Read here. As BEST's Richard Muller woos a skeptical co-author with sweet nothings about romantic number crunching, he then proceeds to provide an interview that has him denouncing his own WSJ opinion piece regarding the preliminary BEST global temperature findings. Needless to say, the BEST 'PR' campaign has become a self-immolation fiasco. Embarrassing may be an understatement.
In the meantime, sober minded individuals are carefully scrutinizing the BEST global temperature science and finding it deficient and unimpressive. Then there is the analysis by the renowned Steve McIntyre that may help explain the self-immolation.
Skeptic McIntyre's analysis summary, in a nutshell: late 20th century warming has happened and satellite measurement remains superior to any surface temperature reconstruction efforts, whether performed by BEST or GISS or CRU.
"In the 1980s, John Christy and Roy Spencer revolutionized the measurement of temperature data through satellite measurement of oxygen radiance in the atmosphere. This accomplishment sidestepped the intractable problems of creating (what I’ll call) a “temperature reconstruction” from surface data known to be systemically contaminated (in unknown amounts) by urbanization, land use changes, station location changes, measurement changes, station discontinuities etc..."
"If one takes the view that satellite trends provide our most accurate present knowledge of surface trends, then one has to conclude that the BEST methodological innovations (praised by realclimate) actually provide a worse estimate of surface trends than even CRU.
In my opinion, it is highly legitimate (or as at least a null hypothesis) to place greatest weight on satellite data and presume that the higher trends in CRU and BEST arise from combinations of urbanization, changed land use, station quality, Mennian methodology etc.
It seems to me that there is a high onus on anyone arguing in favor of a temperature reconstruction from surface station data (be it CRU or BEST) to demonstrate why this data with all its known problems should be preferred to the satellite data. This is not done in the BEST articles."
It would appear the warm cinders of BEST are headed towards the 'ashbin of climate history' as a result of Muller's hurried and statistically lame temperature reconstructions, speeded along by the amazing PR self-immolation.
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