--by Horatio Algeranon
We’ve heard conversations,
Of surface stations,
“Quite worthless, without reservations.”
“The tennis courts,
We must report,
Have made thermometers jump and snort.”
“The barbecues,
Have made the news,
The station managers have no clues.”
"Their AC units here and there,
Have heated surface station air,
But Hansen does not seem to care."
"And burning trash?
How very rash
The surface record’s quite a hash.”
“The definitive test?
Use only 'The BEST,'
You may as well just chuck the rest.”
So the 'BEST' team sat,
And did just that,
And warming "skeptics" gasped “Oh, drat!”
“The result's the same,
How very lame,
Now, what ever shall we blame?”
Of surface stations,
“Quite worthless, without reservations.”
“The tennis courts,
We must report,
Have made thermometers jump and snort.”
“The barbecues,
Have made the news,
The station managers have no clues.”
"Their AC units here and there,
Have heated surface station air,
But Hansen does not seem to care."
"And burning trash?
How very rash
The surface record’s quite a hash.”
“The definitive test?
Use only 'The BEST,'
You may as well just chuck the rest.”
So the 'BEST' team sat,
And did just that,
And warming "skeptics" gasped “Oh, drat!”
“The result's the same,
How very lame,
Now, what ever shall we blame?”
The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature team have just reported the results to their independent study of the land surface temperature record (which they have most humbly dubbed "BEST"). The results basically confirm what has previously been reported by climate scientists at NASA, NOAA and HadCRU (surprise!)
And the Berkeley team has also confirmed something else that other scientists (eg, at NOAA) had found: "poor [surface weather] station quality in the United States does not unduly bias estimates of land surface average monthly temperature trends" (from "Earth Atmospheric Land Surface Temperature and Station Quality in the United States", by Muller et al)
The latter flatly contradicts the claims that some global warming naysayers have made:
- that the historical US surface temperature record has been so "contaminated" (by the warming effects of barbecues, blacktop, air conditioners etc) that it is unreliable if not worthless and
- that much (if not most) of the warming trend documented by scientists is not real but simply an artifact of poor surface [weather] station quality.
Horatio originally posted the above ditty in Nov, 2007, but some things change very little over time (like the unsupported -- and false! -- claims of climate "skeptics") and only two minor modifications were required: "Use only 'The Best' " (in the original) was changed to "Use only 'The BEST' " (all caps!) and "John V. sat" was changed to "The 'BEST' team sat". That's it!
John V = John Van Vliet did a preiliminary analysis several years ago (OpenTemp.org "An Open Analysis of the Historical Temperature Record"), which basically confirmed the results of NASA GISTEMP (James Hansen et. al.) for the US Lower 48.
