Clearing up misconceptions regarding 'hide the decline'
Skeptics like to portray "the decline" as a phenomena that climate scientists have tried to keep secret. In reality the divergence problem has been publicly discussed in the peer-reviewed literature since 1995 (
Jacoby 1995). The IPCC discuss the decline in tree-ring growth openly both in the 2001 Third Assessment Report and in even more detail in the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report.
Divergence problem
...


Twenty-year smoothed plots of averaged ring-width (dashed) and tree-ring density (thick line), averaged across all sites, and shown as standardized anomalies from a common base (1881–1940), and compared with equivalent-area averages of mean April–September temperature anomalies (thin solid line). From
Briffa et al. 1998.[1]
The
divergence problem is an anomaly from the field of
dendroclimatology, the study of past climate through observations of old trees, primarily the properties of their annual growth rings. It is the disagreement between the temperatures measured by the
thermometers (
instrumental temperatures) and the temperatures reconstructed from the latewood densities or, in some cases, widths of tree rings in the far northern forests.
While the thermometer records indicate a substantial late 20th century warming trend, many tree rings from such sites do not display a corresponding change in their maximum latewood density. In some studies this issue has also been found with tree ring width.[2] A temperature trend extracted from tree rings alone would not show any substantial warming since the 1950s. The temperature graphs calculated in these two ways thus "diverge" from one another, which is the origin of the term.
Discovery
The problem of changing response of some tree ring proxies to recent climate changes was identified in
Alaska by
Taubes 1995 and
Jacoby & d'Arrigo 1995. Tree ring specialist
Keith Briffa's February 1998 study showed that this problem was more widespread at high northern latitudes, and warned that it had to be taken into account to avoid overestimating past temperatures.[3]
*************************************************************************
Keith Briffa is the Keith named in "hide the decline"
Your rejection of the numerous bodies that reviewed the stolen emails is unjustifiable. Your characterisation is just another facet of that globe-girdling perfectly executed conspiracy among 60,000+ scientists, not one of whom has ever confessed, been caught nor made a mistake.