CCS: more cost -- JunkScience.com -- Steven Milloy, Publisher

So, despite knowing there is no climatic benefit to be derived from carbon capture and storage (CCS), that it will involve an additional 30% energy cost and significantly increase the environmental footprint of baseload energy supply, politicians have decided to do it anyway. We already know the cost of retrofitting existing power plants is onerous, as is the cost of making new plants CCS capable. What other costs do we need to take into account?

Fortunately Xina Xie, senior research engineer at the University of Wyoming, and energy analyst Michael J. Economides have crunched some of the numbers for us:

The roughly 2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide dealt with in their calculations is slightly less than the emission from U.S. coal-fired electrical generation but quite adequate for our purpose. It is also roughly the amount required to meet the earlier Kyoto Protocol targets but nowhere near sufficient to achieve the activist-desired Kyoto II requirements.

According to Donn Dears (Carbon Folly), some 11,000 miles of pipelines will also be required (see map). Anyone think these are likely to be free or without contention?

Throw in all the costs of easements (transmission right of ways), regulation and monitoring and it seems likely the costs will easily exceed $1.5 trillion per year.

Remember we calculated the potential temperature "saving" over 90 years here? That was based on Hansen's rather ambitious claims for climate sensitivity:

We also looked at Hansen's claims here and found them ridiculously large but that's another matter, workings are laid out below for all who may be interested.

Let's just assume for the moment that these are legitimate estimates of possible "savings", what are we getting for $135 trillion?

That means it would only cost 900 trillion dollars to avoid 1 °C -- a bargain, no?

A mere 18% of global GDP for 90 years could save 1 °C of purely hypothetical warming. Aren't you excited?

Of course we couldn't really avoid that much warming since Hansen's numbers simply don't add up. In fact, trying to manipulate global mean temperature by this means would cost us the whole $900 trillion for an insignificant 0.3 °C at most since Earth is not really very sensitive to atmospheric carbon dioxide levels above a few tens of parts per million (100 ppmv yields roughly three-fourths of all the warming CO₂ can practically deliver):

Assuming the 1.34 billion of us currently living on $10/day or more get to pay for this wondrous exercise, that's a mere $671,640 each to possibly avoid at most 0.3 °C hypothetical warming. Anyone think they can come up with a better use for $670K? I'm pretty sure I can.

Think maybe you'd like to suggest to your elected representatives that you'd like them to rethink this whole carbon pogrom thing?

Sidebar -- for the mathematically minded:

Calculating greenhouse effect using the Stefan-Boltzmann Constant:

If we use Stefan's Constant to derive greenhouse in Wm^-2 as in the following:

G = σ(T_s⁴ - T_e⁴) = σT_s⁴ - OLR = 390.11 - 239.76 = 150.35 Wm^-2

where G is the global average greenhouse effect, σ is the Stefan-Boltzmann Constant, T_s = 288 K, T_e = 255 K and OLR signifies Outgoing Longwave Radiation, we have a figure of 150.35 Wm^-2 and net warming of 33 °C, thus as a linear relationship a ΔF of 1 Wm^-2 ≈ 0.22 °C. Implied then is an increase of 0.81 °C from ΔF 3.7 Wm^-2, the value estimated by the IPCC for a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Alternatively, working back from our calculated 390.1 Wm^-2 above (from net temperature) + ΔF 3.7 Wm^-2 (the value estimated for a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide), we get (393.8/σ)^1/4, yielding 288.68 K for a net warming of 0.68 °C, so ΔF of 1 Wm^-2 ≈ 0.18 °C.

Both our figures derived so far are much smaller than frequently cited estimates for warming from a doubling of pre-Industrial Revolution atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Checking Hansen against the IPCC figures:

According to the IPCC, global mean temperature rose 0.6 ± 0.2 °C from the late 19^th Century through 2000. From the same source ΔF from increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is calculated as +1.4 Wm^-2, while the increase from all greenhouse gases combined is supposed to be 2.4 Wm^-2. Ignoring the much-argued about solar influence over the period and using the "Hansen Factor" of 0.75 °C per Wm^-2, the world should have warmed ≈ 1.8 °C from enhanced greenhouse forcing alone -- 2.4 °C if we use the model's 1:1 ratio. Obviously a simplistic "greenhouse gas increase = n degrees warming" will not do since the real world has only delivered between one-sixth and one-third that value with the greatest confidence being one-quarter (0.6 ± 0.2 or 0.4 to 0.8 °C). Definitely marked as dubious.

Checking Hansen with Stefan's constant:

Looking at the problem another way -- maxing out Hansen's reduced ice age forcing of 6.6 ± 1.5 Wm^-2 we get 8.1 Wm^-2 for an observed ΔT of ≈ 5 °C. Presumably then 390.11 (from Stefan's constant, above) - 8.1 = 382 Wm^-2 and this, according to Hansen, should resolve to 288 - 5 = 283 K. However, (382/σ)^1/4 yields 286.49 K, giving us a cooling not of 5 K but 1.5 K -- less than one-third the expected value.

Working from temperature to derive the change in Wm^-2, σ283⁴ = 363.71 Wm^-2, which subtracted from 390.11 leaves us 26.4 Wm^-2 rather than at most 8.1 as per Hansen. Why the shortfall? Perhaps there being no negative listing for solar in Hansen's ice age forcings should have tipped us off.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS), the other financial considerations