Well you surely don't need a degree in climatology to realise that plots of weather events should not be cherry picked in order to support one side of the argument. At one point, that was exactly what Soon points out. Now I would believe the mainstream climate scientists more if they specifically addressed the points that Soon (or any other 'climate sceptic' made). In my experience that is the telling thing in a number of these debates between scientists, who may have their interests to feather, and people who really want to get at the truth. Informed climate sceptics would love to debate with conventional climate scientists, but climate scientists generally avoid this by the trick of haughtily stating that he/she doesn't debate with climate deniers, and employing rhetorical tricks.
You don't escape being called a climate denier by being a climatologist. Just as you don't escape being called a statin denier if you have plenty of medical qualifications to debate the relative merits of statin drugs. There are a whole range of subjects like this.
What you do not seem to realise is that huge areas of science have adopted an overly defensive approach to defending their beliefs. I haven't followed the Bigfoot debate much, but you take an interest in it. Do you feel that conventional scientists take a dismissive approach to Bigfoot sightings? I guess you probably do, but don't you see that if you used the same type of arguments that you used against me, you would have to conclude that Bigfoot does not exist.
If a scientist with a Nobel Prize of any type came out in favour of the existence of Bigfoot, would you quibble over exactly which type of science he got his prize for? I think you would realise commonsensically that a man like that would have done some thinking and research before coming out with such a contrarian viewpoint.
The whole raison d'etre of Skeptiko (excluding the side issue of politics) is to explore areas of science dogma that appear to be false - focussing particularly on consciousness issues. If a piece of science is really well established - lets say that the earth is roughly spherical rather than flat, but flat earthers were vigorously asserting the contrary, I think plenty of scientists would be willing to debate the issue in public, and it would probably be the flat earthers that would avoid debate.
There are a long list of topics in which scientists are unwilling to debate - even at scientific conferences - such as the whole question as to whether Evolution by Natural Selection can possibly explain the genesis and diversification of life on this planet. However in this case, someone made an attempt to debate against ID scientists. This is how it turned out:
Interestingly the ID scientists seemed to counter just about everything that was thrown at them.
Assuming this is an assertion you have taken from those opposed to Soon, stop and think about it. It doesn't even deny that CO2 is a weak 'greenhouse gas', it tries to muddy the waters by mentioning micro-polutants, and other possible greenhouse gasses - it isn't an argument you could actually deploy in a head to head debate. We aren't spending squillions on removing anything other than CO2.
I have no knowledge of Dr Soon's finances, but suppose he has - if he has done his bit to prevent the world wasting trillions of dollars (literally) on low carbon energy, doesn't he deserve a million or two!
I certainly have not adopted my position on climate change because I am pro Trump, though one reason I support Trump, is that he has seen through the climate hysteria. I don't have any kids, but that doesn't stop me wanting the best for my nephew and niece and their kids. I don't want them to live in an era that has become dependent on a very unreliable source of energy, because in Britain that could endanger people's lives in a cold winter.
Getting back to science, glaciers have melted and grown throughout geological time. Greenland was called that because the explorers that first discovered it, found a green land. A few centuries back back, Britain was in the grip of a cold period when the river Thames famously froze so hard that people could run markets and fares on its surface (with fires to stay warm). What happened when that ended - the climate changed - for reasons that area little unclear. It was warmer before that period, and became warmer afterwards (obviously). The fact is that the climate is extremely complicated and its variation is governed by a whole series of cycles of different frequency.
I am very glad we seem to be moving on from the sterility of our initial debate.
I'll opt you into the PM debate I have had with several other forum members - please read that thread before responding - it contains a lot of information. As you read it, you will discover why I put the phrase "greenhouse gas" in quotes!
David