The Institute of Physics blog has some interesting thoughts on the "Hide the Decline" message that came out of the climategate emails.

Now we know that this refers to the so-called "divergence problem" where tree ring proxy data doesn't match temperature records.

In the blog, there is this interesting quote:

"According to physicist Rasmus Benestad from the Norwegian Meteorological Institute and a blogger for realclimate.org, Jones’ reference to "hiding the decline" could have involved removing some tree-ring proxy data from the analysis after 1960 to produce a curve that agrees better with the evidence for global warming. "

Now, call me a conspiracy theorist, but this sounds awfully like "cherry picking" to me.

These quotes come from Climate Audit and tell a similar story:

"If we get a good climatic story from a chronology, we write a paper using it. That is our funded mission. It does not make sense to expend efforts on marginal or poor data and it is a waste of funding agency and taxpayer dollars. The rejected data are set aside and not archived. As we progress through the years from one computer medium to another, the unused data may be neglected. Some [researchers] feel that if you gather enough data and n approaches infinity, all noise will cancel out and a true signal will come through. That is not true. I maintain that one should not add data without signal."

I am unaware of any other area of science where this methodology would be acceptable. If anyone else does, or has a better explanation, then I am all ears.