Q&A, I have looked at the first three references Google provides and none of them has Carter saying that global warming stopped in 1998. Can you provide a specific source? If not I'm looking forward to the other half of your retraction.

You might also like to look up the meaning of "expert witness". It is not something you claim to be, it is something you are, by virtue of being asked to give witness in court. If you were asked to give witness in court and did, then you would be an expert witness.

In this case Carter did not give witness, although I would imagine he probably has given evidence in other cases in his career, so your reference to him "claim[ing] to be an expert witness", is just an attempt to make your accusation sound plausible, denigrate Carter and evade your misrepresentation.

If you read the Xstrata case you will see that the graph that was referred to was the IPCC graph. There is no mention of a graph by Carter, and in fact I have not seen Carter once refer to a graph that he himself constructed - they are always graphs from the peer-reviewed literature.

I know you claim to be a scientist, but that claim has to be bogus. You are extremely careless with facts (see the rest of this exchange) and lacking in knowledge of basic scientific principles. Your contributions here are more or less just trolling.

Well I'm not taking a backward step, the issue remains contentious at best from the minimifidian (the minimifidianists inhabit an island neighbouring Lilliput and Blefuscu) point of view. I watched the Carter films and they are persuasive, but being a bit of a rhetorician myself, and not a scientist, I'm far from convinced by that. Anyway, my position on AGD (anthropogenic global destruction) is surely not in doubt; there ought to an ethical injunction to clean up our act, including Co2, whether or not we are sure that it's a baddy in the unprecedented concentration it's currently at. As for ETS, as I tried to reason earlier, it is in fact the only sensible course, providing that the revenue finds its way to R&D into cleaner energy production and more efficient consumption. These can only be pluses in terms of the finite fossil fuels on the planet.
Finally, Q&A, congratulations on your humility; it is certainly the height of pig-headedness to try to defend an ambiguous position.
So what makes the Minimifidianists so cocksure? Do they ever stop to wonder, I wonder, whether there might be something in AGW. Like the other cultures from that archipelego, they will no doubt give themselves credit for their rigour rather than their prejudice, and are far from seeing the merit of preventative or ethical or sustainable, or thrifty ways of inhabiting the planet. Such "sentimentality" merely arouses their scorn and derision.
I wait to see what will come of it all. Somehow, I don't think Carter will have the last word.

Mitchell, you might consider the danger of conflating a concern for the environment with concern for global warming. Action on the false premise of AGW is then seen as beneficial for the environment, when in fact quite the opposite is the case.

The unproven AGW case is asserted for the purpose of giving underserved profits to the very people who do the environment great harm by diverting resources to facilitate a fraud, when those resources could be directed most effectively to assisting the environment.

Carbon is not pollution; all life on earth is carbon based. The natural carbon cycle is important to all life, and has worked efficiently for millions of years.

There are great benefits to increased carbon dioxide in the air, and the assertion that more than 350 ppm is detrimental has no basis.

Plant life is not only stimulated by CO2, but made less dependent on water.

The greening of millions of acres of the Sahara comes not just from better water technology, but from the increase in the proportion of CO2 in the air.

There is an assumption that the increase comes from human activity, but this as yet has no scientific basis. If it is ever proven then we should take credit for the benefit to the Earth.

People who oppose a fraud on a scale never before attempted are not anti environment. They are anti criminal activity, as attempted by Gore and the United Nations, with their proposal of an expensive solution to a problem which does not exist.

GrahamY,

Following Q&A's suggestion, I googled. The first one I tried (which happened to be the 9th result) was
http://bravenewclimate.com/2008/09/12/spot-the-recycled-denial-v-–-prof-bob-carter/
where Carter is quoted from a Courier-Mail OpEd:
"One important test is that global temperature has failed to increase since 1998 despite an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide of almost 5 per cent since then."

This fits what Senator Fielding has been saying, and the graph he parades. Fielding relies on some "independent" scientists in his argument with Penny Wong, and the first listed is Carter. See my account near the end of
http://betternature.wordpress.com/2009/10/15/global-cooling-since-1998/
with link to Fielding's website.

My other source was Four Corners some weeks ago. Carter addressed a bunch of cockies (Courtesy Senator Joyce) and made the same claim. As I recall, he had a graph on the screen similar to Fielding's. At the time I know I called to the TV "Show them the earlier data too Bob". Unfortunately he didn't respond. But I think my recollection is pretty clear that he claimed warming stopped in 1998 or thereabouts.

So no, no retraction. And if you reckon I'm cherry-picking, tell me how, don't just make a vague innuendo.

Leo Lane,
Climate scientists make a distinction between "short-term fluctuations" (i.e. fluctuations over 1-5 years or so) and "climate change". It is that distinction, which has a sensible basis, that allows climate scientists to say there is no clear evidence that the climate is no longer warming. You are correct that average temperatures have not increased since around 2005, but that does not mean the long-term trend is gone. The next couple of years are likely to tell, if the warming resumes. 2009 was warmer than 2008, and the second-hottest, after 2005, in the NASA data.

However I doubt you are really interested in this distinction, since it is made by scientists, and you seem totally committed to disbelieving anything a scientist says.

Leo Lane,
the allegation of a deliberate and widespread "fraud" remains unsubstantiated and therefore an innuendo; indeed independent analyses have so far found the hyperbole over the leaked emails to be unfounded. And I don't believe there's are global conspiracy going on (except on the side of the denialists); it's impossible to fix a cricket match without the truth getting out!
Thanks for the tips on the salubrious properties of Co2; though I'm not a scientist, I have some rudimentary understanding of photosynthesis. A lot of scientists are saying that Co2 is tantamount to a pollutant at the current and growing concentration. Interestingly, Carter said nothing to refute this hypothesis, he merely waxed lyrical about its beneficial effects.
They are not "assumptions" that the unprecedented levels of Co2 are anthropogenic, they are well documented. As for proof; there ain't no such animal!

Graham, you mustn't be googling exactly what Q&A suggested, here's a tip:leave in the quotes.

The second result returned by that search is this link:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3624242/There-IS-a-problem-with-global-warming...-it-stopped-in-1998.html

The title:"There IS a problem with global warming... it stopped in 1998" by Bob Carter.

Oh no Bob, say it isn't so.

Now, can you please stop pretending that Bob Carter has never said these things, or pretending that indeed anyone serious is saying them.