How to Explain Global Warming to Donald Trump

By Shlomo Maital

                              Ocean Temperature 1880-2017

Dear President Donald Trump,

       Donald, sir, I have a problem. How do I explain global warming and climate change to someone like yourself, with the attention span just a bit less than a goldfish ?   Who does not read anything, and gets information from Fox News? To someone with untreated attention deficit disorder from childhood ?

     Hmmm.

     Here is my best shot.

     Suppose this next sentence is a Tweet, Donald. Read it as such. I mean no disrespect.

         93 per cent of the added heat generated by global warming is absorbed by the oceans; only 7 per cent, by the air.

         That’s only 23 words.   Well within 140 characters.

         Don’t believe it? Please, look at the graph. OK?

         Why is warmer ocean temperature a problem?   Why do we care that up to 30% of the Great Barrier Reef has already disappeared, because the coral can’t stand the warmer temperatures?

         Well, Donald, let’s take your own body. Uh, rephrase that. YOU take your own body. Suppose you are running a temperature. Say, two degrees. Instead of 98.6 F., 100.6 F.?   Would you go to a doctor? Feel ill? Take medicine?

         Well, the ocean is like our human bodies. It is feeling unwell. And it has been running a fever for quite a while. And it is getting worse. Your decision to leave the Paris Agreement made the oceans feel sicker.

         So while we think global warming is about, say, heat waves, it is really about destroying the ecology of our oceans and melting the ice caps.   The oceans are huge heat sinks. And they just don’t like it all, nor do the creatures who live there.

     Oops.     286 words. Too long. I’ve lost your interest.

     Can anyone help? Maybe – the Russian spooks you seem to love?