Re: Climate-change sceptics
Description of the Doran 2009 paper that surveyed 3146 Earth scientists is here:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientific-consensus-intermediate.htm
To the question "Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?", 82% answered yes. Breaking down the yes's and no's into levels of expertise found that the no's were coming from those scientists with the least expertise. 77 is the number of those 3146 earth scientists who actually publish research on climate change. Of those 75 answered yes (97.5%).
Some climate skeptics would have people believe there is a 50/50 split among scientists on the issue, but really there isn't. Even many skeptics would answer yes.
"Do you want to know why I believe man-made global warming is a hoax? (1) If the science behind it is real, then why do the scientists refuse to follow the scientific method and make their data available and results reproducible? (2) If the science behind it is real, then why do the scientists who promote refuse to have an open, honest debate with those scientists who do not believe? If you are right, what do you have to lose? Science isn't the legal system where you have the right to remain silent. (3) If the science behind it is real, then why do the scientists work hard to avoid Freedom of Information laws."
Scientists are human too. Some climate scientists were turned off by character attacks on themselves, their peers and their field and as a result became hostile and resistant to cooperating with skeptics out of a personal dislike for them. That of course made them look bad in the long run as there is a string of events where they should have cooperated and shared data.
In any case the fundamental science behind man-made global warming is reproducible and available. In fact as a result of the extra demands and scrutiny of climate science there's probably more publicly accessible data available on the internet for climate science than any other scientific field. As to individual scientist behaviors, I would have to see evidence that other fields would behave differently in the same situation to think things were awry. I note that some skeptical scientists have refused or ignored requests to supply code or data for their own claims. It happens and it's because scientists are human and not perfect.
In other fields I can well imagine individual biologists dismissing and refusing to cooperate with creationists for example and ending up getting into a sticky situation where they are labelled anti-scientific for not sharing data. Indeed in particular to one of your points about debate, professor Dawkins has said he won't debate creationists because it's a waste of time, which of course makes him look bad in respect to your point and it could be argued he isn't engaging in necessary debate. I think scientists tend to expect scientific debate to occur in the traditional place in the peer reviewed literature, so the burden is on skeptics to publish their arguments. On the otherhand it would be nice to have written debates on the internet, but as this is a new idea I can't really condemn scientists for not adopting it already.
You ask: "Why is that these scientists ONLY talk about the Arctic and never talk about the Antarctic?"
The significance of the changes that are occurring in the arctic are far greater than what is happening in the Antarctic. Arctic sea ice decline has been much faster and greater than Antarctic sea ice gain. Plus the milestone of zero arctic sea ice beckons which is a step change that could affect the whole arctic climate and weather. There is no such imminent milestone with Antarctic sea ice.
"Did you know that most of the melting in the Arctic is unrelated to temperature but to ocean currents and wind?"
The decline in sea ice is very much related to temperature. The annual cycle of arctic sea ice has always followed temperature: shrinking in the summer and growing in the winter. There's a reason why the minimum occurs in early September, it's because that's when the water temperatures peak. The 2012 storms contributed to the record low, but even without it there still would have been a record. It was already going that way. Storms are not independent from temperature anyway. Why are we only just hearing about storms smashing the ice this year? As the arctic warms and more open water forms in summer there will be more evaporation and probably more and even bigger storms than in 2012. In addition the thinner ice will be more easily smashed to pieces by those storms. If a storm like the one we had this year had hit in 1990 the ice would have been thick enough to shrug it off.