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."[REF]
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.