From Warren Meyer at climate-skeptic.com From the Thin Green Line, a reliable source for any absurd science that supports environmental alarmism:
Sending and receiving email makes up a full percent of a relatively green person’s annual carbon emissions, the equivalent of driving 200 miles.
Dealing with spam, however, accounts for more than a fifth of the average account holder’s electricity use. Spam makes up a shocking 80 percent of all emails sent, but most people get rid of them as fast as you can say “delete.”
So how does email stack up to snail mail? The per-message carbon cost of email is just 1/60th of the old-fashioned letter’s. But think about it — you probably send at least 60 times as many emails a year than you ever did letters.
One way to go greener then is to avoid sending a bunch of short emails and instead build a longer message before you send it.
This is simply hilarious, and reminds me of the things the engineers would fool the pointy-haired boss with in Dilbert. Here was my response:
This is exactly the kind of garbage analysis that is making the environmental movement a laughing stock.
In computing the carbon footprint of email, the vast majority of the energy in the study was taking the amount of energy used by a PC during email use (ie checking, deleting, sending, organizing) and dividing it by the number of emails sent or processed. The number of emails is virtually irrelevant — it is the time spent on the computer that matters. So futzing around trying to craft one longer email from many shorter emails does nothing, and probably consumers more energy if it takes longer to write than the five short emails.
This is exactly the kind of peril that results from a) reacting to the press release of a study without understanding its methodology (or the underlying science) and b) focusing improvement efforts on the wrong metrics.
The way to save power is to use your computer less, and to shut it down when not in use rather than leaving it on standby.
If one wants to argue that the energy is from actually firing the bits over the web, this is absurd. Even if this had a measurable energy impact, given the very few bytes in an email, reducing your web surfing by one page a day would keep more bytes from moving than completely giving up email.
By the way, the suggestion for an email charge in the linked article is one I have made for years, though the amount is too high. A charge of even 1/100 cent per email would cost each of us about a penny per day but would cost a 10 million mail spammer $1000, probably higher than his or her expected yield from the spam.
Ridiculous. I’d bet that watching videos on YouTube (or Netflix) has a much higher cost in terms of computing power (and thus consumes far more energy) than reading/sending emails.
Most (if not all) modern CPUs and operating systems scale back CPU power (and thus energy use) according to demand, and I’m fairly certain that the processing power required to read a hundred emails is far less than the power required to decode and display a 10-minute video stream. Video processing is much more CPU-intensive.
Not to mention all the resources used by routers, switches, and other internet infrastructure moving all those video packets around the ‘net.
According to Cisco’s Visual Networking Index, in 2010, email accounted for 0.23% of all internet traffic, while online video was responsible for at least 28.05% (more than any other category)! This is inevitable, since an email message consumes a small fraction of the resources required to store and transmit even a short, 10-minute video.
Time to slap Youtube and Netflix with a special ‘carbon tax’ ? 😀
Bruce Cobb says:
October 27, 2010 at 5:44 am
> For the truly carbophobic, there’s even a book called “How Bad Are Bananas?: The carbon footprint of everything.” Of course, the book itself would have a hefty “carbon footprint”, so no self-respecting carbophobe would buy it.
OT, but don’t forget, bananas are a good source of potassium (typo – I nearly wrote postasium) and some potassium (K40) is radioactive. As is some of its carbon (C14). Bad stuff, except when visiting anti-nuke rallies.
Big brother salivates when thinking about email. We now have the capability of tracking whether or not email is opened and how long it stays opened on a server. We can track when an email is sent to the bin or saved. And we can require a ping back that it was read. It is only a matter of time before emails can be made to stay on the screen opened till some action is done. Trouble is, we see email as a convenience. Which is exactly why it is being exploited as a control mechanism. We won’t protest.
It isn’t the carbon we should be worried about here.
Charges for emails have been proposed in the past as a way to curtail spam, either as an ‘e-stamp’ involving cash, or credit system for trusted senders. Spam works for the same reason many .com things work, net economics are semi-broken and costs aren’t equitably distributed. So it’s cheap for spammers to blast out millions of emails in the hope a few suckers respond.
