Oh brother, here we go. Recently, McAfee released a study that measured the carbon footprint of email Spam. Below are the key findings of that study:
• An estimated worldwide total of 62 trillion spam emails were sent in 2008
• Globally, annual spam energy use totals 33 billion kilowatt-hours (KWh), or 33 terawatt hours (TWh). That’s equivalent to the electricity used in 2.4 million homes in the United States, with the same GHG emissions as 3.1 million passenger cars using two billion United States gallons of gasoline
• Spam filtering saves 135 TWh of electricity per year. That’s like taking 13 million cars off the road
• If every inbox were protected by a state-of-the-art spam filter, organizations and individuals could reduce today’s spam energy by approximately 75 percent or 25 TWh per year. That’s equivalent to taking 2.3 million cars off the road
• The average GHG emission associated with a single spam message is 0.3 grams of CO2. That’s like driving three feet (one meter) in equivalent emissions, but
when multiplied by the annual volume of spam, it’s like driving around the Earth 1.6 million times
• A year’s email at a typical medium-size business uses 50,000 KWh; more than one fifth of that annual use can be associated with spam
• Filtering spam is beneficial, but fighting spam at the source is even better. When McColo, a major source of online spam, was taken offline in late 2008, the energy saved in the ensuing lull — before spammers rebuilt their sending capacity — equated to taking 2.2 million cars off the road
• Much of the energy consumption associated with spam (80 percent) comes from end-users deleting spam and searching for legitimate email (false positives). Spam filtering accounts for just 16 percent of spam related energy use
Not only is email spam an annoyance to your email inbox, but it’s also harming the environment? Preposterous or accurate?
>> chuck said,
>> I work at home, and use the internet to remotely connect to my office. Does that mean the extra electricity be used to handle the data transfer is producing more carbon that if I drive to work?
More carbon? Not likely but possible. How much gas do you burn on your commute? If you bike or walk to work, that changes the whole equation.
If you heat your home while you stay home, that creates carbon because you normally could turn off the heat. (or cool, in the summer.) ALso, of course, lights, computer, whatever.
#20, why thank you. i’ll rush to trademark it straight away and prep to start a wave frivolous lawsuits.
i was going to go with carbon nazis, but felt it wouldn’t do nazis justice. happy?
-s
# 16 Mr. Fusion said, “…so those like Alphie don’t go on a shooting spree at their local atheist hangout.” Don’t be silly. Alfie would shoot up the Natural History Museum.
# 18 JimR said, “…friction and heat, somewhat lowering home heating bills.” Oh, yeah? Well, here in the tropics that friction and heat drives up A/C bills. So, if you save on heating and we spend on A/C, does that mean porn is carbon neutral?
As to the article, I’m sure spam contributes to energy usage. But, McAfee is in the business of selling anti-spam software (bloated and ineffective as it is). But, remembering Disraeli” lies, damned lies and statistics. You can literally prove anything (except that Alfie is an intelligently-designed creature) by parsing the stats. I suspect JimR’s stats are closer to reality than McAfee’s. I’m always surprised when I go online to check my email (instead of using Thunderbird locally) and see that spam folder with thousands of messages! I don’t read ‘em. And I don’t have time to screen them to be sure they’re spam.
#20
ps.. one of the main reasons i call it fraud
is due the huge amount of solar, solar system, magnetic and “galactic” or galaxy wide data that is completely ignored by (science) politicos when gathering metrics to try and explain the anomalous weather (ie global warming) and justification of using CO2 as the sole culprit of human driven warming.
to wit, here is an excellent article (though long) that shows so much more needs to be taken into account when discussing the changes we are seeing planet wide, on many fronts.
(warming is not the focus, but is discussed)
“The Emerging Sunspot Cycle 24 and a Weakening Magnetic Field”
What does this mean for our planet and species?
http://tinyurl.com/apcefg
-s
Accurate. IT ain’t green. In fact, nothing is really green. Me driving my old Odyssey today is greener than the smug Prius driver, because I didn’t just spend $25K for a new car and all the non-Green manufacturing that went into it. Some day everyone will emerge from this pandemic Green coma, I hope.
Spam takes energy to send and filter. If people could charge the sender for email they didn’t want even if it was just a penny a lot of spammers would be out of business as to whom to charge the people selling the product.
Yeah I know, spammers would fight back by sending spam that resulted in the innocent being billed. Still if nobody was paying for spam…
Hummm, sounds like the RIAA statisctis from losed revenues by torrents…
>> strukhoff said,
>> Accurate. IT ain’t green. In fact, nothing is really green. Me driving my old Odyssey today is greener than the smug Prius driver, because I didn’t just spend $25K for a new car and all the non-Green manufacturing that went into it.
Accurate.
But you could buy a Prius next time.
Better is to park it and start walking, biking or taking mass transit to work.
And vote for mass transit and bike lanes the next time a initiative come to your ballot.
#25 has it right – and wrong. Right that you’re foolish if you don’t factor in the energy and environment cost of producing “energy-saving” devices. A more efficient fridge would save me money eventually, but my current fridge still works, and the manufacturing impact of the new one has to be considered as well. This is the same reason I drive a 13 year old car that gets 40+mpg, even though the Prius would technically be more efficient. If I drive a 10mpg truck, it might be a net-win to “trade-up” — but no way it’s better for the environment for me to trade, especially since my car would almost certainly be stripped and recycled, at best, and not repurchased at this point.
But #25 is also wrong. All of IT comes at an energy cost. But It’s net impact can be green – but it’s all relative to what you assume the world would look like without it. For example, relative to how we used to do business, how many tons of carbon are saved by the phone and internet data structure by preventing people from needing to meet face-to-face? Every web-based training or conference call, every commute not driven by those of us who telecommute… Or what about advances in green design or technology that result from application of computer technology – more efficient blades for wind turbines or better LED lightbulbs, more efficient transport and storage technology, whatever it might be — often designed using computer modeling, by people collaborating from across the globe that might otherwise never be able to spark each other’s innovative ideas?
#29… good post.
#29 – By driving that 13 year old car, you may have reduced your carbon footprint but you have also been a bad consumer. As a result of your personal inaction, thousands of autoworkers and support personnel are out of business. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? Because of you, Oblahblahblahma will probably have to print another trillion bucks. And do you realize what the carbon footprint of the US Mint is like?
In general, I think spam is a terrible waste of resources. We should go back to junk mail. http://tiny.cc/1gGc9
/LED light bulb
instead of carbon fraudsters, how about
CO² = Carbon Oligarchy² -tada!
meh, wont matter a hill of beans anyway if they
raise the “panic pandemic” to 6 next week.
coupled with commercial real estate imploding,
if they move to travel restrictions/marshal law on top it, there will be no economy left to
“make Green” -we’ll be sunk by summer’s end, if we even make it that far.
actually, the flu is the perfect “green” -they’ll lock us all in our homes (or worse) and consumption will drop like rock. kinda the same net effect, no?
(ok, i haven’t had my coffee yet, if none of that makes sense)
(they’re coming to take me away, ha ha! -they’re comi..)
-s