Carbon Positive: The next month or two will go a long way to determining whether 2010 is to be the hottest year since temperature record began in the mid-1800s. Whether this occurs or not has implications for the climate change debate because a key argument among climate change sceptics in recent years is that global warming "stopped in 1998′, based on the fact that the average annual temperature following that peak year has not been surpassed. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric …