Questions

To talk through one’s hat means to say foolish things i.e. to talk nonsense.

Species richness is generally lower in the Arctic than at lower latitudes, and richness also tends to decline from the low to high Arctic.Many hypotheses have been advanced to explain the overall decline of biodiversity with increasing latitude, although there is still no consensus about a mechanistic explanation. Abiotic factors include lower available energy and area at high latitudes, and the relatively young age of Arctic ecosystems.

Were’ needs to be replaced with ‘was’ to make the sentence grammatically correct. This is because,‘If the subjects are joined by as well as, with, along with, together with, and not, in addition to, but, besides, except, rather than, accompanied by, like, unlike, no less than, nothing but, led by, headed by, guided by, controlled by, governed by,etc..Then the verb will agree with the first subject’ Thus, the correct sentence would be, ‘Coleridge as well as Wordsworth was of the opinion that the opposite of poetry os not prose but science’.