Climate Wars: Nick Stern Threatens U.S. With Trade Boycott
Ben Webster
The United States will be banned from selling goods to many countries if it continues to shirk its promise to cut greenhouse gas emissions, according to the world’s leading climate change economist.
In an interview with The Times, Lord Stern of Brentford said that nations that were taking strong action on emissions could start imposing restrictions on “dirty” US exports by 2020.
Lord Stern, who advises several G20 leaders and is one of the key players in the international negotiations seeking a deal on emissions, made his comments ten days before the annual United Nations climate change conference opens in Cancun, Mexico. They reflect the feeling in many countries that a lack of action on emissions in the US is delaying progress in the talks.
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Lord Stern said that Europe and the Far East (sic) were forging ahead of the US in controlling emissions and switching to low carbon sources of energy. They would not tolerate having their industries undermined by American competitors that had not paid for their emissions. “If you are charging properly for carbon and other people are not, you will take that into account,” he said. “Many of the more forward-looking people in the US are thinking about this. If they see a danger on the trade front to US exports that could influence public discussion.”
Asked what type of US products could face restrictions, Lord Stern said: “Aircraft, clearly, some cars, machine tools — it’s not simply what’s in the capital good, it’s what kind of processes the capital good is facilitating.”
Lord Stern said that a complete ban on some goods was also possible. He said the American people should overcome their historical antipathy to taxation and accept that emissions needed to be controlled either through a tax or a trading scheme.
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@ur momisugly Paul Birch
‘You keep missing my point; we want to extract CO2 as a resource, as a feedstock for fuel manufacture and hydroponic food production.’
I am rapidly running out of steam on this website (I didnt think it was for fifth columnist global warmists) but I get the message you want to extract CO2 from massive volumes of air . Couldn’t you apply yourself instead to processing carbonate rocks which would give far higher concentrations of CO2 to deal with and more compact plant to design (rather than something the size of the Empire State Building). In addition magnesite would give you by product magnesium after carbochlorination/and treatment in an Alcan cell etc.
Robert Stevenson says:
November 26, 2010 at 10:16 am
@ur momisugly Paul Birch ‘For the same reason we use expensive combustion processes to which we have to input two or three times more energy than we get out as electricity. Convenience. Hydrocarbon fuels are convenient. An extremely useful energy storage medium. So we will still want to use them, even when we no longer rely upon fossil fuels for primary energy production’.
“Admittedly the use of fossil fuel in the power cycle has at best a Rankine Efficiency of 50% or so even operating near the triple point but at least the fuel is cheap and relatively abundant.”
There is no such fundamental limit on the efficiency of primary power stations – not even on fossil fuel power stations. The factor of two or three I mentioned is a rough figure for the average thermodynamic efficiency of the power stations currently providing our electrical power. Despite that rather low efficiency (it was even lower in the past), we nevertheless make and use lots of electricity, for the reason I stated: convenience. What the thermodynamic efficiency may be is irrelevant to the value of the product. For many purposes, electricity is much more useful than any other form of energy, so we would still use it even if the generating efficiency were quite appallingly bad. Similarly, we find hydrocarbon fuels highly convenient for various other purposes – especially for vehicles – more so than any other form of energy. So we would still use them even if they cost a lot more than electricity does. Again, it is their value in use that counts; economic efficiency, not merely a crude energy efficiency of manufacture. Why is that so hard for you to grasp?
Fossil fuels are currently cheap and abundant, but, unless usage declines very strongly in the future (faster than 1/t, so total cumulative demand is bounded), they will not always be. When the cost of synthetic fuels falls below that of fossil fuels, they will almost inevitably tend to replace them in the market. (The effective costs include any taxes, levies, subsidies, and regulatory burdens on each). With sufficiently cheap primary energy, and appropriate regulatory regimes, this could happen in as little as a few years – or, on the other hand, with very cheap fossil fuel not in great demand, it might not come about for centuries. My best guess is that we are most likely to see some such production (possibly subsidised) within a decade or so.
“A scheme like yours which requires the output of three power stations* to provide the fuel for one power station seems basically flawed.”
It is not intended to provide fuel for power stations at all. Except for special cases like emergency generators, etc..
“*By your own admission you would have put in far more energy than you would get out; and also with a primary fuel as cheap as 10p/kWh why bother with a synthetic fuel.”
I did not say “far more energy”. Somewhat more energy, certainly. Depending on how determinedly one recycles the sensible heat, one should be able to keep the losses down below ~20% (ie, a factor of 1.25, not three). There’ll obviously be a trade-off of capital cost against running cost. What the optimum may be will depend – among other things – on the primary energy cost (not the cost of primary “fuel”, since we are not talking about fossil fuel plants, but “fuel-less” sources like solar or geothermal power, or technologies where the cost of the fuel itself is a minor or negligible component of total cost, such as fusion power).
“This maybe so but the absorption process is essentially a surface phenomenon with the driving force from the gas phase proportional to 1 atmos*mole fraction CO2 and as the process is gas phase controlling, what happens to H at depth is of no relevance.”
It is of great relevance. It would still be relevant even if the initial absorption process were only a surface phenomenon, because even diffusion alone will gradually take the surface CO2 down to the depths. However, considerable quantities of CO2 also enter the water at depth- from geological processes like volcanoes, as well as the action of acids like SiO2 on carbonates , and the biological decomposition of detritus from the photic zone. I suspect that much (or even most) of the deep CO2 may actually come from subducted carbonate deposits at destructive plate margins.
