It is not a consensus among Rush Limbaugh followers, but among scientists, because as the evidence piles up, the experiments have the same findings, then gradually more and more scientists stop trying to disprove something that so many others have not been able to disprove, and so it becomes the accepted science.

In Galileo’s or Newton’s day there were far fewer scientists to replicate experiments, and form consensus, but you won’t find scientists still trying to disprove Newtons law of gravity: they share a consensus now, and have for centuries.

Eventually scientific theories that cannot be disproved become the consensus among scientists.

‘ It is probably a combination of melting glaciers, draining underground aquifers….’

There’s also that summer thing that has been happening for a while now, where millions of tons of snow and ice begin melting about this time each year, significantly altering the weight of snow packs and glaciers around the world.

Hmmmmm…..

‘Actually, ultimately, science IS about consensus. Among scientists. ‘

Tell that to Galileo. Actually, tell that to all the consensus-shattering scientists throughout history. Without them, we’d still be worshipping the Sun-god as he passed by each day. We’d be desperately trying still, to unravel the secrets of phlogiston. We’d be burning ‘witches’, because the weather wasn’t perfect. The list goes on ad infinitum.

Oh that’s right, we’re still doing that witch thing.

BBC: Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming

Phil Jones: Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.

BBC: How confident are you that warming has taken place and that humans are mainly responsible?

Phil Jones: I’m 100% confident that the climate has warmed. As to the second question, I would go along with IPCC Chapter 9 – there’s evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity.”

The science is explained in full at
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Phil-Jones-says-no-global-warming-since-1995.htm

Make up your mind, first you say that the plates will stop, now they will go faster ??

It certainly is an idea now coming under consideration by scientists, per for example the Montreal Gazette:

“Scientists have discovered that the accelerated melting of the Greenland ice sheet over the last 10 years already is lifting the southeastern part of that island several millimetres every year.

The surface of the Earth is elastic. A heavy load such as a glacier will cause it to sink, pushing aside the liquid rock underneath.

The Greenland glacier is about three kilometres at its thickest and it is believed that its weight has depressed sections of the land under the glacier about one kilometre. In fact, the weight of the glacier is so great that significant portions of Greenland have been pushed well below sea level.

“There is certainly some literature that talks about the increased occurrence of volcanic eruptions and the removing of load from the crust by deglaciation,” said Martin Sharp, a glaciologist at the University of Alberta. “It changes the stress load in the crust and maybe it opens up routes for lava to come to the surface.

“It is conceivable that there would be some increase in earthquake activity during periods of rapid changes on the Earth’s crust.”

Other scientists, however, believe that tectonic movements similar to the one that caused the Japanese quake are too deep in the Earth to be affected by the pressure releases caused by glacier melt.

These scientists theorize, however, that glacier melts could cause shallower quakes.

Andrew Hynes, a tectonics expert at McGill University, said the issue is not so much the load shift on the Earth’s crust, but rather the increased fluid pressure in the fault that lubricates the rock, allowing the plate to slide.

“All earthquakes, except those produced by volcanic activity, are essentially the unsticking of faults,” he said.

In other words, if you pump fluid into a fault, it can reduce the friction and allow the rock to slide”.

http://www.montrealgazette.com/technology/Could+global+warming+causing+recent+earthquakes/4445389/story.html#ixzz1GzHubHle

[Ed: This is incorrect. A bunch of paid talkers from the CATO Institute might say Phil Jones says, but Phil Jones does not say there has been no climate change for 15 years. He is a respected climate scientist who accepts facts.

You can check for yourself: all the breaking records in heat, floods, ice melts, sea temperatures, glacier melts, and so on are well covered as each new one is broken at a scientific site covering climate news: http://climatesignals.org/ ]

But interesting in that ‘more earthquakes’ was not one of the original predicted consequences two or three decades ago, as were the other results like more floods, more droughts, melting ice caps, ecological destabilizing new pests (turned out to be the pine bark beetle, so far) that have come to happen as predicted.

Wonder if there’ll be any more surprises? I’m betting there will be.