You are right James H, Co2, is a very efficacious fertilizer, that causes increased top and bottom plant growth!
This is known as the greenhouse effect! [ F-, Greater effort and more homework please!]
It also increases moisture aspiration. i.e., an acre of trees will evaporate 2.5 times, the evaporation numbers of open ponded water, average ambient temperatures, being largely equal!
It is also a well known phenomena, that regions subject to regular winter frost, only see it on nights where the humidity is low, and not at all on overcast nights, given atmospheric moisture is the best naturally occurring thermal blanket, that traps radiant heat and even creates diurnal warming rain events and so on; which in turn, creates the micro climates of rain forests.
Are you following me so far?
Given it is increased atmospheric moisture that most effectively traps radiant heat, and plants releasing more of it due to the quite brilliant fertilizer effect of Co2, promoting increasing plant growth and consequent moisture aspiration!
Given this is all proven science, then there is a connection to increased atmospheric Co2, and global warming, warmer oceans, more evaporation, more atmospheric moisture, more trapped heat, more rapid ice melts, more consequent evaporation, more atmospheric moisture, more retained heat. [The greenhouse effect!]
On and on she goes, where she stops, nobody knows!
Are you still with me, or blinded by the science?
Simply put, we need to reduce atmospheric moisture, by reducing that which promotes plant life, Co2. [The greenhouse effect!]
The simple facts are, we can do this and create massive profits/economic growth, while adapting!
Call yourself a physicist or a scientist?
Then start thinking/reasoning like one! It would be a huge improvement!
Rhrosty.

So sad but so predictable. As soon as anything remotely related to climate change or global warming is printed out comes the usual rat pack of deniers, shills, ratbags, hollow men and people with 'authority' in other areas. The chance to have a fruitful discussion on this site is limited by the neo-Orwellian sheep with their deafening blasts of misinformation, disinformation, twisting of facts, cherry-picking of other facts and in most cases ignorance of reality.
The Drum posts an article and gets hundreds of responses. OLO puts up a reasoned argument for a rational review of current practices and gets less than 50 responses, usually from people who don't know what they are talking about or who are paid to cloud the issue.
So sad - that is why so few people come here.

Australia is the same as the U. S. when someone disagrees with CAGW. They attack the messenger and not the message. For those who claim increasing carbon dioxide makes plants lose moisture, the following answer say no:

How does all this happen? Plants use energy from the sun to convert carbon dioxide from the air, and water and minerals from the soil, into the carbohydrates and other molecules that form plant biomass. More CO2 means more and larger flowers; higher seed mass and germination success; and improved plant resistance to droughts, diseases, viruses, pathogenic infections, air pollutants, and salt or nitrogen accumulation in soils. Higher CO2 levels also improve plants’ water use efficiency – ensuring faster and greater carbon uptake by plant tissues, with less water lost through transpiration.

More airborne CO2 lets plants reduce the size of their stomata, little holes in leaves that plants use to inhale CO2 building blocks. When CO2 is scarce, the openings increase in size, to capture sufficient supplies of this “gas of life.” But increasing stomata size means more water molecules escape, and the water loss places increasing stress on the plants, eventually threatening their growth and survival.

When the air’s CO2 levels rise – to 400, 600, or 800 ppm – the stomata shrink in size, causing them to lose less water from transpiration, while still absorbing ample CO2 molecules. That enables them to survive extended dry spells much better.

(The 2009 and 2011 volumes of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change report, Climate Change Reconsidered, especially this section, and Dr. Craig Idso’s www.CO2science.org website summarize hundreds of similar studies of crops, forests, grasslands, alpine areas and deserts enriched by carbon dioxide. CO2 Science’s Plant Growth Database lets people search for more studies.)
- See more at: http://www.cfact.org/2013/08/18/time-to-praise-co2-the-miracle-gas/#sthash.BwYPavm2.dpuf

James H. Rust

Dear Kellie,

There are plenty of serious reasons to worry about food security, as well as that horrible TPP - so why discredit yourself and these important issues by flogging that "climate change" nonsense?

Brian of Buderim; what a hateful, spiteful, arrogant comment which is so typical of the hating, elitist, vainglorious acolytes of the failed theory of AGW, a 'theory' so bereft of scientific evidence it has to trawl the Old Testament for vindication:

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=16177

The Drum, unlike this place, is a parasitic, tax-payer funded swamp where idle, censorious fools parade their self-declared superiority.

Why don't you scuttle back there.

As ever, more heat than light is generated by this forage around random statistics on "climate change". Everyone immediately leaps on their favourite hobbyhorse - hi there Ludwig, nice to see your "demand-side" mantra raising its head yet again - and does a quick cut'n'paste of their last post. And the one before that. And the one before that...

There are so many blithe assumptions and random factoids lumped together in this "article", it is difficult to grab any individual thread to pull. For myself, I had the greatest difficulty moving past this, the very second sentence...

"Its publication coincides with the recent release of the final report from the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food"

There is a UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food? What the...

"...the right to food is the right to have regular, permanent and unrestricted access, either directly or by means of financial purchases, to quantitatively and qualitatively adequate and sufficient food corresponding to the cultural traditions of the people to which the consumer belongs, and which ensure a physical and mental, individual and collective, fulfilling and dignified life free of fear."

http://www.ohchr.org/EN/issues/food/Pages/FoodIndex.aspx

I expect he wanders around the refugee camps in Somalia, showing a grateful people a piece of UN headed notepaper showing how their "rights" are being protected by the United Nations. Phshaw.

And its good to see Divergence once again taking the opportunity to take up the cudgels (shillelaghs?) on behalf of the Irish.

>>No doubt an Irishman raising concerns about the dependence on the potato in the 1790s would have also been called 'alarmist'<<

Yep. If only they had been able to write.