National Post no relation cherry picking
Development of perception of post-1998 hiatus
The warm El Niño year of 1998 was exceptional: the IPCC Third Assessment Report of 2001 highlighted that the "high global temperature associated with the 1997 to 1998 El Niño event stands out as an extreme event, even taking into account the recent rate of warming."
Opponents of action on global warming used this peak to misleadingly suggest that warming had stopped; an April 2006 opinion piece by Bob Carter in the Daily Telegraph announced an 8-year halt, but was soon rebutted. The IPCC Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 reported that "2005 and 1998 were the warmest two years in the instrumental global surface-air temperature record since 1850. Surface temperatures in 1998 were enhanced by the major 1997–1998 El Niño but no such strong anomaly was present in 2005. Eleven of the last 12 years (1995 to 2006) – the exception being 1996 – rank among the 12 warmest years on record since 1850." The IPCC report was disputed by an open letter in the National Post with 94 signatories, which said "there has been no net global warming since 1998. That the current temperature plateau follows a late 20th-century period of warming is consistent with the continuation today of natural multi-decadal or millennial climate cycling."There were further claims in blogs and media of lack of warming since 1998, and an Investor's Business Daily article in 2008 even claimed the planet was cooling. In April 2009, a NOAA study showed that similar short-
term periods with no trend or even cooling had occurred previously in the years since 1901, and could even be found during the warming trend since 1975: it was easy to "cherry pick" the period 1998–2008 to support one view, but 1999–2008 showed a strong warming trend. They used computer simulations of future climate to show that it was "possible, and indeed likely, to have a period as long as a decade or two of 'cooling' or no warming superimposed on a longer-term warming trend." In July 2009 Jeb Bush said that global warming might not be occurring as mean temperatures had been cooler over six years. The decade to the end of 2010 was again the warmest on record, but David Rose in the Mail on Sunday argued that, excluding the 1998 "blip", global temperatures had been flat for 15 years. 
A November 2011 study by statistician Grant Foster and Stefan Rahmstorf showed that after allowing for known short-term variability, there had been unabated warming since 1998 with no reduction from the rate over the preceding decade.
In January 2012 Rose claimed that the latest global temperatures showed 15 years without warming: the Met Office described this as "entirely misleading".In January 2013 James Hansen and colleagues published their updated analysis that temperatures had continued at a high level despite strong La Niña conditions, and said the "5-year mean global temperature has been flat for a decade, which we interpret as a combination of natural variability and a slowdown in the growth rate of the net climate forcing", noting "that the 10 warmest years in the record all occurred since 1998." Under the heading "Global Warming Standstill" they "noted that the 'standstill' temperature is at a much higher level than existed at any year in the prior decade except for the single year 1998, which had the strongest El Nino of the century. However, the standstill has led to a widespread assertion that 'global warming has stopped'."The Economist led an article 30 March 2013 with the sentence "Over the past 15 years air temperatures at the Earth’s surface have been flat while greenhouse-gas emissions have continued to soar, quoting Hansen as saying that ""the five-year mean global temperature has been flat for a decade." It discussed possible explanations of "the recent hiatus in rising temperatures", and suggested that it implied lower climate sensitivity. 
There was a surge in media interest setting a misleading narrative, as in the Reuters headline "Climate scientists struggle to explain warming slowdown". 
At the Science Media Centre in London in July 2013, journalists met Met Office scientists and were given a briefing document with three papers on "the recent pause in global warming" in surface temperatures. These said other indicators continued to show warming, at least part of the pause related to heat being exchanged into deep oceans, and it did not alter the risks of future warming or invalidate the physics behind the models: it meant only a 10% reduction in the most probable projection, so "the warming that we might have expected by 2050 would be delayed by only a few years".In preparing the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), representatives of the U.S. government and the European Union wanted details of the slowdown or "hiatus", Germany and Hungary were concerned that a 15-year period was too short to determine a meaningful trend, but the IPCC included discussion of the topic.
One of the lead authors, Dennis L. Hartmann, subsequently said; "Going into the IPCC this time, I would have said that, well, the trend over a 15-year record is not really very meaningful, because of the natural interannual variability of the climate system. But as the IPCC evolved, it became more and more of a public issue, so we felt we had to say something about it, even though from an observational perspective, it's not a very reliable measure of long-term warming." He said "the apparent reduction in the observed warming rate" was "interesting on purely scientific grounds, but it does not have a huge impact on the scientific assessment and does not alter the basic facts." Research cited in the report had to be published by 15 March, which excluded more recent work such as a paper by NCAR scientists including Kevin E. Trenberth indicating that increased heat was going into ocean depths.A month before formal AR5 publication, a leaked draft of the report noted that "Models do not generally reproduce the observed reduction in surface warming trend over the last 10–15 years", but lacked clear explanations, and attracted wide media coverage.
On 16 August Reuters said the "panel will try to explain why global temperatures, while still increasing, have risen more slowly since about 1998 even though greenhouse gas concentrations have hit repeated record highs in that time". 
The BBC on 19 August reported IPCC warnings that the final text would vary, and said "The panel will also outline why global temperatures have been rising more slowly since 1998, a controversial slowdown that scientists have been struggling to explain." It said the possibility that climate sensitivity was lower than previous estimates had been argued by "many sceptics" as a key factor, and "a good reason not to believe the more extreme predictions of those they dismiss as warmist conspirators." 
Coverage varied: on 22 August the National Geographic said the "draft IPCC report also dismisses a recent slowdown in global warming, attributing it to short-term factors." On 26 September, the day before formal publication, CBC News quoted The Heritage Foundation under the headline "Climate change reports temperature hiatus fuels skeptics".In late night negotiations over wording, the IPCC added clarifications including "due to natural variability, trends based on short records are very sensitive to the beginning and end dates and do not in general reflect long-term climate trends", but at the press conference releasing the IPCC Summary for Policymakers on 27 September, journalists focussed questions on the "pause" rather than the overall conclusions. This focus resulted in headlines such as "Global Warming Slowdown Seen as Emissions Rise to Record" from Reuters. The National Post used the subheading "IPCC report skeptics seize on lull in global warming". Even Nature headlined their news report "IPCC: Despite hiatus, climate change here to stay", though it said that "the 'hiatus' since the record hot year of 1998 — probably due to increased heat uptake by the oceans — is no sign that global warming has stopped, as some would like to hope", and quoted climatologist Thomas Stocker saying that "Comparing short-term observations with long-term model projections is inappropriate", and adding "We know that there is a lot of natural fluctuation in the climate system. A 15-year hiatus is not so unusual even though the jury is out as to what exactly may have caused the pause." He said that claims dismissing climate models would only be justified if "temperature were to remain constant for the next 20 years", and Brian Hoskins said other factors showed climate change.In a statement to the press in March 2016, Professor David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey said that recent increases in global temperature were not due to an unusually severe El Niño, but that the opposite is true. "This is a catch-up of a recent hiatus that has occurred in rising global temperatures. We are returning to normality: rising temperatures. This is an absolute warning of the dangers that lie ahead."
no relation