Global Warming Could Slam Food Supply

FRESNO, Calif., Aug. 5, 2006 — -- Suppose the dinner on your table last night had cost 20 times what it did? Or 50 times as much?

Scientists say global warming very likely has something like that in store in the coming decades.

The agricultural abundance Americans have long taken for granted and the low food prices that go with it, they say, now face a withering enemy -- and the recent blows to California agriculture are a taste of things to come.

The threat to the state's $30 billion agriculture industry has farmers and legislators battling over differing ideas about how to deal with what climatologists tell them future temperatures in the Golden State will likely be before mid-century.

In the very short term, a number of food prices will be creeping up over the next few months as the impact of the 21-day double heat wave of 2006 works its way from withered fields to the market shelves.

In that double heat wave, Fresno County, Calif., alone suffered $85 million in beef, dairy and poultry losses. That's not surprising, as they had 20 days exceeding 100 degrees, including three consecutive days of 113 degrees.

Scientists have linked this latest heat assault to man-made global warming in a number of ways, most simply because it fit exactly the global warming pattern of more frequent and more intense heat waves predicted 30 years ago.

Scientists now calculate that man-made global warming makes the chances of events such as the deadly 2003 European heat wave, which killed more than 35,000 people, twice as likely -- and that by 2040 Europe could well experience such serious heat waves every other year.

Or take the case these past three weeks of one of America's most taken-for-granted miracles: the cornucopia of California's San Joaquin Valley. Sprinklers to wet the panting cows in the San Joaquin's massive dairy and meat farms, and fans to cool them, were not enough. Thousands of cows dropped dead in the heat.

This one valley grows nearly half of America's fruits and vegetables. You've most likely tasted some recently, wherever in the United States you are.