I was one of the first people to make the link between climate change and deforestation, in an article published in 1978. In fact I thought I was the first, but I then found that the physicist Freeman Dyson had said the same thing in 1976. In fact I put the idea into an article written in Algeria in 1971, but the person I sent it to for publication lost it, so it doesn't count. What I also said that Dyson didn't say was that the fate of wood after its removal from the forest was an important part of its contribution to climate stability; if it is kept for centuries in the form of structural timber, furniture, books etc., instead of soon rotting or being burnt, the carbon remains fixed. Anyway, this idea is still not widely known, so I attach the 1978 article.

 

The 1971 article was also about the effect of deforestation on temperature and rainfall. That is something that has been talked about for hundreds of years, but when I was a forestry student we were confidently told that experiments had proved that deforestation had little or no effect on local rainfall. However, the interesting question is whether it has an effect on climate in general, and I concluded that it must do. I'll put that article up too, when I find time to get it electronically.