You linked to the "response from the petition organizers", and you got absolutely no background on who is behind all this. I didn't find any provenance for this enterprise either when I looked. No address, no organization name, sponsors, nada. The petition website is quite obscure as to who is responsible. It is deliberately vague and misleading. All you get is a PO Box in La Jolla to mail it off to.

This should have set off alarm bells for you just as it did for me, after all, these guys might just be discrediting your whole position, through no fault of your own or of your cause. I posted a suggestion that Zoners Google it and read the sites listed and make their own mind up. Your assessment: "Doesn't matter, really." You then move on to your usual condemnation of AGW supporter "Ad hominem cracks and sneering condescension...".

The Wiki site you gave is at least open for inspection and verification, but that's not what we are concerned about, is it? It's the legitimacy of THIS petition, because that's how it was presented to us, as a mass testimonial from the scientific community which supposedly challenges the consensus position claimed by the AGW supporters.

This list may or not be bogus, but it certainly is suspicious and it certainly can't be accepted at face value. What if Arrell had posted that dozens of respected academic organizations had endorsed AGW and then not bothered to list even one name so we could look them up and verify for ourselves what they had to say about it?

You're right, this is no longer about the data, particularly since none of us here is qualified to evaluate climatological research. It's about politics and propaganda, and S's little button-pushing bombshell is a prime example of that. It does not hold up under scrutiny, which by itself does not reflect on AGW either way, but it does speak volumes for S. And it also speaks volumes about your running interference and cover for him, and for diverting the discussion from the legitimacy of the document introduced as evidence and onto the political motives of the participants instead. THAT testimony has already been delivered, ad nauseam, and you are quite familiar with my opinion of it.

You know, the really ironic aspect of this for me is that I am starting to have second thoughts about AGW myself, I still lean to that position because it seems so self-evident that we can't alter atmospheric chemistry on a global scale without expecting some consequences. But perhaps the effects have been exaggerated, misinterpreted, or are totally overwhelmed by natural variations. Who knows? But when I run into something like this, I realize that the "other side" simply cannot be trusted.