Here's my climate article, for an eight year-old who lives in a northern US state, and I think it would be just as useful for scientists with PhDs:
- People like to talk about the climate.
- The climate of our planet is always changing.
- Did you know your house was once under a mile of ice?
- Scientists don't know why that happened.
- Then the ice melted.
- Scientists don't know why that happened either.
- Scientists don't know a lot of things.
- People love to predict the future.
- Sometimes scientists predict another ice age:
“Fifth ice age is on the way…..Human race will have to fight for its existence against cold.”
------- Los Angles Times,
October 23, 1912
"The discoveries of changes in the sun's heat and southward advance of glaciers in recent years have given rise to the conjectures of the possible advent of a new ice age"
------- Time Magazine,
September 10, 1923
"An international team of specialists has concluded from eight indexes of climate that there is no end in sight to the cooling trend of the last 30 years, at least in the Northern Hemisphere."
-------- New York Times
January 5, 1978
- Sometimes scientists predict a global warming disaster.
"The Arctic ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot.... Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers, he declared, all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone."
--------- Washington Post
November 21, 1922
"America in longest warm spell since 1776; temperature line records a 25 year rise."
---------- New York Times
March 27, 1933
“Gaffers who claim that winters were harder when they were boys are quite right…weather men have no doubt that the world at least for the time being is growing warmer.”
-------- Time Magazine
January 2, 1939
- Whether they predict cooling, or warming, it seems the scientists' predictions are always wrong.
- Some clever men, who are not scientists, will predict a coming disaster, and say all people MUST follow their orders, or they will be doomed:
- Those clever men are called politicians.
- Sometimes teachers act just like politicians.
- People lie a lot, and not always with good intentions.
- The prediction of a coming global warming disaster is one of those lies.
- Hundreds of years ago, it was too cool, and green plants grew too slow.
- Today, it's a little warmer.
- That's good news.
- Today, more carbon dioxide in the air makes green plants grow faster.
- That's good news too.
- That good news means todays climate is better than it has been in hundreds of years.
- Your main lesson for today is:
When people predict the future,
especially a coming disaster,
DON'T BELIEVE THEM.
Ask them how they could be so smart that they can "predict" the future, when no one else has ever been able to predict the future.
And don't ever worry about the climate -- it's good this year, and getting better.
My final words:
"Do you have any questions?"
The 8 year-old responds:
"huh? ... what did you say? ... are you done yet? ... I wasn't texting, I was just, like, checking the battery in my phone. ... Whatever. ... Will you buy me the new iPhone?"