I was thinking of pressure then, oops, regardless it doesn't change the fact that average kinetic energy of the water molecules is the main driver of solubility

Thats not true. Hydrogen bonding is an intermolecular force of attraction, as in between two molecules, and it certainly doesn't only apply to ionic substances being dissolved. The reason why water is a liquid at room temperature is because of hydrogen bonding between the positive hydrogen ends of one water molecule being attracted to the negative end of a second water molecule.

I think the point you were getting at was intramolecular vs intermolecular forces of attraction, and that in general intramolecular forces are considered to be true bonds, as they hold the atoms in different molecules and compounds together whereas intermolecular forces, not being nearly as strong as intra, are generally demoted to just being weak attractive forces, with hydrogen bonding being confusingly named as its not even a true bond by these metrics. This whole thread seems pretty semantic, 'bond' is just a strong word to describe an attractive force, at the end of the day and at its core a triple covalent bond is not that different from dispersion forces, they are just two ends of a spectrum representing how little/how much energy you need to break an attraction.

Liquids have a fixed volume regardless of temperature, space isn't really the issue. The space between molecules in cold water is pretty much the same as in hot water, what's different is the average speed and energy of the molecules moving around in the water. Gases escape from hot water more quickly because gases don't 'want' to be dissolved in water, so all it takes is a little bit of energy to push them out of the liquid and into the air. Since hot water has more energy in it, collisions with dissolved gases happen more often and with more power, so it's relatively easy for the gas to bubble out of solution

"You blew me away" by Penny Hardy

"You blew me away" by Penny Hardy