EPA says global warming is affecting environment

My site: http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/

When I read this blog post I went straight to the Environment Protection Agency’s website. Right away I thought of the EPA because it was so standard, and I figured they would have a lot to say on global warming. I wanted to see how they broke it down, and I was not disappointed. The first sentence on their page for climate change immediately made me chuckle a little. It read, “Climate change is a problem that is affecting people and the environment.” …No way! Climate change? A problem? It affects the environment?! My mind had been blown.

Unfortunately for the site, but fortunately for my entertainment, information never got much more complicated than that. It was filled with a series of oversimplified diagrams, generalized statements, and a host of very basic climate change terms and definitions (…Did you know green house gasses are ”gasses that trap heat in the atmosphere”?). I felt like I was reading a 5^th grade text book, or watching that cartoon video we saw in class of chemical imbalance in the brain causing depression.

My intelligence had been insulted, but I could understand why the EPA chose to go the rout they did. After all, global warming is big topic and for some conceptually very hard to grasp. Every winter seems to feel colder and colder to me, so why should I believe the planet is heating up? And it doesn’t help that much or research and evidence is either contradictory or over the heads of anyone not in the field. Breaking global warming down into easy to understand terms humanizes it in a way, makes it less intimidating and confusing. And this makes it all the more real. If I don’t understand something it is probably speculation or a conspiracy theory. However, if something can conceptually be understood then why wouldn’t it be real? Thanks to the EPA next time its readers are told global warming isn’t legitimate they can respond, “It is too! I can draw a diagram to prove it!”