Posted on 12/19/2007 8:04:05 AM PST by Incorrigible
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INDEPENDENCE, Ore. — Science teacher Greg Craven had one night before the last day of school to finish "The Most Terrifying Video You'll Ever See'' in time to let his high school students know about it.
Downing cans of Red Bull, Craven holed up in a science lab at Central High here, editing all night. At 6 a.m., bleary-eyed, he posted his 91/2-minute global warming video on YouTube.
His students linked to it on their MySpace pages. By that night, 60 people had clicked on it. The next day, 300. Soon after, 1,000. Craven was psyched. That kind of "viral'' growth gets you noticed on YouTube, the Internet's anarchic video smorgasbord. Within two more hours, his wife called: It's up to 10,000, she said.
Now, six months later, Craven's earnest and quirky appeal to act on climate change has collected more than 4 million views worldwide — roughly 500 times the population of Independence. That puts it near the top of YouTube's all-time list for views in the news and politics category, despite competition from videos featuring Britney Spears, Satan's face in a 9/11 explosion and an Alabama leprechaun.
The 38-year-old family man has sifted through some 7,000 comments and discussions, mostly critical. One said: "My toddler drools more cogent arguments.''
After posting the first video, Craven agonized about a hole in his theory, skipped his aunt's wedding to fill it, took a monthlong break at his wife's insistence, then spent six weeks producing a 44-part, six-hour sequel, "How It All Ends.'' It includes small explosions, silly hats Craven bought in a Nepalese tourist mart and a script totaling 70,000 words.
He slept two or three hours a night. He spent $500 on energy drinks. He made his relatives very nervous.
"It became a little bit maniacal,'' Craven admitted last week from behind his desk at Central High. "But if you think you see the emergency escape hatch when the Titanic's going down, you're going to do what you can to help people get to it.''
Craven's YouTube site gives little biography, and his first video gives none (the sequel says he's a science teacher and fellow "Joe Schmoe'').
Jan Hawkins, Craven's mother, can fill in: As a young boy, Craven looked inside padlocks and tadpoles to see how they worked. As a young man, he camped out for four days in the Honolulu airport to reflect on his year of traveling in Asia.
He and some other students had spent weeks in a Thai Buddhist monastery, where he shaved his head. Later, he was in a group that had an hourlong audience with the Dalai Lama.
"He's never been one to be superficial,'' Hawkins said.
Craven grew up in Silverton, Ore., and graduated from the University of Puget Sound with majors in Asian studies and computer science. In his 20s, he wrote some code, knocked around Asia, worked in his dad's nursery and took science classes at the University of Washington with an eye toward becoming a physical therapist.
Global warming presentations there and his chemistry classes got him wondering. He realized he had taken enough science to become a high school science teacher. He used the climate change debate to teach critical thinking.
His activism didn't kick in until he and his wife, Jodi Coleman, 37, got high-speed Internet nine months ago. He concluded that a video was the perfect way to get his points across.
Wearing a T-shirt and glasses in "Most Terrifying,'' he sketches a four-part chart to help frame his argument:
We don't have to know for certain whether human-induced global warming is really occurring to act on it, because "the risk of not acting far outweighs the risk of acting.''
Under a worst-case scenario, excessive regulation to reverse global warming could trigger a "global economic depression which makes the 1930s look like a cakewalk,'' Craven tells viewers, waving his black marker pen.
But at its worst, climate change could cause droughts, floods, dust bowls, famine, economic collapse and the displacement of millions of people, making "Al Gore look like a sissy Pollyanna with no guts who sugarcoated the bad news.''
"How lucky do you feel?'' he asks.
The video got more than 500,000 hits on Craven's site. Somehow, it also ended up on another YouTube page, where it got 2.8 million views, and on break.com, a video site for young men. There it got 1 million hits, sharing space with videos of skateboard wipeouts and mud-wrestling girls.
Craven says he can't explain why it happened. The Internet is a chaotic system, he says. Little things, maybe a link on a student's MySpace page, can have huge, unforeseen consequences downstream. Small tweaks get magnified as their effects circle back. Things can happen much faster than you expect.
Kinda like climate change, he says.
"That's why it's so scary.''
Craven's fans liked his argument, his "inescapable logic.'' They also liked his low-key and frank tone, his off-kilter sense of humor, his way of not speaking down to people.
In chemistry class last week, students said Craven teaches that way. He's "wacky'' and "animated,'' Chloe Takacs, 17, said. "He makes a lot of jokes,'' said senior James Sprenger, "which is a good attempt to make chemistry fun.''
Craven's hundreds of critics said his argument was too simplistic. Who was he to talk? What if mankind's response messed things up even more?
