Basically I go by the black curve that Dr Spencer draws on the data. There was a continuing rise past the 1997/8 El Nino which is now likely to drop the next few decades as the sun goes quiet.
That is why they used a trick to hide the decline.
That's misinformation that they purposely spread to confuse the issue. The temperature record is all screwed up with bad stations inside airports, but that is not what "hide the decline" refers to. The hide the decline was a specific hack to proxy data (tree rings) to avoid showing that basically the current period isn't as warm as the Medieval Warm Period.
Basically I go by the black curve that Dr Spencer draws on the data. There was a continuing rise past the 1997/8 El Nino which is now likely to drop the next few decades as the sun goes quiet.