If there is more CO2 in the air than in the past, are plants growing better than ever before?
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Not necessarily, there are many other factors that also affect plant growth. For example water, sunlight, or the amount of nutrients in the ground.
Not really.
Back when plants evolved into plants (ie a very very long time ago) the CO2 concentration was much higher than now. Plants are the reason we have more O2 in the atmosphere. So technically, they may have grown better then.
Would you be growing better than ever before if we supplied you with an extra hose of pure O2 that you could huff all you wanted?
That’s essentially the same question. You get more stuff to breathe, but not any extra water or exercise or nourishment. Are you going to grow better without better food water or exercise?
IT is not uncommon to CO2 enrich greenhouses to increase plant growth it is done for a reason.
Increased CO2 levels have an effect on wild plants too. The planet is green is hase been in the recent path that CO2 levels and increase the temperature in the northern have resulted in a longer growing season.
[https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2436/co2-is-making-earth-greenerfor-now/](https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2436/co2-is-making-earth-greenerfor-now/)
For many wild plants, it is not CO2 that is the limiting factor but it is often Nitrogen or another element the plant need. To that add the obvious limitation in many places water. So what the result of CO2 is for a plant in a greenhouse where everything else is provided too is not the same as for a plant in the wild where other things are most of the time the limiting factor
It is not the case that higher and higher-level results in higher growth rates, that is experiments that show that plans have optimal CO2 levels and what it depends on the pant.
[https://bmcplantbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12870-018-1243-3](https://bmcplantbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12870-018-1243-3)
But you have to remember CO2 changes are not something that occurs and nothing else changes, the temperature increase, and the weater pattern changes. So for plants in some locations, the result will be that it will be too warm and dry and the result is less growth than today. So increasing CO2 levels can have a short time planetary increase in plant growth the long-term effect can be less plant growth.
A bit, yes. There is a NASA study showing that *on average*, the world is greening, mostly due to the higher CO2 levels in the air.
However, CO2 is just one of the things plants need, so this effect is limited. There’s a limit to how much CO2 a plant can even absorb, so while many plants *do* benefit a bit from the rise in CO2 levels, it doesn’t mean they’ll continue to benefit from further increases.
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