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The web is alive with idiotic commentary this week after the American Astronomical Society’s solar physics division heard three new studies, all pointing towards declining sunspot activity into the next decade.

But while the least professional journals (see the Financial Post link above) presented only the possibility that reduced solar energy could chill the planet, even sometimes-skeptical newspapers such as The Telegraph responded to the responsibility to include some scientific response confirming that a Grand Solar Minimum, even if one occurred, would not be sufficient to offset the effects and dangers of human-induced global warming.

For more complete looks at the goofy claims of an impending ice age, and more thoughtful presentations of the science debunking such a chill, check out Bad Astronomy, Peter Sinclair’s take on Climate Denial Crock of the Week or Joe Romm’s at ClimateProgress.

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Lawrence Solomon, the National Post’s champion of imagined climate change Deniers complained in a weekend column that Anna Maria Tremonti, host of the CBC radio show, The Current, was too hard on him and too soft on me in a series of interviews last week.

In this, Solomon reminds me of some PR clients I have had over the years, people who, in the midst of a problem of their own making complain about the questions reporters ask rather than accepting that they looked bad because they didn’t have good answers.

Solomon’s in a tough spot because nobody could gracefully answer the questions he was asked.

He wants to say that climate change isn’t happening, even when an overwhelming majority of the world’s best scientists say otherwise. He wants to call people like the UK astrophysicist Nigel Weiss “deniers,” when they respond that his work is a “slanderous fabrication.” And when Tremonti challenges him on these assertions, he blames her for treating him roughly.

Solomon should understand: all questions are hardball when you don’t know – or can’t stomach – the answers.

As for answers, Solomon demanded some from me in that same weekend column. He posed a series of questions that he wished Tremonti had asked, actually going so far as to attribute them to her in his presentation.

I have repeated the questions here verbatim, though I have replaced her name with his. Tremonti is too good and impartial reporter to have made the minor blunders or major ideological assumptions characterized in these questions. My answers follow.

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Climate Change itself, however, is as bad as ever

The National Post’s Denier-in-Chief Lawrence Solomon has weighed in again with an irrelevant and inaccurate celebration that, in the U.S. at least, people are becoming LESS concerned about climate change.

Of course, Solomon didn’t offer any actual evidence for this contention, other than vague references to unspecified public opinion polls. His strongest source was this: “Andrew Revkin, The New York Times reporter entrusted with the global warming scare beat, has for months lamented “the public’s waning interest in global warming.”

As for actual climate change science - apparently of little interest to Solomon or his readers - he offered no sources whatever. Instead, he repeated the denier talking points (“Not only has the globe not warmed over the last decade but the Arctic ice is returning, the Antarctic isn’t shrinking, polar bear populations aren’t diminishing, hurricanes aren’t becoming more extreme.”), ignoring such actual evidence as the new Nature article warning that Antarctic ice is, in fact, declining at historic rates, or the latest warning from the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center.