Interesting article

...but riddled with bollocks. I think you can cut through a lot of this by being sensible, leaving room for uncertainty, and not trying to divide everything up into absolute categories like 'true' and 'false'. Realising that every theory, model and philosophical tool, even fundamental logic, appears to be at least a little bit broken, and accepting it, would probably be a good start.

Models and theories are useful in as much as they allow predictions to be made; they will be applicable to a certain range of scale and conditions. What's the problem with that?

Also, we do this stuff because its interesting; where's the fun in throwing everything into a giant database and seeing what correlations are thrown up? If I wanted to do that I would have gone into insurance...

Long term

These things are a short to medium term measure - when they've outlived their usefulness you can just unbolt them from their foundations and take them away. A little bit of landscaping and there's nothing to be seen. Likewise the much-hated proposed Beauly to Denny pylons.

...c.f. a four-reactor nuclear power station? Can't we see past the short-term NIMBYism?