Please let me know if this sounds about right. ABS can absorb moisture in the air to a lesser extent than PLA, but it can still absorb it due to microscopic grooves and such. When printing with ABS that absorbed moisture, it will expand more than usual when passing out the nozzle. It will require more heat to melt properly because you have to heat the water too. Does that sound about right?
Abs behaves worse than pla in humid environments. It pops and foams. But otherwise yes.
I’m not sure the details are right. But it’s very true that absorbing water into filament does mean that print quality suffers because the water turns to steam creating bubbles or pits in the prints, etc. This is true to a degree with ABS or PLA, and much more so with Nylon. So you might need to ‘bake’ the filament at low heat in your oven, or store it with desiccant, to get better prints.
@Matt_Kraemer I have some abs parts outside for a bit over 3 years now, they still look like the day I printed them. 
@Matt_Kraemer I think you have it backwards. PLA is much more hygroscopic than ABS.
Abs will absorb moisture, but it won’t cause it to fail or require a higher temperature to print. Instead your prints will have surface defects from the water flashing to steam.
ABS absorbs humidity only fractions of a percent so it won’t have any affect on energy consumption, however the bubbles of trapped humidity inside ABS during extrusion can block the hot end. I leave in a very humid place so I have to keep my filament with desiccant otherwise it is impossible to print and needs to dried.
I wonder why I have a slic3r setting for SeeMeCN250C C natural ABS at 228C and have had to print at 250C then…
Why couldn’t you print at the regular 230?
It seemed to want to jam at lower temps. It was not feeding through. It was originally a different nozzle, but both were supposed to be 0.5mm output for 1.75mm filament. I suppose the spring on the EZstruder may be weak now though.
I think that the bubbles forming due to humidity block your Extruder. Once you raise the temperature your polymer becomes softer which let’s the bubbles out and releases the blockage. It happened to me also. Once I dried the filament all the problems disappeared. I now keep the filament with a lot of desiccant and have no such problems.