The Washington Post – who giddily supported the election of Barack Obama – attempts this rather lame fact check on Rick Perry’s answer on global warming, bascially calling him a liar. The writer Glenn Kessler is a noted Obama supporter and supported his election for President and of course a registered democrat.

And he’s wrong saying that there are not a substantial number of scientists who have been found to manipulated global warming data, as well as a substantial number of scientists who disagree the finding of man-made global warming. He uses as his rebuttal blog post claims by Think Progress, Media Matters and even the Daily Kos.

The fact is that more than 15,000 scientists have come forward in the last 5 years to voice questions over global warming being caused by man. One in fact is one of the formost authorites, in fact one William M. Gray, Professor Emeritus and head of The Tropical Meteorology Project, Department of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University, wrote:

“This small warming is likely a result of the natural alterations in global ocean currents which are driven by ocean salinity variations. Ocean circulation variations are as yet little understood. Human kind has little or nothing to do with the recent temperature changes. We are not that influential.” “I am of the opinion that [global warming] is one of the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated on the American people.” “So many people have a vested interest in this global-warming thing—all these big labs and research and stuff. The idea is to frighten the public, to get money to study it more.”

More?

William Happer, physicist specializing in optics and spectroscopy, Princeton University:

“All the evidence I see is that the current warming of the climate is just like past warmings. In fact, it’s not as much as past warmings yet, and it probably has little to do with carbon dioxide, just like past warmings had little to do with carbon dioxide”

William Kininmonth, meteorologist, former Australian delegate to World Meteorological Organization Commission for Climatology:

“There has been a real climate change over the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries that can be attributed to natural phenomena. Natural variability of the climate system has been underestimated by IPCC and has, to now, dominated human influences.”

David Legates, associate professor of geography and director of the Center for Climatic Research, University of Delaware:

“About half of the warming during the 20th century occurred prior to the 1940s, and natural variability accounts for all or nearly all of the warming.”

“Many records reveal that the 20th century is likely not the warmest nor a uniquely extreme climatic period of the last millennium, although it is clear that human activity has significantly impacted some local environments.”

Tad Murty, oceanographer; adjunct professor, Departments of Civil Engineering and Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa:

[Global warming] “is the biggest scientific hoax being perpetrated on humanity. There is no global warming due to human anthropogenic activities. The atmosphere hasn’t changed much in 280 million years, and there have always been cycles of warming and cooling. The Cretaceous period was the warmest on earth. You could have grown tomatoes at the North Pole”

Tim Patterson, Pubs paleoclimatologist and Professor of Geology at Carleton University in Canada:

“There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth’s temperature over this [geologic] time frame. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years. On the basis of this evidence, how could anyone still believe that the recent relatively small increase in CO2 levels would be the major cause of the past century’s modest warming?”

Ian Plimer,Pubs Professor emeritus of Mining Geology, The University of Adelaide:
“Natural climate changes occur unrelated to carbon dioxide contents. We’ve had many, many times in the recent past where we’ve rapidly gone into a greenhouse and the carbon dioxide content has been far, far lower than the current carbon dioxide content. It was only 1,100 years ago where Greenland was populated. It was called Greenland because it was green. There were crops, there were cattle there. … We only have to have one volcano burping and we have changed the whole planetary climate… It looks as if carbon dioxide actually follows climate change rather than drives it”.

Tom Segalstad, head of the Geology Museum at the University of Oslo:

“The IPCC’s temperature curve (the so-called ‘hockey stick’ curve) must be in error, because the Medieval warm period (the “Climate Optimum”) and the Little Ice Age both are absent from their curve, on which the IPCC bases its future projections and recommended mitigation. All measurements of solar luminosity and 14C isotopes show that there is at present an increasing solar radiation which gives a warmer climate (Willson, R.C & Hudson, H.S. 1991: The Sun’s luminosity over a complete solar cycle. Nature 351, 42-44; and Coffey, H.E., Erwin, E.H. & Hanchett, C.D.: Solar databases for global change models. www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/SOLAR/solarda3.html). Warmer climate was previously perceived as an optimum climate and not catastrophic. … On a wet basis the Earth’s atmosphere consists by mass of ~73.5% nitrogen, ~22.5% oxygen, ~2.7% water, and ~1.25% argon. CO2 in air is in minimal amount, ~0.05% by mass, and with minimal capacity (~2%) to influence the “Greenhouse Effect” compared to water vapor”

Nicola Scafetta, Pubs research scientist in the physics department at Duke University, wrote a booklet proposing a phenomenological theory of climate change based on the physical properties of the data. Scafetta describes his conclusions writing:

“At least 60% of the warming of the Earth observed since 1970 appears to be induced by natural cycles which are present in the solar system. A climatic stabilization or cooling until 2030–2040 is forecast by the phenomenological model.”

Nir Shaviv, Pubs astrophysicist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem:

“[T]he truth is probably somewhere in between [the common view and that of skeptics], with natural causes probably being more important over the past century, whereas anthropogenic causes will probably be more dominant over the next century. … [A]bout 2/3′s (give or take a third or so) of the warming [over the past century] should be attributed to increased solar activity and the remaining to anthropogenic causes.

“The climatic variability attributable to solar activity is larger than could be expected from the typical 0.1% changes in the solar irradiance observed over the decadal to centennial time scale [Beer et al., 2000; Soon et al., 2000]. … Over the solar cycle, the interplanetary magnetic field varies considerably, such that the amount of tropospheric ionization changes by typically 5%. Svensmark [1998, 2000], Marsh and Svensmark [2000a] as well as Palle Bago and Butler [2000] have shown that the variations in the amount of low altitude cloud cover (LACC) nicely correlate with the cosmic ray flux (CRF) reaching Earth over two decades. A recent analysis has shown that the latitudinal variations of the LACC are proportional to the latitudinal dependence of the low altitude ion concentrations [Usoskin et al., 2004].”

