global warming is real, but complex.     besides global warming, there's also natural climate change...for example, the sun is in its low solar activity cycle for now until the next decade.      how does global warming lead to global cooling? it's actually very complex, but very simple at the same time.     the easiest way to explain it is this: put an ice cube in a glass of room temperature water. what happens? it cools the water. what happens later? the ice cubes melt.    the polar caps are in effect, the earths ice cubes.     the planet is constantly bombarded by the sun, which introduces energy in the form of solar rays, which ultimately means light, radiaition and heat.     cold is a lack of heat radiation, heat is the presence of it. in essence, heat is energy, cold is the lack of energy.     now with all of these facts in mind, it's the polar caps which keep the earth from baking under the sun. another factor of this is not only the fact that we have a day/night rotation cycle which helps regulate the earths temperature, but also the axis of the earth helps with this too.     so when polar caps melt, they aren't hot water -- they're just not frozen anymore. this water spills into the ocean, which due to cause and effect on a grand scale, ultimately causes cooling to effect the temperature of the entire ocean. on top of that, the new water changes the salt content of the ocean which has tons of effects on all sorts of things, from sea life to temperature to weather.     right now, our polar caps are absorbing heat, cooling us off......BUT if that trend continues, soon enough we won't have enough left to effectively cool the earth., then the suns rays will really pound us until the planet is unlivable for humans except inside an artificial environment.    the scary thing is though, that even if global warming is a real problem, if natural climate change shifts to a point in the future where the earth ends up in a downward spiral toward cooling rather than warming, then man made climate change may actually prevent or lessen the effects of that. so it's a toss up of whether it's a right or wrong thing to fix climate change when you think of it from a larger perspective into the future.