Scientific consensus ? Baloney !

...for many global warming/climate change sceptics the alarm bells rang loud and clear when politicians and green/left political "activists" announced that the jury had returned, and that the science of climatastrophe was settled. Over these last few years the AGW debate has largely stayed out of the MSM, it has instead been fought through blogs, and day by day, poll by poll the news is that the general public are getting the message. Re recent US polling see this.

Now from the University of Bristol, UK, more bad news for the warmists and further reinforcement that computer based climate change models are worthless...

...New data (9.11.09) shows that the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of carbon dioxide has stayed approximately constant since 1850, despite emissions of carbon dioxide having risen from about 2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year now.This suggests that terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans have a much greater capacity to absorb CO2 than had been previously expected.
The results run contrary to a significant body of recent research which expects that the capacity of terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans to absorb CO2 should start to diminish as CO2 emissions increase, letting greenhouse gas levels skyrocket. Dr Wolfgang Knorr at the University of Bristol found that in fact the trend in the airborne fraction since 1850 has only been 0.7 ± 1.4% per decade, which is essentially zero...

...This work is extremely important for climate change policy, because emission targets to be negotiated at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen early next month have been based on projections that have a carbon free sink of already factored in. Some researchers have cautioned against this approach, pointing at evidence that suggests the sink has already started to decrease...MORE HERE...

Polar bears at play...

...In 2001, Robert Essenhigh, E.G. Bailey Professor of Energy Conservation in Ohio State's Department of Mechanical Engineering speculated that rising global temperatures were naturally increasing the levels of carbon dioxide, not the other way around, and that global warming was a "natural geological process that could begin to reverse itself within 10 to 20 years."

...Here's how Essenhigh sees the global temperature system working: As temperatures rise, the carbon dioxide equilibrium in the water changes, and this releases more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. According to this scenario, atmospheric carbon dioxide is then an indicator of rising temperatures -- not the driving force behind it.
Essenhigh attributes the current reported rise in global temperatures to a natural cycle of warming and cooling...According to Essenhigh's estimations, Earth may reach a peak in the current temperature profile within the next 10 to 20 years, and then it could begin to cool into a new ice age. Essenhigh knows that his scientific opinion is a minority one. As far as he knows, he's the only person who's linked global warming and carbon dioxide in this particular way...more here...

...In light of the fact that solar activity is the lowest that it has been for a hundred years, an overall cooling planet is to be expected. Whether the good professor's theory is correct is as yet unknown. Time will tell. But the fact remains, that overall, CO2 levels are increasing, and the planet is showing a cooling, not warming trend. None of the IPPC forecasts predicted this persistent cooling yet we are expected to compromise our national economies, our freedom of movement, and pay more for energy use on the basis of IPPC computer modelling...