There is no serious doubt that our planet continues to heat, but it has heated less than most climate scientists had predicted. The consensus is that the planet continues to warm, not cool.
and
"The moralising stridency of so many arguments for cap-and-trade, carbon taxes, and global emissions treaties was founded on the idea that there is a consensus about how much warming there would be if carbon emissions continue on trend. The rather heated debates we have had about the likely economic and social damage of carbon emissions have been based on that idea that there is something like a scientific consensus about the range of warming we can expect. If that consensus is now falling apart, as it seems it may be, that is, for good or ill, a very big deal."
Using that as a criticism, especially given the word has very technical meanings in terms of distributions and fits, is silly.
No, it's not. As the article notes up front, there is no serious doubt that the climate is warming. So not only is the climate not cooling, neither is the consensus.
Estimates of the long-term rate of warming have always varied, but the consensus remains that the rate is significant and even the lower estimates will result in environmental changes that will impact millions of people.
The consensus was that (1) the earth is warming (2) if not stopped this will have catastrophic effects on the human race soon. Both of those things are still true and there is still the same consensus about them.
FTA : "This isn't a crisis for climate science. This is just the way science goes. But it is a crisis for climate-policy advocates who based their arguments on the authority of scientific consensus."
1. http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/2157446...
2. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v482/n7386/full/nature1...
As of right now, you have 30% of the comments in this submission. It really seems like you have a strange bias here to argue over something so trivial.