Climate change warning over food production

New studies on the effect of climate change on the growth of food crops have shown that previous estimates that increased CO2 levels will be enough to counteract increased temperature and ozone levels were out by ~50% and climate change could have a disatrous effect on global food production.

26 April 2005

Climate change is set to do far worse damage to global food production than even the gloomiest of previous forecasts, according to studies presented at the Royal Society in London, UK, on Tuesday.

“We need to seriously re-examine our predictions of future global food production,” said Steve Long, a crop scientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, US. Output is “likely to be far lower than previously estimated”.

Most researchers believe that higher temperatures and droughts caused by climate change will depress crop yields in many places in the coming decades. But a recent consensus has emerged that rising atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide could come to the rescue. The gas thought to be behind global warming could also speed up photosynthesis, counteracting the negative effects of warming and even ushering in an era of bumper crops.

But Long told the two-day meeting on crops and future climate that this conclusion was a dangerous illusion. It was, he said, based on results from tests in gas chambers and small greenhouses known to be unreliable.

Long reported instead on the findings of four studies in the US, China and Japan that all test crops in open fields. In these Free-Air Concentration Enrichment…

Posted by PerceptualChaos
PerceptualChaos is a physics (photonics) student from the University of Auckland, Aotearoa (NZ). He is working towards eventually getting a PHD and doing R&D on renewable energy sources and technology as we approach the end of the fossil fuel era Learn...