Robert Stevenson says:
November 26, 2010 at 12:48 pm
“Couldn’t you apply yourself instead to processing carbonate rocks which would give far higher concentrations of CO2 to deal with and more compact plant to design (rather than something the size of the Empire State Building). In addition magnesite would give you by product magnesium after carbochlorination/and treatment in an Alcan cell etc.”
No. It’s an inferior option. The environmental impact of mining so much carbonate rock and disposing of the huge quantities of waste quicklime would be considerable. The energy cost would be quite a bit higher than for direct extraction from the atmosphere, and total costs could also be expected to be significantly higher. The mines would before long extend over a far greater area than the atmospheric plant, which once built could continue to operate indefinitely (unlike a mine, which is a depleting resource). It would make sense for cement works to capture and sell or reform their CO2 as a by-product.
(Actually, I do have a method for devolatilising mega-quantities of carbonate rocks, but it’s not exactly ideal for a populated planet. It’s a radical terraforming technique, not a sustainable utility).
@ur momisugly Paul Birch
‘No. It’s an inferior option. The environmental impact of mining so much carbonate rock and disposing of the huge quantities of waste quicklime would be considerable.’
you wouldnt get quicklime from magnesite. I thought you might know that.
Have you tried any of your schemes out out on Kellog or Bechtel? I’m sure they would soon show you where the door is.
R Stevenson says:
November 27, 2010 at 10:19 am
“you wouldnt get quicklime from magnesite. I thought you might know that.”
Most carbonate rocks are largely calcium carbonate. I thought even you would realise that. But disposing of large quantities of magnesia would be scarcely less problematic. Using the magnesia for constructional purposes (or reducing some of it to magnesium) would be an option, but then there would be no built-in recycling mechanism to draw the CO2 back out of the atmosphere. It would no longer be a “carbon neutral” process. Moreover, locating and mining out 30 cubic kilometres of pure magnesite per year would be quite a challenge.
“Have you tried any of your schemes out out on Kellog or Bechtel? I’m sure they would soon show you where the door is.”
Do you not understand the meaning of “long term”? I’ve tried spelling it out, but you seem too prejudiced to pay attention.
@ur momisugly Paul Birch
‘Most carbonate rocks are largely calcium carbonate. ‘
I was referring specifically to magnesite which can be carbochlorinated with CO/Cl2 in a single reactor and is self sufficient in reductant (see MPLC process).
Are you some sort of diletante scientist who hasn’t got a proper job?
R Stevenson says:
November 28, 2010 at 6:18 am
“I was referring specifically to magnesite which can be carbochlorinated with CO/Cl2 in a single reactor and is self sufficient in reductant (see MPLC process).”
You did not refer “specifically to magnesite”. Your actual words were “processing carbonate rocks”. Further on, you then went on to say “In addition, magnesite …” (my italics).
Moreover, as I have already pointed out, even if you could find and mine sufficient pure magnesite (by contrast with dolomite, it is comparitively rare and tends to come in inconveniently thin veins), this would not eliminate the general disadvantages of carbonate rocks, which, to reiterate, include higher energy costs, higher total costs, environmental impact of large-scale mining, disposal of waste oxide product to the environment (or lack of carbon neutrality if the oxide is not so disposed of). Carbochlorination is a red herring; it is unlikely that there would be anything like as great a demand for magnesium metal as for CO2, and the hydrocarbons and other organics to be manufactured from it.
@ur momisugly Paul Birch
‘What is it that you contending is “ridiculous”? Extracting CO2 from the atmosphere? In the long term that is probably how…….’
I do not know why you are so concerned about CO2 in the atmosphere its concentration in air could be doubled to 700ppm without any further contribution to global warming.
At 288 K the black-body radiation or total emissive power from Earth is 391W/m^2 (124 Btu/h-ft^2). CO2 in the atmosphere absorbs 79.8W/m^2 after 3600m (CO2 absorptivity 0.184 at 350ppm or PcL of 1.24 m.atm). H2O in the atmosphere absorbs 248W/m^2 after 120m (H2O absorptivity 0.573 for a PwL of 2.77 m.atm).
Doubling CO2 to 700ppm would absorb the same 79.8W/m^2 after only 2000m ( CO2 absorptivity 0.195 at 700ppm 0r PcL of 1.4 m.atm).
Robert Stevenson says:
November 30, 2010 at 7:54 am
@ur momisugly Paul Birch ‘What is it that you contending is “ridiculous”? Extracting CO2 from the atmosphere? In the long term that is probably how…….’
“I do not know why you are so concerned about CO2 in the atmosphere its concentration in air could be doubled to 700ppm without any further contribution to global warming.”
I am not “concerned about CO2 in the atmosphere”. I am in favour of extracting CO2 from the atmosphere as a cheap, convenient, non-polluting and sustainable resource. You seem to think that’s ridiculous, even though that’s just how the biosphere has worked for millions of years! It has nothing to do with AGW.
Perhaps I should not be surprised, but I am nevertheless frustrated by how readily people here keep jumping to the illogical conclusion that just because an idea is favoured by some AGW believer somewhere, it must be nonsense. This seems to have become an article of faith, as idiotic and ideological as AGW itself.