“Higher temperatures associated with climate change can slow down the economy and lead to political instability in poor countries, says a US study“
Oh. So the poor countries with the fastest economies are Nunavut, Greenland and oh, maybe Iceland then? Guess they must be since economies and temperature are apparently negatively correlated.
Small increases in temperature may have reduced the industrial and agricultural production of poor countries, according to a study by US economists.
Higher temperatures may also have contributed to political instability in these countries — defined as those with below-median per capita income, adjusted for the purchasing power of the country’s currency — according to the study published in the American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics last month. In contrast, rich countries have so far shown no measurable economic or political consequences resulting from temperature change.
“Temperature fluctuations can have large negative impacts on poor countries,” said Benjamin Olken, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and one of the authors of the study.
“If fluctuations affect the growth rate each year, over time that adds to a really big impact.”
The authors compared annual temperature and precipitation changes from 1950 to 2003 with aggregate economic output data. Based on the data, the researchers estimated that a one degree Celsius rise in temperature in a given year had reduced economic growth by about 1.3 percentage points on average.
If there are studies concluding “maybe,” then it follows that another study can conclude “maybe not.” Too bad scientists aren’t all that likely to do a study that proves that their study is not worth studying