The big news today seems to be Steve McIntyre’s recent discovery that the Briffa series in print has been chopped back in a Mann paper even further than advertised to hide “more” decline. Amazingly, no mention was made of the radical surgery.
Steve Writes –
Had Mann and his 13 co-authors shown the Briffa reconstruction, without hiding the decline, one feels that von Storch (and others) might have given more consideration to Soon et al’s criticism of the serious problem arising from the large-population failure of tree ring widths and density to track temperature.
the Air Vent 
email 0285.txt
cc: ???@uea.ac.uk, ???@uea.ac.uk, ???@virginia.edu
date: Tue, 10 Jun 2003 08:26:12 -0400
from: “Michael E. Mann”
subject: Re: Figure 1
to: Phil Jones , Scott Rutherford
“The only exception is Brifffa et al MXD, where the 1856-1940 period is used instead
(because it starts to diverge downward about 1940 relative to the NH annual mean record).
We also don’t show it after 1940.
I agree this has to be made very clear in the caption, and Scott should be able to help you
guys make sure the caption is accurate.”
I doubt the caption was ever made “accurate” to draw attention to the truncation after 1940 of Briffa et al MDX – maybe someone knows the answer?
The Hide and Decline of the AGW Empire.
#1 – It was not.
See http://holocene.meteo.psu.edu/shared/articles/eos03.pdf