OK, according to the doomsayers, under the worst case scenarios the warming will both expand the ocean water volume through heat expansion (huh ??????) and raise sea level because of melting antarctic and other ice sheets (not arctic, most of them will admit that floats so displacement will be the same as melted volume). Most of the scientists reporting on this (shills creating scary sounding reports to extort funding from gullible tax payers) have produced estimates which have sea level rising a few inches per century. doesn't sound like much, they admit, but it could lead to swamping low lying islands and coastal property.
Now we come to the real horror and what this is all about. Tom Brokaw and his friends have multi million dollar compounds on (environmentally fragile) land on the coast (denying acces to the great unwashed, like us). If sea level rises 1 inch they'll get their tootsies wet. And they won't be able to hold the Renaissance Weekend Clinton Love In every year. Now that would be a devestating tragedy for world affairs.
bottom line, I agree with you completely. I've never figured out what was so bad about the whole deal either, even if true. Growing land suitable for farming would increase markedly. Growing seasons would lengthen. As you note, increased C02 would increase plant yield and health.
If we just learn to open the windows and catch the breeze we should all do fine. The French screwed up by locking granma in the apartment while they went off for their mandatory month of holiday in August. In the US we would prosecute them if they did that to a dog. Seems like someone ought to bring a human rights case to the world court against the nation of France for granma abuse. Instead they'll probably try to bring one against us for causing the heat wave since we wouldn't sign the Kyoto treaty.
Oh,and I actually believe that global warming is real and at least partly caused by human activity. I also believe that we are several thousand years overdue for a major ice age and that global warming is the only thing holding back the glaciers. So throw another log on the fire!
What is farcical is that the Antropogenic Warming or Cooling is of any discernable level above that of the Natural Variability of the system, or that it could ever be so.