The infamous hockey stick, purporting to show that global temperatures have been sky-rocketing in the 20th Century, has now been conclusively proven to be a load of nonsense. The conclusion was reached based on cherry-picked data designed to produce just that result. Flying in the face of scientific integrity, the original authors had until very recently done everything they could do deny anyone else access to their original data-set. As a result their conclusions could not be independently tested. Now that has finally happened, it turns out the hockey stick is more of a baseball bat ... with no upward curve at all. The stick is dead.