One does not need to be a climate sceptic to agree vigorously with Anthony Cox. I happen to be a professional scientist with a lifelong career in scientific research and its management. I do accept I am not qualified to debate with climate scientists the complex science of climate change as related to carbon dioxide emissions. That does not mean I am certain they are right in every respect. And I am always happy to refer to works from the likes of Roy Spencer and Ian Plimer to get other views. The notion that I should be prevented from reading of such works in the media by some kind of authority set up to protect me is anathema.

But there is much more to my objection. The key issue for Australia right now is not the science itself. It is: how certain of the rate of climate change does one need to be before introducing the kind of measures our government is taking? And that question is intimately tied up with another: what are the real prospects that such measures will achieve their objectives and at what cost? These are truly political questions on which views will necessarily differ, often along politically ideological lines.

I can only conclude that, if Finkelstein's position is as reported by Cox, then Finkelstein does not understand the matters at hand.

Cunningly written but generally nonsensical article, to be expected from the climate sceptics.

One of the statements is not nonsense: "Equality of exposure to ideas and transparency of information are the pillars of any free society.' This is irrefutable. But News Limited violates this principle time and again by censoring out information that differs from their world view. Climate change is the most glaring recent example. They censor out the 90% of peer reviewed science supporting climate change action and substitute it with the non-scientific views of maniacs like Monckton and sceptic organizations such as Lavoisier Inst. and the author's own group.

The only way to a balanced free news media is to legislate to make media companies a special case, to be free of corporate bias - independent boards and limits on the percentage of shares held by any entity or person. Under such legislation News Limited would be broken up and Rhinehart would not be allowed to have anywhere near 15% shareholding of Fairfax or a seat on the board.

Finkelstein's proposed single government funded independent media regulator is the other essential prerequisite to banish coruption and bias from the news media.

It would be nice if all we read in the press was produced by people acting with competence and honesty. Whether any sort of authority can ensure this is doubtful.

On the subject of competence and honesty, it's worth examining Cox's article. Cox writes:

"But if all your peers accept that AGW is real aren't they all going to reject any view which diverges from the consensus?

This seems to be the case with great acrimony attaching to any non-consensus view. Spencer and Braswell found this out when their 2011 paper showing climate sensitivity was much less than the computer models predicted provoked a resignation by the editor of the journal which published their paper."

Cox seems to have no interest in ascertaining whether this was a result of the journal having incompetently published a rotten paper, or whether this was an example of "reject[ing] any view which diverges from the consensus". He seems to be suggesting the latter, if so this makes his article rather a bad example of competence and honesty.

Cox also says: "The fact that Spencer and Braswell based their paper on observations was overlooked by most of the critics." You mean other papers, which reach different conclusions, don't? Anyway, the following criticism certainly doesn't overlook this fact - it deals with how the data is analysed:
http://bbickmore.wordpress.com/2011/07/26/just-put-the-model-down-roy/

Then he refers to one of Delingpole's writings which quoted a rather unclear email about possible future actions (tryihg to ensure two papers were left out of the IPCC process) without saying what eventually was done, how it was done, etc. In fact the emails did stimulate a number of investigations. A competent and honest author would tell us of the outcome of them. (In fact, so far as I have been able to ascertain, in regard to this accusation, there is nothing worth telling).

Roses1. Were you a regular contributor to Pravda a few decades ago? Your attitude terrifies me. What it comes to is that any media outlet that does not agree with you and your fellows 'thinkers' such as Manne or Brown should be broken up,emasculated and controlled by a governmental organ so that only ABC attitudes get a show. Above all else you and notably Finklestein claim supperiority over the great unwashed masses who are unable to think. You are totally undemocratic.
I presume that when the Finklesteinians have their way that organs such as OLO will have to shut down.

Oh dear Anthony, you trot out the good old ‘It does not matter to him that the peer review system has systemic corruption as shown by the Climate-gate emails’.

Never mind the entire Climate-gate email saga was shown, by three independent investigations, to be untrue.

As someone working in a marine science field, I can see the evidence of ‘Climate Change’ and yes human impacts are a major factor.

Please tell me what qualifications in climate science you have and your justification for such a fervent stance on scepticism against the real scientific evidence that is growing exponentially regarding this growing issue? Oh that’s right, you are a lawyer, makes sense, you obviously study climate science as part of your legal duties, or do you?

Tombee, I agree to some extent with what you state, for me the precautionary approach is gold. Whether or not the current federal policies are an effective approach is yet to be seen. As the Chinese proverb states 'a thousand mile journey starts with but one step'.

Roses1; if you don't like Murdoch, read Fairfax; if you don't like either start your own blog. The point is Finkelstein will make all those options harder.

Jeremy; way to go: "rotten paper". Could you elaborate? In regard to your link to Bickmore perhaps you would care to read Spencer's wiping the floor with him here:

http://www.drroyspencer.com/2011/09/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-my-initial-comments-on-the-new-dessler-2011-study/#comment-24269

Spencer specifically examines the fact that Dessler and other pro-AGW views do not base their conclusions on observations but modelling.

As for the emails, how anyone could claim that the 2 batches released do not show an egregious lack of candour, transparency and honesty is astounding; a good analysis of the 1st batch is by Dr Costella:

http://assassinationscience.com/climategate/

A good preliminary analysis of the 2nd batch by another scientist, Pointman:

http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2011/11/22/crash-post-climategate-mk-2/

The only illegality to so far come out of the email scandal is of course the FOI finding against the University of East Anglia.