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Film a skit about global warming and climate change, and post it to Youtube.

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After reading this article about climate change, write your opinions and thoughts on the subject on your EduBlog page.

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Young activists participate in a climate strike demonstration outside the White House on Friday. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)
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In a coastal town in Washington state, climate change has a high school junior worried about the floods that keep deluging his school. A 17-year-old from Texas says global warming scares him so much he can't even think about it.

But across the country, teens are channeling their anxieties into activism. "Fear," said Maryland 16-year-old Madeline Graham, an organizer of a student protest planned for this week, "is a commodity we don't have time for if we're going to win the fight."

A solidmajority of American teenagers are convinced that humans are changing Earth's climate and believe that it will cause harm to them personally and to other members of their generation, according to a new Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll. Roughly 1 in 4 have participated in a walkout, attended a rally or written to a public official to express their views on global warming - a remarkablelevel of activism for a group that has not yet reached voting age.

The poll by The Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) is the first major survey of teenagers' views since the explosion of the youth climate movement last year. Inspired by 16-year-old Greta Thunberg, whose year-long "strike" in front of the Swedish Parliament and carbon-neutral sailboat voyage across the Atlantic have made her an activist icon, growing numbers of teens have been skipping school on Fridays to protest on behalf of something they say is more important.

Extreme climate change has arrived in America

This week, in the run-up to a major U.N. summit, hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren plan to abandon their classrooms to demand more-aggressive measures to protect the planet.

After taking a solar-powered boat from England to New York to attend the United Nations Climate Action Summit, Thunberg discussed what activists need to do. (Video: The Washington Post)

"People feel very guilty when a child says, 'You are stealing my future.' That has impact," Thunberg told The Post. "We have definitely made people open their eyes."

More than 7 in 10 teenagers and young adults say climate change will cause a moderate or great deal of harm to people in their generation, a slightly higher percentage than among those 30 and older. By the time today's high schoolers turn 30, scientists say, the world must achieve a "rapid and far-reaching" transformation of society to avoid warming's most dire consequences.

Several teenagers told The Post they are already feeling its effects.

Gabe Lopez, 16, of Everett, Wash., said warming waters have taken a financial toll on relatives who fish in the Pacific. Graham, who lives in Silver Spring, was inspired to take action after seeing hurricanes bombard Puerto Rico, North Carolina and the Bahamas - and watching floods repeatedly deluge her grandmother's home in Ellicott City, Md.

"It's like a dystopian novel," she said. "To grow up seeing the world fall apart around you and knowing it's going to be the fight of your lives to make people stop it."

Lopez and Graham said thinking about climate change makes them afraid, an emotion they share with 57 percent of teens nationwide. Fewer than a third of teens say they are optimistic.

"A lot of it is connected to being a kid," Lopez said. "We can't vote. We don't have anyone to represent us."

Adults, he said, don't seem to take the issue as seriously, or as personally, as people his age. Lopez recalled getting into an argument with his driving instructor after the older man was dismissive of students' anxieties about climate change.

Adults think, " 'Oh you're so young, you don't know what you're talking about,' " he said. "But I know the facts, and I know what the most drastic consequences will be. I know that people aren't doing what needs to be done."

Teens are slightly more likely than adults to accept the scientific consensus that humans are causing global warming, 86 percent vs. 79 percent. But in other ways, kids are much like the rest of the country when it comes to climate change.

Roughly a third of teenagers and adults say the issue is "extremely important" to them personally. Just under half believe the United States must drastically reduce its fossil fuel use in the next few years to avoid the worst effects of climate change. And roughly 4 in 10 say mitigating the effects of warming will require major sacrifices from ordinary Americans.

Teenagers also share adults' questions and misconceptions about the ways the world is warming. In both age groups, no more than 2 in 10 say they know "a lot" about the causes of climate change and ways to reduce it. Sizable minorities of teens incorrectly believe that phenomena such as volcanic eruptions and the sun getting hotter are major contributors.

Despite many teens' strong feelings about the issue, fewer than half say they've taken action to reduce their own carbon footprints. Their most common approaches are recycling, limiting time in cars and reducing plastic use. And most say they rarely or never discuss the issue with family and friends.

Meanwhile, the number of teenagers who say they are being taught in school how to mitigate climate change appears to be on the decline. Fourteen percent say they have learned "a lot" about the subject, down from 25 percent in 2010, when the Yale Project on Climate Change asked a similar question.

