The tired, old climate-change deniers who keep trying to get themselves taken seriously have launched another petition claiming that “having assessed the relevant scientific evidence, (they) do not find convincing support for the hypothesis that human emissions of carbon dioxide are causing, or will in the foreseeable future cause, dangerous global warming.”

This new laundry list of paid skeptics and ideologues is yet another instalment in the periodic petition process that has confused the climate conversation since Dr. S. Fred Singer launched the first such stunt in 1992. In fact, usual suspects such as Singer, Richard Lindzen, Patrick Michaels and Sherwood Idso are on both lists.

Connoisseurs will recognize more names, perennial Canadian deniers like Tim Patterson and Tim Ball, both alumni of an evolving series of oil-backed astroturf groups including the Friends of Science and the Natural Resources Stewardship Project. The oily lobbyist and former APCO Worldwide PR guy Tom Harris, who was prominent in both of those organizations, is also the “brains” behind this effort.

In an article titled the Sad Demise of On-Line Opinion, Australian Clive Hamilton, writes:

The editors' appeal to the principles of good journalism to defend the publication of denialist anti-science, but have failed their readers by breaking another tenet of journalistic ethics. The lead author of 'The UN climate change numbers hoax", Tom Harris, is described by On Line Opinion at the end of the article as "an Ottawa-based mechanical engineer and Executive Director of the International Climate Science Coalition'.

The top link on the energy industry lobby site, International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC), points to another promoter of scientific doubt, a site called Climate Debate Daily (CDD).

According to the Times Online, the CDD "rounds up news and gives equal voice to the dissenters and the activists and as such is a great place to go for varying interpretations of the latest happenings."

This is rubbish or, in the deathless prose of one of CDD's editor's "pluperfect rubbish." CDD clearly exists not to resolve the "debate" about global warming, but to encourage the notion that a legitimate argument still exists