Who are the 'Deniers' now?

Geoffrey Bloom, a member of the European parliament, is obviously being ironic when he calls European Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard a "denier" for her assertions that AGW was worse than ever but was it justified? Has AGW got worse? Does it exist at all?

In a recent article Fred Pearce had no doubt at all that AGW existed but acknowledged it had not met model predictions. Pearce conceded:

...there is a growing consensus among temperature watchers that the pace of warming in the atmosphere, which began in earnest in the 1970s and seemed to accelerate in the 1990s, has slackened, or stalled, or paused, or whatever word you choose. It may turn out to be a short blip; but it is real.

This is incontrovertible. In a straightforward analysis Werner Brozek compared all the main temperature records and in all of them there had been a lengthy period of flat or declining temperature. 

Werner concluded:

For RSS the warming is not significant for over 23 years.
For RSS: +0.127 +/-0.134 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1990
For UAH the warming is not significant for over 19 years.
For UAH: 0.146 +/- 0.170 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1994
For Hadcrut3 the warming is not significant for over 19 years.
For Hadcrut3: 0.095 +/- 0.115 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1994
For Hadcrut4 the warming is not significant for over 18 years.
For Hadcrut4: 0.095 +/- 0.110 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1995
For GISS the warming is not significant for over 17 years.
For GISS: 0.111 +/- 0.122 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1996

For AGW exponents the required period before AGW can be described as affecting climate is at least 17 years. On this basis the 2 most reliable temperature recorders, the satellites systems, UAH and RSS, now officially contradict AGW. This conclusion is unavoidable considering that Werner has included in his graph CO2 which continues its monotonic increase. How can temperature have "slackened, or stalled, or paused, or whatever word you choose," to quote Pearce, when CO2 is continuing to rise?

However Pearce does not accept that AGW has stalled just because temperatures appear to have stopped rising. He says:

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), all 12 years of the new century rank among the 14 warmest since worldwide record-keeping began in 1880. The second-warmest year on record, after 1998, was 2010.

1998 was a significant year. It is just after a climate shift occurred which was opposite in phase and temperature effect to the well documented 1976 climate shift which caused an increase in temperature. It was also the year of a particularly big El Nino although, not as Pearce implies, the biggest.

While it is true 1998 was the warmest year in the modern temperature era it is a statistical deceit to claim that most of the warmest years of the modern era occur post 1998. The reason is shown by this graph: