Thanks to Professor Katharine Hayhoe, Texas Tech Climate Change Director and Heny Drake, postdoc Henry Drake, and climate Professor Andrew Dressler at Texas A&M, climate change scientists have come up with an effective and low-cost method to communicate climate science: through the popular video game Fortnite. They call this ClimateFortnite:
Every Sunday for two hours, Drake jumps into Fortnite, bringing climate-themed guests — such as Dessler and Peter Griffith, the founding director of NASA’s Carbon Cycle and Ecosystems Office — with him. While they play (and stream to Twitch), they chat about climate change. The three-month-old squad has set out to make climate change information accessible to Fortnite fans.
The setup is akin to a TV chat show with virtual gunplay: the squad hopes their streams will be watched by climate-curious gamers who can send in questions for them to answer midgame. The sessions are invite-only, so the chat is private until the streams are uploaded. Right now, the only thing the squad exchanges with other gamers is gunfire. You must view the videos in order to hear the climate banter.
Here’s a sample:
And here’s their Twitter stream. They appear on TwitchTV also.
I’m awaiting the Climate Change game, where discovering lithium and transition metals or developing new technology or banning coal contributes to reducing human suffering and improving the economy. We may not be in control of government, but we can communicate with confused or underinformed voters through innovative methods.
Congratulations to Hayhoe, Dressler, and Drake!