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wildfire 
Tue Apr 19, 2011 at 16:27:32 PM MST
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For those of you who have followed this topic to a reasonable degree, you probably already knew what the lede had to say. For those of you who don't pay quite as much attention to this topic, this post is especially important. The dirty energy worshippers have screamed about the costs of doing what's required to keep our climate livable for some time now. Left unsaid during that whole period (thanks for that, corporate media) is the alternative: what would doing nothing and hoping our climate remains livable cost?
Some basic studies have been performed to ask that second question in recent years. They mainly deal with large-scale (national) economies and make a ton of generalizations and assumptions. Part of the problem is too little fundamental research has been performed examining what kinds of benefits we enjoy in a livable climate and what they should be worth to us.
On top of that, I have spent a lot of time and effort detailing a lot of the disadvantages of the assumptions made and processes left out of climate research to date. Keep that in mind: everything discussed here remains based off of data that contains too many unrealistic assumptions and therefore likely underestimates the problem at hand. Unfortunately, that's all we have to work with right now. Some of those gaps will continue to be filled in the future, enabling more detailed and accurate cost analyses to be performed.
The American Security Project has released analyses for all 50 U.S. states' costs as a result of doing nothing to stop our climate forcing. The report for our state, Colorado (pdf), has some interesting results.
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