ODT: Carbon capture and storage should not be required.

Roy Latham is considered as the best debater at DDO. However this is not one of his best debates and he appears to be clearly distracted. In R3, he has ignored many of my arguments, dropped his own arguments and posted ‘quotes’ which are actually comments on some other blog. Reader will also notice that there appears to be no continuation between arguments made by him in R2 and R3. == My arguments == My arguments were brief. However as they have been ignored by Pro, I will first recapitulate them. CCS internalizes cost of CO2 removal from atmosphere into production. CCS is technically feasible, as confirmed by organizations like IPCC, IEA and CURC. IEA is already working towards global adaptation. Countries which are part of Kyoto protocol have already accepted it, at least in principle. Modalities of global implementation are being worked out. It is projected to be as cheap as conventional method once the technology is widely accepted. Pilot projects are already being implemented worldwide, including 12 sites in United States. This is remarkable for a technology which only gained prominence in 2005. == New arguments by Pro == Pro introduces a number of new arguments without any theme: Global Warming / Cooling and its cause: Suddenly it turns out that Pro is not sure whether global warming is real and is caused by CO2 emission into atmosphere. This is just a cunning debate tactic. If we are debating economics of CCS, it should be obvious that we are concerned about global warming caused by CO2. There is no point in debating CCS, if my opponent believes that global cooling is going on. Note that Pro does not even specify what he believes in. He just tries to present all possibilities and inflate the scope of the debate. There has been lots of research on the result of global warming [1]. Even the most optimistic ones sound eerie. Unfortunately for my opponent, his lack of awareness of recent research makes his tactic worthless. Global warming is taking place and it is caused by burning of fossil fuel. This is the inescapable conclusion of a research conducted by Berkley Earth Group [2]. This is the conclusion of a team of 11 leading scientists including Robert Muller and Saul Perlmutter. Saul Perlmutter won the Nobel Prize for physics last year. This paper is still under peer review process. There are no shortcuts in science. However it is obvious that this path breaking research has settled the debate on cause of global warming. I will argue the readers to read the New York Times article by Robert Muller [3] announcing key components of his team’s work. Climate Engineering: Pro would like to invest as much as needed in ‘climate engineering’. I have no problem with further research. However rejecting a solution we already have in favor of an unknown solution which we don’t even know even exists is not rational. Pro not only assumes that a solution exists and will be found, he also assumes that the solution is going to be cheap and would solve all the problems all alone. Too expensive to be globally accepted: Pro thinks that this technology will not be accepted globally. However he ignores the fact that it is already being globally accepted. He thinks only US and Europe would use it. As it turns out, lots of work on CCS is being done by China. [4] Costs of CO2 unknown: There is no doubt that exact costs of removing CO2 emission are not known. However unknown costs does not mean no costs. Voters will agree with me that the cost is likely to be high. It is better to shift too CCS whose costs are comparatively well known. I am not arguing for internalizing cost of CO2 removal just because it is fair. Internalizing cost is an essential component for any stable and pragmatic economic solution to the problem. CO2 is not like a normal pollutant. However it may interest my opponent to study effects of global warming. Balloon baloney: Pro offers an extremely non-serious alternative to CCS. Everyone should blow into balloon. However he fails to explain. Feasibility of scheme Cost of scheme How much of CO2 is emitted by human beings, and whether he plans to extend it to animals as well How he plans to dispose the balloons Until he can present more serious proposal, voters are argued to ignore it as a juvenile attempt to derail a serious debate. == Rebuttals == CCS would provide negligible reductions in global warming: Pro considers 13% reduction in temperature increase to be insignificant. It can be argued that this is significant since this is the contribution from a single industry. I am not saying that CCS alone would solve all global warming problems. However it is clear that Pro is not having any better proposal at present from power industry. The Cost Makes CCS Impractical: Pro wrongly asserts that the costs are projected future costs without providing any quotes. Here is the relevant quote from the article Pro quoted [5] All studies were made using commercially available technology and include the cost of compressing the captured CO2 to about 100 atm for pipeline transportation. The results do not include cost of CO2 transportation and injection, which will add about $10/tonne of CO2 avoided. Another problem is that this is a 1999/2000 paper. A lot has changed in this industry since then. I admit that cost of coping with CO2 in environment is not precisely known. However my argument was that cost of CCS should not be compared to cost of conventional production directly. It should be compared with cost of production and the cost of removing the excess CO2 from atmosphere. The cost of CO2 damage to our environment is likely to be high. To buttress his arguments Pro raises the issue of risk with CCS and it’s associated cost. Unfortunately he has posted ‘quotes’ which are actually comments on some other blog. There is no doubt that there are some risks associated with CCS also. However as per IPCC reports the risk associated are comparable to risk associated with current hydrocarbon activities. [6] Nuclear, Climate engineering and adaptation: Pro has ignored most of my arguments against nuclear power and rather relies on few assertions. Pro asserts that if nuclear power is located away from population centre, the cost of accidents can be minimized. I agree, that is not feasible for many countries including India. Also that is not the only problem with nuclear power. I listed several problems, which Pro has ignored. In any case, there is no reason why both CCS and nuclear cannot be used. There is no sense in debating nuclear power unless my opponent wants to take the extreme position that all methods of power production except nuclear should be abolished. Pro blandly asserts that there is no problem to spread of nuclear power. This is clearly not true. The biggest problem is that the Pro’s own country refuses to trust a large part of globe. I do not want a full international politics dispute here. It should be clear to readers that while nuclear is controversial, CCS is being enthusiastically welcomed by everyone except my esteemed opponent. Roy believes that climate engineering offers the only solution. Problem is, climate engineering has not got any solution at present. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org... [2] http://berkeleyearth.org... [3] http://www.nytimes.com... [4] http://www.globalccsinstitute.com... [5] http://sequestration.mit.edu... [6] http://www.ipcc.ch...