I didn't say that 1998 wasn't a record year; it is. The problem is that this record year is being used as a starting point for a trendline from which mistaken assumptions can be drawn.
When the next El Nino year sets a record, it will be "publically" clear that there is still an underlying warming trend.
The situation which would make the warming trend even more clear is a new temperature record in a non-El Nino year (though I can hear the skeptical arguments against it already warming up offstage). 2005 came within less than a tenth of a degree of that happening. Skeptics just say that the trend was "flat" from 1998 to 2005, ignoring how statistics work and the years 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 (as is clear on the nice plot I found).
Somebody oughta discuss how batting or bowling averages work... i.e. Chipper Jones can go 0-for-4 in a game and still not exactly be in a "slump", right?
Well 98 is either a record (which you now say it is) and we have gone down since then, or it is a record El Nino, should be disregarded, and the trend is still up. If you don’t want 98 used as a starting point, then I would only point out it should’t be used at all, being representative of ENSO, not “global warming”.
Karl and his colleagues conclude that there is only a one-in-20 chance that the string of record high temperatures in 1997-1998 was simply an unusual event, rather than a change point, the start of a new and faster ongoing trend.
And alarmists like yourself are already pointing to the next El Nino which has yet to occur as evidence of global warming.