After hearing an 11 year-old’s Fortnite video got more views than a climate change lecture, Henri Drake had an idea.

A red haired cowgirl grabs a submachine gun from a building and as she runs away from an oncoming storm the player in control starts talking about the impact CFC emissions have on global warming.

"We basically have since banned those materials… but we found out last year that the concentration of these gases in the atmosphere is increasing again."

The cowgirl is Henri Drake, a casual gamer and climate scientist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the game is Fortnite, a crazy popular multiplayer shooter game.

It’s a strange mix, but the ClimateFortnite Twitch channel Henri created is using the game's popularity to teach people about global warming and climate policy.

He streams video of him playing the game with other climate scientists and they all take turns answering questions from the audience.

When a question about the Paris climate agreement comes up you hear Chris's voice over the mic, a masters student from Boston University. He starts explaining who could fill the void if the US pulls out of the Paris agreement as the team skydives out of the Battle Bus, the way every Fortnite game starts.

Chris names several countries while landing in Pleasant Park, “China is obviously a large emitter,” before Henri interrupts to direct the team: “Let’s go north-east side.”

Chris continues as the team meets up, “Because [China is] such a large impact on the global economy and global emissions they’re someone to watch.”

Right place, right time.

This climate Q&A stream almost started by accident. A few months ago, when playing Fortnite in his PhD downtime, Henri Drake saw a tweet from climate scientist Katharine Heyhoe about how her son's gaming vids were getting heaps more views than her lectures.

“I put two and two together and figured I could stream it on Twitch,” Henri tells Hack.

"Part of the gaming community really likes it.

I get a lot of kids who are scared about what climate change means for their future, they come on and like being able to ask their question directly to an expert."

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The biggest streamers on Twitch pull in hundreds of thousands of viewers and at one point in June more than 1.5 million people were watching Fortnite streams. ClimateFortnite isn’t quite in that league though.

“We’ve been averaging about 30 people a stream, which doesn’t sound like much but that’s the average,” Henri says.

Henri explains the average viewer number can be a bit misleading because it doesn’t account too well for drop-ins. For example, the Monday stream only had an average viewer number of around 20 but there were almost 3,500 viewers over the 90 minute stream.

“I like to compare that with some of the other outreach that I do, so I’ll go and do a talk at a middle school, that’ll be a two hour event, I have to travel there, I have to prepare and then only about 20 kids get to see it.

“Even now I’ve amplified my communication just by doing it online, so I’m pretty happy with that.”

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Whatsapp Henri found out kids are worried about climate change by talking to them while playing Fornite.

The gaming scientists

The ClimateFortnite gang aren’t the only scientists using Twitch and gaming to get people outside of their usual circles engaged.

Folks like biologist DrWD40, professor of physics and astronomy HorisonSci and geologist RockitSage have been on the streaming platform for a little while now.

Sage, for example, joined in 2015.

“I only streamed video games then because I didn’t know how big and how interested people would be in geology,” she tells Hack.

While RockitSage goes by Sage online, when she’s working on her PhD or teaching geology at West Virginia University she answers to Alyssa. If you consider her 2,500 Twitch followers it turns out people are pretty interested in what she’s got to say.

Her science specific streams, which started about a year ago, followed on from other outreach she’d done (things like school visits) but feel much more worthwhile.

“This has just been beyond more impactful than anything else I’ve done. Really for me right now I can share science and make a difference.”

There’s more and more of a demand for it too. Alyssa is seeing the educational content on Twitch, the EDU side as she refers to it, grow really quickly.

“I think a lot of people still don’t know, but the people who are finding out are sharing it very rapidly.”

Spreading the good word climate

Compared to the pure-bred gamers on Twitch these scientists are barely making a splash, but that doesn't bother Henri Drake.

He's not ruling out the a rise into the top tier of streamers.

“The upper limit for how many views you can get on a twitch stream is kind of absurd, there are people who literally have an average of hundreds of thousands of viewers every day.”

Even if Henri doesn't make it to that level he's pretty pleased with the response so far: “If I quit now I’d be happy with it.”

“I just want people to be aware that climate is going to be a huge issue over the next 100 years or so and I think there’s no age that’s too early to start talking about it.

“So if we get some 10 year old kids going up to their parents and saying, hey I want to learn about climate change, even is just a few kids do that, then for me that’s a big win.”

And hell, they’re getting some pretty good feedback during the stream too, with Henri getting this message during a match.

“We got our greatest compliment on our stream so far,” he pipes into the chat.

“We are, quote, woke: ‘This stream is woke.’”