Myth of the mini ice age

I've heard right-wingers claim that scientists only a few years ago were predicting global cooling, not warming, but that's not true, either.

Of course, then as now, you could find pretty much anything in the popular press, especially if it was sensational enough. And I remember talk about nuclear winter, too, which is a completely different issue.

It's also true that particulate pollution might indeed cause a cooling effect. We humans have a number of different effects on our planet, not all in the same direction. (Note that ozone depletion was a big concern years ago, but we've actually been doing something about that. Chalk one up for effective regulations.)

The bottom line is that concerns about global warming have been the scientific consensus for many decades, becoming a bigger concern - and a bigger consensus among climatologists - all the time. Right-wingers don't want to believe it, and since they're faith-based, rather than evidence-based, they don't.

But the rest of us should be smarter than that.