I’ve provided a two downloadable “newsletters” on a geologists perspective on climate change. My key points are as follows:
1) When you see apocalyptic-sounding pronouncements in the media like: “ Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reaches highest level in four million years!”; take a deep breath and then look at the reconstructed record of CO2 levels through the Phanerozoic and you’ll realize that they’ve been higher than 400 ppm for most of the last 540 million years. Then look at the number of genera of living critters present on earth over the same period and you’ll see that the general trend is up, irregardless of CO2 level.
2) While it may be that “the science is settled” regarding the reality of the current episode of global warming, the science is not settled in terms of what happens next, when it will happen and how grave the consequences will be for life in general and the human species in particular. There is still a lot of uncertainty regarding key elements of the global climate system. Carbon sinks, in particular, have a huge impact on climate change (and computer models thereof) and are relatively poorly understood in any quantitative sense.