IT has been one of humanity's greatest desires: to see into the future.
No-one can, but in the past 30 or so years, as computing powers have grown exponentially, and armies of researchers have examined the globe from its deepest depths to its atmospheric heights, a scientific consensus has emerged to warn the world we're on a highway to hell of our own making.
A two-page list of "headline statements" from Monday's sixth report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change leaves no room for doubt.
"It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land," the opening paragraph begins.
"Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred." (The cryosphere is that part of the earth covered in ice.)
As the report and all of its appendices total more than 9000 pages, it's doubtful that anyone will ever read it in entirety, and it will take weeks, and perhaps months, for the various tributaries of investigation to be explored by policymakers, the media and the public.
But with the wildfires sweeping much of the northern hemisphere providing a suitably Biblical setting, the release of this report and its warning of an impending climate apocalypse will put Australia under increasing pressure to wind up our coal industry.
The only constant about life is change. Some is gradual, but the original industrial revolution, and the ones that have followed, resulted in big and quick changes.
There are no single renewable power or storage sources likely to replace the centralised output of coal or nuclear baseload stations.
But the science is getting there and later this century, if we can successfully integrate hydrogen into the economy, we should, as a world, wean ourselves off fossil fuels.
The question is how to get there, and what to do in the interim.
As the leading media outlet of a great coalmining region, the Newcastle Herald stands with its mining communities, while realising - as they do themselves - that change is already under way.
But that change will take time, and arguably much more time than the most zealous advocates of renewable energy will acknowledge. And debate must be allowed to continue.
Because whether it's climate change or COVID, the science is always advancing, and so it's never truly settled.
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