Two points to take from all the backpedalling and caveating in this BBC report on Global Climate. First, all the variations seen in the last decade are within the margin of error – in other words the annual temperatures are statistically identical:

While Nasa, the US space agency, cites 2005 as the warmest year, the UK’s Hadley Centre lists it as second to 1998.

Researchers say the uncertainty in the observed value for any particular year is larger than these small temperature differences.

These ‘error bars’ can be seen in the US Government chart on global temperatures:

Forget the red line, it is someone’s opinion of the trend. The lines that matter are the vertical lines for each year which represent the range of temperatures the global annual temperature falls into – it is not a specific number (welcome to the world of science and math folks). If you click on the chart to blow it up you can see there was a spike in 1998, a drop in 1999 and 2000, and then the temperature want back to around the 1998 level. The vertical bars show the statistical range and they are flat for the last decade.

The second thing to note is the admission the temperature rise was not global and due to CO2, but regional and due to a hot spot in the Pacific Ocean:

This year, the Pacific is in the grip of a powerful La Nina.
It has contributed to torrential rains in Australia and to some of the coldest temperatures in memory in snow-bound parts of China.

Mr Jarraud told the BBC that the effect was likely to continue into the summer, depressing temperatures globally by a fraction of a degree.

This would mean that temperatures have not risen globally since 1998 when El Nino warmed the world.

El Nino is not a global phenomena of the atmosphere, therefore it cannot be directly due to C02 levels in the air. For all we know it is a seismic effect where there could be cracks or a thinning in the earth’s crust, ready to produce new volcanic islands in the future. The fact is Global Warming stopped warming in 1998 – when El Nino disappeared. It is not unreasonable to assume it takes a decade to remove the extra heat generated by this phenomena, which has now subsided with the onset of the El Nina which is causing a drop off in global temperatures.

Even the man-made zealots of from the Church of Gore have to note the connection to the hot spot in the Pacific Ocean. Yet they have not shown how this local phenomena is driven by CO2 levels. They say to not focus on anything but the trends. OK, the trend for the last decade shows no Global Warming.