California's farms and vineyards 'could disappear by the end of the century' because of global warming

California's farms and vineyards could disappear by the end of the century if urgent measures to curb global warming aren't implemented, the new US secretary of energy has warned.

By Caroline Hedley in Los Angeles Last Updated: 11:55PM GMT 05 Feb 2009

Steven Chu, a Nobel prize-winning physicist, says his home state faces "dire consequences" from the effects of climate change.
Rising temperatures could lead to the disappearance of up to 90 per cent of the Sierra snowpack, which California - the US's main agricultural producer – is dependent on to sustain its crops.
"I don't think the American public has gripped in its gut what could happen," Mr Chu said in his first interview since being appointed head of President Barack Obama's energy office. "We're looking at a scenario where there's no more agriculture in California."
He said that cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco were also under threat.
A key factor in the new administration's strategy to arrest climate change is education, the former Stanford University professor revealed. Billions of dollars would be allocated to fund research into renewable 'clean' energy, he said, and strict limits on greenhouse gas emissions would be enforced. He said he hoped the public would "wake up" to the potentially catastrophic scenario facing their nation.
Mr Chu's assertions are supported by two recent studies, which claim farmlands are particularly vulnerable to environmental changes.
A report in the American journal Science forecast worldwide crop shortages resulting from increases in temperature, while researchers from the University Of California found that 'the golden state' has $2.5 trillion (£1.9 trillion) in assets endangered by global warming, many of them agricultural.