Bob Carter is famous for saying global warming "stopped in 1998".  What Bob carter doesn't say is that 1998 is a year which an El Nino event occured.  Not only was it a year of El Nino, but it was the strongest El Nino in recorded history.  He also fails to mention that the climate is very dynamic.  Unless you are an expert you need to look at averages and not cherry pick any single day, week, or even year.  The two animations below will show just how much El Nino can influence global averages.  The animation on the right (Fig 1.2) is an El Nino event.  The large red flare is warm water.   The dark red water is 10^oC or 18^oF hotter than the darkest blue on the chart.  The animation on the left is a El Nina event.  As you can see there is a huge difference in ocean temperatures.  This is why there was a spike in global temperatures in 1998.  If the animations don't work try opening them in a different browser (Internet Explorer seems to work well) or refreshing the page.  The animations tend to be a little browser specific.

El Nina - 1989	El Nino -1997
Fig 1.1.  Image courtesy NOAA	Fig 1.2.  Image courtesy NOAA

If you look at the chart below you will see the global mean surface temperature has in fact increased over time.  Bob Carter will also say "Consider the simple fact, drawn from the official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, that for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase (there was actually a slight decrease, though not at a rate that differs significantly from zero)." Well using NASA's data he's wrong as 2005 is the hottest, but that is merely splitting hairs.  The real issue is displayed in the chart below.  Yes there was a spike in 1998 but as discussed before that was from El Nino.  If you want to make a dishonest case for radical global warming, you'd start with 1999 and draw a trend to 2005. But starting with 1998 is being dishonest in the other direction.  To minimize short term noise you can plot the temperatures based off of 5 year averages.  The red line in the graph below shows this temperature trend and there is an obvious increase in overall termperature.  Another important feature to keep in mind is that the ten years after the 1998 El Nino event are hotter than the ten years before the 1998 El Nino event.  When the next El Nino occurs it should easily set a new temperature record.

Image courtesy NASA

Just to drive the point home, the following quote is from NASA's Goddard Institute's 2006 Surface Temperature Analysis page:  

"The highest global surface temperature in more than a century of instrumental data was recorded in the 2005 calendar year in the GISS annual analysis. However, the error bar on the data implies that 2005 is practically in a dead heat with 1998, the warmest previous year....... Record warmth in 2005 is notable, because global temperature has not received any boost from a tropical El Niño this year. The prior record year, 1998, on the contrary, was lifted 0.2°C above the trend line by the strongest El Niño of the past century.  ... The quasi-regularity of recent El Niños at intervals of about 4 years (there was a weak El Niño in 2002) suggests the likelihood of an El Niño in 2006 or at latest 2007. In such a case the 2005 global temperature record will almost surely be broken."

Here is a very similar graph using a different set of instrument readings::

souce: University of East Anglia, UK

This is the very same graph Bob Carter uses to "debunk" global warming.  Now that you are armed with this information, we suggest you read Bob Carter's article titled "There IS a problem with global warming... it stopped in 1998" and decide for yourself whether or not he's telling the truth when he claims climatologists are engaged in what he calls a "sophisticated scientific brainwashing".

Following Tim Lambert's post on Bob Carter, I emailed Professor Carter to see if he would bet me over global warming, offering 2:1 odds that temperatures will increase in 10 years.  He politely emailed me back, saying that because temperature change is a random walk, he won't bet me. I've replied to say that doesn't make sense.   Either he doesn't believe temperature changes are random, or he should bet me.

UPDATE:

2005 was named as the "hottest and stormiest year" on record by NASA.  That record was subsequently broken in 2006.  

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For more analysis on Bob Carter please go to:

1. http://timlambert.org/category/science/bobcarter/
2. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=290#comment-11443
3. http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/04/warming-stopped-in-1998.html

A few more temperature trend studies:

1. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/warming/
2. http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/pollack.html

Bob Carter repeats his claims:

• Telegraph:  "There IS a problem with global warming... it stopped in 1998". 
• Deltoid, Seed Blogs, More Nonsense about CO2, October 4, 2006 11:03 AM, Tim Lambert
• Deltoid, Seed Blogs, Shorter Lavoisier workshop, July 8, 2007 11:07 AM, Tim Lambert -TD
• Rabett Run, Coming soon to your comments section, 6, 2007, Eli Rabett -TD
• Deltoid, Seed Blogs, ABC makes lemonade, July 17, 2007, Tim Lambert -TD