> that "trillions of dollars" is a baseless assumption that's just pulled out of somebody's behind
No, it isn't. It's what is quoted by the people advocating mitigation.
> most mitigation analyses have us saving money
Because they claim that the savings from adopting all these clean energy technologies will more than outweigh the costs of switching to them. Which is based on...assumptions pulled out of somebody's behind. Or, if you prefer, economic models that have no track record of predictive success.
In other words, mitigation means we pay the costs, and then we find out whether all those models that said the savings would make up for it were right, or not. Yeah, sure, let's bet the entire world economy on that.
>Which is based on...assumptions pulled out of somebody's behind.
No, absolutely not. They are based on data. And projections.
However, if you're going to assert that it's impossible to know anything, than my estimates are just as good as yours, and I say it's going to save us $100 trillion/year! Tada!
Economic models are subject to manipulation, just as a business model is, but that doesn't mean that none of them have any credibility.
The credible answers, the ones where somebody has tried to make honest efforts, have mitigation costs as a tiny percentage of current GDP. In the US, that could be easily paid for by the amount of government waste in defense.
> if you're going to assert that it's impossible to know anything
I made no such assertion. I said that the economic models have no track record of successful predictions. We should not be making huge bets based on models that have no track record of successful predictions.
The difficulty is that it is also a huge bet to continue "business as usual". Not making significant changes is also a choice, and based on the best science (indeed, imperfect models) we have so far, it does not look good...
> it is also a huge bet to continue "business as usual"
Yes, but that's true for a lot of reasons that have nothing to do with climate change. I'm simply saying that if we're going to redirect a large amount of resources, we should redirect them to actions that will have a positive impact regardless of things in the future that we can't predict. As I said in my original post in this subthread, I think two important such actions are bringing people out of poverty (since the wealthier people are, the better able they are to adapt to change) and making our infrastructure more robust.
No, it isn't. It's what is quoted by the people advocating mitigation.
> most mitigation analyses have us saving money
Because they claim that the savings from adopting all these clean energy technologies will more than outweigh the costs of switching to them. Which is based on...assumptions pulled out of somebody's behind. Or, if you prefer, economic models that have no track record of predictive success.
In other words, mitigation means we pay the costs, and then we find out whether all those models that said the savings would make up for it were right, or not. Yeah, sure, let's bet the entire world economy on that.