What really happened is that the non-alarmist and non-political side of the scientific community were the closest.
Not those who had research to publish, funding to gain, funding from either the "green" movement or the "sceptic" movement, just those who have a knowledge of climatology and research it.
Temperature, weather and climate are linked, but are different. There were always going to be fluctuations in temperature, but there have been changes in climate.
The same scientific community were always quiet on the validity of some of the "scientific consensus" evidence, like the hocky stick graph, because it had some big weaknesses and relied on several bits of major guess work to patch it together.
They would say that there is enough evidence to show that greenhouse gases derrived from man-made sources can and have impacted on climate. There isn't enough evidence to show that this will lead to runaway global warming, but there is enough evidence to show it can impact climate. The full impact though on this, when trying to measure against what might have happened naturally is difficult.
Unfortunately, they give out Nobel Prizes to ex-politicians for power point presentations that exaggerate much of the real science and this doesn't help.
Temperature will always fluctuate and we've only recently (in a historicaly sense) established accurate ways of measuring this. Existing weather stations are poorly maintained and aren't in ideal locations, that's why satalite readings are used in real data. But, the climate is changing, winters are milder and dryer, summers are wetter.