This article in “Ecoworld” is an excellent one. It’s an interview with Roger Pielke and he outlines some of the problems with current thinking on global warming as it relates to climate change. Notably, he thinks that:
1) Land use is a large driver of climate change and
2) People do not experience climate change as an average over the entire world, the effects are very local and specific to the location.
From what I’ve seen, I agree with him that man’s use of land is an enormous driver of climate change. The more I read and research, the more skeptical I become about CO2 having much effect. The second point is even more important I think. Many people think that the effects of climate change will be an average rise across the board, but there’s no reason to believe that to be true. Different parts of the world react differently, even if there was an across the board rise in temperatures. The other night I was thinking about what an overall temperature rise would mean and it occurred to me that it could very well be a positive thing. Right now, vast swaths of land are essentially uninhabitable and useless. I’m thinking of large parts of Russia, Canada, Greenland, and of course Antarctica. If things really did warm up, regaining those lands would be an unambiguous good thing for humanity. The trade off would probably be making the Sahara more hellish than it already is, but that’s not a given. No one knows if higher temperatures would lead to drought or more rain (due to more water being evaporated from the oceans). Anyway, he makes a lot of good points, and they seem to be able to be backed up by actual science instead of the usual hand waving that the “scientists” resort to when trying to rationalize their CO2 theory. Here’s the link.