The hockey stick hoax

This was a classic from a few years ago - a graph purported to prove that anthropogenic global warming was indeed real. This was a centerpiece of Gore's fear-mongering. The researchers that made it refused to disclose their data, even though the study was funded with taxpayer money. In the end, it was proven to be a hoax (Did I mention it was funded by taxpayer money?). This should have been the nail in the coffin for the alarmists. Unfortunately, the controversy went right down the memory hole (surprise, surprise...). In any case, Powerline had a few things to say about it today. Here's the famous graph above climate data in Europe over the same time period (via moonbattery). See any differences? Yeah - me neither. Adds powerline: "The "hockey stick" graph had the virtue, from the alarmists' perspective, of "getting rid of" the Medieval Warm Period, which had always been acknowledged as the predecessor to the Little Ice Age and our own era, in which temperatures have recovered from the Little Ice Age..."

More:

More recent scientific work has thoroughly debunked the Mann "hockey stick" analysis. It has been shown to rest on "collation errors, unjustified truncation or extrapolation of source data, obsolete data, incorrect principal component calculations, geographical mislocations and other serious defects," as well as
"incorrect mathematics." There are indications, at least, that some of the errors on the part of Mann and his collaborators were deliberate--an instance of the corruption of science by politics and perverse financial incentives that underlies the entire global warming movement.

Andrew Bostom provides an excellent short summary of the significance of the hockey stick and its debunking by more rigorous scientists, which is readily understandable by the lay reader.

If you really want to worry about the climate, consider the fact
that we are due for another ice age.

UPDATE: Then there's this bar graph showing 2009 priorities (HT:moonbattery):

My guess is that BHO better be careful with this. It's a hot potato ready to burn him.