We all have been inundated with the global warming scare. How the massive amounts of CO2 pumped into our atmosphere will lead to rivers and seas boiling, 40 years of darkness, the dead rising from the grave, dogs and cats living together and other forms of mass hysteria.
Here is a graph showing historical trends levels of Carbon Dioxide (Purple) and Temperatures (Blue). Looking at the graph, there appears to be no real correlation between the two.
Throughout the eons, CO2 has been slowly reduced. Some of it is through plant life being buried as coal, oil, or natural gas. It is a vast ocean of carbon, but unusable to plants in its current form. Also, there is limestone, or calcium carbonate, it too is carbon stored organically as shellfish die, leaving the shells. Carbon dioxide is one of the few resources available for plants. Think of it as free carbon in the carbon cycle, much like the water cycle has "free" state as rain, where it is available for use. Atmospheric CO2 is where plants get the basic building block they need to grow. There are few other sources for plants to obtain the carbon they need.
At 400 ppm, we are in a relative carbon drought. During the last ice age, carbon absorbed into the ice as carbonic acid and dropped the CO2 levels to as low as 170 ppm. This is significant, because at 150 ppm, entire plant species will die off. It is no secret that greenhouses will pump bottled CO2 in to increase plant growth rates and reduce water usage. Plants will use less water due to the fact that in order to receive the CO2, they need, plants will open their stomata or "pores" to bring in the CO2. However when they do that, their water evaporates. If plants do not need to open their stomata so much, the amount of evaporation and water usage drops.
During the Jurassic Period, there was about 5 times of the present level of CO2. Any coincidence that there are fossils of bigger plants, and bigger animals at that time? Simply put, the increased amount of CO2 led to a more abundant food supply, and consequently, bigger animals.
Burning fossil fuels is a good way to make more CO2 available for plants. Before the next ice age comes in 8,000 years (26K year cycle), we need to burn more fossil fuels, and use more limestone to make concrete to make sure we don't have a global carbon drought.
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