BEIJING — Global warming threatens to intensify natural disasters and water shortages across China, driving down the country’s food output, the Chinese government has warned, even as its seeks to tame energy consumption. A forthcoming official assessment of the effects of global climate change on China will warn of worsening drought in northern China and increasing ‘extreme weather events’, according to the Ministry of Science and Technology’s Web site (www.most.gov.cn) on Wednesday. A deputy director of the National Climate Center, Luo Yong, was blunt about the risks for China’s food production. ‘The most direct impact of climate change will be on China’s grain production,’ he said on Tuesday, according to the Science Times newspaper. ‘Climate change will bring intensified pressure on our country’s agriculture and grain production.’ The official report promises to stir debate about whether and how China can balance its ambitious goals for economic growth with steps to rein in rising greenhouse gas emissions from industry and cars, which keep heat in the atmosphere and threaten to dramatically increase the planet’s average temperatures. Scientists have been uncertain about the effects of rising global temperatures on China’s farming, unsure whether greater average rainfall […]