Global Warming Skeptics? Take A Look At "The Hockey Stick"

[kpete]

The Most Controversial Chart in History, Explained
Climate deniers threw all their might at disproving the famous "hockey stick" climate change graph. Here's why they failed.

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So what does it all mean? Well, here's the millennial scale irony: Climate deniers threw everything they had at the hockey stick. They focused immense resources on what they thought was the Achilles' heel of global warming research—and even then, they couldn't hobble it. (Though they certainly sowed plenty of doubt in the mind of the public.)

What's more, even if they'd succeeded, in a scientific sense it wouldn't have even mattered.

"Climate deniers like to make it seem like the entire weight of evidence for climate change rests on the hockey stick," explains Mann. "And that's not the case. We could get rid of all these reconstructions, and we could still know that climate change is a threat, and that we're causing it." The basic case for global warming caused by humans rests on basic physics—and basic thermometer readings from around the globe. The hockey stick, in contrast, is the result of a field of research called paleoclimatology (the study of past climates) that, while fascinating, only provides one thread of evidence among many for what we're doing to the planet.



When he shows that graph to audiences, says Mann, "I often hear an audible gasp." In this sense, the hockey stick does indeed matter—for it dramatizes just how much human irresponsibility, in a relatively short period of time, can devastate the only home we have.

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/05/most-controversial-hockey-stick-chart-climate-change

[Junkdrawer]

1. Let's see: A future and purpose for humanity...OR....A life FULL a useless bullshit....

Easy choice apparently. Bullshit it is.