Computer models that have figured prominently into the climate studies organized through the United Nations show that the warming trend evident in the latter half of the 20th century would continue and even accelerate into the new millennium. But the climate has not cooperated and in fact the newest research shows that a cooling trend has taken hold that could persist for decades.

Dr. Don Easterbook, a geologist and professor emeritus at Western Washington University, has concluded that sea surface temperatures will experience a drop that could last for the next 25 to 30 years based on his observations of the Pacific Decadal Oscilliation or PDO, a weather phenomenon that reverts between warm and cool modes. He's not alone.

Victor Manuel Velasco Herrera, a researcher at the Institute of Geophysics with the National Autonomous University of Mexico sees evidence that points to the onset of a "little ice age" in about 10 years that could last for much of the 21st Century. The U.N. computer models are not correct because they do not take into account natural factors like solar activity, he said in a lecture.

This view is also advanced in a paper published by the Astronomical Society of Australia. The authors anticipate that sun's activity will diminish significantly over the next few decades.

In reality, the main arguments underpinning man-made global warming have been unraveling for quite some time Bonner Cohen, a senior fellow with the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR), has observed.

"The alarmists have a problem," Cohen explained. "The climate isn't doing what they theory says it should be doing. The temperature is not rising in a linear fashion, which the man-made global warming theory says it should be doing. Instead there has been virtually no warming over the past 10 years, which is insignificant in geological terms, but very significant when you consider the alarmist theory."

"Even though man-made greenhouse gases are going up, there is no evidence that these emissions are in fact driving temperature upward," he continued. "Of course, historically warmer temperatures have lead to higher Co2 levels, not the other way around. The lesson here is that association is not causation."

When warming and cooling trends are placed within a larger geological context the "alarmist position" becomes unsustainable, he added. The history is deliberately ignored and dismissed by the U.N. because it would undermine the political agenda attached to global warming alarmism, Cohen has argued.

Researchers who have long questioned the premise of man-made global warming theories point out that alarmist claims are driven more by computer models that omit key variables than they are by actual observations. The growing "climategate" scandal goes a long way toward vindicating the scientific skeptics who have been ostracized in the media and the academic community. Emails that have been leaked to the Internet from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia show that researchers have deliberately fudged and manipulated data in an effort to account for predicted catastrophic warming that has not materialized.

"We've had no warming for the past 10-15 years, even though carbon dioxide emissions have increased," notes Steve Milloy, editor and founder of JunkScience.com. "The upper atmosphere should be warming at a much greater rate than the lower atmosphere but this is not happening. It means that we don't understand energy flows, and if you don't understand how something works it cannot be modeled. It's insanity to go forward with regulations that are not based on something we understand, but that's what is being proposed."

Sen. Lisa Murkowsi (R-Alaska) has introduced a resolution to block the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from regulating greenhouse gases without congressional approval. She has been joined by colleagues on both sides of the aisle. Moreover, opinion polls show that the public become more dismissive of alarmist claims.

Does the mean the global warming industry has reached its Berlin Wall moment?

David Berlinski, a senior fellow with the Discovery Institute, views "climategate" as an "unexpected gift" to skeptics that shows "Big Science in its natural state." Climategate follows on the heels of other scientific scams that reach back to the Club of Rome in the 1970s that warned pending doom.

"The overwhelming consensus is, as it always is, utter nonsense because it is in the first place an illusion," he wrote in an email. "There are very many scientists who dissent from global warming. And it is utter nonsense because it is based on nothing more than a trend line. No one has the faintest idea what the trend represents or whether it will continue or whether even the trend itself was based on data so fudged as to be meaningless. The latter, I think."

"What is at work deep down is a delusion as striking as various Zulu beliefs and no more credible," he continued. "To wit, that because there is something that might for the sake of convenience be designated as the global atmosphere, there is as well a science of the global atmosphere, one in which for various initial conditions of the GA, laws of its evolution might be adduced from which explanations and predictions would flow. There is no such science; there are no such laws. To be sure one can say with easy confidence that the GA is determined by fundamental physics."

In reality, science has never operated by consensus. Over time, prevailing views are either substantiated or dismissed as new evidence emerges. The momentum is now very much with researchers who have identified natural forces as opposed to human activity as the primary driving force behind warming and cooling trends. Ideally, they should find greater expression.

Kevin Mooney is the Editor of Timescheck.com and a contributing editor of ALG News.