Robust and heated start as readers speak out

MORE than 310 climate change questions have been posted - and more than 11,000 votes cast - in a robust online forum prompted by The Sunday Age's Climate Agenda. The agenda encourages people to ask questions on climate change and to vote for others' questions they want answered. The Sunday Age has committed to reporting on the 10 most popular questions.

In its first week, the Climate Agenda attracted significantly more hits on OurSay.org than any other forum run by the participatory democracy organisation. Voting ends on September 2.

One question, by Jason Fong, has led from the start. It streaked ahead in the days after climate change sceptic and Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt highlighted it and encouraged readers of his blog to ''vote here'', providing a link to the OurSay forum.
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Last night, the question had attracted more than 4780 votes, compared with the next most popular question, from Simon James, about scientific uncertainty around the magnitude of future global warming, and what he says is the reluctance of the Fairfax Media to investigate it. Fairfax is the owner of The Sunday Age.

Jack Knox: Science deprived of a voice by politics of silence

An Environment Canada report leaked to Canwest last year showed science reporting dried up after Ottawa introduced its complicated, cumbersome communications strategy in 2007. "Media coverage of climate change science, our most high-profile issue, has been reduced by over 80 per cent," it said. The Big Brotherishness has become so silly that, as the Ottawa Citizen noted, a scientist needed clearance from political staff before discussing a report on flooding that occurred in northern Canada 13,000 years ago.

"Scientists are telling me 'We can't talk to the press and we can't talk to MPs,' " Hetherington said this week. "They can't get their message out."