Need to turn this into a rebuttal, but here's the blog post:

The BEST Summary

I think it would be fair to point out that there was originally some suspicion that Muller, who had taken a somewhat skeptical maverick approach towards trusting the temperature data, would somehow "arrange" that the global-warming effect would be vitiated. But it should be pointed out that the BEST team was balanced by the inclusion of others well-known in the warming and energy debate: Robert Rohde, Judith Curry and Art Rosenfeld; and the methodology of data analysis was defined prior to the processing of the data.

Rub some salt into the wound.

www.skepticalscience.com/pics/GISS_RSS_UAH_Land_ONLY.xlsx

Here you can find annual averages for GISS, UAH and RSS land-only series. I adjusted them to the 1981-2010 baseline. I can provide you with the R code to do this if it would help for future work (same with for decadal averages etc...

Is that how you spell schizophrenic?

I'd also indent the Muller quote.

So Dana, post this as soon as you're ready.

neal - good point, will add that.

Robert - thanks, will have a look at that data tonight.

John - I linked the short URL to the rebuttal, which I'll put together quickly right now.

Hi Dana,

Sweet.  Just three observations:

1) " The BEST results are also approximately consistent with the amount of land-only surface warming estimated by satellite data as analyzed by Fu et al., Vinnikov & Grody (V&G), and Zou et al."

Make it clear that the satellites not the gold standard or "ground" truth, that they too have issues (maybe link to Glenn's recent post).

2) It was not immediately apparent that you were referring to the scaled satellite data (i.e., TLT data adjusted to represent surface temepratures) in the para between Fig 3 and Fig. 4.  I only later saw the explanation in the caption for Fig. 4.  So maybe consider noting that in the body text instead of in the caption or both.

3) "The BEST results have certainly given us an insight into who the true skeptics are."

I'd be cautious here.  I do not think that we should sign off on the BEST results-- some might certainly interpret your statement that way and accuse us of being unskeptical.  Hansen and Jones have rightly said that they are waiting to see the papers in print before commenting in detail (or something along those lines).  I agree with them, the findings could change quite a bit by the time the papers appear in print, assuming that they make it that far.  We do not wish to create the impression that we are signing off on their paper b/c they mostly agree with our point of view and mainstream science. 

It is my impression that this whole fiasco has not shown who the true skeptics are as much as highlighted the logical fallacies, contradictions and inconsistencies in the arguments used by "skeptics" and those in denial, not to mention their cherry-picking and distortion and misrepresentation of the BEST data and papers.  In short, it has once again highlighted their trickery, disingenuity, and their lack of ethics and honor.

Yeah I meant the reactions to BEST have shown who the skeptics are, not the results themselves.  Will clarify that, and implement your other two suggestions.

Good stuff!

Phew, glad that's over with. Nice work Bro!

Whoops, forgot thumbs up.