
Unwanted emails dump 28,397 tonnes of CO₂ into the atmosphere every day - jivings
https://blog.leavemealone.app/clean-your-inbox-save-the-planet/
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maxharris
Why not put it into more graspable terms? 28,397 tons of CO2 is what you get
when you burn about 76 barrels of oil. (Each barrel is the standard 42-gallon
size.)

Now compare these 76 barrels to the 19.96 _million_ barrels of oil consumed
each day in the US.

Notice that the contribution of spam is so small!

For example, the average American burns (or has burned on their behalf) the
equivalent of about 2.8 gallons of oil per day. At that rate, a group of just
1140 people will emit 28,397 tons of CO2 in a day.

(I hope I got all these figures right. Don't be angry if they're off a little
bit.)

Making your headline dependent on innumeracy isn't a nice thing to do. Framing
things with an obvious spin is fine. But cherry-picking your units to make
your numbers seem big isn't honest.

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jivings
We did try to cherry pick stats that were relatable to the average person.
There's a problem in talking about this in that the numbers can so big they're
basically meaningless, which is why we introduced things like the equivalent
number of plastic bags.

That said, I'm not sure your stats are correct.

Assuming the sources are correct, I found that the combined liquid fuels from
an average barrel of crude oil will produce a minimum of 317kg of CO2 when
consumed [1]. If we then extrapolate from that base amount then 28,397 tonnes
of CO2 is what you get when you burn about 90,000 barrels of oil.

Which is quite a bit different to 76 barrels.

If we're starting from a similar base amount then I think maybe you misread
tonnes in my post as kg, as 76 barrels is closer to 24,000kg (24 tonnes).

[1]: [http://numero57.net/2008/03/20/carbon-dioxide-emissions-
per-...](http://numero57.net/2008/03/20/carbon-dioxide-emissions-per-barrel-
of-crude/)

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jakeogh
I wonder how that compares to re-execution:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20783292](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20783292)

or atime

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l4yao
I'm having trouble wrapping my head around 4g of CO2 per email. That's a lot!

That's like driving a car for 50 feet per email!

~~~
jivings
Yeah, that's what I thought too. There's a lot of energy there in the
background to account for!

~~~
wondering123
and how much energy is used to scan those email accounts for such emails?
Don't' see this in the calculation ;-)

~~~
jivings
It's a fair point, we're working on making our service carbon neutral :)

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greatgib
That article is completely bullshit. As the statistics it is based on...