Elsewhere on the ‘net, there are some potentially ungreen things happening. In the good’ol days of POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) phones didn’t need consumers to plug wall adaptors in. They were powered from the line and exchanges provided the power and batteries to make them ring. So power supplied to the customer device as and when needed. Give or take a couple of mA wetting current, if that was used.
Early days of the ‘net where dial-on-demand, so modems on and connected when needed. Then along came always on broadband with xDSL or cable modems complete with inefficient wall-wart PSU’s to convert mains to working voltages. Next step is migrating to all-IP networks and VoIP which will make unpowered POTS phones redundant, and also means exchanges need less power kit to serve their distribution networks because their customer’s electricity will be used. That saves telco’s money on their electricity bills. Shifting to optical and especially passive optical distribution also saves power and money.
Consumers are left stuck with an ever expanding array of inefficient transformers powering gizmos, often without any kind of redundancy, which is especially bad for safety of life services like VoIP. Mobile phone companies have agreed to standardise on PSU’s for mobile phones and I wish other CE makers would follow suit. Then I could get a hopefully more efficient low voltage power strip instead of all the 13A power bars in my office. On the plus side though, they are helping keep my office warm.
I copied Anthony’s trick of moving all my wall-warts onto switchable power strips though and that does save a reasonable amount of electricity. Also curious if there are any fire investigation studies into overheating, cheap PSU’s as causes of domestic fires.
OT but something exceedingly strange is going on with millions of dollars earmarked for environmental campaigns.
http://fairquestions.typepad.com/rethink_campaigns/2010/10/the-11-million-dollar-question.html
Tides acts as a cleaning house so that donors can hide what their funds are specifically earmarked for. I guess with groups like 10:10 putting out children snuff videos, we can expect more of this type of funding against any and every industrial activity.
I have read Warren Meyer’s blogs for a very long time, and he is one of the most ‘common sense’ individuals that you can read.
He has suggested a small charge for email for years, and once you overcome your initial horror, you realise what a bloody good idea it is. A fraction of a penny for an email, would cost us peanuts per day, but would stop the spammers in their tracks.
You ought to listen to him on ‘Company DNA’ too. Try this:- http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2005/12/why_its_ok_if_g.html
“This is simply hilarious, and reminds me of the things the engineers would fool the pointy-haired boss with in Dilbert. ”
One of my favorites was the one where the Boss was trying to reboot his lap top
an Wally said:”Shake it”-the Laptop being an “Etch-a-sketch”
I think, since the advent of IM, Facebook, Twitter, etc, people are sending fewer and fewer legit emails these days. And if you start taxing email, services such as those will take up the slack when email is discarded. So, those services will need to be taxed too…
I use only black letters to save power.
I don’t recall ever turning off my modem(s). And those I troubleshot as a network technician in the late 80s and 90s were always on. They would have to be to receive a call.
So are the climate alarmists going to blogging misrepresentations, lies and scaremongering rubbish now then? It is pumping out those nasty poisonous CO2s that they keep scaring us about.
Or is this how they are going to prevent the next “climategate” by stopping the alarmist’s opponents from using computers and the internet?
Then why did you post it? Your post is no better than spam. Mods, why let these through? They’re supposed to be in the “Tips and Notes” section…
A frequently overlooked other reason for high energy use while surfing on the internet is internet traffic congestion. However there is an easy remedy. Once a day, unplug the transmission line from the router/modem and let it hang down for some 30 minutes to allow for stuck bits and bytes to evacuate. Blow into the transmission line socket and and clean the plug with a lint-free tissue before reconnecting. You will immediately notice the improved transmission rate.
nano pope says:
October 27, 2010 at 5:07 am
Thank you. I’ve been trying to figure out how to say that idea is such an idiotic idea without insulting anyone. Sadly, words have failed me. Why is it that people turn to big brother to solve their problems in the form of a tax? TAXATION TOWARDS BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION IS A SELF-DEFEATING PROPOSITION!!
Further, its easy to speak of spam in generic terms, but as any ISP/net admin will tell you, there is no clear line between e-mail and spam. Some twits actually peruse the ads Walmart sends out while others are annoyed they’re on a mailing list. Further, mass mailing aren’t always shopping ads or gimmicks. For instance, many of us belong to groups whose membership is quite large. When these groups have a conference or other similar event, you’d punish them for letting the membership know?
