Let me add to this ~ we are moving into the core area of a worldwide drought ~ this is the kind that precipitates great famines ~ just like in the 1800s.
No, it's not hot GW weather that's the problem ~ it's the cool, dry air that results from a toning down of the Sun's radiation. Doesn't take much either.
The world's peasants have already detected the problem, whether it happened when they found out a 25 pound bag of rice was more than $20 or when they noticed the neighborhood stream was DRY.
The condition has continued to grow and is now into its third year.
This will probably be the last tolerable year in the cycle. Next year the megadeaths ~ whole nations wiped out as if they'd never existed. Mud filled, stagnant rivers clogged with the bodies of dead cattle and men. Millions of villages burned to the ground by untended cooking fires. Streams of humanity making their way South in China and North in America.
It's coming.
I see it as if it is happening now.
Whoa.
I think you are right about the drought but wrong about mass starvation anywhere except africa.
In the US, we waste about 20 percent of our food anyway and we can also grow more by using our back yards for gardens.
We also waste a ton of water. And we can fish farm with algea providing the feed stock.
And if a few hundred million in africa can not afford food, their dying off will balance the equation.
Stop trying to cheer us up. :O)
So drought and starvation results in rivers clogged with cattle and men? Did you write the end of your story before or after the beginning?