"It's terrible," said Sam Riley, 17, of Boston. "It's hardly ever brought up at my school."

The high school junior said he learned nearly everything he knows about climate change from reading the news and searching the Internet. What he found scares and angers him.

"We're killing the thing we live on," he said. "By the time that I'm old, I know I will see more impacts starting to happen."

Riley, who is black, believes that minorities and people in low-income communities will be most severely affected by warming, because they are more likely to live in vulnerable areas and less likely to be able to insulate themselves.

"The wealthier you are, the more protection you have," he said.

The Post-KFF poll finds black and Hispanic teens express a greater sense of urgency around climate change; 37 percent and 41 percent, respectively, say people need to act in the next year or two, compared with 24 percent of white teens.

Teens who do not think that human activities are affecting the planet are in the minority. Jane Palmer, 13, of Chubbuck, Idaho, said she doesn't see how people can influence the climate when Earth has been changing for millions of years. When her eighth-grade science teacher told her class that fossil fuel use is warming the globe, her mother dismissed those lessons as "fearmongering."

Still, Palmer has noticed that summers in Idaho are getting hotter. She worries that many people "don't really care about the Earth" and says she is still thinking the issue through.

"I'm kind of in between," she said. "It is a problem, but it's also not that big a deal. Teachers should talk about it and let us know what's happening in the world, but they shouldn't . . . make it seem like the world is going to end."

Many of her peers disagree: About 4 in 10 of those under 18 call climate change a "crisis." But unlike adults, most teenagers say they don't feel helpless. More than half - 54 percent - say they feel motivated.

"It's the greatest threat to life as we know it and humanity as we know it," Graham said. "When you're facing something like that, and you're 16 years old, and your mom's yelling at you, and you have classes, and, on top of that, everybody's going to die . . . it's easy to let fear overtake you."

"But," she said, "this generation - we're fighters. And we're going to win."

The Post-KFF survey was conducted online and by telephone from July 9 to Aug. 5 among a national sample of 2,293 adults and 629 teenagers through AmeriSpeak, a survey panel recruited through random selection of U.S. households by NORC at the University of Chicago. Adult results have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points, and teen results have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus five percentage points.

Scott Clement contributed to this report.

Dangerous new hot zones are spreading across the globe

Americans increasingly see climate change as a crisis, poll shows

How should we talk about what's happening to our planet?

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Most American teens are frightened by climate change, poll finds, and about 1 in 4 are taking action

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"It's like a dystopian novel: To grow up seeing the world fall apart around you, and knowing it's going to be the fight of your lives to make people stop it."

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Try out this interactive simulator, En-Roads, to see how different factors can impact the Earth's temperature and how to reduce the changes. Please take a screenshot of your findings and email them to me.

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Interact with this global scenario of climate action

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Use this activity to calculate how much carbon emissions your family puts into the atmosphere each year, and take a screenshot of your results for submission on Google Classroom

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Background

Carbon dioxide (CO2) traps infrared energy emitted from the Earth's surface and warms the atmosphere. Currently, the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouses gases in the atmosphere is increasing causing global warming. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, carbon dioxide in our atmosphere was at approximately 280 ppm (parts per million). As of 2009, carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is approximately 386 ppm and growing steadily upward.

Over the past 100 years, Earth's average temperature rose 0.74° Celsius (1.33°F). Scientists are finding that the change in temperature has been causing other aspects of our planet to change. The effects of global warming are far-reaching.

Human activities, including burning fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas, are causing Earth to warm according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a group of hundreds of scientists organized by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) to summarize our current understanding of climate. Burning these fuels releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, causing the greenhouse effect to grow stronger, warming the climate.

During the 21st Century, various computer models predict that Earth's average temperature will rise between 1.8° and 4.0° Celsius (3.2° and 7.2° F) depending largely on how humans change the ways they live on the planet. If we continue to emit as many, or more, greenhouse gases, this will cause more warming. If we make changes to emit fewer greenhouse gases, this will cause less warming.

The Kyoto Protocol was the first attempt by countries throughout the world to address the problem of rising greenhouse gas emissions through a plan aimed at reducing emissions to 1990 levels by 2010. Many third world countries trying to improve the standard of living for their people were not required to reduce their emissions. The United States was one of the few developed countries that did not sign the Kyoto Protocol.

