ODT: Carbon capture and storage should not be required.

Roy Latham thinks I am attacking him personally. However I praised him as the best debater on this site! I did comment that he appears to be a distracted due to strange features of his arguments. This is not a personal attack, rather a serious attack on the quality of his arguments. Attacking his arguments is definitely within the scope of this debate. What is more interesting is that he has not responded to the criticism I had presented. I would list it below so that readers can verify that the criticism is valid. My arguments were ignored Lack of coherence between Pro R2 and R3. Dropping arguments from R2 in R3. Quoting comment by a reader on someone else’s blog as an authentic source. == Arguments == Apart from the cost factor, Pro has not disputed any of my arguments. I will address the cost factor in rebuttals. Pro has conceded that CCS is technically feasible for global adoption. == Rebuttals == Global Warming / Cooling: Pro seeks to defend his introduction of global cooling into the debate. This is a technical debate on an important issue. To have an in-depth discussion, it is essential that we limit the scope of debate to essential points. If the issue of global warming is introduced in this debate and Pro is ‘undecided’ on the issue, the burden on Con increases considerably. This is clearly undesirable in a serious debate. After balloon baloney, Pro again shows lack of seriousness by comparing existence of global warming to existence of vampire. I have already answered the principle issue. I would argue the readers to ignore the analogy. In any case, this meta-debate is moot, since it has already been established by science that global warming exists and is anthropogenic in origin. Pro has dropped the research presented by me in the last round. Too expensive to be globally accepted: This is being merged with discussion of Cost. Cost of CO2 removal unknown: Pro has dropped my arguments that cost of removal of CO2 produced by fossil fuels is likely to be huge. Balloon Baloney: It turns out that the intent of Pro was a huge straw man on my arguments. I did not say that any scheme which internalizes cost is perfect, irrespective of cost. I showed in the first round that pollution is an externality of industrial activity. Pro did not dispute this argument. In R3, I said: 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. It would be obvious to readers, that my opponent’s analogy is a straw man fallacy. Internalization of cost should be considered as a positive point in favor of CCS. Negligible reduction in global warming: The figure of 13% reduction in temperatures was obtained using extremely rough calculation. We assumed half of emissions are prevented over an unspecified time period. The figure of 3 degree rise in temperature was not significant in our calculation, and 13% reduction should be obtained whatever temperature sensitivity is assumed. Pro wants us to consider the effect of delay in conversion. However that was the major reason we assumed that only half of carbon emission will be curtailed. The rough calculations we have used prevent us from making any more precise estimate. We have a dispute whether 13% reduction is significant. TPPs account for 33% of global emission of CO2. CCS provides 13% reduction in global temperature increase. This is clearly significant. It is even more important to note that this decrease is over a scale which is logarithmic. Cost makes CCS impractical: I had already explained that Pro’s source 6 specifies current cost. Pro’s source 7 is even more interesting. The article does not explain whether the cost is based on current technology or future technology. It refers to Carnegie Mellon study on the subject. A quick look at the study [1] confirms that they are talking about current cost (i.e. 2007) which they find to be in order of 15-30%. I saw no need to present my own figures for cost since I accepted the cost presented by Pro for current technology. For future cost projection I did refer to Wikipedia [R2:7]. Pro did not challenge that earlier. The Wikipedia referred to CURC roadmap, which I used as source [R2:8]. The complete cost projections are presented on page 19 of roadmap. Readers are welcome to read that. Pro does not believe that costs can decrease in any technology. When a new type of industry is built for first time, there are lots of extra costs and delay. This is essential since all design assumptions have to be validated at each stage. Once the technology becomes popular, it is possible to copy large part of design and move ahead with production. It becomes more economical to produce some components with specialized parts. With a technology like CCS, it can be hoped that better processes will develop leading to lower costs. I presented evidence to show that China is developing CCS. There is little doubt that they would like to sell it to the world. However it also shows that they will be able to afford the technology. Further, just like Americans, Chinese are also human beings and our fellow citizen of planet earth. Just like we are debating merits of CCS, it is hoped that they too will discuss it and switch to CCS to control emissions. An argument which is good enough to convince an American and Indian is likely to be good enough for Chinese also. Pro also believes that ‘poor’ nations should focus on ‘poverty’. It is a typical useless advice. In India we have reduced poverty significantly through developments in industry and service sectors. It is not possible to remove poverty by focusing on poverty. It can be argued that projects like CCS will create jobs and boost technical skills of developing countries. Nuclear, adaptation and climate engineering: Pro wants us to wait for solution from climate engineering research. However we don’t really know whether this will provide us a solution at all. Even if it does provide a solution, it may be expensive, risky or the impact associated with it may be small. We already have a reasonable solution in our hand and we should go ahead with it. Trusting the future of planet to a field of scientific research in its infancy is naïve. Pro again tries to present a false dichotomy between nuclear power and CCS. Nuclear power should not have any bearing on this debate unless my opponent thinks that the world should switch to nuclear power completely. Otherwise both CCS and nuclear power can be used. I admit there are several advantages of nuclear power. However readers would also be aware of several problems. These issues were presented in R2, however Pro has not addressed them. He has asserted that there is no problem with nuclear power and all that is needed is monitoring. Readers would be aware that monitoring itself is a controversial issue. == Conclusions == We have spent lots of time in going through Pro’s rebuttal, since my arguments were either conceded or dropped by Pro.CCS offers us a way of curtailing CO2 emissions from thermal power plants by 90%. Pilot projects are already on in various parts of world. At current level, costs of power production increases by around 50%. This is good enough for us to move ahead with technology. Once the technology becomes popular the cost should be same as that for conventional production. Unlike nuclear, it is globally popular and non-controversial. It has been recommended by various agencies and welcomed by large number of countries. While we don’t know about future, as of now CCS looks like a very good option. Good enough for us to continue moving ahead with it. ===========Thanks to my esteemed opponent for a very enjoyable debate. ==References==1.http://www.chemeng.mcmaster.ca...