Washington -- In his inaugural address, President Barack Obama
made climate change a priority of his second term. It may 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. CO2 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
University of California, 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." For Connecticut, the consequences go far beyond
Superstorm Sandy, flooded shorelines and snow-starved ski areas.
The very landscape wil