This one hit Craven hardest: His four-part chart laid out the worst-case scenario for global warming, critics said, but didn't take into account the probability of that scenario actually happening.
Using Craven's logic, critics argued, shouldn't nonbelievers be prepping for the potentially devastating Rapture predicted in the Book of Revelation, too? Or as Craven's explosion-happy "devil's advocate'' (Craven with a Viking hat on) later put it in the sequel, for an onslaught of "giant mutant space hamsters''?
Craven read thousands more posts. The world can solve global warming without dumb interventions, he says. "I'm not talking about putting up space mirrors or injecting ash into the atmosphere. I'm talking about stopping what we're doing.''
In Craven's view, the science suggests the probability of damage from global warming is high and the odds of excessive damage from our response are low. But his first video didn't handicap the odds.
"I almost took it down,'' he says. "For a while I was worried I did more harm than good.''
He filmed follow-up fixes, but they were hard to find on YouTube, adding to his frustration. This was his chance of a lifetime, he figured. "I didn't want to miss an opportunity to make a huge impact.''
Craven took a month off to be with his wife and two young daughters. But then he jumped back in, taking just six weeks to produce his sequel, 44 segments under 10 minutes each, to meet YouTube's time limits. He clipped single words from the script, talking as fast as he could. The frantic pace at one point made him worry he was having a heart attack.
His family took out-of-town trips to give him more time. "He loves his daughters more than anything in the world,'' says Coleman, Craven's wife. "But for the first time, he was happy to see us go.''
She worried about him, but her husband was on a mission, and "I needed to honor that.'' When she saw the finished product, "I was very relieved to be so proud and impressed and awed with what he's come up with.''
Life is changing for Craven. He might write a book. He's shifted to part-time teaching after seven years to spend more time with his family.
The sequel's introduction has gotten more than 500,000 views, most on break.com.
The backup videos, still fun but wonkier, have far lower totals. That's disappointing, Craven says. "But I can look my kids in the face years from now and feel OK, that I did everything I could — even if the carbon has hit the fan.''
(Scott Learn is a staff writer for The Oregonian of Portland, Ore. He can be contacted at scottlearn(at)news.oregonian.com.)
Not for commercial use. For educational and discussion purposes only.
Science teacher eh? Heh. Education degree teaching science. What a maroon. When are we going to demand that our teachers actually have education in the courses they are teaching? This clown couldn’t pass: elementary stats, calculus, logic, physics.....and the list goes on and on. Oh, perhaps he could work for CNN.
He minimizes the concequences of the boxs on the left and maximizes them on the right. It’s must more than just dollars. It is a complete loss of our constitutional freedoms. And that is a fate worse than death in my opinion.
And his analysis assumes that all climate out comes are equally probable. Which I reject out of hand.
Don't think they have those courses anymore as with history they were just two hard.
Basket weaving 101, has really hurt the Florida State football team. LOL
Big government destroying the world or Mother Nature destroying the world.
I’ll trust Mother long before any government.
read later
The scariest part? Dipsh*ts just like this guy will actually be making the policy that affects us all.
This guy’s column A, bottom should be just the same as column A, top. The $ will cause the same results—”global depression”—whether or not it is in the top or bottom box. Further, his words are more inflamatory when it suits his purpose.
An Al Gore planet circling the Gore star and basking it its warmth. Expect many more like him and the state of science education is so dismal that very few viewers of his video can even provide a critical analysis of anything he says.
“...he and his wife, Jodi Coleman, 37, got high-speed Internet nine months ago.”
Way to stay ahead of the curve there, genius.
ping. Junk science ping?
In a nutshell. We should throw tons of money into GW “solutions” just in case it’s true. Using his logic, we should build a shield around the planet in case we get hit by a massive meteor. It would be money well spent.
This guy’s biggest problem is his original premise that:
“We all can agree that human activity COULD contribute to GCC”
Why should we all agree to that? All I have to do is look back upon recoded history/geological history and there is no evidence that human activity has any consequence in global climate patterns.
At most humans can make individual cities warming (pavements, etc) or destroy individual rivers (pollution)
But the idea of even entertaing the proposition that Human caused global climate change is even possible is completely preposterous.
I reject this guy’s reasoning outright.
Well, If it’s popular on MySpace it’s gotta be educational
We can’t make the case that humans are wrecking the atmosphere so I have to come up with an “argument” making that question moot.
Just be honest and try to sell us on the wonderful world we would have if we turn our lives over to a global government. Good luck on that.
I reject this guy’s reasoning outright.
This video has been out there and is a much better representation of WORLD PROBLEMS, and is actually done better.
Warning: Strong Language
http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/end
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