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Global warming debate has been given a new angle by McAfee, antispam product seller. It blames the internet users for harming the environment every time they hit the delete button to get rid of spam email. McAfee reports, 62 trillion spam emails were generated last year and these had the huge impact on environment.

Though deleting spam mail is only a small part of the overall production of spam but it can reduce green house gases. End user might not be able to save a big chunk as the spam has been generated somewhere and sent out over routers and travelled the world before landing in inbox. So, spam filter can save only a part of the energy used.

5 big threats to environment:

Search
Internet search was the first online activity to attract environmentalists’ rage. Alex-Wisner Gross of Havard announced publicly that each Google search generates 7 grams of CO2. This means two Google searches produced the same amount of carbondioxide as bringing an electric kettle to a boil. After some protests from Google, he accepted that the amount of energy consumed by an average Google query is 0.2 grams of CO2. Interestingly, Google claims that user’s personal computer will take more energy than Google uses to answer the query.

Blogs and micro-blogs
As blogs become pervasive and integral part of our online lives, energy consumed in posting and reading can not be far behind. Currently, 27.9 million US Internet users have a blog they update at least once per month, and they represent 14% of the Internet population. By 2013, 37.6 million users will update their blogs at least monthly. Growth numbers are even bigger at micro-blogging sites like Twitter. It saw a 131% increase in US visitors in March and 700% in February respectively over the previous month, according to online traffic tracker comScore.

Social networking and video sharing
Social networking and video sharing would certainly consume more energy than sending a spam mail, which is even smaller than a typical legitimate email. As everything online, from gaming to email, adopts social networking features, it is obviously counted the most popular activities. According to Comscore, visits to the social networking sites in India increased 51% from the previous year to more than 19 million visitors at the end of last year. And these users are spending a lot of time last year, For instance, Facebook users spent 178 minutes on the site last month on average.

Job searches
Job sites rank among the more popular online and even economic slowdown hasn’t affected the business of major job sites in India like Naukri.com in 2009.

Porn
Most user studies don’t track it, but cyberporn is clearly one of the more popular activities online and the resulting carbon emissions are bound to be high.

If all the spam in the world were to be stopped, for instance, at least some of the spammers will revert to junk mail. This means cutting more trees and burning more fuel to deliver these letters!