What is a good story to tell kids to illustrate global warming?

tell them the polar beers er bears are dying as their ice floes are disappearing. and there wont be any by the time they grow up…which is true.

United States Environmental Protection Agency
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/kids/

Truth and Consequences: Teaching Global Warming Doesn’t Have to Spell ‘Doom’
http://www.edutopia.org/global-warming-fear

This is a movement about change, as individuals, as a country, and as a global community. Join the 1,004,404 supporters of the Stop Global Warming Virtual March, and become part of the movement to demand our leaders freeze and reduce carbon dioxide emissions now. We are all contributors to global warming and we all need to be part of the solution.
http://www.stopglobalwarming.org/sgw_actionitems.asp

How to Teach Global Warming Facts to Children
http://www.greenlivinganswers.com/archives/112

Books and magazinesgreat links
http://globalwarmingkids.net/books.html

How to Teach a Child About Global Warming – Step by Step
http://www.ehow.com/how_2122473_teach-child-global-warming.html

Kids Boogaloo is taking a stand! Here are the best things you can do to help fight global warming.
http://www.alligatorboogaloo.com/kids/features/globey/index.html

above found via http://www.teachthechildrenwell.com/science.html

Good links above. Maybe you could wrap it up with a scenario asking what your kids are going to do. eg. Imagine that you are sitting on a rock by the sea in 60 years and a small child comes up to you. The child says that they have been learning about global warming in school and all the things that were done to curb it. The child wants to know what you did to help. What are you going to say?

Can you use pictures? Some churches use power point and/or have places to display pictures or graphs. Manyt people have seen graphs from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change but haven’t thought about what predictions mean for them locally -ie drought, storms, floods, weird temperatures/crop harvests, etc. It might be good to break “global warming” into specific indicators or results. It would also be amazing if you could find a song about global warming to get stuck in their heads…

tell them its earths natural cycle and we can slow the process down (but not stop it) by making environmently friendly choices.

I don’t know if I can give you an entire story, but I do have a suggestion for a structure. The hard thing about global warming is that it’s so big and complex. I think you need to start with something really simple, like a story of people polluting a lake, or even smaller: some very concrete example where the consequences of an action are clear. Then gradually change the story to make the system bigger (i.e. from polluting a lake to polluting an ocean). The point being that the behavior that is unethical (in this case, ruthless, thoughtless consumption and pollution) doesn’t cease to be so when we can’t see it’s immediate negative effects. They still manifest, but in more complicated ways, that are often harder to track and control.

Have them watch a good 20/20 segment on global warming:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=YEJ5pHVKjiI