How serious is climate change?
Since 2007 Hank has called climate change the biggest problem humanity has ever faced, repeating it through 2021, and in 2025 he says we are already living with its effects. John called it an emergency in 2007 and in 2018 maybe the biggest problem facing humans, constantly deprioritized for breaking news.
Axis: a grave, urgent threat ... overstated / manageable
Concept: climate change
Positions by date: 39 records in 39 videos. The position was refined (2020), never reversed, in these records.
John
| date | how | position | video |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2007-10-12 | first on record | John calls climate change an environmental emergency we all face and thanks Al Gore and Hank for helping him understand it. | October 12th: Carbon Re-Neutralizing Brotherhood 2.0 00:03:14 |
| 2011-02-23 | restate | John says Nerdfighteria's million pounds of carbon gives a sense of how huge the climate problem we face really is. | WE ARE 812 YEARS OLD 00:02:47 |
| 2016-11-15 | restate | John says climate change is real, humans are causing it, and future people will judge us on how we dealt with it. | Good News/Bad News: A Pizzamas Video in Nine Slices 00:01:09 |
| 2017-07-18 | restate | Sometimes, though, bad news is slow, like climate change, and good news comes all at once, from a surprise A on a test to something bigger. | Accio Decade Hallows 00:00:39 |
| 2018-05-15 | restate | A map of average temperature change between 1965 and 2014 shows red where Earth got warmer, white where unchanged and blue where colder, and there is no blue. | Seven Maps to Better Understand the World 00:01:45 |
| 2018-07-10 | restate | It is also a reminder that a changing climate can fuel global instability. | The General Crisis 00:03:46 |
| 2018-09-04 | restate | The obvious example is climate change, maybe the biggest problem facing humans, yet constantly deprioritized in favor of breaking news. | The Eisenhower Matrix 00:01:15 |
Hank
| date | how | position | video |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2007-10-05 | first on record | Hank ranks the environment above health care: good health care won't matter if we have poisoned the Earth and cannot feed ourselves. | October 5th: Feuding, Goonies and Politics 00:02:39 |
| 2007-10-09 | restate | Hank tends to believe the environmental crisis is the biggest problem humanity has ever faced. | October 9th: The Feud Continues 00:01:17 |
| 2009-10-13 | restate | Hank says climate change is making weather go haywire, drying the southeast and changing whole ecosystems: 'global everything changes. Get ready.' | Nine Die in Georgia Floods - Kanye is a Jackass 00:01:54 |
| 2010-05-26 | restate | Hank says that without being dedicated, smart and informed about these environmental problems we are going to kill ourselves, and he is not kidding. | How to Be Green Without Being a Prick 00:03:47 |
| 2013-09-27 | restate | In the description Hank calls climate change real, human-caused and one of the largest problems humanity will ever face. | Invalid Arguments: Climate Change video description |
| 2014-01-03 | restate | Hank says global climate change is going to threaten the stability of everything. | The Golden Gate Bridge Didn't Collapse!! 00:03:29 |
| 2014-01-10 | restate | Hank says the energy trapped in the atmosphere is increasing, which no one can argue with; as it does the globe warms on average and the climate changes. | Global Warming and the Polar Vortex 00:02:56 |
| 2014-12-26 | restate | Hank says 2014 will very likely be the warmest year ever recorded and, though humans are adaptable, growing food and rebuilding infrastructure for a changed climate will be very expensive. | The Best and Worst of 2014 00:00:31 |
| 2015-02-13 | restate | Hank says burning the vast reserves of unconventional oil would be 'game over' for climate change. | Draw My Life + 16 Other Suggestions 00:02:31 |
| 2016-01-08 | restate | Hank says he thinks climate change is the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced. | Who Am I?! - Some thoughts on Personal Identity 00:00:29 |
| 2017-02-03 | restate | Hank believes global warming is caused by people and will be one of the biggest challenges humanity will ever face together. | Are We Making Things Worse? 00:00:42 |
| 2017-04-28 | restate | Hank calls continued denial of 'the biggest crisis humanity has ever faced' one of the terrible results of the destruction of expertise. | Can You Trust Mainstream Media? 00:03:08 |
| 2017-06-02 | restate | Hank says climate refugees, lost crops and lost infrastructure could destabilize the world economy and bring a very bad era, a view the US Department of Defense shares. | The Paris Accord: What is it? And What Does it All Mean? 00:04:13 |
