“ “The science isn’t proven,” said Mandi Risko, a spokesperson for Energy In Depth, a research and public outreach project of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, a trade group.”
Ms Risko’s comment reveals a profound ignorance of how empirical science works.
Empirical science cannot prove any assertion. Empirical science advances by attempting to disprove a proposition. Proof is limited to those disciplines like mathematics and logic where the underlying premises or axioms on which conclusions are drawn are declared true by definition.
The more and unrelated ways we attempt to falsify a scientific conclusion AND FAIL TO DISPROVE IT the more confidence we can have in it being true. But we cannot know for sure because there can always be another explanation we didn’t test or even know about that is the real cause.