[anigbrowl]

This is a canard. There was certainly some thought given to the idea of global cooling but there was never anything even close to the modern consensus about climate change (a term which recognizes the non-uniform effects of warming). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling

I get where you're coming from, but I do think you're being a touch disingenuous with questions like 'has anyone crunched the numbers?' Of course people have considered that higher CO2 concentrations could come with benefits as well as costs. Here's an optimistic crunching of the numbers, finding a $3.5 trillion benefit over the last 50 years, although I thinkt he methodology is severely flawed: http://www.co2science.org/education/reports/co2benefits/Mone...

And here are some explanations for why the relationship between CO2 availability and agricultural productivity is non-linear: https://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-plant-food.htm

I have to say that if you are as concerned about your descendants' future as you say, then I think it's time you did more of your own homework.

As for CFCs, the main problem I've been aware of resulting from the ban that might have resulted in deaths was due to the increased cost of asthma medication. Do you have any data to quanity how many deaths this has supposedly caused? Would you say that this is more or less than the lives that would otherwise be lost to skin cancer?

[jjoonathan]

Just this week there was an article in Science about plants/soil as a CO2 buffer:

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/344/6183/508.abstract