It was better if you know Bob Lutz. I've never seen anyone shut him up before - he's pretty doggone outspoken.
It is true that there are a lot of things other than CO2 that affect the planet - a long term history shows at first, big ice age cycles, with the cycles getting shorter "recently" in geologic time anyway. In fact, some study I read said that we should be re-entering an ice age right about now, instead of recording record temperatures and ice melts all over the world this year, which we are. And the last couple decades. Were we following the recent short ice age cycle, we'd be worrying about the opposite instead - something's changed here.
It's too slow to matter to me personally - future generations might hate us, but we'll be dead anyway. It does stand to reason that if we put all the carbon and methane back into the air that obtained during the dinosaurs, we'll be increasing the chances that we get the same climate again, though, and that one had half this country underwater. The earth is always either in or approaching some sort of dynamic equilibrium, of course, the "balance of nature" always obtains - it just might not be one especially friendly to humans, is all.
I agree that urban people (many of whom claim to be such because it limits the need for transport) can't get enough energy from the sun, there's simply not room for that. Actually, in this country, most people live in the suburbs - the urban sprawl, and they get plenty of roof space - the US is nowhere near as dense as most of Europe or UK. Luckily, I think. Of course, solar isn't the only way as you point out - nuclear, if the human race ever becomes responsible enough to do it - I think we've proved we aren't, is one. Wind, hydro etc also work pretty well where they work, and this trend towards putting wind power out in the oceans is encouraging - perfect place - no obstructions for wind, no eye-sore for most.
In the US, coal just recently became the least prevalent source of electricity - it's last behind nat gas and nuclear+renewables. I think that's a good sign, coal is nasty stuff on a lot of levels, which isn't to say I don't have 8 tons of it in my back yard as "thermal security" should the need arise. It's still pretty nasty to mine, to store, to burn, but at least it keeps longer than the dead wood I harvest from my woodlot which is going back to CO2 one way or another - if I don't burn it, the termites and fungus do.
And we ARE running an experiment. Sure, CO2 has been all over the place during history. But this is the first time we've been the major reason for the rise with our own voluntary activities. Some of those "mini ice ages" were spawned by "random events", in other words, volcanic eruptions that do add CO2, but also aerosols that have a profound opposite effect so the net is "the dark ages" which literally were...and cold.
I seem to recall that when I was born, the CO2 levels were about half or less what they are now, and it was a lot cooler then....sure, that's anecdotal, but it's also true, and I'm aware correlation isn't causation. But it is true. Humans, BTW, are knocked cold by 1k ppm, not 2k - we cannot survive 1k, and we're over 340 now.
Not that I particularly care. I'm not a greenie, I do what I do for reasons of fun and freedom more than anything else. Yea, I live in a "nature preserve" but it is that because I'm too lazy to be a good farmer. I drive a a solar=charged electric car to have freedom from a monthly bill from some very nasty people, and to avoid sending money to countries that basically want me dead. I don't want to be the reason for all those wars in the ME and innocent deaths due to our lust for oil - or in Libya due to Europe's fascination with diesel that requires Libyan light sweet to be practical. Sure was easy to get NATO in on that one - and that's the reason. We let genocide go down worldwide except for countries that have oil, it's pretty obvious what the motives are. Either give us the cheap oil we require, or we'll beat the crap out of you and take it anyway is a pretty obviously valid take on recent history. And I agree - we're wasting an important, limited resource that has a lot of other truly good uses.
I am against big cities, having grown up in them and now seeing the difference now that I'm nowhere near any of them - they are stupid, mismanaged cesspits, and the people in them are self-trapped in the main.
They think they need their huge incomes to pay their huge expenses, not knowing there's another way if you're not in a city and actually produce things on your own initiative rather than being a wage slave to some big company. They think they have "culture" we lack, even though, as I'm finding out on google+, nearly all the musicians and artists who are any good DON''T live in cities. Funny that.
(I know this because I also hang out on other discussion boards with some "survivalists" who think a backpack and a gun will save them from anything, and who think that if they show up in a place like mine with their gun and gold I'll happily welcome them - even though I have more of both those things, no need, and kinda like my privacy. Mentioning that really pisses them off. Telling them it takes years to be accepted as a new guy in the sticks is met with disbelief, since they just don't know how things are anyplace but where they are, and so on. However, my own efforts, which have very little to do with their politics or beliefs, make me a sort of hero to that crowd. They still don't like it when I point out the real reasons I've done these things.)
They call us hicks...because we produce things, and they skim off the top with paper pushing, they think they have it made off our backs - taxes go to cities net, and they import our goods and export their pollution to us. This may not go on forever, people are waking up out here. City folk are ultra-dependent, think groceries come from the grocery store, and only a minor disruption of a few days in their supply chains is enough to create panic and take months to recover from - JIT inventory is dangerous at the margin, and there simply aren't enough roads and trucks to make up for a couple days loss if the JIT systems fail. The grocery stores don't even know how to do things by hand at all anymore. And this really isn't news, it's been taught by logistics professors at war colleges worldwide for officers of the military for many decades.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dio ... atmosphere has some interesting numbers of how the "natural" cycles have gone completely off-track since the industrial revolution. The increase would be worse if the oceans didn't sink a lot of it - but now the lowering of pH in the oceans is becoming a problem for a lot of life forms in it, corals in paricular, but also some of the beings (algae) that produce most of the oxygen we breathe (it's not mostly the forests, I was surprised to find out awhile back).
But again, I don't care that much - it will take care of itself one way or another I'm sure, and with it, a probable decrease in human population, which would be a healthy thing compared to the current struggles we have over resources - they'd just go away with a lower population since there'd be a lot more per capita and no need to fight over it. We've however, since nukes, lost the usual cure - send all the young guys out someplace to kill a bunch of each other, thus not only getting a step reduction in population, but also darwinially reducing those who tend towards violence, while letting the smarter and quicker ones survive. It's now just too dangerous to have such a major war - someone might go nuclear... And yet another reason to get out and stay out of major cities - cesspools full of losers you can't avoid since they live within feet of you, and who often as not, are not net producers of more than they consume.
This is better, but not possible for all at current population levels, to be sure. But it doesn't have to be this good to be a lot better than it is. My expertise allows me to get paid for producing things that require very little transportation costs - I used to just sell bits - IP - code - blueprints, for example. The Internet is the most deflationary invention in all history. It's particularly hard on paper pushing middlemen who are no longer needed to connect suppliers and consumers - and they never really created the level of value they charged us all for anyway. It does bring up the problem of what to do with all the people who used to survive by doing things that are now useless, however.