IPCC scientist compared CO2 emissions to "mugging little old ladies"

October '09: Error-riddled Superfreakonomics claims Caldeira’s “research tells him that carbon dioxide is not the right villain.”...

In SuperFreakonomics, Levitt and Dubner write of Ken Caldeira (page 184), “Yet his research tells him that carbon dioxide is not the right villain in this fight.” What he really believes, as he wrote me last weekend, is:

I compare CO2 emissions to mugging little old ladies…. It is wrong to mug little old ladies and wrong to emit carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. The right target for both mugging little old ladies and carbon dioxide emissions is zero.  [Via Michael Tobis]

Flashback: IPCC Report Author Estimates $800 Billion Annual Cost to Capture Carbon from Power Plants

One of the authors of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Carbon Capture and Storage estimated the worldwide cost could run an astonishing $800 billion annually.

Stanford University Energy and Environmental Sciences Professor Dr. Ken Caldeira said his 2005 IPCC Report estimated a cost of about $100 per ton of carbon (not just carbon dioxide) for carbon capture and storage costs in ideal locations.

Ocean Voices: Ken Caldeira

Caldeira is the lead author of the 2007 U.S. “State of the Carbon Cycle Report” and was chosen to be coordinating lead author of “Ocean Storage,” an IPCC report on carbon storage in the ocean.