Since you mention heliocentric theory....
Copernicus proposed the sun was the center of the universe. He was right. Was he right enough that we could send a craft to Jupiter using nothing more than what he published though? Hell no. Even though he was right, he wasn't specific enough to actually spend money on practical applications of his ideas.
Two hundred years later, Newton came up with quite a few laws. Was he right? Well, kinda sorta. He was right enough that newtonian physics can (and has) gotten spacecraft throughout the solar system. Relying on just his physics can cause problems in some areas though, Newton's laws do not correctly predict Mercury's movements for example.
Three hundred years after that, Einstein came along. With his theories we finally had science that would accurately predict the movements of pretty much anything in the solar system. We can send stuff to other planets with the confidence that they won't fail because the physics was wrong. They might have an accident, or been poorly designed, or have some idiot who doesn't know the difference between metric and imperial measurements, but they won't fail because the physics was wrong.
I feel that climatology is only slightly past the Copernicus stage. Climatologist say that man is changing the climate. Are they right? Probably, evidence certainly suggests it's possible, but there's enough unknowns that I don't discount they may be proven wrong either. Is the science specific enough that we can put the science to the practical application of stabilizing the climate? Hell no. Before we spend trillions on what climatologists claim, climatologist have to at least get up to the Newton level of accuracy.
Before anyone tries claiming they're already there, let me point out that over the last eight years or so global temps have been fairly stable. That's a long enough time period we're talking climatology rather than meteorology. I've heard several explanations of why this happened and how it doesn't disprove global warming, mostly based on the oceans acting as bigger heat traps than anyone thought. Fine, it's entirely possible that is true and global warming will kick our asses in a few years. My point is though, no one predicted this. If you look at the IPCC reports from the 90's, even their best case said temps would raise over the last decade when reality is they haven't. Incidently, their best case was based on if we pretty much stopped pumping any CO2 in the atmosphere immediately. In reality, we've been pumping out CO2 on level of the IPCC's worst case scenario, so their predictions are even more off than it first sounds like. Obviously climatologist had a huge lack of understanding about some rather important things when they made those predictions. That doesn't mean AGW is wrong, but it does mean if I bet money on what they predicted then I would have lost. There are other examples, astronomers are launching satellites to study the sun because they don't understand enough specifics of it, yet at the same time global warming proponents are saying there is no possible way the sun caused recent warming. Isn't it odd how climatologist claim they understand the sun so much better than astronomers do? Some predicted that the antarctic ice would melt and raise sea levels, yet measurements show that in 90% of the antarctic the ice is actually getting thicker (which, by the way, may be attributed to global warming).
Now keep in mind I'm not saying this is 'proof' global warming is wrong. What I'm describing here is how science should work. Make a theory, test it with real observations and facts, refine the theory based on those tests. There's nothing wrong with this. It's not like I agree with deniers when they go 'Ah ha! We found one mistake therefore the entire field of science must be wrong!' I just believe we should let the test/refine theory process go on for awhile until climatology hits a point it can make accurate predictions. Acting on what climatologists have now would be just as stupid as plotting a course to Jupiter with nothing more than Copernicus saying maybe the earth isn't the center of the universe as a guide.


