Exactly. It’s not a matter of the metal housing this stuff, it’s the sheer volume of traffic and cost that all the noise makes.

Been thinking about this for years. Used to sell data centers. Every watt of power requires another 2 watts to cool down. Legit phishing, spam, junk, has a cost.

4g of CO2 per email? I find that hard to believe. Probably overestimating emissions like some media did with Netflix.

https://www.iea.org/commentaries/the-carbon-footprint-of-streaming-video-fact-checking-the-headlines

That is a lot of waste, I certainly underestimated. Another commenter has some insight. Sounds like email spam is less of an issue today simply because it’s moved to other platforms.