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I don't think the religion metaphor is quite right, Jim. Barring the actual Second Coming, there's no way for us to know whether anyone's priests are right or wrong. Which is why we end up with arguements about the number of angels dancing on the head of a pin. We'll never know.

We can figure out, though, with a high degree of certainty, that humans are contributing to global warming. Elizabeth Kolbert describes the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:

By the time the I.P.C.C. publishes an assessment, it has been vetted by thousands of scientists, as well as by the organization’s hundred and ninety-odd participating governments. The process guarantees that I.P.C.C. reports are conservative—indeed, frequently out of date—since every statement has had to pass review not just in Paris and London but also in Riyadh and Washington. The first I.P.C.C. assessment, issued in 1990, was noncommittal on the source of the warming that had been observed up to that point. In each subsequent report, the organization has moved cautiously but inexorably toward assigning responsibility. Last week’s assessment, the fourth, put the likelihood that human beings are the cause of global warming—now evident from “increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global mean sea level”—at ninety per cent.

Is that "definitely, no doubt?" Nope. But it means that there is a broad scientific consensus about human contributions to global warming -- and that most of the arguments occur at the margins. This is far, far beyond the area of "unproven theory," and well into the area of figuring out what we should be doing about it.

-That's an excellent point. I would point out that the scientific community is pretty much in agreement on this one, so if we were listening to them, there might be more of a consensus politically.