Anthony Watts has a piece over at his blog on a new paper that’s been accepted by the Annals of Applied Statistics that turns Penn State climatologist Michael Man’s hockey stick into little more than a bent branch.

Here’s the new graph.

Not so scary now is it?

However, the more interesting graph comes via statistician William Briggs. You see, that big gray area on the edges of the graph? That’s the margin for uncertainty. The middle red, then black line is what their best guess at what reality is, but reality could be anywhere in within the grey. Which means, the yellow line could be reality too:

If you eyeball that graph, you can also see a potential reality inside that uncertainty margin that could accommodate a line trending downward over the past 1,000 years.

Whatever the reality, there’s insufficient evidence to wreak the world economy and throw developing nations back into the stone age in order to prevent “runaway global warming.”