YouTube Global warming Tutorial makes science teacher a web star

U.S. science teacher is a Web sensation
December 02, 2007
Francine Kopun, TheStar.com Feature Writer

The Most Terrifying Video You'll Ever See contains no fake blood, vampires, creepy talking dolls or spooks hiding in television sets. It's a 10-minute lecture on global warming, delivered by a high school science teacher from Oregon, and it has swept the Web, generating millions of hits on multiple sites.

It's low-tech, low-quality and low-budget – Greg Craven, a 38-year-old father of two, shot it himself at his home in Monmouth, Ore., hopped up on Red Bull and Little Caesars pizza.

"It's my midlife crisis and my magnum opus, and my nervous breakdown and my enlightenment experience all rolled into one," he says.

Armed with a black marker and a whiteboard, Craven made an academic argument that went viral after he posted it on YouTube in June, generating nearly 3 million hits on the site. It now ranks among the most popular videos in the news and politics category.



"It's a classic example of how everyday people can help change the world," says Graham Saul, executive director of Climate Action Network Canada.

Craven wants to be the man behind the pebble that starts the landslide that ends in an avalanche change in public opinion, and he's already paid a price to be that man.

After completing his first video, he sifted through 5,000 critical comments to come up with a revised video, called How It All Ends, which links to five hours of explanatory videos.

In them, Craven dons a series of pointy hats and casually sets chemicals on fire in a lab to spice up his discussion, which combines science and risk-management theory to argue that what's needed now is nothing less than a change in public policy to combat global warming.

During the months it took him to produce the package, his wife, Jodi Coleman, 37, took their two girls, ages 2 and 3, to visit relatives for a week at a time, so Craven could work undisturbed.

"I entered this weird haze. My relationship with sleep changed. I would sleep when I could no longer function, and I would sleep for an hour so that I could function again. Then I'd get back up," says Craven.

He suffered the symptoms of what he feared might be a heart attack and drove himself to the emergency room at the local hospital. It was stress.

He spent $400 on energy drinks and another couple of hundred on pizza and McDonald's $1 cheeseburgers. He filmed the segments at home with a camera on a tripod and his Mac.

"He was definitely following his passion," says his wife, a former primary school teacher who quit to stay at home with the kids. "He is the world's most doting father and loves being with his kids more than anything in the world. He did it so that their world would be a better place, and I understood that."

Craven applied his considerable teaching ability to the project, drawing viewers in with a frank and charmingly mild-mannered delivery. "What if I told you I think I've found an argument that makes that whole bitter question of whether it's really happening or not, moot," he asks, peering into the camera.

He was inspired in part, by one of his online heroes – a Brooklyn blogger called Ze Frank, who started a Web sensation in 2001 by sending a party invitation featuring a series of hilarious dance moves to 17 friends. After it went viral, Frank quit his day job to build up his Web site and spent a year doing a daily three-minute show that drew 10,000 viewers a day.

Craven says an agent has contacted him to discuss a possible book. But he doesn't want to spend any more time developing projects for the Web – he says it's time for him to turn his attention back to his wife and children. He hopes others will pick up where he has left off.

"We need as many information warriors out there as we can get."