The Carbon Footprint of SPAM

Spam 'produces 17m tons of CO2'

Percentage of green house gas emissions per spam message

A study into spam has blamed it for the production of more than 33bn kilowatt-hours of energy every year, enough to power more than 2.4m homes.

The Carbon Footprint of e-mail Spam report estimated that 62 trillion spam emails are sent globally every year.

This amounted to emissions of more than 17 million tons of CO2, the research by climate consultants ICF International and anti-virus firm McAfee found.

Searching for legitimate e-mails and deleting spam used some 80% of energy.

The study found that the average business user generates 131kg of CO2 every year, of which 22% is related to spam.

Unwanted traffic

ICF say that spam filtering would reduce unwanted spam by 75%, the equivalent to taking 2.3 million cars off the road.

However, the ICF goes on to say that while spam filtering is effective in reducing energy waste, fighting it at the source is far better.

The report highlights the case of McColo , a US web hosting firm that had ties to spammers. The day after it was taken offline by its two internet service providers, global spam volume fell by 70%.

Although the respite was only temporary, McAfee said the "day without spam amounted to talking 2.2 million cars off the road" and that tackling spam should be part of the campaign to reduce carbon emissions.

Richi Jennings - an independent spam analyst who helped produce the report - told the BBC that the figures were based on the extra energy use spent dealing with spam.

"The PC on our desks uses more power when they do work, so the numbers are based on the additional work they use when dealing with spam," he said.

The Spam Report follows only a few days after Symantec's bi-annual Internet Security Threat report, which found that spam had increased by 192%, with bot networks responsible for approximately 90% of all spam e-mail.

Mr Jennings said that while McAfee and Symantec had different ways of measuring spam, he was in total agreement with the bot network figure.

"Our report was based on mail that spammers attempt to send, including ones that are blocked by an ISP at source. Symantec only measures spam that is successfully sent.

"The vast majority of spam is sent via botnets. We've got Conficker building a fantastic network and you can bet your bottom dollar that it will wind up being used to send spam.

"There is speculation that the botnet Conficker is building up is owned and run by the owners of another active botnet - Waledac, itself probably connected to the classic Storm botnet - and the theory is that the owners are keeping their powder dry at the moment and will activate it once Waledac goes down."

Comparing Climate Change Websites

Not only were both websites set up completely differently but they each had their own goals in their approach to climate change. The "Friends of Science" website was aiming to clear up some of the common myths surrounding climate change, with their "facts" as written by their volunteers and Scientific Advisory Board. Their points were simple, without a lot of deep science, and clearly the Top 10 list was an easy format for those environmental novices out there. However reading "Friends of Science's" "About Us" selection of the website made me highly suspicious of the material published on the website. "Friends of Science" is apparently a non-profit organization of volunteers, who with the assistance of a Scientific Advisory Board, write on the website regarding climate change. The main goal of the "Friends of Science" website is to combat the political mistruths surrounding climate change, brought on because of the Kyoto Protocol. This philosophy reminds me of Wikipedia, also not the most reputable website, where any volunteer (or member in the case of Wikipedia) can go onto the website and make changes. Therefore the scientific credibility of the entire website, in my opinion, is called into question.

On the other hand, Grist's "How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic" website follows a completely different model. First of all, and most importantly, is the website is backed up by a very credible organization of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). The recognition and support of this organization for this website, lends itself to the credibility of Grist's website. "How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic" also is much more thorough and tackles any possible attack on the possibility of climate change, with scientific fact. Each answer is written in a detailed yet understandable manner, yet it is clear that the authors of the website actually are leaders in the scientific community and have years of educational and practical experience in the environmental field. Based on the overwhelming sense of credibility and scientific knowledge from "How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic", I believe that this website is not only more convincing but also most accurate.

One major issue I had with Grist's website however, was the fact that you had to click into every topic to see the answers for the various issues. The excessive "clicking" becomes tiresome and takes away from the great wealth of knowledge being presented. In this one regard, I feel as though "Friends of Science" had an easier to navigate website, in that it did not take so much additional "clicking" and new pages to read the information. That said, "Friends of Science" did not have nearly as much information as Grist's website, however I felt as though the website could have been better formatted to suite the user's needs.

Overall it is amazing to see the differences in two websites regarding climate change, both of which claim to be written by the scientific community. However in the age of the Internet, after a little investigation, it is very easy to tell which website has the real knowledge and which one is just grumpily denying science.

Amanda

Environmental Websites

The Friends of Science website claims that their goal is to help engage Canada in debates about the validity of climate change science and the Kyoto protocol, and to do so by educating the public about the so-called “science” of global warming. FOS believes that the main cause of global warming is the heat from the sun, and that like any other natural process, the best way to respond is through adaptation and not flawed attempts at changing the process.

