Here's the March 28, 1995 WashPost story by Rick Atkinson. See if you think skeptics receive "equal attention" in the piece.

Everyone will be talking about the weather when delegates from more than 120 countries gather here on Tuesday for the opening of the U.N. climate conference. But will anyone be able to do anything about it?

The 11-day conference is expected to be long on palaver and short on decisive action, as nations struggle over a common strategy for slowing global warming and averting what many scientists fear could be a future environmental calamity.

The awkwardly titled First Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change will pull together most of the 166 countries that agreed to tackle global climatological problems at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.

At that time, governments vowed to intensify study of the "greenhouse gases" -- particularly carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide -- believed to accelerate the Earth's warming. A number of industrialized nations also agreed to try to cut back carbon dioxide emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2000.

But since those heady days three years ago, the vested interests of the rich vs. the poor, developed vs. developing countries and energy-producing vs. energy-consuming groups have made it clear that consensus will be hard to come by. And few of the industrial countries are on a clear path toward achieving the 1990 goals.

The Berlin conference is intended to resolve several administrative issues set in motion at the Rio summit, including choosing a site for the headquarters for the new international climate secretariat -- Canada, Germany and Switzerland are vying for the privilege -- and how big a budget to allocate.

More substantively, delegates will debate whether and when to begin setting guidelines for emissions levels in the decades beyond 2000. And among the most politically explosive issues is whether to adopt such guidelines eventually with less than unanimity -- such as the three-quarters majority rule favored by the United States on substantive matters.

"Theoretically it's possible to make progress on a consensus basis, but we do not think that is an appropriate way to go," Rafe Pomerance, the deputy assistant secretary of state who is heading the U.S. delegation, told reporters.

While there appears to be widespread support for the U.S. position, members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries reportedly fear that an agreement to curb carbon dioxide emissions will inevitably lower global oil consumption and damage their exports. An OPEC bloc, perhaps supported by some developing countries who want to avoid restraints on industrial development, may thwart efforts this week to adopt some version of majority-rule voting.

Such procedural scuffling reflects the lack of international consensus on the causes and hazards of global warming. Many environmental groups contend that industrial gases are, in effect, magnifying the heating powers of the sun. Vice President Gore, in a speech in Washington earlier this month, said "global surface temperatures could increase from an average of 2 degrees Fahrenheit to 8 degrees over the next century, [a] rate unseen on this planet for at least the last 10,000 years."

The consequences of such a radical alteration of the climate could include a melting of polar ice and subsequent raising of the sea level; a calamitous change in storm and rain patterns; and the widespread alteration of ecosystems.

"Rising sea levels, threats to food crops, more severe floods, hurricanes, drought, increasing poverty, the spread of disease and a threat to the survival of millions of the world's species are some of the risks that we face," warned a recent report by Earthaction Network, an international umbrella organization of environmental groups.

In a similar vein, the Association of Small Island States is anxious enough to demand a 20 percent cut in carbon dioxide emissions by 2005, a goal that is improbable at best.

"Each tick of the clock could be time lost in saving some 30 small island nations from drowning in a sea of rising tides," President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, president of the low-lying Maldive Islands, said here today.

On the other hand, some skeptical meteorologists and analysts assert that global warming reflects a natural cycle of temperature fluctuation and cannot be decisively tied to human actions.

"As far as we are concerned, there's no evidence for global warming, and by the year 2000 the man-made greenhouse theory will probably be regarded as the biggest scientific gaffe of the century," Piers Corbyn, an astrophysicist at London's Weather Action forecasting organization told the Reuter news agency.

How does algore speep at night, what goes through his head... it's going to get warmer tomorrow, yes it is warmer and warmer, i'm right i am ! surely kneading and rubbing his hands while he's saying this. Everyone will agree with me yes yes they will, they must.. tossing and turning.  Sweat dreams al.

About the only profession that liberals have mastered is hypocrisy. The art of pretending. No wonder so many are actors.

"It depends on what the meaning of the word dissent is."