Overall, as many as 50 million additional people could be at risk of hunger by 2020, and as many as 1.2 billion people could suffer from "water stress."
Developed nations are likely to fare better, Fingar said, with some estimates predicting that agricultural production in the U.S. could increase during the next 20 years.
But the U.S. will also face a cascade of challenges and problems. The nation "will need to anticipate and plan for growing immigration pressures," Fingar said, noting that helping dense coastal populations in the Caribbean "will be an imminent task."
Fingar also said the U.S. infrastructure is in many ways ill-prepared for climate change and the prospect of intense storms and flooding.
"Two dozen nuclear facilities and numerous refineries along U.S. coastlines are at risk and may be severely impacted by storms," he said.
The study relied on calculations and projections made by the United Nations' .
The report does not address global warming's potential effect on terrorism. A privately funded study completed by the Center for Naval Analyses last year concluded that climate change could "foster the conditions for internal conflicts, extremism and movement toward increased authoritarianism and radical ideologies."
The report can be found at http://www.dni.gov/testimon .
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greg.miller@latimes.com
