More Global Warming. Cooling. Whatever.

Clearly, the Global Warming issue is not settled. For those of us stuck in the middle watching scientists get obliterated by the political machine it's no wonder many are skeptical.

In any event, how could it be settled with such certainty? We're dealing with nature. No?

What I find most appalling is the zealotry that has gripped the pro-Global warning alarmists who suffocate debate at every turn thus in effect censoring the true voice of science to speak.

For the fun of it, I pulled out this 1975 Newsweek blurb from Wiki regarding Global Cooling.

"While these discussions were ongoing in scientific circles, more dramatic accounts appeared in the popular media, notably an April 28, 1975 article in Newsweek magazine. Titled "The Cooling World", it pointed to "ominous signs that the Earth's weather patterns have begun to change" and pointed to "a drop of half a degree [Fahrenheit] in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968." The article claimed "The evidence in support of these predictions [of global cooling] has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it." The Newsweek article did not state the cause of cooling; it stated that "what causes the onset of major and minor ice ages remains a mystery" and cited the NAS conclusion that "not only are the basic scientific questions largely unanswered, but in many cases we do not yet know enough to pose the key questions."

The article mentioned the alternative solutions of "melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting Arctic rivers" but conceded these were not feasible. The Newsweek article concluded by criticizing government leaders: "But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies...The longer the planners (politicians) delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality." The article emphasized sensational and largely unsourced consequences - "resulting famines could be catastrophic", "drought and desolation," "the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded", "droughts, floods, extended dry spells, long freezes, delayed monsoons," "impossible for starving peoples to migrate," "the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age."

On October 23, 2006, Newsweek issued a correction, over 31 years after the original article, stating that it had been "so spectacularly wrong about the near-term future" (though editor Jerry Adler claimed that 'the story wasn't "wrong" in the journalistic sense of "inaccurate."

Shit. What is it? Global warming or cooling? I'm so confused!