“Recent theoretical and experimental studies (Dickenson, 1975; Harrison and Aplin, 2001; Eichkorn et al., 2002; Yu, 2002; Tinsley and Yu, 2003) relate the CRF to the formation of charged aerosols, which could serve as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN), as demonstrated independently by ground-based and airborne experiments (Harrison and Aplin, 2001; Eichkorn et al., 2002).

Fred Singer, Pubs Professor emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia:

“The greenhouse effect is real. However, the effect is minute, insignificant, and very difficult to detect.” “It’s not automatically true that warming is bad, I happen to believe that warming is good, and so do many economists.”

“The current warming cycle is not unusual. … The Earth consistently goes through a climate cycle marked by alternating warmer and cooler periods over 1,500 years (plus or minus 500 years).” “When the sun is less active, its solar wind weakens and provides less shielding for the Earth from the cosmic rays that bounce around space.” “We have a number of shorter-term proxies (cave stalagmites, tree rings from trees both living and buried, boreholes and a wide variety of other temperature proxies) that testify to the global nature of the 1,500- year climate cycles. … Models that posit a human impact on the climate must better take this evidence into account before any conclusions are drawn regarding humanity’s ability to prevent future climate change.”

“The IPCC summary report presents selected facts and omits important information. The summary (correctly) reports that climate has warmed by 0.3 °C to 0.6 °C in the last 100 years, but does not mention that there has been little warming if any (depending on whose compilation is used) in the last 50 years, during which time some 80% of greenhouse gases were added to the atmosphere. … The summary does not make it explicit that the IPCC time scale for warming has now been stretched out — doubled, in fact, from 2050 to 2100 — making any possible impact less dramatic. The summary also does not mention an authoritative U.S. government statement; it quotes a global warming as low as 0.5 °C by 2100 — only half of the IPCC’s lowest 1995 prediction.”

Willie Soon, astrophysicist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics:

“[T]here’s increasingly strong evidence that previous research conclusions, including those of the United Nations and the United States government concerning 20th century warming, may have been biased by underestimation of natural climate variations. The bottom line is that if these variations are indeed proven true, then, yes, natural climate fluctuations could be a dominant factor in the recent warming. In other words, natural factors could be more important than previously assumed.”

Roy Spencer, principal research scientist, University of Alabama in Huntsville:

“I predict that in the coming years, there will be a growing realization among the global warming research community that most of the climate change we have observed is natural, and that mankind’s role is relatively minor”.

“It has been calculated theoretically that, if there are no other changes in the climate system, a doubling of the atmospheric CO2 concentration would cause less than 1 deg C of surface warming (about 1 deg. F). This is NOT a controversial statement…it is well understood by climate scientists. (As of 2008, we were about 40% to 45% of the way toward a doubling of atmospheric CO2.) BUT…everything else in the climate system probably WON’T stay the same! For instance, clouds, water vapor, and precipitation systems can all be expected to respond to the warming tendency in some way, which could either amplify or reduce the manmade warming.”

“A confusion between forcing and feedback (loosely speaking, cause and effect) when observing cloud behavior has led to the illusion of a sensitive climate system, when in fact our best satellite observations (when carefully and properly interpreted) suggest an IN-sensitive climate system… Finally, if the climate system is insensitive, this means that the extra carbon dioxide we pump into the atmosphere is not enough to cause the observed warming over the last 100 years — some natural mechanism must be involved … my favorite candidate: the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.”

Philip Stott, professor emeritus of biogeography at the University of London:
“…the myth is starting to implode. … Serious new research at The Max Planck Society has indicated that the sun is a far more significant factor…”

Henrik Svensmark, Pubs Danish National Space Center:
“Our team … has discovered that the relatively few cosmic rays that reach sea-level play a big part in the everyday weather. They help to make low-level clouds, which largely regulate the Earth’s surface temperature. During the 20th Century the influx of cosmic rays decreased and the resulting reduction of cloudiness allowed the world to warm up. … most of the warming during the 20th Century can be explained by a reduction in low cloud cover.”

We find that the observed variation of 3–4% of the global cloud cover during the recent solar cycle is strongly correlated with the cosmic ray flux. … The effect is larger at higher latitudes in agreement with the shielding effect of the Earth’s magnetic field on high-energy charged particles.

Variations in the cosmic-ray influx due to solar magnetic activity account well for climatic fluctuations on decadal, centennial and millennial timescales … to reconcile abundant indications of the Sun’s influence on climate (e.g. Herschel 1801, Eddy 1976, Friis-Christenen 1997) with the small 0.1% variations in the solar cycle measured by satellites. … The connection offers a mechanism for solar-driven climate change much more powerful than changes in solar irradiance.[57]

Jan Veizer, Pubs environmental geochemist, Professor Emeritus from University of Ottawa:

“At this stage, two scenarios of potential human impact on climate appear feasible: (1) the standard IPCC model …, and (2) the alternative model that argues for celestial phenomena as the principal climate driver. … Models and empirical observations are both indispensable tools of science, yet when discrepancies arise, observations should carry greater weight than theory. If so, the multitude of empirical observations favours celestial phenomena as the most important driver of terrestrial climate on most time scales, but time will be the final judge.”

As to the manipulation of data to support GW, Perry is again right on target. Lest Mr. Keesler chooses to ignore the recent launch of an investigation into the scientist who forged data on polar bears trapped on ice float.

Mr. Keesler needs to fact check himself.