I'll back Sharon Beder's academic and scientific credentials over the author's spurious snivelling anytime. What are his qualifications? How many examples of corporate/ industry misbehaviour has he carefully researched and published?
Cambo

The author says "Ms Beder, whose work on climate has never appeared in a peer-reviewed journal ... "

I don't recall Ms Beder's aritcle exactly, but the general criticism of Senator Fielding, that he seeks to find out about climate change by attending a conference devoted to putting a particular point of view, can be made by anyone, it doesn't need a climate scientist.

If it comes to that, why do I keep hearing the same name (Willie Soon) put forward as a serious scientist who challenge the consensus climate change science? Aren't there any others? And when I do keep hearing the same name, why isn't it a climate scientist (or, for example, an atmospheric physicist), rather than an astrophysicist?

You both have the same problem , you have mistaken Religion ALP styled for Science .

Hooray for Sharon?

There are many reasons why.

One was because she published a book titled Global Spin. A book which exposes the activities of the right-wing think tanks in creating the "news" and public opinion.

Another is because she is associated with this group of people, whose function is to expose and question the 24/7 wall to wall edifice of government and corporate lies that now dominate the media (and always did for that matter).

1. http://www.medialens.org

A different point. Has anyone noticed the puritannical censorship code which limits some terms that can be used in making postings?

Yesterday I tried to use a word which was made up of these letters.
wa nk er

I was censored for using a profanity.

Let’s just face facts. The Climate Change movement is simply a full frontal attack on Christianity. It works on the proposition that Almighty God is incompetent, that men are infallible, and that we as a collective human race, are in control.

It does seriously ignore the fact that in China there are over 1.5 billion people and something like the same on the Indian subcontinent. These three billion people are about as likely to submit to discipline from us, as the moon is made of green cheese. The solution, short of a nuking of both China and India, is to persuade them that the world does not owe them a living, it owes us one. This also is unlikely, so we have liberal academics attacking one man in the Parliament of the Commonwealth who is doing his job properly and finding out all he can about climate change.

One of the immutable laws of nature, is that populations expand in proportion to the available food supply. As a rule, we get plagues of rats from time to time. In nature this leads to a plague of cats, and when the cats get on top of rat numbers, they starve to death and the population stabilizes. The same goes for all species. The top predator in the food chain, is the human being. By science we have developed the ability to feed an enormous population. When the world was only about three billion there was widespread fear of food shortages. It is now six billion, and the only shortages are man made, not physical. Carbon is an essential element in both human beings and food.

We have intellectual problems accepting that every human being has a soul. The tendency to regard us as simply a commodity, is un-Christian. We all make CO2 every day. Should we be destroyed for that? Science and Christianity are not incompatible. Science makes for a quality of life, unbelievably better than it was two thousand years ago. Much science is done by Christians. It is okay to be a scientist and a Christian

Mr Bast has egg on his face calling someone a lightweight while trumpeting his think tank as "among the nation's best known and highly regarded". The Heartland Institute isn't among the USA's elite by any means, exhibited by his absence from citation rankings. They are a fringe group, no more. Mr Bast trying to throw his lot in with other conservative and libertarian groups is a dirty trick to pretend they share his views.
Source: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3322

He makes it even worse by sticking up for Willie Soon. After Dr Soon got his flagship denialism paper published in Climate Research half the editorial board resigned and the managing director of the company acknowledged they let it slip through by accident. The article itself was gimped by hideous scientific oversights (if you don't believe me have a read of the outraged scientists who he misinterpreted in his citations) and when it was repeated with a decent methodology the results totally supported extreme climate change.
Sources:http://www.sgr.org.uk/climate/StormyTimes_NL28.htm
http://www.int-res.com/articles/misc/CREditorial.pdf

His claims about the number of astrophysicists supporting denialism are probably as bogus as his earlier research, which had dozens of scientists say they didn't belong on his list of denialists (http://www.desmogblog.com/500-scientists-with-documented-doubts-about-the-heartland-institute).

If you want to talk about support for anthropogenic climate change, let's talk about how no national or international scientific organisation endorses his brand of denialism. Don't you think that if there was any merit to his claims that at least one national scientific organisation would support them? Just one out of the hundreds? Guess what: none do.

His claim that global warming being a trick to increase government power is laughable. Other one liners courtesy of the Heartland Institute: "A modest amount of global warming, should it occur, would be beneficial to the natural world and to human civilization." and "The best strategy to pursue is one of 'no regrets'."

Quick tip, Joseph: as the CEO of a think tank, you should know that people don't share "theses", they share beliefs or accept theories