Soob

It's fact. Scientific consensus has been achieved and the latest Nobel prize simply cemented it. Human kind's industrial dismissal of Earth's fragile systems has brought us to the brink of an anthropogenic, systemic process that will likely end in our catastrophic demise as our lonely blue pearl quickly heats up and heads for the climatic likes of our neighbor Venus . The end is nigh!
Actually, the beginning of our eco-sinful demise is to suffer a brief recess of some fifteen years as the planet actually cools a bit:

Researchers studying long-term changes in sea temperatures said they now expect a "lull" for up to a decade while natural variations in climate cancel out the increases caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

The average temperature of the sea around Europe and North America is expected to cool slightly over the decade while the tropical Pacific remains unchanged.

This would mean that the 0.3°C global average temperature rise which has been predicted for the next decade by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change may not happen, according to the paper published in the scientific journal Nature.

However, the effect of rising fossil fuel emissions will mean that warming will accelerate again after 2015 when natural trends in the oceans veer back towards warming, according to the computer model.

Noel Keenlyside of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences, Kiel, Germany, said: "The IPCC would predict a 0.3°C warming over the next decade. Our prediction is that there will be no warming until 2015 but it will pick up after that."

A year ago we were assured a lengthy trend of anthropogenic warming. Now we see a brief reprieve followed by re-assertions of the full force of human folly. According to Keenslyside the planets massive, complex climatic systems will step in for a mere global cooling decade and then suddenly blink a few times and head on to a lengthy vacation as human kind's progressive sins resume bringing about global calamity.

Scientific consensus in the name of global warming would seem to be exactly what I expected it to be. Self important and counter-intuitive alarmism in the name of a powerful conflation of ideological redemption and political influence (and federal funding.) In other words, there's nothing scientific about this "scientific consensus." Furthermore, the "fact" of any broad based assertions regarding global climatic patterns is anything but.

While we're selling ourselves on lightening our carbon footprints, real and immediately obvious environmental problems have taken a back seat. The disappearance of American wetlands (a football field a day), deforestation (16 million hectares a year,) shrinking freshwater lakes (Lake Chad is only 5% the size it was 40 years ago) all these events can be seen with our own two eyes, no computer models or Oscar award winning movies necessary. None of these are caused by excessive carbon dioxide and none of these issues enjoy global conferences and proposed global treaties to resolve them. You want global warming? Keep mowing down the rain forests. You thought Katrina was a disaster? Keep filling in wetlands, the natural coastal buffers against hurricanes and storm surges.

Maybe Al Gore will make a movie about one of the above mentioned issues or about Chinese forests and farms being damaged by acid precipitation. Maybe that will kick off a real Green Revolution.