[Brede]

There are a number of misconceptions regarding 'hide the decline':

1) The "decline" does not refer to a "decline in global temperature" as often claimed. It actually refers to a decline in tree growth at certain high-latitude locations. This decline began in the 1960s when tree-ring proxies diverged from the temperature record.

2) "Mike's Nature trick" has nothing to do with "hide the decline". "Mike's trick" refers to a technique by Michael Mann to plot instrumental temperature data on the same graph as reconstructed data over the past millennium.

3) The divergence of tree-ring proxies from temperatures after 1960 is openly discussed in the peer-reviewed literature and the last two IPCC assessment reports.