Although there is a certain amount of global warming that we are going to have because of our activities during the past century, there are many ways to help slow the rate of warming. Recently, many people and companies have been trying to be to prevent more greenhouse gases from entering the atmosphere.

The various scenarios shared within the activity, How Much Do You Spew?, show how a range of lifestyles produces different amounts of CO2 emissions. From the Jetsetter family with their two homes, four cars, and frequent flights, to the Demos who are producing more renewable energy than they are using, the scenarios are intended to demonstrate how lifestyle choices affect CO2 emissions. There are two scenarios included to reflect the American average. The Des Moines family and the Median family have energy use that is about the U.S. average according to data from the US Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration.

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Background Carbon dioxide (CO2) traps infrared energy emitted from the Earth's surface and warms the atmosphere. Currently, the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouses gases in the atmosphere is increasing causing global warming. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, carbon dioxide in our atmosphere was at approximately 280 ppm (parts per million).

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Go outside and start a compost bin as a class, as it helps to combat global warming. Create a short video using iMovie to show some items added to your compost bin.

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‎With a streamlined design and intuitive Multi-Touch gestures, iMovie lets you create Hollywood-style trailers and beautiful movies like never before. Instantly create Magic Movies
• With just a few taps, you can create and share a beautiful, custom video • Select an album or group of videos or im…

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Create a song of your own about climate change using GarageBand.

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GarageBand for Mac has everything you need to learn, play, record, mix, and share incredible music, even if you’ve never played a note.

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Write a summary in a Google Doc of this article by NASA for submission and then be prepared to share with the class what the most interesting fact you learned was.

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Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet

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The rate of change since the mid-20th century is unprecedented over millennia.

Earth's climate has changed throughout history. Just in the last 800,000 years, there have been eight cycles of ice ages and warmer periods, with the end of the last ice age about 11,700 years ago marking the beginning of the modern climate era - and of human civilization. Most of these climate changes are attributed to very small variations in Earth's orbit that change the amount of solar energy our planet receives.

This graph, based on the comparison of atmospheric samples contained in ice cores and more recent direct measurements, provides evidence that atmospheric CO2 has increased since the Industrial Revolution. (Credit: Luthi, D., et al.. 2008; Etheridge, D.M., et al. 2010; Vostok ice core data/J.R. Petit et al.; NOAA Mauna Loa CO2 record.) Find out more about ice cores (external site).

The current warming trend is different because it is clearly the result of human activities since the mid-1800s, and is proceeding at a rate not seen over many recent millennia. It is undeniable that human activities have produced the atmospheric gases that have trapped more of the Sun's energy in the Earth system. This extra energy has warmed the atmosphere, ocean, and land, and widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere, and biosphere have occurred.

Do scientists agree on climate change?

Yes, the vast majority of actively publishing climate scientists - 97 percent - agree that humans are causing global warming and climate change.

detailed answer

Earth-orbiting satellites and new technologies have helped scientists see the big picture, collecting many different types of information about our planet and its climate all over the world. These data, collected over many years, reveal the signs and patterns of a changing climate.

Scientists demonstrated the heat-trapping nature of carbon dioxide and other gases in the mid-19th century. Many of the science instruments NASA uses to study our climate focus on how these gases affect the movement of infrared radiation through the atmosphere. From the measured impacts of increases in these gases, there is no question that increased greenhouse gas levels warm Earth in response.

"Scientific evidence for warming of the climate system is unequivocal."

- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Ice cores drawn from Greenland, Antarctica, and tropical mountain glaciers show that Earth's climate responds to changes in greenhouse gas levels. Ancient evidence can also be found in tree rings, ocean sediments, coral reefs, and layers of sedimentary rocks. This ancient, or paleoclimate, evidence reveals that current warming is occurring roughly 10 times faster than the average rate of warming after an ice age. Carbon dioxide from human activities is increasing about 250 times faster than it did from natural sources after the last Ice Age.

References

References
Header image shows clouds imitating mountains as the sun sets after midnight as seen from Denali's backcountry Unit 13 on June 14, 2019. Credit: NPS/Emily Mesner

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Climate Change Evidence: How Do We Know?

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Vital Signs of the Planet: Global Climate Change and Global Warming. How do we know it's happening? Here's the evidence.

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In small groups, brainstorm ways that you can make a difference in combatting climate change using Popplet to organize your thoughts.