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Skeptical Science the Thermometer Needle and The 11/9/2015 The thermometer needle and the damage done Look up a Term CLAM Bake Climate Science Glossary Term Lookup Enter a term in the search box to find its definition. Settings Use the controls in the far right panel to increase or decrease the number of terms automatically displayed (or to completely turn that feature off). Term Lookup Term: Define Settings Beginner Intermediate Advanced No Definitions Definition Life: 20 seconds All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941­954. Cambridge University Press. Home Arguments Software Resources Comments The Consensus Project Translations About Donate Search... The thermometer needle and the damage done Posted on 6 November 2015 by Andy Skuce Rising temperatures may inflict much more damage on already warm countries than conventional economic models predict. In the latter part of the twenty­first Century, global warming might even reduce or reverse any earlier economic progress made by poor nations. This would increase global wealth inequality over the century. (This is a repost from Critical Angle.) A recent paper published in Nature by Marshall Burke, Solomon M. Hsiang and Edward Miguel Global non­linear effect of temperature on economic production argues that increasing Climate's changed before temperatures will cause much greater damage It's the sun to economies than previously predicted. Furthermore, this effect will be distributed very It's not bad unequally, with tropical countries getting hit very There is no consensus hard and some northern countries actually benefitting. It's cooling Models are unreliable Let me attempt a highly simplified summary of Temp record is unreliable what they did. I’m not an economist and this analysis is not straightforward, so beware. If I Animals and plants can adapt confuse you, try Dana Nuccitelli’s take or Seth It hasn't warmed since 1998 Borenstein’s or Bloomberg’s or The Economist's. Antarctica is gaining ice View All Arguments... Firstly, Burke et al. looked at factors like labour supply, labour performance and crop yields and how they relate to daily temperature exposure. Generally these show little 97 : 00 : 00 variation up to temperatures in the high twenties Celsius, at which point they fall off quickly. Secondly, those trends were aggregated to predict the relationship between annual average temperatures and the annual impact on economic output. Thirdly, they looked at annual economic output and average annual temperatures for individual countries for the period 1960­2010. Note that they only compared the economic effects of temperature change on individual countries, they did not correlate one country with another. Using these observations they were able to see how the observations http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=3178 1/8 11/9/2015 The thermometer needle and the damage done compared with their predicted aggregate curve. Our climate has accumulated e h T 2,289,7a 3m i 7h ,s o r 4i H 50 Hiroshimab am to ob mic bom c i bsm o t a y og r f e hn ee ae t v si is no l cp ex 1e 9n 9a 8 d e d l e i y e c n i S . s e l u o J 3 1 0 1 x 3 . 6 f o s a h e t a m i l c r u o , 8 9 9 1 n a h t e r o m d e b r o s b a y d a e r l a 0 . 4 ( s b m o b h c u s n o i l l i b 2 Username n i ) d n o c e s y r e v e Password m o r f y g r e n e d e t a l u m u c c a e s u o h n e e r g o t e u d , n u s e h t Keep me logged in o t s e u n i t n o c d n a , s e s a g t a e h s a y g r e n e e r o m b r o s b a New? Register here r ho tF tp . :/y /a sd ks .y tr oe /hv e a d t n a h c a e Forgot your password? t i s i v , n o i t a m r o f n i e r o m . t a e h / o t . s k s / / : p t t h Latest Posts By rejecting Keystone, President Obama cements his climate legacy 2015 SkS Weekly Digest #45 2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #45 The thermometer needle and the All figures from Burke et al. (2015). damage done Scientists warned the US president about global warming This work showed that the GDP of countries with an annual average temperature of 13°C 50 years ago today were the least sensitive to temperature changes. Colder countries on the left side of the Q&A: Is Antarctica gaining or hump would benefit from an increase in temperature, whereas warmer countries would The Consensus Project losing ice? see their output suffer as temperature increases. Note that the figure does not show that Website Arbitrary focus on hurricane wind a certain temperature predetermines the level of wealth of a country (China, despite speed has birthed a new climate recent rapid growth is poorer than the US and Japan even though average annual myth temperatures are similar). Rather, it illustrates how susceptible countries are to increases Homogenization of Temperature Data: An Assessment or decreases in productivity relative to their annual average temperature. 2015 SkS Weekly Digest #44 There is some evidence that rich countries are slightly less affected by changes in 2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #44 temperature (the curve is a little flatter for them). There are few hot and wealthy countries 2015: A Very Bad Year for the examined in the study, so any general conclusions about them cannot be certain, but the Global Warming Policy evidence still points to them being more prone to damage from rising temperature than Foundation rich, cooler countries. No matter how rich you are, extra heat hurts the warm lands more Newest Entry in Inside Climate than it does the temperate and the cool. You can’t buy your way out of the effects of News’ #ExxonKnew Story is a Doozy global warming, except by moving away from the Equator or up into the highlands. Leveraging the Skeptical Science Glossary for references Ceteris non paribus Global warming could be more TEXTBOOK devastating for the economy than Other things being equal, poorer countries are expected to grow faster than already rich we thought ones over the course of this century, which will reduce inter­country economic inequality. Interview with Gavin Schmidt However, according to Burke et al, because poor countries tend to have warmer climates 2015 SkS Weekly Digest #43 than rich ones, global warming will slow the rate of economic growth among the already 2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup warm and may even provide a boost to the economy for cool countries and regions such #43 as Canada, Russia and Northern Europe. If global warming continues into the latter half of Tracking the 2C Limit ­ the twenty­first century, many countries may see the gains made over the next few September 2015 decades reverse themselves. By 2100, some countries may find themselves back to CO2 was higher in the late Ordovician ­ intermediate rebuttal where they are today, despite decades of progress made in the meantime. Carbon pollution: the good, the bad, the ugly, and the denial The Brave New World of Ecomodernism New UN climate deal text: what’s in, what’s out 2015 SkS Weekly Digest #42 2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #42 Skeptical Science honoured by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry Propaganda trumps journalism in THE ESCALATOR conservative media climate reporting Earth’s worst extinction “inescapably” tied to Siberian Traps, CO2, and climate change Methane release from melting permafrost could trigger dangerous global warming Understanding climate feedbacks (free to republish) 2015 SkS Weekly Digest #41 THE DEBUNKING HANDBOOK Archives http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=3178 2/8 11/9/2015 The thermometer needle and the damage done BOOK NOW AVAILABLE The Scientific Guide to Global Warming Skepticism The two figures above show projections of wealth for the 166 countries studied under two economic scenarios: a high­growth, high­convergence one on the left and a low­growth, low­convergence one on the right. The grey lines show the baseline growth trajectories assuming no warming and the red lines the growth under the RCP8.5 worst­case greenhouse gas concentration pathway. Inequality is bigger at any given time when the vertical extent of the bundle of lines is bigger. (The vertical scale is a log scale.) If there is rapid growth, warm, poor countries will lose part of their hard­earned wealth as the climate warms—even so, they may end up ten times more wealthy than they are today. If there is only slow growth, many currently warm, poor countries may find themselves back Smartphone Apps where they started. Because some cool, rich countries become even wealthier under iPhone Android Nokia global warming than they would under a stable climate, global inequality between countries will greatly increase or, at best, stay at current high levels. Ooh, ooh, the damage done To see the effect expressed as a function of overall damage to the world economy, look at the black line in the figure on the left.
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