Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Climate Change and Environmental Issues Billions face food shortages, study warns

Third point. Most studies don't attempt to dispute that, in at least some nations (the US, Canada, Argentina, Australia, etc) that total grain production will, when CO2 fertilization is considered, be **higher**. Their negative effects are only when losses in Africa and other third-world nations are added in. And, as I've demonstrated, those values are highly unrealistic.

In this week's issue of Science, the researchers contend that today's simulation models overestimate the "CO2 fertilization effect," which refers to the improved efficiency of some crops in using sunlight to convert CO2 into sugars. The problem is, the models rely on data from enclosure studies, say ARS plant physiologists Donald Ort and Elizabeth Ainsworth, UIUC scientists Stephen Long and Andrew Leakey, and Josef Nösberger of the Institute of Plant Science in Switzerland. According to their Science paper, trapped heat, poor airflow, high humidity and other conditions inside greenhouses and growth chambers skew plant responses to elevated CO2.