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When is a scientific question settled to the point that entertaining further debate becomes not only a waste of precious newsprint but also a diversion from finding a solution to the problems raised by the answer to the question?

Earlier in my journalism career I had to confront this question over whether smoking causes cancer. I worked in Annapolis, Md., and my beat included the tobacco farms of southern Anne Arundel County. At the time, the cigarette companies denied the link and only begrudgingly put warning labels on their packaging. Because smoking was seen as a personal choice (secondhand smoke and public smoking bans were not yet on the health policy radar), I kept my conclusions to myself and instead chatted up the farmers about yields and leaf blight.

But human-caused climate change has implications far beyond personal vices. To dispute the science as either fundamentally flawed or a vast conspiracy among climate scientists to provide job security until their retirement simply hasn’t withstood scrutiny. There does seem room to debate the extreme predictions by some scientists, but the basic idea that human activities are accelerating the pace of global warming in an unsustainable way enjoys the same scientific consensus as the finding that smoking causes cancer.