Quote Originally Posted by Xiahou
It's still hockey stick-like and distorts the data in a similar way, which is what I referring to.
That's nonsense. Come on Xiahou, the whole hockey-stick thing was just something thrown out to the uninformed masses which they could repeat over and over again so they wouldn't have to actually read about the issues for themselves. The fact a graph may look like a hockey-stick doesn't mean it's distorting the data.

Here's another hockey-stick like graph. Has the information on the number of AWD vehicles also been distorted? It is "hockey-stick" like after all.


Here's another


The "hockey-stick" controversy came about from a graph like this


The dispute with this came about when Michael Mann's data (something like above) was found not to take into account certain localised data from the middle-ages. Some of Mann's statistical sampling methods were also called into question. This critique was done by economist Ross McKitrick and mineral-exploration consultant Stephen McIntyre. However, since then the US National Academy of Sciences has "more-or-less" endorsed Mann's work (less part for how his work is being used politically).

Who do I believe - the NAS and most of the world's most respected paleoclimatologists or an economist and a mining industry consultant? Hmmmm?

If you want an idea of how uncertain it all is, read this article from the New York Times of all places...
Yes, I guess you could say it is uncertain exactly what effect humans vs. natural processes are having on the amount of CO2 in our atmosphere. This stuff is very difficult to model and it's not something you can get exact information for easily. However the data that has been developed clearly shows a relationship between increased levels of CO2 and high temperatures. What isn't in question is that we are making more and more CO2 and this heats things up and therefore exacerbates global warming.