For the final 2020 collaboration between the NCSE Graduate Student Outreach Fellows and Our Changing Climate, we turned to portrayals of climate change in television sitcoms. Many people don't actively engage with climate change science, so passive portrayals on TV can be crucial for shaping their understanding of environmental topics and the importance of taking action. To put together this video, we created a list of many examples of climate change comedy on television, then deconstructed how the framing of climate change impacts audience engagement with science. What we found is that climate change portrayals on television comedies are far from funny.
We've begun a citizen science project to document additional instances of climate change portrayal in television comedy - learn how you can participate.