Yet again. It's an old mudge here.

I start with the assumption that we are pathetically ignorant, seriously deluded and insufficiently humble. So, a new idea that contradicts common views is always welcome. It might be mistaken, but so are current views, as we will come to understand in due course. I've posted on this theme before.

Eccentrics. One sandwich short of a picnic. A screw loose. History is littered with sometimes charming enthusiasts who go a bit over the top, following a line of reasoning beyond the pale, shocking, outraging or just titillating more sober and cautious types. Sometimes they are vindicated as knowledge increases over time and their musings are shown to have been prescient. Hannes Alfven, 1970 Nobel Prize winner in Physics, is one of my favorite examples of this.

for much of his career Alfven's ideas were dismissed or treated with condescension. He was often forced to publish his papers in obscure journals; and his work was continuously disputed for many years by the most renowned senior scientist in space physics, the British-American geophysicist Sydney Chapman. Even among physicists today there is little awareness of Alfven's many contributions to fields of physics where his ideas are used without recognition of who conceived them.

There's something especially ugly about the way we treat heretics, and it's growing uglier.

And, see this mudge about John Holdren's execrable "Global Skeptic Model".

The Global Skeptic Model is pure hokum, pernicious stuff from the tawdry world of antediluvian politics, the realm of the left/Democrat/environmentalist political and cultural thugs that disgust me. It is possible to find some skeptics that fit that description, but many others do not and the model has no predictive power. Its purpose is merely to smear those who have differing views, to trivialize them as humans since their arguments are too difficult to engage. If you can't beat them, psychologize and mock them.

These intellectually, ethically and aesthetically bankrupt behaviors impede the important effort to understand the climate system and adopt effective policies in response. They fail at every level and we would do well to speak out about it. Whether you find the theories compelling or not you should object strenuously to these behaviors, insisting that skeptical arguments be engaged since they advance understanding even when they prove to be wrong, and that is not always the case.

Now that the lunatics have taken over the asylum it's probably a good idea to pay more attention.

What should we do with the 1% who dissent about global warming? By logic, we should embrace them, but currently "deniers" of global warming have become demonized, which is a sign that global warming has become slightly religious. Which is a shame because many global warming skeptics are not crackpots or paid shills, but first-class prestigious scientists with a minority view.

Throughout its history, science usually advances from the edges. Heretics should be cherished for forcing edges to the center. The most respected scientific global warming heretics have been rounded up in this very readable book, The Deniers. Significantly, many of the eminent scientists included here don't call themselves deniers at all. They say, "I believe global warming is evidenced in all these other fields; Except in the field that I am expert in, the evidence is totally bogus." One by one the field-specific heretics make their case. And a number of them are rather persuasive. But at the moment there is no unified alternative theory of climate change, so the critique of global warming amounts to exposing holes in the current science. Any good scientific theory will have holes.

Until the heretics can change the consensus, we should proceed with the remedies that make sense no matter how climate change rolls out: getting off oil and coal, upping conservation, drastically increasing efficiency, expanding solar, wind, nuclear, and embracing cities while protecting wildlife habitat.

At the same time cherish your heretics.

I fully agree with the base argument - "cherish your heretics" - though I can quibble with some of the other assertions.

Saying that "Any good scientific theory will have holes" seems nonsensical, and isn't applicable to the type of problems being discussed. It isn't just that the climate theories are incomplete, it's that domain specialists claim that "in the field that I am expert in, the evidence is totally bogus".

I also question the idea that "we should proceed with the remedies that make sense no matter how climate change rolls out". It sounds sensible, but the ideas cited as examples don't make sense.

Climate angst - and environmental angst in general - is used as a universal political solvent, a get-out-of-jail-free card. What is required is that each proposed poli-fix be evaluated independently. A curious result is that those fixes that make sense proceed without being pushed by political activism because they do make sense. The activism required, the useful actions in response to demands that something be done, is to think and investigate fixes. No politics required or desired. Sensible ideas are pursued before politicians can get their pants on and get out the door. It's only bad ideas that benefit from political activism.

The task for political activism is to undo the problems created by previous political activism. In this context it is the impediments to development of nuclear energy and subsidies for drain bramaged ideas like ethanol (and ag in general) that need a political fix. Imagine if all of the time, resources and energy that has been squandered on these silly political actions had been used wisely.

Update: In praise of Heresy

Not the smallest of the casualties of the crash is the authority of managers. Think about it. The most powerful elected managers on the planet – the presidents and prime ministers – failed to see it coming. Their private-sector counterparts in the banks and hedge funds, who must have been the most lavishly paid mangers on the planet, were just as clueless, for all their posing as masters of the universe.

The most interesting people I am interviewing at the moment are the bankers and traders, who tried to warn City managers that they were going wrong. Without exception they were treated as heretics who must be purged from the cult for their pains. . .

The best side may be that we will become more self-confident, more willing to raise objections and point out obvious flaws. The British like to pretend that we are a freeborn, plain-speaking people, who do not tolerate nonsense. Maybe now is the time to turn our national myth into reality.

Yanks would do well to reclaim their heritage as well.