Your points are well taken. I realize the Denning quote is an oversimplification.
It should have been followed by, “on the other hand……”

Reply to Snape…..Although true, none of those paradigm shifts involved overcoming the incredible built in influence on the scale of the fossil fuel industry

None of those shifts meant giving up notions of “ease” or “luxury” or “convenience ” by consumers

And every one of those shifts brought about immediate life enhancements to the consumers- the Climate Crisis requires deferring immediate gratification by individuals for the long term welfare of the greater ecology. We seem quite incapable of doing that on any significant level.

Ah but in the U.S. the only relevant question is: Will such a change enrich the Koch brothers and the other current billionaires pouring huge amounts of dark money into disinformation campaigns to affect the general public’s perceptions and their voting choices?

“Solving the problem by 2030, 2040 or 2050 requires a new global energy infrastructure, which is arguably easier and less expensive than past infrastructure shifts like indoor plumbing, rural electrification, the automobile and paved roads, telecommunications, computers, mobile phones or the internet.”

“All of these past changes cost tens of trillions of dollars, adjusted for inflation. All of them were hugely disruptive. All of them took a decade or more, completely changed the industrial and economic and social landscape, and created bursts of growth and productivity and jobs. And arguably, all of them made life better for huge numbers of people.”

– Scott Denning, Colorado State University

JohnL, this is mostly wrong.

“Earth has been around for millions of years. ”

Billions. And during that time nearly all life was forced into extinction a number of times because of changes in atmospheric or ocean chemistry. The history of the Earth should make us concerned about changing atmospheric or ocean chemistry.

“We have some proof of extremes taking out civilizations long before they could seriously affect climate change. ”

The archaeological community actually disagrees with you. There are no cases of civilizations going under where we agree on the causes, and few where causes are clear or suggested strongly by the evidence. But where there are major changes, shifts in climate like the one we are causing, but much less severe, seem to be the main implication in some of them. The history of human civilizations should make us worry about the much more serious changes we are causing now.

“The question is should we spend trillions trying to reverse what is likely the inevitable change in climate. ”

There is inevitable change, and there is change we can stop, slow, or even reverse. So the premise of your argument if false. The amount of money we need to spend, if we spent it all at once and with one whopping big bill, might be a couple of trillions, but most likely, most of that money will be passed through the system in the form of profit generating economic turnover. There are no credible economists that disagree with that.

“Or spend money trying to adopt to what is coming? ”

You might mean adapt, and not adopt. In any event, we spend plenty to adapt now, and because this problem has not been dealt with (your fault) we will have to spend much more than we otherwise would have.

“Where people thousands of years ago had no ability to move or adopt to extremes. ”

Pre-ag hunter gatherers actually adopted as their habitats, i.e, adapted to habitats, across a range of living conditions that even to this day post-ag people have been unable to. Our system of existence is more delicate and vulnerable wrt morality and morbidity caused by changes in settlement, food availability, and climate, than ever before.

“We have more resources to put forth to attempt to deal with it. To adapt would seem way more effective and have a more potential of success then claiming we know what to do in order to reverse climate changes. ”

Not one single expert in this area agrees with that.

“My faith in scientists understanding how to achieve such reversal is hardly one I would place my bet on. Accepting that change happens and dealing with those changes would be a much better bet and have a better result.”

See arguments above. This leaves me wondering how someone could have such a totally incorrect view of climate change.

The historical and prehistorical record is full of human migrations, from Africa into Eurasia and from there into everywhere else except Antarctica. It was actually a lot easier for people organized into simpler societies to move than it is for our modern, societies, with their dependence on roads, power plants and power grids, industries, etc., all integrated tightly into people’s lives and livelihoods. When people flee by the hundreds of thousands from flooding coastal regions all over the world, who is going to give up “their” land to them? Having lost their homes (and any equity related to them) and likely their jobs, what are they going to use for money? What do you suppose will happen to the already antiquated and over-stressed infrastructure in many areas when large numbers of needy people flood in? Is Trumpist America in any way prepared to respond to such situations, even within the U. S. itself, let alone from other countries? it wasn’t too long ago that Hurricane Sandy devastated parts of the NE, and some Southern states balked at providing the kind of Federal aid that they had been receiving for the same kind of devastation for decades. And several decades before that, California tried their best to close their borders to immigrants from the Dust Bowl states.

This post is riddled with so many logical fallacies that it’s difficult to know where to start.

We have some proof of extremes taking out civilizations long before they could seriously affect climate change.

Red herring: what happened in those cases is not germane to what’s happening now. Which leads ro a related fallacy…

Normalcy bias: expecting the past to predict the future, when there is no guarantee the same factors are in operation.

The question is should we spend trillions trying to reverse what is likely the inevitable change in climate.

False dichotomy: there is more than just the cost involved that needs to be considered in making decisions. Which leads to…

Incomplete comparison: there are more important issues involved than just cost.

Argument from assertion: you are (falsely) claiming that the contemporary warming is “inevitable” when in fact the natural state of affairs is slow cooling – it’s only warming because humans choose to continue to emit fossil carbon.

Or spend money trying to adopt [sic] to what is coming?

Incomplete comparison: you are not confronting the full cost of adaptation. Further, you are not confronting the fact that adaptation is not fully possible, both for humans and especially for the rest of life on the planet.

Where people thousands of years ago had no ability to move or adopt [sic] to extremes.

Argument from assertion: you are (falsely) claiming that previous civilisations couldn’t migrate (or adapt). They could, on both counts, and in fact even in the face of slower natural climate change processes their ability to survive was at times compromised by unavoidable impacts on agriculture and other food/resource availability.

We have more resources to put forth to attempt to deal with it.

Argument from assertion: in fact resources are dwindling in most sectors, and we are woefully under-resources to be able to sustain our current population and way of life:

https://www.biobasedpress.eu/2017/12/doughnut-economics-or-why-economists-should-learn-more-about-technology/planetary_boundaries_of_agriculture_and_nutrition/

https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/earth-overshoot-day-humanity-resources/

To adapt would seem way more effective and have a more potential of success then [sic] claiming we know what to do in order to reverse climate changes.

Argument from assertion; hasty induction: adaptation without mitigation is a lost cause. The more it warms the more exponential is the degree of effort/difficulty required to adapt, and the more the underlying and unaddressed causes continue to increase. Consider this:

https://www.dw.com/image/39462046_401.png

My faith in scientists understanding how to achieve such reversal is hardly one I would place my bet on.

Argument from incredulity. Your unevidenced (and incorrect, as it happens) resistance to the reliability of professional, expert scientists is no proof of your assertions.

Accepting that change happens and dealing with those changes would be a much better bet and have a better result.

Argument from assertion, and completely false. And before you claim that I’m making assertions myself, go check AR5. I’ve used my quota of links before I evaporate in the bin of moderation, but there is a wealth of referenced information there that indicates that doing nothing is a recipe for disaster.

These are just the fallacies that I discovered on a first parsing – I’m sure that I’ve left out many more…

“Where people thousands of years ago had no ability to move or adopt to extremes.”

I’m thinking just the opposite. A thousand years ago, North America was a land without borders.

The question is should we spend trillions trying to reverse what is likely the inevitable change in climate.

The extent of climate change and the depth of its negative impacts will be determined by total CO2 emissions. The less we ultimately emit, the less severe the climate impacts will be.

So the question is ill-posed. It is not that we can spend trillions attempting to reverse climate change, rather we could spend the money trying to reduce its severity in the medium and long term.