http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_1142489...
Food crisis due to warming world trumps all other worries, say scientists By Suzanne Bohan Contra Costa Times Posted: 01/10/2009 05:36:51 PM PST
Many of today's toddlers face the grim prospect of coping with chronic food shortages in their old age if agricultural science doesn't adapt to a warming world, concluded scientists in a study published Friday in the journal Science.
The stark report, from scientists at Stanford University and the University of Washington, makes melting polar ice caps and rising sea levels from global warming appear minor compared with the prospect of hundreds of millions of people, including those living in Europe and the United States, anxiously seeking stable food supplies.
Global warming's effect on food production, said David Battisti, professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington and lead author of the study, is one of "the foremost reasons" for concern about climate change. The study's co-author is Rosamond Naylor, director of Stanford University's Program on Food Security and the Environment.
By the end of the century, the worst of the heat waves in recent times will become the normal average summertime temperatures, the researchers reported. They based their conclusions on 23 climate models in a 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as well as data from severe heat waves dating several decades.