Global warming threatens China harvests: forecaster
By Chris Buckley BEIJING (Reuters) – Droughts and floods stoked by global warming threaten to destabilize China’s grain production, the nation’s top meteorologist has warned, urging bigger grain reserves and strict protection of farmland and water supplies. Extreme weather damage can now cause annual grain output in China, the world’s biggest grain producer, to fluctuate by about 10 to 20 percent from longer-term averages. But with global warming intensifying droughts, floods and pests, the band of fluctuation in annual production could widen to between 30 and 50 percent, Zheng Guoguang, head of the China Meteorological Administration, wrote in a new essay. He did not say how long it might be before that could happen. A stretch of especially bad weather for farming conditions could be disastrous for the world’s most populous nation, Zheng wrote in the latest issue of Seeking Truth (Qiushi), the ruling Communist Party’s main magazine, which was published on Tuesday and reached subscribers on Wednesday. “If extreme climatic disasters occur twice or more within five years — for example, major drought over two or three years — then the impact on our country’s economic and social development would be incalculable,” wrote Zheng, who plays a role in developing China’s climate change policies. …
