Forget wooly mammoths and times long past, the earth is now-today-presently in an ice age and, more specifically, in a warming period of that age. And it's not just ice ages that we fail to understand, but all permutations of our planet's climate. The complex combination of factors which dictate global temperature trends, wind velocities, and precipitation patterns are easily misunderstood and, as it turns out, easily politicized. The earth's climate is not simply a matter of hot or cold.