“(Cough Cough) Well, (Cough Cough) at least (Cough) CO2 is (cough cough) good for plants!”
I read on Twitter that “CO2 is plant food.” That didn’t seem right, so I asked David Lobell, one of the world’s experts on climate change and agriculture. He’s a professor at Stanford, a MacArthur genius grant recipient, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and an all-around good guy.
A little logic here: if CO2 could stimulate plant growth, then CO2 levels would not be rising because the biosphere would be compensating. We might see an explosion of plant growth and a rise in O2 as photosynthesis consumes CO2 then releases O2 as a byproduct.
Now what we are really seeing is a rise in CO2 associated with a fall in O2 ( https://scrippso2.ucsd.edu/ )