Just as some Americans, for political or religious reasons, continue to argue that evo- lution is no more than a theory rather than a scientific (or biblical) fact, there are among us those who doubt or even deny the existence of climate change, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Others actually acknowledge its existence, but fault their political rivals for advancing unacceptable (to them) solutions to the problem.

We can argue in good faith and with mutual respect about what is the most practical approach to the problems caused by climate change, but the time has long passed for there to be any dispute over whether in fact it exists. The recently released annual report of the State of the Climate, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) document based on the work of more than 300 scientists in 48 countries, confirms that the globe not only is getting warmer but that the past decade was the warmest on record.

But will that change any minds? Last year, skeptics seized upon reports (based on a computer hacker’s disclosures) that scientists at the University of East Anglia in England had systematically deleted e-mails that appeared to weaken their argument that global warming was indeed a genuine threat. This, the skeptics gleefully argued, was all the proof anyone should need that the climate change alarms were a fraud.

But a panel of leading scientists, nominated by Britain’s prestigious Royal Society, carefully studied the controversy and concluded that the scientists in question were “objective and dispassionate in their view of the data and their results, and there was no hint of tailoring results to a particular agenda. Their sole aim was to establish as robust a record of temperatures in recent centuries as possible.”

The NOAA report’s analysis of 10 critical indicators concludes that “clearly and directly … they all tell the same story: Global warming is undeniable.” Americans who have suffered through this summer’s prolonged heat wave and witnessed multiple examples of extreme weather patterns all over the country and abroad – witness a historic heat wave in northern Russia and Scandanavia and rains in northwest Pakistan – may be more inclined to believe the report’s findings. The report, the 20th in a series, does not specify the cause of global warming.

“At first glance, the amount of [temperature] increase each decade – about a fifth of a degree Fahrenheit – may seem small,” the report conceded. “But the temperature increase of about 1 degree Fahrenheit experienced during the past 50 years has already altered the planet. Glaciers and sea ice are melting, heavy rainfall is intensifying and heat waves are becoming more common and more intense.”

This past June was the warmest on record and this year, thus far, has had the warmest average temperature for January-June since record keeping began, NOAA reported recently. The report focused on the 10 “most obviously related indicators of global temperature” and found that seven are increasing and three declining. Rising over decades, it said, are average air temperature, the ratio of water vapor to air, ocean heat content, sea surface temperature, sea level, air temperature over the ocean and air temperature over land. Indicators declining are snow cover, glaciers and sea ice.

You can now add illegal immigration, a hot political topic in America these days, to one of the possible consequences of global warming. Princeton University researchers recently warned global warming could persuade as many as 6.7 million more Mexicans to move to the United States to flee the effects of the drought in their own country.

It is well past time to confront the fact that global climate change exists and poses profound issues and threats. Therefore it’s urgent that solutions be found, as swiftly as possible.