Temperature is the Kevin Bacon of climate change response!

Given a simple model of plant/crop growth (see the right), the numbers in the circles show the average number of steps that each environmental variable is distant to yield. This means that CO2 is relatively poorly linked (or simply linked) to plant growth (on average 3.1 connections away from yield), while air temperature (Tair) affects almost all plant processes (1.7 connections away from impacting yield directly). Thus, predicting plant response to temperature under climate is very difficult, and deserves a lot of focus (obviously water, CO2 and interactions also deserve focus). 

What does Kevin Bacon have to do with this? Check it out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Degrees_of_Kevin_Bacon