Eeek! There was another
writeup in this node, without which my own looks kinda lonely and a bit
daft. No wonder it's garnering downvotes.
The original WU under this title told of the environmental craze for global cooling in the '60s. Accoring to that noder, scientists and protestors combined with the media to create a panic very much like the one of global warming today, only instead of getting a lot hotter it was supposed to be getting a lot colder. The noder then proceeded to extrapolate from this about turn in environmental thinking to cast a shadow on environmental activism in general.
The whole global cooling/warming debate is not an environmental cause in itself, but rather a handy catchphrase to represent fears from a variety of factors cause by industrialisation and the modern lifestyle.
Whether we are going to be broiled or flash frozen is relatively immaterial. There are issues we must deal with long before either eventuality materialises, such as the fact that we're running out of trees, places to put our collective trash, clean water and breathable air. Pollution caused by cars and factories in the big cities is bad for our health, and the deforestation process is harmful both to the atmosphere and the land. Many of the solutions proposed for global warming will deal with these hazards along the way.
The debate about global warming is a bit like that over GM foods - a smoke screen. The issue is so ambiguous it will keep the public occupied long enough not to notice the real environmental issues, conveniently distracted from the fact that our governments are letting the big industries get away with (literal) murder under the cover of controversy.