Imagine you're in a giant greenhouse filled with all your favourite things: onion ice cream, bug pizza, and your best friends, Rupert and Bubert. It's like a dream come true! But here's the catch: someone turned up the heat, and the temperature inside the greenhouse keeps rising. Suddenly, things start to melt, your ice cream turns into a sticky puddle (that stinks of onions), and your pizza starts to sizzle. What's going on? You wonder and wonder. Later, you find out that Rupbert and Bubert are total idiots and they turned the heating on full blast because they each had ONE COLD TOE! Then, they couldn't turn it off because...well...they're still total idiots.
Young one, that's global warming in action! Global warming is like the greenhouse effect on Earth. Our planet has a natural blanket of gases, including carbon dioxide, that trap some of the sun's warmth and keep the temperature just right for all living things. It's like a cozy jumper on a brisk day.
But things have gotten out of control. The activities of humans, like burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests, have released a lot of extra carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It's like adding extra layers to that cozy jumper, making it too warm. The heat gets trapped, and the Earth starts to warm up more than it should.
Just like in the greenhouse, global warming leads to all sorts of frankly absurd changes. The ice at the poles starts to melt, ruining the lives of furry polar bears and penguins have to set new world records to navigate the melting ice shelfs. If sea levels rise, before you know it, your favourite beach might be underwater and we'll be canoeing down the street.
It's not all doom and gloom, it's only 99.9% doom and gloom. We can be the superheroes of this story by making small changes in our daily lives that can help fight global warming and save the day. Cumulatively, if everyone stops burning stuff all the time (in car engines, to heat their homes, and to produce things we don't really need), we can make a big dent in the problem and limit carbon dioxide emissions. We can't reverse the damage we've already done - that'll take tens of thousands of years - but we can try to make the future the best version of itself.
So, think about the following, then nod your head and accept it as OUR new truth: Global warming IS happening. We caused it. We can't reverse it, only limit it.
Now we have a reasonable foundation of knowledge, we can ACTUALLY think about fighting FOR our Earth instead rather than fighting against it. James Teacher ^^