When 1 was 16 in 1964, a schoolmate told me the US, not the Viet Cong, was the power preventing a democratic outcome in Vietnam. I could not dispute his facts and felt frustrated at my own ignorance. I determined to study Vietnam and learn the truth, so the next time some damn commie lied about my country, I’d know how to answer and put him in his place! I studied, and what I learned turned me against the war. It appears that a scientist, formerly a climate change denier, experienced similar paradigm shift, while studying to disprove climate change. And the beauty of this is that the Koch Brothers funded the study!

A prominent physicist and skeptic of global warming spent two years trying to find out if mainstream climate scientists were wrong. In the end, he determined they were right: Temperatures really are rising rapidly.

The study of the world’s surface temperatures by Richard Muller was partially bankrolled by a foundation connected to global warming deniers. He pursued long-held skeptic theories in analyzing the data. He was spurred to action because of "Climategate," a British scandal involving hacked emails of scientists.

Yet he found that the land is 1.6 degrees warmer than in the 1950s. Those numbers from Muller, who works at the University of California, Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, match those by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA.

He said he went even further back, studying readings from Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. His ultimate finding of a warming world, to be presented at a conference Monday, is no different from what mainstream climate scientists have been saying for decades.

What’s different, and why everyone from opinion columnists to "The Daily Show" is paying attention is who is behind the study.

One-quarter of the $600,000 to do the research came from the Charles Koch Foundation, whose founder is a major funder of skeptic groups and the tea party. The Koch brothers, Charles and David, run a large privately held company involved in oil and other industries, producing sizable greenhouse gas emissions… [emphasis added]