ABSTRACT
A major source of uncertainty about the future costs and benefits of climatic change arises when economic methodologies are applied to the problem. There is a continuing debate about how well traditional economic analysis can deal with long term climatic impact studies. The Climate Impacts Assessment Program, sponsored by the Department of Transportation, estimated the national costs of a climatic change due to a hypothetical fleet of supersonic transport aircraft. The point to emphasize here is that the methods for dealing with a variable climate can be applied to long term climate change. The stability and distribution of food production could be greatly affected by a large scale climatic warming. Plant physiology, pests, water availability, and soil conditions are vital to crop growth and are likely to be altered if global temperatures increased. Agriculture for food and fiber production differs from the less managed ecosystems of the world, such as grasslands, savannas, forests, tundra, alpine lands, and deserts.
