Accurately interpreting IPCC assessments

Kotchen et al. find that the greenhouse gas mitigation potential identified by the IPCC in its latest
assessment report is larger and cheaper than what is found in widely used integrated assessment
models, like DICE, FUND, and PAGE.
They suggest that the discrepancy between the various curves could be resolved by excluding the
What worries us most is the sentence in the Kotchen et al. paper saying that they “are not aware of
… efforts to cross-validate top-down mitigation cost assumptions with bottom-up empirical
estimates”. Given the strong dynamics in mitigation potentials, this raises the question of whether
the models concerned, like DICE, FUND, and PAGE are still fit for purpose as a tool for climate change
cost-benefit analysis.