The Guardian's Leo Hickman has added his thoughts to my earlier piece commenting on his call for climate bloggers to lose their anonymity. This, he believes, will create trust in what they are saying. Many readers have responded with thoughtful contributions, and in particular I'd echo Lucia's point about the nature of the problem being one of the public not trusting the scientists rather than the other way round, as Leo seems to think. Turning Tide also points out that anonymity of commenters does encourage readers to assess comments on the arguments made rather than any spurious authority of the writer.
I think though that there is a more important point to be made about anonymity. People on the other side of the global warming argument are very aggressive in their denunciation of those who question the mainstream position on global warming. Leo Hickman himself has noted* calls by Mark Lynas, Paul Krugman and James Hansen for climate "deniers" to be put on trial. Steve McIntyre has noted previously that several of his regular contributors are statistics post docs, who post anonymously for fear of reprisals.
A glance at the council of NERC, the body that funds most climate research in the UK, suggests that money for anyone questioning the global warming mainstream would be hard to come by. We might well also assume that no climatologist who questioned AGW would get a job at the Met Office while it was run by a deep green like Robert Napier. The scientific institutions in the UK are entirely politicised, to the extent that even the venerable Royal Society is entirely dependent on government money. There is no truly independent voice of science in the UK, just many different echoes of the official position. There are no private universities, as there are in America, where the odd sceptic might find a tenured position, that would offer the possibility of free expression of dissident thoughts. Here, scepticism is a one-way ticket to intellectual oblivion, with the Guardian cheering on from the sidelines.
*Leo discusses their position, but doesn't condemn them. While I don't think it's fair to criticise someone for what they haven't said, if Leo wishes to dissociate himself from the positions of Messrs Lynas, Krugman and Hansen, I am happy to clarify the point. If he wants to go further and call for the activists to be cleared out from NERC, or perhaps balanced by the appointment of some sceptics, I would welcome that too.