See Inside Planet Earth: Helps Children Understand Different Earth Disasters
See Inside Planet Earth
- Author Name: Katie Daynes
- Illustrator Name: Peter Allen
- Recommended Age: 6-9 years
- Language: English
- Publication Date: March 28, 2008
Content Consideration
See Inside planet Earth is a picture book that helps children to understand the causes of global warming and difference earth disasters found in land, marine, desert, mountain, river, and forest areas. Most importantly, children can be inspired to take appropriate action to save the planet.
Have you noticed summer becomes hotter and lasts longer, while winter becomes warmer and lasts short; heavy rainfall occurs more frequently than usual, while on some occassions you may experience drought condition?
This is the great evidence: climate change deteriorates.
Can you give me some evidence to support that climate changes existed a long time ago?
Recorded shows that the temperature has risen about 1.4C (2.5F) when compared to the last century. The Paris Agreement was signed, aiming to argue and warm different people in the world to restrict the temperature rise well under 1.5C (2.7F). You may wonder whether the small increments in temperature change can impact the world.
How do climate change affect the life of human beings?
Scientists believe that human beings’ crisis in this decade is global warming. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that, between 2030 and 2050, there will be around 250,000 additional deaths for global warming, such as from air pollution, water pollution, drought, hill fires, floods, infectious diseases, pandemics, and grain loss.
In 2026, heatwaves sweep across all the globes. How exactly are these heatwaves cause impact to Earth?
In summer 2026, heatwaves sweep all over the world, covering from Southern, Central, and Western European; Central and South America; and even Asia.
Italy recorded 48.4°C(119°F) – the highest temperature in European. Germany recorded 41.7°C (107.1°F); France and West London in England also recorded 43°C and 38.1° C, respectively.
Other countries like Germany, Spain, and Portugal also reported that they experienced a high-temperature summer.
Central and South America also recorded extreme high temperature. Phoenix and Arizona recorded 45°C (113°F) during early July, and Miles City, Montana, recorded 46°C (113°F) on July 12 in the United States.
Lytton, British Columbia, recorded 41.2°C (106°F) on July 22, and Armstrong, Ontario recorded 40.7°C(105.3°F) in Canada.
In Japan, it was recorded as the city’s highest temperature at 41.8°C( 107.2°F) in 2025. In summer 2026, Japan recorded 41.1°C (106°F) in Shizuoka Prefecture.
Hong Kong recorded 36.9°C on August, 2026, and the highest temperature was recorded in 1884.
What can children learn from See Inside Planet Earth?
See Inside Planet Earth is a lift-and -flap picture book: Children can understand the cause of global warming and discover the potential environmental hazards on different Earth surface-land, oceans, rivers, mountains, and forests.
See Inside Planet Earth has eight chapters:
- Earth in space
- A blanket of gases
- Warming up
- A watery world
- Hot and cold desserts
- Mountains, rivers, and forests
- Changing climates
- Saving our planets
What are the major reasons and sources of global warming?
The major reasons for global warming is the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. These gases come from burning fossil fuels in power plants for electricity consumption, exhaust from vehicles and airplanes, methane from landfills, excessive beef consumption, and factory operations.
What are the major sources of global warning found on land?
Oil Refining
Oil refining is a process of separating the crude oil into different oil products we use every day, such as asphalt, gases, diesel oil, kerosene, and fuel oil. Separating crude oil into different oil products is called distillation. This process can release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Agriculture
Google figured out that everyone consumed around 56 to 60 pounds of beef in USA each year. Up to now, global beef consumption is about 59.5 million tons for 2026.
A cow can release 70 to 120kg of methane gas into the atmosphere each year.
What are the major sources of global warming found in marine environments?
Petroleum extraction
Marine greenhouse gases come from petroleum extraction. The extraction of petroleum normally uses on-site petroleum for the machine-drilling process, which emits a massive amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Prudhoe Bay Oil Field is located on the North Slope of Alaska along the Arctic Ocean. It is the largest oil field in North America.
There is no organization to estimate the emission of carbon from the Prudhoe Bay Oil Field into the atmosphere. With reference to the scientific estimation, Prudhoe Bay Field generates around 6.6-8 million metric tones of carbon dioxide per year.
