Hockey stick graph

In economics, marketing, and dose–response relationships, a hockey stick graph is one in which the "blade" is near zero (hugging the floor) before the graph turns upward to a long nearly straight increasing section. By contrast, in climate science, the well-known hockey stick graph (global temperature) describing 1000 years of global or hemispheric temperature has the "handle" horizontal and "blade" turning upward. This difference of viewpoint is remarked on in a 2020 novel about climate change:

Insurance companies in a panic at last year's reports. Pay-outs at about one hundred billion USD a year now, going higher fast, as in hockey stick graph. Insurance companies insured by re-insurance. These now holding short end of stick (tall end of stick?).

— Kim Stanley Robinson, The Ministry for the Future: A Novel