From a longtime reader:

Dear Jonah,
I thoroughly enjoyed your article today, and not just because you touched on an area where I worked – at least tangentially – for over a decade. You are right, virtually nobody is doing the leg work on keeping track of all the debris and potentially nasty sized rocks out there compared to the number of people shrieking about our impending slightly warmer earth. The big reason is that it isn’t very sexy work, unlike being a proponent of Anthropocentric Global Warming (AGW). If you work on space debris, minor planet orbits and earth crossing orbits about the best you can hope for is getting to name a new rock nobody else saw, or maybe getting your name in the paper while being misquoted by some reporter who doesn’t have a clue about what preliminary results or margin of error means when he says that your recently discovered rock will destroy the earth in 2029. By comparison if you use your computer model to predict that according to your model the earth might possibly warm by somewhere between 0.9 and 3.5 degrees Celsius by the year 2100 you get to hang out with Al Gore and Bono and morally scold the ignorant proles for driving their SUVs to pick up the kids from daycare as you jet off to Switzerland for another speaking engagement. Of course there is one other distinction. The guy cataloging rocks is actually doing science, and that’s hard work.
One of the problems many people, especially scientists, are starting to have with the AGW proponents is their use of shrill tone and authority of numbers to try to stifle debate. Science is not consensus, and though there can be a scientific consensus that doesn’t constitute science either. Computer models predicting conditions 50 years from now in a system as complex as the earth aren’t within spitting distance of science. To be science something has to be testable and falsifiable. It must produce a predicted data point, interaction or outcome that is unique to the theory and can be verified or falsified. Would you bet your future on the accuracy of day seven of a seven day weather forecast? That is essentially what we are being told by the AGW proponents we absolutely must do without delay. Of course I think the without delay part has more to do with “We must pass the stimulus without delay” or “We must pass healthcare without delay” considerations than any notion that waiting three or four years will actuall make any long term difference.
PS. By the way you absolutely nailed it: “…it requires making peace with the idea that nature can’t be conquered.”
That is the central problem the AGW people have too. They can not grasp the fact that the climate will change no matter what, and we can’t control it.
This has long been a pet peeve of mine and I have done a lot of arguing about it with friends, both scientists and non-scientists. One of the most frustrating aspects is trying to explain to people the difference between science and predicting via model. I especially love it when my non-scientist friends tell me I’m unqualified to opine because while I’m a scientist I’m not a CLIMATE scientist. My arguments usually go to the fallacious assumptions that pass for an argument with the AGW crowd….