| 2017-09-01 | restate | Hank says the more carbon we release, the more the curves shift: that is the future we have to accept and prepare for. | What Everyone Gets Wrong About Global Warming 00:03:04 |
| 2018-10-19 | restate | If we wait until 2100, when the serious sting of climate change is really felt, we will have signed up for much worse. | This is the scariest graph I've ever seen 00:02:54 |
| 2018-12-04 | restate | Hank says the world is going to be worse: there will be climate refugees, and the global situation will probably destabilize somewhat as we deal with the problem. | When it All Seems Like Too Much 00:01:04 |
| 2019-05-03 | restate | Climate change is the first global-scale collective problem our species has faced, so it is no surprise we don't know how to face it. | What Game of Thrones is Really About 00:05:10 |
| 2019-05-24 | restate | Ocean water has warmed over the last 50 years or so, and warm water holds less oxygen, which is bad for many animals. | The Monterey Bay Aquarium Has a Secret 00:06:14 |
| 2019-05-31 | restate | Hank says, as he does over and over, that climate change is like the biggest challenge humanity has ever faced. | Uncomfortable Nuance: Natural Gas Edition 00:02:26 |
| 2019-08-30 | restate | Hank says burning fossil fuels measurably lowers Earth's oxygen, but only by a small share; carbon dioxide, though, is extremely low and we are well on our way to doubling it. | The Earth Shouldn't Have Oxygen 00:02:51 |
| 2019-09-27 | restate | As a climate advocate, Hank says panic would make sense and is a normal emotion given the circumstances, but it is not the most helpful one and solves nothing. | Crisis 00:01:15 |
| 2019-12-27 | restate | Hank says part of it must be that we are starting to feel the real effects of climate change: the climate is actually changing. | Why I'm Worried about 2020 00:00:50 |
| 2020-08-21 | refine | If collective means everyone contributes and can affect it, however slightly, through their actions, then maybe global warming is the first large-scale collective problem the world has faced. | The Water's Getting Warm 00:00:29 |
| 2021-07-09 | restate | Hank says for all 41 years of his life we have known climate change will impose devastating instability; those who deny it through greed, bias or ignorance are wrong. | Wrong on the Internet 00:00:45 |
| 2021-08-13 | restate | Asked what to do, Hank says viewers should do a lot, around their other duties, because climate change is the most important and difficult issue humanity faces. | How We Fix the Climate 00:02:26 |
| 2022-07-29 | restate | Hank says human infrastructure assumes rainfall and temperature stay as they were; as they change, crop yields might fall and leave people hungry, power grids fail under air conditioning, and forests burn. | How Climate Change /Actually/ Works...in 4 Minutes 00:00:46 |
| 2022-08-12 | restate | Burning them releases carbon dioxide, opaque to infrared, so heat stays in the atmosphere, changing weather and increasing droughts, fires, storms and heat waves. | The Biggest Climate Bill of Your Life - But What does it DO!? 00:01:35 |
| 2023-08-04 | restate | Hank says this is bad news: global warming is worse than we thought, and other pollution has been shielding us from some of its effects. | The Biggest Science Story of the Week 00:03:22 |
| 2023-10-04 | restate | Hank says heat is a big part of the problem (not all: ocean acidification would not be helped) and is already making life harder, getting worse decade by decade for a while. | A Messy and Unhinged Introduction to Geoengineering 00:04:06 |
| 2024-03-08 | restate | Hank says climate change is part but not all of the reason the graph rises, and disasters are increasing, especially heavy rainfall events and heat waves. | I Believed These Four Lies 00:07:25 |
| 2024-10-04 | restate | Hank says the flood happened because our warmer atmosphere carries more water, which happened because we have been digging up old trees and burning them. | Trees are Destroying the Earth (Again) 00:04:09 |
| 2025-07-25 | restate | Asked whether we will escape the effects of climate change, Hank says no: we are experiencing them now and are past the point of no negative impacts. | The Molecule that Changed Everything 00:06:28 |
Background
| date | how | position | video |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2007-08-01 | background | In a song line Hank calls it deranged not to believe in climate change when Montana is at 102 degrees in the dark. (playful) | August 1: It's Too Hot 00:02:25 |
| 2009-02-08 | background | John mocks the idea that cold weather at home disproves global warming. (playful) | All Aboard the Fail Boat 00:02:24 |
| 2020-10-14 | background | Hank adds that it is unseasonably warm most days in most places: 2020 is one of the warmest years of the last hundred, or one of the coolest of the next hundred. (playful) | John Predicts the Future! 00:00:29 |