Cruise travelling
Extremely cold weather and massive glacial ice sheets make it difficult for people to step into the two poles. Due to the large amount of glacial ice melting and the increasing temperature, people are curious to take a cruise trip, exploring and experiencing that peaceful envrionment.
By estimation, each cruise can produce about 2.95 metric tones of carbon dioxide in a 7-day trip.
Container shipping
Container ship transportation can also be considered a source of global warming. Instead of using air freight for goods, merchants prefer using a cheaper form of transportation, especially when they want to transport large quantities of goods.
Although container ships are gradually changing to use low-sulphury fuel oils and diesel oils engine energy sources, exhaust pollutants are the main greenhouse gases sources. Moreover, the noise from underwater engine and the sound from the discharge gas can disturb the ecosystems in the poles.
The largest oil tanker accident happened in 1979: the Atlantic Express. The ship leaked nearly 88 million gallons oil into the Caribbean Sea.
Oil spills
Oil tanker also has problems with exhaust pollutants, noise from underwater engines and the sound from the discharge gas that can pollute and disturb the poles’ ecosystems. Transporting the oils through ships to various countries always involves long-distance travel.
Although not more than 30% oil comes from marine extraction, oil tanker accidents are huge impact to the marine ecosystems.
The largest oil tanker accident happened in 1979: the Atlantic Express. The ship leaked nearly 88 million gallons of crude oil into the Caribbean Sea, Atlantic Ocean.
How does the marine environment cause impact to the ecosystems?
Polar ice melts
The Guardian published an article, “Earth has lost 28 trillion tones of ice in less than 30 years”, stating that 28 trillion tones of ice melted into seawater between 1994 and 2017 – that is about 100-meter-think ice covers in the United Kingdom.
Article: Earth has lost 28 trillion tones of ice in less than 30 years
Countries disappear
Global temperature rises and ice melts, causing sea level increases. Many countries in the world are underwater due to sea level differences. Therefore, scientists believe that some countries, like Holland, Kiribati, Tuvalu, the Maldives, Vietnam, Egypt, Bangladesh, and Guyana, will eventually disappear underwater by the end of this century, caused by the global water level increases.
Salinity
Since the growth of coral is highly sensitive to salt concentration in seawater. When ice melts into oceans, it indicates that salt concentration in the oceans decreases. They will eventually die of coral bleaching. This is known as salinity. Therefore, scientists or scholars believe that we can observe the growth of coral to analyze the quality of seawater.
Extreme high rainfall
More greenhouse gases cause the earth to become warmer, more ice to melt and the ocean to become warmer. When there is more water evaporating into the atmosphere, moist air rises and cools at a certain level, and rain can fall.
Extinction
Polar bears, penguins, and sea lions have difficulty finding food for survival and a place to live. In the North Pole, polar bears are in danger of extinction. Under estimation, there are about 26,000 polar bears alive. Scientists believe that if we do not take immediate action to minimize the effects of global warming, most of the polar bears will disappear by the end of this century.
What can children do to preserve the planet?
As I said in Peep Inside in the Deep Ocean and the Planet Needs You, the environment is an ecosystem; any tiny environmental change – a tiny temperature fluctuation – can cause a great impact not only at all humans but also to all living things in the world.
About the author
More about the author: Katie Daynes
Takeaway
Besides oil refining and agriculture, can you figure out any other sources of global warming found on land? For example, power stations, factories and transportation.
Besides petroleum extraction, cruise travel, container shipping and oil spills, can you figure out any other sources of global warming found in marine environments?
Can you find out the other oil spill accidents that happened in the world? Why did the oil spill cause a great impact on the environment? Not limited to oil tanker accidents.
How does the existence of coral contribute to the marine ecosystems?
Instead of using cruise and airfreight, can you figure out any other ways to arrive at the poles for the purpose of traveling. Why?
Can you figure out why the life span of a polar bear must rely on living on sea ice?
Can you figure out why rainfalls have lasted longer, pouring harder, and happening more frequently than before?
Why do cows release methane into the atmosphere?
The world’s largest tropical rainforests is the Amazon. The area of the Amazon’s rainforest significantly decreased in the past several decades. Why? What is the impact on the environment, and why does the disappearance of the tropical rainforests causes a great impact on global warming?
Many lands become deserts. It is called desertification. How does it have an impact to the environment? Why does the existence of the deserts cause a great impact on global warming?
Can you figure out any methods of saving the planet?
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