Which is it -- global warming, or ice age?

In the interest of furthering debate, I'd like to point out an interesting article in today's Wall Street Journal , "Academy to Referee Climate-Change Fight: Scientists' Group Agrees to Congressional Request to Study Temperature-History Charting", pg. B4.

In sum, the National Academy of Sciences has agreed to appoint an 11-member panel to investigate the accuracy of Dr. Michael Mann's data and charts of climate change over the last 1,000 years, in the face of allegations by other scientists that the data is replete with inaccuracies, and wrongly-indicates that fossil fuel emissions are warming the planet. The panel intends to report it's findings in roughly 4 months time.

What I found interesting about the published chart (Difference in temperature compared to 1961-1990 average) is that the range in uncertainty in Dr. Mann's own charted data is much greater than the data variations themselves. This highlight's my questioning of the data collected, and the conclusions drawn by models that man has contributed to global warming. The range of uncertainty itself negates the possible value of the published data. When one cannot have confidence in the accuracy of collected data, there can be no confidence in the outcome of models using that data.

As usual, i am unable to provide a link because this comes from the paper in my mailbox, and the WSJ requires online registration.