Major climate changes looming
Washington — In his inaugural address last Monday, President Obama made climate change a priority of his second term. It might be too late.
Within the lifetimes of today’s children, scientists say, the climate could reach a state unknown in civilization.
In that time, global carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels are on track to exceed the limits that scientists believe could prevent catastrophic warming. CO{-2} levels are higher than they have been in 15 million years.
The Arctic, melting rapidly and probably irreversibly, has reached a state that the Vikings would not recognize.
“We are poised right at the edge of some very major changes on Earth,” said Anthony Barnosky, a UC Berkeley professor of biology who studies the interaction of climate change with population growth and land use. “We really are a geological force that’s changing the planet.”
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