The funny thing about hockey sticks is that they are fairly brittle when bent the wrong way… They can also become roller-coasters (see our excellent, professionally hand drawn version of the original hockey stick graph) pretty quickly if just a couple of the data points (ie. what the actual, real world temperature anomaly was at the time, and not just an educated guess) over a few thousand years of highly uncertain global temperature data actually fall at the upper end of the margins of error…

But who would ignore that very real possibility and develop an entire hockey stick brand (and probably merchandise) based purely on the mid-point of a massive 0.8°C guess-timate range, just for dramatic effect, right?

Certainly not completely innocent and always ethical scientists that in no way have their livelihoods and future careers dependent on certain results and perceived emergencies… It’s not like climate change research and mitigation initiatives are receiving billions and billions in funding these days, right? Oh wait…

Lower down, a few other hockey sticks that don’t rely on massive margins of error to arrive at their final format and, incredibly, and are actually pretty positive…

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