[simonh]

He definitely does engage in legitimate debate about reasonable theories and weighing plausible evidence. On issues like that he can be a reasonable contributor to the public debate. That's fine. The question is to what extent is that cover to get himself a seat at the public debate table, to lend credibility to the woo woo stuff which is what sells his books?

He doesn't make money from suggesting there might have been an asteroid impact that affected the climate at a given point in history. He gets paid for writing books about "Meetings with the ancient teachers of mankind".