Predictions of a bumper world harvest in coming decades have been put on hold. That’s because climate change is set to do much worse damage to global food production than even the gloomiest forecasts have so far predicted, according to studies presented on Tuesday and Wednesday at the Royal Society in London.
The higher temperatures and more frequent droughts caused by climate change are widely expected to depress crop yields in many places, especially the tropics. But this ought to be offset by faster photosynthesis caused by rising atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, and laboratory tests had suggested that this…
