Internet Causes Global Warming

You should be ashamed of yourself. As you sit here and read yet another global-warming-is-a-hoax post by yours truly you are contributing to the warming of the planet.

At least that is what this article claims.

Wissner-Gross estimates every second someone spends browsing a simple web site generates roughly 20 milligrams of C02. Whether downloading a song, sending an email or streaming a video, almost every single activity that takes place in the virtual environment has an impact on the real one.

Or even reading articles about how you can save the planet, right? What can be more unbelievable than the claim that sitting behind a computer monitor is destroying the planet? How about a new “green internet?”

As millions more go online each year some researchers say the need to create a green Internet ecosystem is not only imperative but also urgent.

Naturally the article never actually mentions what a “green internet" ecosystem is. That is because there is no such thing, this whole issue is made up. The only “green internet ecosystem” that I can come up with is that the government is going to take our “green” away from us through taxes and regulations. Maybe we can implement an email cap and trade policy.

The article also fails to take into account that the more our society has turned to computers and the internet for recreation, the more we turn away from other things that create so-called greenhouse gasses. Like baseball and bicycle riding. (Remember, we breathe in oxygen and breath out CO2, the greenhouse gas, and we do it more when we are active.)

The article goes on to claim the following:

Anti-virus software firm McAfee reports that the electricity needed just to transmit the trillions of spam emails sent annually equals the amount required to power over two million homes in the United States while producing the same level of greenhouse gas emissions as more than three million cars.

“Most people don’t appreciate that the computer on your desk is contributing to global warming and that if its electricity comes from a coal power plant it produces as much C02 as a sports utility vehicle,” said Bill St. Arnaud of Canarie, a Canada-based internet development organization.

There you have it, spam emails are just as harmful to the planet as SUVs and we have all seen the scrutiny that SUV drivers have been under in recent years. If spam emails are helping to destroy the planet, that means all emails are destroying the planet, the planet cannot differentiate between a spam email and a non-spam email. Doesn’t that mean that emails need to be regulated (through taxes of course) in order to save the planet?