A few days ago, I wrote about sattelite temperature measurement:
Satellite temperature measurement makes immensely more sense – it has full coverage (except for the poles) and is not subject to local biases. Can anyone name one single reason why the scientific community does not use the satellite temps as the standard EXCEPT that the "answer" (ie lower temperature increases) is not the one they want? Consider the parallel example of measurement of arctic ice area. My sense is that before satellites, we got some measurements of arctic ice extent from fixed observation stations and ship reports, but these were spotty and unreliable. Now satellites make this measurement consistent and complete. Would anyone argue to ignore the satellite data for spotty surface observations? No, but this is exactly what the entire climate community seems to do for temperature.
Today in the Washington Post, Gavin Schmidt of NASA is pushing his GISS numbers that 2007 was really hot — a finding only his numbers support, since every other land and space-based temperature rollup for the earth shows lower numbers than his do. As Tom Nelson points out, the Washington Post goes along with Schmidt in only using numbers from this one, flawed, surface temperature rollup and never mentions the much lower numbers coming from satellites.
But here is the real irony — does anyone else find it hilarious that #1 person trying to defend flawed surface measurement against satellite measurement is the head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at NASA?