The week...the consensus...died?

Sometime in the recent past, there was supposed to be this complete "consensus" that the earth was facing catastrophic global warming caused by human CO2 emissions. Anyone not buying this alleged consensus was supposed to be misinformed or paid off by Big Oil.

The first week of 2008 was rather remarkable in that three different mainstream news sources published articles strongly questioning some or all of that consensus.

To review:

1. On January 1, in The New York Times, John Tierney took alarmist Al Gore to task in this article.

Excerpt:

In his acceptance speech, Mr. Gore didn’t dwell on the complexities of the hurricane debate. Nor, in his roundup of the 2007 weather, did he mention how calm the hurricane season had been. Instead, he alluded somewhat mysteriously to “stronger storms in the Atlantic and Pacific,” and focused on other kinds of disasters, like “massive droughts” and “massive flooding.”

“In the last few months,” Mr. Gore said, “it has been harder and harder to misinterpret the signs that our world is spinning out of kilter.” But he was being too modest. Thanks to availability entrepreneurs like him, misinterpreting the weather is getting easier and easier.

2. On January 3, a non-alarmist Associated Press article by Seth Borenstein was published.

Excerpt:

There's a natural cause that may account for much of the Arctic warming...

3. On January 6, the Boston Globe published this non-alarmist piece by Jeff Jacoby.

Excerpt:

Climate science isn't a religion, and those who dispute its leading theory are not heretics. Much remains to be learned about how and why climate changes, and there is neither virtue nor wisdom in an emotional rush to counter global warming - especially if what's coming is a global Big Chill.

I don't think that this global warming hysteria will die quickly, but I'm confident that it will continue to erode in the months and years ahead.