Global Warming and Climate Change Speech

Topic: Global warming/climate change.

General Purpose: To inform.

Specific Purpose: For the audience to understand that climate change is a rapidly increasing global problem.

Thesis: Climate change is an increasing worldwide problem.

INTRODUCTION

I. Attention Getting Device – You’re in your house, with the knowledge that a hurricane is barreling toward you. You decide to stay, because, well, “the hurricane would never hit me,” right? A few hours later, you are without a home with water as far as the eye can see. This was the reality for millions of people during Hurricane Katrina. How safe would you feel knowing that natural disasters such as this may not only increase in frequency, but intensity as well?

II. Establish Credibility – As Al Gore, the Nobel Peace Prize winner for his work on climate change, once said, “What changed in the United States with Hurricane Katrina was a feeling that we have entered a period of consequences.” These consequences include the earth warming 2 to 3 degrees in the next century, arctic ice disappearing completely, and coastal flooding.

III. Thesis – Climate change is an increasing worldwide problem.

IV. Preview – Today, I am going to talk to you about climate change as a problem, the causes of it, and the effects it will have on our planet

I. WHAT IS GLOBAL WARMING?

A. Over the past decade, climate change, or better known as global warming, has become a much more noticeable problem than in years past.

B. Global warming is better defined as the increase in the average temperature of the

Earth over an extended period of time.

C. This is a serious problem because it is affecting the entire globe. Not one person is left out of these effects.

1. According to N...

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...blem plaguing the world, caused mainly by greenhouse gas emissions. Carbon dioxide is the main greenhouse gas emitted by humans, with the United States being the leading producer in the world.

If global warming continues, there will be many effects on Earth that could be devastating. Weather will become more extreme, and the arctic sea ice will melt, causing a barrage of other serious effects. While global warming implies the entire globe will warm, some places may, in fact, cool. This warming will be so gradual, you probably won’t even notice a difference in the near future. As Elizabeth

Kolbert from The New Yorker says, “People tend to focus on the here and now.

The problem is that, once global warming is something that most people can feel in the course of their daily lives, it will be too late to prevent much larger, potentially catastrophic changes.”