The Grist Magazine website approaches climate change skepticism by simply answering claims made against the existence of global warming. Its purpose is much different than the FOS website in that it takes a less serious approach, acknowledging the fact that the world is full of tree-hugging environmentalists, and what we need instead is a light-hearted approach to an extremely serious issue.

I think that in trying to evaluate the scientific claims that these websites make, you have to understand the purpose of spreading the information in the first place. For FOS, they're goals are to have the government of Canada re-evaluate the Kyoto Protocol, so they obviously have some sort of political agenda. Additionally, its important to question the sources of their science – it specifically says on the FOS website that although the body is comprised of highly educated scientists and professionals, they do not do any original scientific research but instead research works already written by scientists.

I think this definitely makes the site way less convincing and a lot less valid, because you can't even trace their claims back to any valid body of work. Instead, their claims seem like opinions that they push for their own agenda, using words such as “significant”, “mild warming”, etc., to provide the rhetoric that climate change is not a real threat. They do however, in talking about the importance of “adaptation” note that warming is a) something that cannot be ignored and b) something to which we do, to a degree, need to respond.

I appreciate the approach of the Grist website because its fronted by the WWF, which makes it seem a lot more legitimate, and also it makes no “claims” for climate change – instead approaches its existence as merely common sense. “There is no evidence”, well in fact, “yes there is”. The website also includes numerous links to other scientifically-recognized organizations such as NASA, the Climate Research Unit, etc., to back-up the claims they make.

Corn is everywhere!

I found this assignment incredibly challenging due to the fact that living on a tight budget often means I shop in advance and try (as best possible) to plan meals in advance. Therefore when I was at home I was limited to eating what I had already purchased, and as we all know, there is corn in pretty much everything in the U.S. I had no idea that everything from my sandwich to my pasta would be affected. So needless to say I did not succeed very well.

But I do eat at least once a day on campus. Here there is not the pre-planned problem, although I am limited to the food choices on campus that I can pay cash with, since I don't have a meal plan. Again most foods (that I would choose to eat from AU food services) have some element of corn in them. I try eating salads, but even the dressing has corn product in it. And basically anything from The Tavern is going to have corn in it (and I don't even eat their burgers).

Overall I was really surprised at how all encompassing corn is in the American diet, and in my opinion for seemingly no reason. Do we need corn in our tooth paste, salad dressing, or bread to make it taste good? I really don't think so. I begin to question what incentive does the food producing company have for adding just one more ingredient to their food, especially one that is so seemingly useless in terms of taste and quality. Although I failed at the NO corn for a week assignment, it was a great learning opportunity to see just what is inside American food products. Surprisingly corn is everywhere!

Amanda

There is corn in my beer???

This was pretty hard, seeing as how I already have to check food labels often for any meat product, and also just can't eat meat in general. But that is just with the food that I eat – not to mention the things I drank, the medication I took. I thought a lot about a good friend of mine who is allergice to peanuts, and how hard it must be to have to check labels of everything you eat, and how additionally hard it must be when your food is prepared for you, so you are never really sure of what it contains. And THEN, I started thinking about labels, and what is actually in food. A huge percentage of the list on the corn allergen website contains words that I've never heard of, ending in -ine, -ate, acid, etc. What is all this crap? Why is it in our food? How does corn end up in vanilla, or baking soda, or confectioner's sugar? It doesn't belong there!

This was a really hard challenge, nearly impossible, seeing as how even the cab that I drove home in had corn in it. But, it brought full circle everything that we've learned about the contemporary US food system. When we can really cash in on a commodity, like corn, we abuse it to the max. There isn't any reason for corn to be in everything we eat – its hardly a vegetable, and it has little nutritional value. But corporations can make a lot of money on it, and pump millions of dollars into aid campaigns about how high-fructose corn syrup is “just like sugar” (see http://www.sweetsurprise.com/) . Our food system has absolutely nothing to do with growing and selling food that humans need to live a healthy life. Just like every other aspect of our consumer society, it has become a way to make the consumer ignorant and encourage bad habits.

Food

When trying to decide what food to eat there a quite a few characteristics to consider. Besides the obvious nutritious factor, taste must also be considered. I try to eat as healthy as possibly and after living in Europe where there are more organic food options readily and cheaply available, I try to eat organic if possible. However, given my status as a college student, without a sizable income, it is not entirely realistic for me to be able to afford to buy organic food, even if I really would like to eat completely organic.

Of the foods I've eaten in the past few days, the foods worst for the environment would have to be something that is very processed, definitely not organic, that has chemicals added to it and is then produced in an environmentally damaging way. Processed foods such as fruit snacks or peanut butter, would probably be very environmentally damaging, along with such natural products like grains that are grown with excess chemicals which are environmentally harmful.

Amanda

Your Water Footprint

This is the link to the article I mentioned earlier about your "water footprint" from Good Magazine (which is a totally awesome magazine, btw):

http://www.good.is/?p=16356