The much maligned Carbon Dioxide is actually plant food. Without CO2, plants would be unable to grow as it is a key part of photosynthesis. The natural and part man-made increase in CO2 has resulted in higher yields of cereal crops worldwide. From The Financial Times:
World grain glut set to enter fourth year
D. E. Bondurant Grain Co’s silos have for decades stored wheat, corn and milo grown by farmers in western Kansas. But the recent winter wheat harvest brought something different.
“I’m putting wheat on the ground now for the first time in my life,” says Gary Gantz, president of the company his great-grandfather founded in 1888. “I was ready for a large crop, but I wasn’t ready for one of this proportion.”
His outdoor wheat pile, 20 feet tall, 80 feet wide and 200 feet long, is evidence that a world grain glut is poised to spill into a fourth straight year. Even though Mr Gantz has added almost a million bushels of capacity to his silos in recent years, all the wheat will not fit.
No mention of CO2 in the article though - a bit more:
In the US, the biggest overall grain exporter and home of futures contracts tracked by investors, the winter wheat harvest is nearly complete. The government expects the average winter wheat field to yield 50.5 bushels per acre, the most on record, while production will rise 10 per cent year on year to 1.51bn bushels.
Emphasis mine - this 10% increase in yield is about right for the increase that we have seen of CO2 - optimal level for plant life is around 1,000 PPM - we are currently at just over 400 PPM. Human activities contribute about 4% of the natural annual increase.
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