User:A Quest For Knowledge/Hide the Decline

"Hide the Decline" is a music video parody of the song "Draggin' the Line" by Tommy James. It was posted on YouTube on November 24, 2009 by user M4GW, an acronym for Minnesotans for Global Warming. It was created in response to the contents of one of the e-mails from what the media have called Climategate. The music video became a hit on YouTube, receiving 500,000 hits and was played on the Rush Limbaugh radio show. The video also reached number six in The Guardian's weekly Viral Video chart.

Synopsis
The video is based on a phrase from one of the e-mails of the Climatic Research Unit email controversy‎ in which professor Phil Jones uses the phrase "to hide the decline". It features a cat with a guitar, a singing tree and an animated character with a picture of Michael Mann's face. The original submitted video was removed from YouTube by M4GW after Mann threatened legal action.

Reception
Wyatt Andrews of CBS News has said of the video, "The phrase "hide the decline" is now so infamous it is being spoofed on you tube".

Ed Barnes writing for Fox News has said that Michael Mann has threatened legal action over the video as Mann feels that it uses his image to sell merchandise. Minnesotans for Global Warming responded to the legal threat by posting the letter on their website and by creating an update to the video.

John Tierney writing for The New York Times has said of the video, "the phrase that has been turned into a music video by gleeful climate skeptics: “hide the decline,” used in an e-mail message by Phil Jones, the head of the university’s Climatic Research Unit. He was discussing the preparation of a graph for the cover of a 1999 report from the World Meteorological Organization showing that temperatures in the past several decades were the highest of the past millennium".

Dan Gainor in an Op-Ed for Fox News wrote, "“Hide the decline” is such a memorable term that it has been enshrined in song in a humorous video by Minnesotans for Global Warming".

L. Gordon Crovitz writing for the Wall Street Journal has said the video is, "a mocking send-up of the scientists who tried to suppress data showing global cooling. It was viewed hundreds of thousands of times on YouTube".

Jeff Tollefson writing in Nature called the video "catchy" and reported on Manns reaction to it.

Stephanie Gutmann writing in The Telegraph said "So you thought you had to be on the Left to have fun with a guitar and a computer graphics program? Hah! Welcome to the new Climategate counter-culture. Here’s a video entitled “Hide the Decline”, put together by some clever young men called Minnesotans for Global Warming".