The ideal average temperature for national economic success is 13C (55.4F), academics have discovered. “We’re basically throwing away money by not addressing the issue”, said Marshall Burke, an assistant professor at Stanford University.
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Several previously conducted studies have also clearly depicted how climate change can be the cause for civil war, expensive commodities, inadequate water supply and more powerful storms, among other threats.
But because the U.S.is now at that ultimate peak, there’s greater uncertainty in the study’s calculations than in places like India, Pakistan, Vietnam, Nigeria and Venezuela where it’s already hot and there’s more certainty about dramatic economic harm, Hsiang said.
The second half of the study then projected the toll of a steadily warming trend, based on these relationships. However, this time the authors note that each country is comprised of many different locations, each with a different temperature, so when the country starts warming, the hottest locations surpass 25 degrees Celsius first.
That point, it turns out, is an annual average temperature of about 55 F.
With this temperature rise, couple of mechanical countries would partake in the misfortunes; notwithstanding, the most exceedingly awful hits would come to creating countries in the tropics and subtropics.
At the least, he adds, the study will stimulate a debate among economist about the best way to sift through the various factors that affect a country’s productivity in order to isolate and assess global warming’s economic effects.
Countries including Canada, Russia, central and northern Europe would see an increase in productivity due to global warming for a limited time.
The new study breaks productivity down into agriculturally-related and non-agriculturally-related.
It examined 166 countries in the world in the last 50 years to determine how GDP lined up with the global temperature.
“The climate situation is like deciding on how much to spend to maintain the family farm”, said Hsiang. Burke, Hsiang, & Miguel (Nature 2015) demonstrate the effects of these changes on economies around the world. Climate change could reshape global economy. We also know that society tends to get somewhat insane when the temperature gets hot.
Five years ago, Hsiang had contended that national economic output should reflect changes in workers’ productivity – higher temperatures should mean less productivity. If climate change continues, that might be the case more often.
The researchers’ findings were stark. In the researchers’ benchmark estimate, climate change will reduce average income in the poorest 40 percent of countries by 75 percent in 2100, while the richest 20 percent may experience slight gains.
“Using year-to-year changes is a good proxy for long term temperature changes, but countries may not be prepared to invest in mitigation on such a short cycle (it is unanticipated and temporary); in the presence of ongoing climate change, however, countries might be forward looking in terms of investing in mitigation”, he said by email for Washington Post.
Other estimates are twice as high.
The global warming study will hopefully reach the world leaders and take the necessary actions to lessen the carbon emissions that are causing global warming. Below that temperature, productivity increases with warming.
It is also clearly timed to concentrate governmental minds on the forthcoming United Nations summit in Paris to decide upon the global response to climate change-which is the effect of soaring fossil fuel combustion, rising levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases, and the predicted and potentially catastrophic increase in global annual average temperatures. “Rich companies could be impacted in important ways”. “We’re finding it’s more like the middle-of-the-road forecast”.
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Around 77% of the world’s nations are likely to witness a drop in average income, according to new estimations.
