usually move more heat than input energy.

Basically, a refrigerator is a heat pump. The input energy runs the heat pump, which it uses to move heat out of the refrigerator. Typically, for every watt of electricity, more than a watt of electricity is moved out of the refrigerator.

They work by compressing gasses into fluids, and then letting the fluid expand back into a gas. Basically, when a fluid evaporates, it absorbs heat as potential energy. The energy can be harvested by compressing the gas at a high enough pressure that it condenses into a fluid. Do this in a loop, and you can move heat.

No laws of physics violated!

Or an example that might be more readily acceptable, being something that a person without any domain knowledge could simply test* to prove it to themselves:

Suppose you built a shed around the outdoor unit of a central air conditioning system and let it come up to max ambient temperature. Then right next to it you built a shed with a resistive heater which consumes the exact same wattage as the air conditioner. The first shed will be much warmer because you're not creating heat so much as you're moving heat. If you increase the resistive heater's wattage by about 2.5x then the sheds will be about the same temperature.

* Don't actually do this and expect the system to survive.

But heat pumps don't pay you to run them! (I wish mine did.)

I understand this, but the argument I was responding to was "you're already going to use the electricity, you might as well make profit", but actually you could use less energy so it's not a given that all this electricity was going to be used. It is instead a choice between profit and carbon emissions.

Why would we assume they are (I'm not sure that the "someone somewhere" part of that is material either) going to use a mining rig already to assess the merits of mining rigs for heating? That's tautological.

Do you really think anyone in Siberia, one if the poorest places in the world, cares about carbon emissions?

For a guy in Siberia various climate models show that the global warming will improve life. Winters will be much milder, agriculture will be less risky.

My understanding is that this isn't true, because Siberia's muskeg soil isn't very suitable for growing things, whether frozen or not. (Same with northern Canada. Muskeg and mosquitos are why northern Ontario has never been settled.)

My point is that when we as outsiders look at this practice and evaluate its merits, we should care about the carbon emissions even if the people there don’t.

> Do you really think anyone in Siberia, one if the poorest places in the world, cares about carbon emissions?

Unfortunately they care. For now only poor face real consequences of climate change. They are to poor to mitigate its effects.

It seems Siberia is one of the places where living conditions might actually improve https://eos.org/articles/climate-change-could-make-siberia-a... (the "big bog" scenario does cast doubt on that -- e.g. existing structures may collapse).

There are sinkholes appearing due to permafrost melting and ice keeps ground solid, otherwise there would be mud(and sinkholes) all over the place.

The problem is almost noone there can afford a heatpump

A lot of places that do electric resistive heat have cheap electrical sources - often hydro or nuclear.

If you live in Siberia you presumably want the planet to warm up more. ;)

> If you live in Siberia you presumably want the planet to warm up more. ;)

No you don't, when permafrost melts it causes ground to move. It is really bad for everything build on or in it. Something like houses sinking and falling apart. In some cases it cause big holes in the ground and they got even bigger over time.

Most of Siberia does not have permafrost, though.

Because permafrost melting is the only negative consequences of climate change. There are no forest fires, no problems with insect due to milder winters, etc.