Our atmosphere consists of three principle gases.  They vary from:  77% to 79%, nitrogen,  18% to 20%, oxygen, 1% to 3% water vapor plus 1% trace gases.  Of the trace gases carbon dioxide is the most significant with 0.038%, but it is statistically insignificant when considering the chemistry and physics of air.  CO2 occupies a special place because it is a component of all food, fiber and fuel.  This makes carbon important economically and politically as it can be regulated and taxed.

Where today's green plants are starving for CO2, it is amazing science has so long overlooked a great opportunity in providing it directly.  For every molecule of CO2 the plant captures it had to deal with 3883 molecules of other kinds in a process with an efficiency of  0.0378%.  If this were to happen with oxygen to animal life animals would not live or even have developed beyong the microscopic marine worm stage.

Atmospheric carbon dioxide has never been classified a soil fertilizer, in spite of being more important to green plants than any other substance.  Nitrogen, the oxides of which are the most common fertilizers, are delivered to plants through the soil with great production increases and some water savings, but this has never been proposed for CO2 until SCAF.  The water to carry CO2 is already in the soil and CO2 is much more soluble in water than nitrogen or oxygen.  

Until the early 20^th century carbon dioxide was only 0.028% of the air and it was becoming dangerously low for plant physiology. We have actually been headed in the direction of an atmosphere caused agricultural crisis.  Now it is 0.038%, an increase of 36% much of which is due to man's activity.  But, there is yet another source in the environment that is increasing atmospheric CO2 at an even greater rate than man, but it has yet to be identified.  

The most likely source is the vast ocean complex that covers over 70% of Earth's surface.
An enormous amount of carbon dioxide is known to be dissolved in deep abyssal zones which are cold, at four Celsius degrees, where water is most dense.  The tracing difficulty arrises from the fact that not only are oceans everywhere, but every carbon dioxide molecule is like every other unless it has been in the atmosphere for a while where some carbon atoms become C14  atoms when struck by cosmic rays.  Any sample containing C14  is thus known to have been in the atmosphere.

Where we can trace carbon that has been in the atmosphere we cannot identify that which has come from underground with certainty, but assume that because it is not radioactive it has come from under the ground.  Just as likely sources are the deep oceans as they are known to carry a lot of dissolved carbon dioxide, but the difficulty in making that determination and the taxing opportunity arrising from blaming man mean this avenue of research will never be funded. This is how government controls science.  Science became a tool of government in the 19th century.  It is largely sponsored by government and the victim of politics where truth is what is said by powerful people.  This has led science to make some huge blunders like Eugenics and the biology of Lysenko in Russia.

        Commercial greenhouses have supplemented their air with carbon dioxide for over 100 years. They have had excellent results and no hazards to the people working in them.  If you read the popular press you could get the idea CO2 is poisonous, but it is not.  Nonetheless, it is not an oxygen substitute and will not support animal life.   Is the current CO2 increase good or bad?

            The above chart shows the increase in agricultural production correlated with the increase in aerial CO2.  The full range of gain is from 280 ppm to 380 ppm or 100 ppm, but this chart documents only 310 ppm to 360 ppm, 1/2 of the gain and it reveals a 128% increase in output.  Some gain has to be attributed to improved plants, but most of the increase, which could now be on the order of 356% when fully shown, is clearly due to increased CO2 in the air.  Such manipulation is a consequence of letting politics have too much say in science.

Corn harvests are up by factors of five to 10 since the 1930’s, but hybridization and genetic engineering have been done extensively with corn so it is impossible to determine the net effect of increased carbon dioxide alone.  Early work with grasses, sedges and grain plants, all C4 plants,  were thought not responsive to increases in aerial CO2 concentrations, but more recent studies reveal they behave like the C3, round-leafed plants and use increased CO2 very well.  In this new light on C4 plants it is certain that SCAF use with corn and wheat will get good results. This casts doubt on all old research into the physiology of C3 and C4 plants.  This work is overdue to be revisited with new tools and techniques.

          Some agricultural authorities attribute today’s increased grain and citrus harvests to greater amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere with the added benefit of reduced water demand as plants may shut stomata when CO2 needs are satisfied..  This infuriates environmentalists wanting to demonize the gas.  However, CO2 gas has been used in high-quality greenhouse food and flower production for 100 years to increase growth and quality, increasing production 150%.

Carbon dioxide has been in increasingly short supply for green plants over 1.5 billion years.  Young Earth had a 12% CO2 atmosphere that brought simple plants to life long before animals could live in the oxygen starved atmosphere of geologic antiquity.  It contained only 8% oxygen, not enough to support animal life.  Carbon dioxide is not toxic, but it will not support animal respiration.  We can tolerate up to 1.5% of CO2 in air, 15,000 parts per million so panic over a few hundred parts per million is pushing panic.

Green plants flourished for billions of years converting CO2 to oxygen and plant products.  They were so successful CO2 is only a trace gas in air today.  Plants have been on the path to extinction by eliminating CO2 as a molecular species for many centuries.  Industrial activity has raised the CO2 level to 380 parts per million with good effects but alarmed people who want to be alarmed or government scientists in search of something new to tax.

There are 380 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in today’s air, 0.038%.  Even so, green plants must transpire huge quantities of water, keep stomata open and their interiors moist to exchange water for the carbon dioxide they need.  Our studies have shown that CO2 delivered to the roots causes stomata to close and transpiration to fall dramatically.  In our tests the reduction was 50%.

CO2 enters stomata by chance as water vapor exits.  CO2 molecules are only one of every 2640 molecules in air, but it is favored to enter the plant as it is 54.2 times as soluble in water as oxygen and 73.5 times as soluble as nitrogen. The relationship between plants and CO2 in nature is ridiculous given its’ importance to green plants.  We change that profoundly with SCAF and bring man closer to his destiny of stewardship over the planet. 

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