Free Republic

The term "hockey stick" was coined by the head of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Jerry Mahlman, to describe the pattern of historical temperatures in the northern hemisphere (it kind of looks like a hockey stick on its side). The chart, created by Dr. Michael Mann (now at Penn State University) shows relatively stable temperatures until around 100 year ago when we see a spike up. It is one of the key pieces of information used to prove that global warming is about to destroy the world. To create most of the chart, climate change...

On his January 29 TV show, Glenn Beck drew national attention to a relatively obscure graph of our nation's "monetary base" (a narrow definition of money supply, also known as M0) maintained online by the Research Department of the St. Louis Federal Reserve. The reason for the special attention was the dramatic hockey stick shape of the graph that developed during the last few months of 2008. Beginning about September the usually stable graph of monetary base vs. years shot virtually straight up for the remainder of the year.  Immediately below is the graph that Beck featured on his January...