You're the one raising "consensus" onto the pedestal. The idea that if a large number of people agree on something, they're probably right, and those who dissent are probably wrong. "Consensus" is how you pick what pizza you're going to order, not what's true.

That the apocalypse mongers were just as dead certain years ago as they are now, and dead wrong, is not irrelevant. And yes, it's some of the same people.

By your standard we should forget that our original Iraq approach kind of stunk because we got it right with Petraeus?

As far as I've seen, all the climate scientists have actually done empirically is established that it's gotten warmer since 1900. By 1 degree. And you can bet a lot of curve smoothing went into nailing it down to that precision.

Given the huge number of variables and chaos in a climate system, even the best climate science isn't going to be all that hot at predictions. Weather predictions are vague and often wrong. So are predictions on numbers of hurricanes, micro-climates, and pretty much any short-term climate phenomenon. This doesn't mean the scientists are stupid. It means they're working with an immensely complex problem, and by definition they HAVE to discard some externals or they'd be paralyzed.

We aren't just betting quatloos on whether they're right. The potential climate changes would create serious problems for many parts of the world. But at the same time, many of the mitigation proposals I've seen involve major upheavals for an industrial society, and an even greater degree of control over our lives.

Incidentally, I brought up the ozone hole because it's an excellent example of a hypothesis that has yet to be actually borne out by real-world observation. So far, it's mostly been chemistry. Arranging the final proof after we're all dead isn't that impressive.