Tim Robinson is known for making awkward social situations funny – in a cringe-worthy way. On his Netflix sketch show I think you should leavehe played a series of strange characters: a contestant on a replica of The old bachelor which is only there for the zip line; a man in a hot dog costume who claims he is not responsible for the hot dog car crashing through the window of a clothing store; a guy who wears a really weird hat at work. These sketches are largely an escape from the heavy subjects that keep people up at night.
So it may come as a surprise that Robinson’s next move was a climate change PSA. “I’m sick and tired of scientists telling us bad, bad facts about our world in confusing ways,” Robinson yells to the camera in a recent skit. He plays a TV host named Ted Rack and invites a climate scientist on his show “You Expect Me to Believe That?” for a message makeover.
It is manufactured by Yellow Dot Studiosa project by Adam McKay (of Don’t look up fame) who recently released comedic videos to draw attention to a global problem that most people probably wouldn’t think about. Sometimes the resulting videos are only mildly amusing: In a recent one, Rainn Wilson, Dwight van The officetakes the case against fossil fuels to the court of game of thrones. But for a comedian like Robinson who thrives on a sense of discomfort, talking about climate change isn’t just a public service; this is great material.
In the sketch the subject of the Queer Eye-style makeover is Henri Drake, a real-life professor of Earth System Science at the University of California, Irvine. Ted Rack’s first move is to dress Drake in a number 69 jersey. “Let’s focus on making your messages a little more appealing to someone like me,” says Rack. “Someone who, like, when I hear it, I get a little mad because I don’t understand it.” Robinson is known for his facial acrobaticsand his expressions become increasingly distressed as Drake describes how fossil fuels are the Earth’s “radiation balance.” Towards the end, Rack holds his head in his hands. “I have to be honest,” he says. “What you’re telling me makes me want to fight you a little.”
The video struck a chord with the public and went viral 100,000 views on TikTok and nearly a quarter of a million on YouTube. It also resonated with some scientists. “I immediately understood where it was coming from,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, after watching the video. “I feel the same pressure, I get the same complaints.” After giving scientific talks, the most common response he hears is along the lines of “Oh my god, you’re just so depressed.”
The sketch touches on similar themes as Don’t look up, McKay’s 2021 film depicting a distracted, celebrity-obsessed world that ignores scientists’ warnings of an approaching asteroid. However, Rack wants to help avoid the disaster that occurs when no one pays attention to scientists’ “terrible message”, and he finds ridiculous ways to make climate science recognizable. “Here’s what you have to say,” he instructed Drake. “‘Your house is about to be part of the ocean… A shark could swim in there and eat a picture of your father.'”
As a scientist with a self-described dark sense of humor, Swain enjoyed the sketch. He thought it did a good job of satirizing the expectation that scientists, as the bearers of bad news, should be “cheerful cheerleaders”. At the same time, however, Swain thinks many climate scientists could really use a communications overhaul. “I absolutely agree that a lot of times where the scientists are involved with the larger world is really inefficient,” he said. Jargon scare people off. And even if people stick around for technical discussions about, say, the Earth’s radiation balance, they can disengage when the conversation turns to ecological collapse, even though that’s at the heart of why the topic matters at all. The story of how humans made the world warmer and more hostile is hard to hear, especially when to accept it means you may be a small part of the problem.
If experts struggle to talk about climate change, you can bet the general public does too. Two-thirds of Americans say climate change is personally important to them, but only about half of that number, just over a third, actually talk about it with their friends and family, according to the most recent recording from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. People may be reluctant to express their thoughts because they mistakenly believe that their opinions are unpopularor simply because scary things is just hard to talk about.
Oddly enough, this is what makes climate change a good subject for a Robinson sketch. A recent one profile of the comedian in The New York Times Magazine — which begins with Robinson spooning an absurd amount of hot chiles over his noodles at a restaurant — likens an affinity for spicy food to the appeal of cringe-worthy comedy. “In a harsh world, microdosing shots of controlled pain can be soothing,” wrote Sam Anderson, the author of the profile. “Comforting, to touch the scary parts of life without putting ourselves in real danger. Humor has always served this function; it allows us to express threatening things in safe ways. Cringe comedy is like social chili powder: a way to feel the burn without getting burned.”
Climate scientists can also spice up their talking points—if they get the resources to do so. “I think everybody kind of understands why it exists and is funny,” Swain said. “But the reason that’s the case — why there aren’t engaging, funny climate scientists out there on TV — is that no one is facilitating it in any environment.” The real barrier, says Swain, is the places where scientists work usually does not support public communication as part of their work.
Swain is just one of a handful of climate scientists with a very high level of public visibility, appearing all over TV news, articles, YouTube and social media. He thinks he’s appeared on more podcasts than he’s ever listened to in his life. But he worries that funding for his communications work will soon run out, with nothing to replace it. “I’m still working through this myself,” Swain said. “I mean, I don’t know what my job is going to be in six months because I can’t get anybody to really support it on a deeper level.”
Finding a climate scientist who had time to talk about a silly five-minute video was also a bit of a challenge. Zeke Hausfather, another media favorite, was overwhelmed; Drake, of the video, apologized but said it was the busiest week of the year; other scientists did not respond. The initial email to Swain resulted in an auto-reply patiently advising in the midst of his “inbox meltdown”. As a one-man team, Swain wrote, he could only respond to a fraction of the incoming correspondence.
Talking to a journalist about comedy is clearly not at the top of the priority list for most scientists. But Swain doesn’t think it’s a waste of time. By now, he hoped climate change would play a bigger role in comedy sketches, bad movies and trashy TV shows, to meet people where they already are. “Where is the pop culture with climate science? It’s not where I thought it would be at this point,” he said. “But pop culture changes fast. It responds quickly to new things that are injected into the discourse.”
