Tackling climate change with a comic zest for life

By Dan Bloom
Dan Bloom

CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan — Getting a PhD in physics from Oxford University wasn’t enough for a British YouTuber known as @ClimateAdam. Worried about the future impacts of runaway global warming, but full of hope and optimism that humans can find ways to stop climate change before it gets unstoppable, he decided to use his acting chops to channel his inner Adam with comedy routines to talk about climate issues with ordinary people online.

Meet Adam Levy, scientist and YouTube personality.With a doctorate in atmospheric physics from the University of Oxford, he has created an engaging YouTube persona dubbed ”Climate Adam” who in short video segments breaks down dead serious climate change issues in humorous and accessible ways.

His online alter-ego is mischievous, a little bit lacking in self-awareness and most important of all, funny.

“Climate change is a huge hurdle for humanity, but it’s also an incredible opportunity,” he says. “Never before have humans been presented with such a genuinely global threat that at the same time we have such important tools to overcome the threat.”

Although runaway climate change can seem insurmountable, Adam feels that solutions are in fact already available, if only we work together across borders around the world.”My @ClimateAdam YouTube channel is all about making this huge, complex and often an alienating problem more relatable,” he says. “I hope to communicate key issues about climate change in a way that reaches and engages diverse groups of people. Hopefully this can help motivate more action on climate change.”

Levy’s shtick, created and refined in Britain, is a brand of stand-up comedy that laughs with — and not at — climate change. His mission is to change the way people around the world talk about climate change, laying out problems as well as solutions. He uses comic routines  to take on global warming and turn it into a wake up call.

Online, the science communicator and former co-host of the Nature Podcast plays the roles of both skeptic and scientist and has been finding audiences around the world. While he is based in London, the internet gives him a platform where he can reach viewers in a world that is now borderless and multilingual.

A very funny guy, with an inviting personality that is both show business and lecture hall, Levy uses YouTube to deploy a cast of supporting characters to demystify and explain the finer points of global warming.  Props include a plate of ravioli, a woolly sweater, a gin and  tonic, the planet Mars, online dating, and a cup of fictional arsenic that ruins a perfectly good dinner to make a point about CO2.

On one video, he even dresses up as a character he calls “ClimateMadam” to discuss the difficulties of trying to communicate about climate change.

So why did a Jewish bloke in Old Blighty decide to become a climate comedian with an online Youtube channel following?

“Climate change can be such an abstract, intangible, intimidating thing, and humor is a way to make it less daunting,” he told San Diego Jewish World.”In my act, I try not to make light of climate change, but rather make light of myself. The thing I try to do the most with the ClimateAdam shtick is to tell science stories in a playful style. I hope viewers will enjoy the videos and learn something in the process. Why not?”

While working on his doctorate at Oxford, Levy met many highly-qualified academics doing amazing cutting-edge research. But he found that there was a huge gulf between academia and the level of public or political conversation. While a lot of the most important scientific questions about climate change had been answered, the answers weren’t being taken into account in public opinion or policy. And so the test tube and laboratory man decided a better use of his time on Earth would be to help people understand the scientific knowledge about climate change that already exists.Thus was an entertaining science communicator named @ClimateAdam born on YouTube.

You can subscribe to his YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCu5wtZ5uOWZp_roz7wHPfg?sub_confirmation=1

With Greta Thunberg making waves worldwide with her spellbinding climate speeches, Adam Levy comes at the same subject in a very different way — with British humor and Jewish pzzaz.

Break a leg, Adam.

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Bloom is a freelance writer and inveterate web surfer based in Taiwan.  He may be contacted via dan.bloom@sdjewishworld.com