Inviting the government further into our lives and forcing ourselves to pay for the intrusion seems, well, idiotic.
Everyone knows that, at bottom, all the emails (and websites, etc.) are composed of 1’s and 0’s. We could save half the energy by only sending 1’s over the Internet — after all, 0’s are nothing anyway.
😉
If email is bad for the environment, video is worse: Let’s put a tax on YouTube and Netflix!
“I’m reminded of the jokes about our Australian Prime Minister of about 30 years ago.
It was said that the next tax he would introduce would be one based on penis length (more = more).”
Cool, My husband would get a massive rebate!
Tides acts as a cleaning house so that donors can hide what their funds are specifically earmarked for.
The comments show the hook to climate change. Anything associated with global warming, climate change or whatever they call it now is only cured by regulating, rationing, monitoring and taxes. My take is, they think, if they pour it on enough we will drown in their swill, become intoxicated and take the whore home to mother.
There are lots of ways to do this. I myself don’t use the lights on my vehicle so that I can save the cost of electricity
vivendi
October 27, 2010 at 7:10
A frequently overlooked other reason for high energy use while surfing on the internet is internet traffic congestion. However there is an easy remedy. Once a day, unplug the transmission line from the router/modem and let it hang down for some 30 minutes to allow for stuck bits and bytes to evacuate. Blow into the transmission line socket and and clean the plug with a lint-free tissue before reconnecting. You will immediately notice the improved transmission rate.
###
It is also a good idea to swab the area with alcohol to prevent infection.
Lefties always confuse doing less with being more efficient.
This reminds me of Micro$ofts proposal to control access to the Internet to “certified clean” computers. Having created a problem, they now want to get paid to solve it.
Unfortunately, as has been seen time and time again, trying to solve problems through taxation suffers from the law of unintended consequnces. Like the side effects of taking medicine, the cure is often worse than the disease.
Governments assume that taxes opperate outside of the laws of supply and demand. Nothing could be further from the truth. Charging for emails will immediately open up a huge business opportunity for companies to develop products to send email via some other format, to divert the tax money from the government. These business will not actually produce anything, they will simply be a by product of the new tax.
We have this already in everyday life. Armies of people that build nothing, produce nothing, employed simply to divert money that would otherwise go to the government. Over time, as more and more of the economy becomes involed in “tax avoidance”, productivity is lost and living standards can only be maintained by increased taxation, driving even more of the economy into “tax avoidance”.
As less and less people are employed doing something productive, the only was governments can maintain revenues is to go into debt. Eventually debt servicing becomes impossible, leading to the inevitable collapse of the economy.
Once the economy collapses, there is a significant reduction in fuel use, along with a significant reduction in CO2 production. Problem solved.
This is just ridiculous. Why does everyone stress so much about Spam? I rarely get any, and I get a lot of email.
In fact, once my funds from Nigeria arrive, I’m going to just stop reading WUWT, it seems everyone’s gone off the deep end. That should be any day now, apparently the trunk packed with cash and gold is currently on a train. Cross your fingers that it gets past the border!
And another thing, those online pharmacies are providing a valuable service for people who otherwise are unable to get their ED medication (used, of course, to blend with E medication, so you love everyone, and can). In fact, they are even making meds better. I notice my last few shipments from “Xpress Farmacee” don’t have any bitter taste, they’re sweet and shaped just like Tic-Tac’s. What a nice touch!
Ahem. Seriously… the only way to “save” anything with a computer is to not use one. Heck, viewing ONE web page probably consumes more resources than even a prolific emailer is likely to consume in a week.
Of course, the real problem here is that the typical feel-good “greenie” is completely incapable of comprehending numbers and scale, which explains their AGW belief in the first place. How else can you explain why we literally DOUBLE the number of trash collection vehicles and miles driven in order to take a second batch of trash away for “recycling”?
“Dealing with spam, however, accounts for more than a fifth of the average account holder’s electricity use.”
I call total BS !
Spam accounts for 20%? More than the refrigerator? If the computer is ON, the incremental power draw due to using an e-mail program (hardly a CPU intensive application!) is nothing, and the portion dealing with spam is even less, and way less than 20% of my electrical bill.
These greenies know nothing about energy, computers, or technology. A sad commentary on the level of thinking (or what passes for thinking).