Actually, that’s exactly how “scientific fact” is established.
However, the phrase “scientific fact” itself isn’t scientific. Scientists generally avoid using the word “prove.” Science is about systematically reducing—but never really totally eliminating—uncertainty.
Scientists conduct experiments, collect data, write papers, construct models and then they decide amongst themselves what the preponderance of evidence says about society or the natural world. And the overwhelming majority (greater than 90 percent) say global warming is real, its consequences are potentially catastrophic, and that the current rapid increase in temperatures are caused by human activity.
You want to appeal to authority by copy-pasting this list of denialist hacks, when they make up a tiny fringe of scientists—and most of them aren’t even in fields that are applicable to the debate.
Let’s look at a sample of these luminaries:
Roger A. Pielke, Jr., director of the Sports Governance Center within the Department of Athletics at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Oh shit?!? The director of P.E. at the University of Colorado at Boulder!?!? Wow, I stand corrected.
I’m sure this CEO from a fossil fuels company has a really objective scientific opinion on the matter:
Fritz Vahrenholt, German politician and energy executive with a doctorate in chemistry.
Then you have Freeman Dyson, who is actually a scientist, but not a climatologist. He literally admitted once that he didn’t know what the hell he was talking about:
My objections to the global warming propaganda are not so much over the technical facts, about which I do not know much, but it’s rather against the way those people behave and the kind of intolerance to criticism that a lot of them have
Among the few who actually do have credentials is MIT Prof. Richard Lindzen, who is a prostitute for the energy industry. He’s taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from them over the years. He also pimped himself out to the tobacco industry. This guy testified that there was no link between tobacco and lung cancer.
