Climate and the Oceans, 
Food, and Energy 
Climate affects food production. Food production affects people. People affect 
energy use. Energy use affects climate. We neglect any link in this chain at 
our peril. 
NACOA is aware that a serious start has been made to improve understanding 
of the nature of climate and those factors which influence it. But we wish to 
make certain that a fundamental aspect, the ocean-atmosphere link, is developed 
in an integrated and planned way. Merely coordinating programs separately 
pursued for a variety of reasons will fall short. 
NACOA also points out that, despite our ignorance of the causes of climate 
change, enough historical information exists to make it possible to estimate the 
likelihood of variations in local climate so as to anticipate such things as the 
environmental impact of over-concentration of power-generating plants, the 
probability of crop failure, etc. Longer range crop assessment than is now done 
could make possible contingency planning on a scale large enough to be equal 
to the magnitude of the problem of possible large-scale food shortages. 
Introduction 
Climate changes. It has changed before and it is changing now. More- 
over, with the ever-growing consumption of energy, with working so much 
of the land surface, and with what we put into the atmosphere by simply 
going about the business of existing in such great numbers, we are entering 
an era in which local climate changes already result from man’s activities. 
The possibility of inducing global climate change is not out of the question. 
The critical importance to us today of knowing more about climate 
stems from its connection with two major forces affecting international 
society—the increasing demand for food and for energy because of world 
population growth and the struggle for an improved standard of living. 
Food production depends to a large extent on climate. What we do 
produce is uncomfortably close to what we can produce under present 
conditions. There is reason to believe that for the past thirty years or so 
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