Robert A. Heinlein

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To be science, nothing is ever "settled" - it is always subject to repeated verifications by independent testing, even if only to teach the methodology behind the scientific method.

When we conduct Physics 101 Newtonian equations verification experiments, it's not that we expect them to change and end up being wrong, but that we're willing to accept that we must always verify our basic axioms, and if the tests end up showing Newton's wrong, to seriously investigate to find the source of our experimental error, or quantify and describe the deviation our experiments have discovered.

Maybe this is why there is still a Flat Earth Society.

I would agree; however, it is more applicable to hypothesis than theory.  




A theory has a HUGE body of experimental evidence to support it. And to junk it, or modify it, requires a even larger body of evidence that it is incorrect or in need to a modification.  




A hypothesis is easily overturned and modified, as it has only a small amount of evidence to support it.  A hypothesis is a working model that may one day, after much modification become a theory. A hypothesis is changed as needed, bending to new experimental evidence easily; although gradually more slowly changing as it is modified to better fit the growing body of evidence.
I like this quote by Max Planck better:






A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
 

Prescience he had.
Encapsulates the essence of Global Warming argument.

You can't teach what he's describing. It's built in or it's not.

Very well put.  Heinlein is a quote master.

 

...or virtually all of Academia.

...unless there's a political agenda to advance and/or money to be made via charlatanism, i.e., global warming.

"It's settled science."

Of course, his views on organized religion won't win him anything close to universal praise on Arfcom.