This hilarious song shows how frustrated scientists can get when you ignore climate change.
Jeremy Hoffman spends his days studying ocean sediment samples.
That may not sound very interesting, but for Hoffman, it's fascinating: He's reconstructing climate records from Earth's past.
So you can imagine how the 26-year-old paleoclimate scientist feels about climate change doubters, people who say Hoffman — and 97% of his colleagues — are wrong about the effects of human activity on global climate.
He's tried to convince them using traditional methods, but some people can't be swayed by peer-reviewed papers.
So he's decided to use a different tool: parody songs.
There's something familiar about this Hoffman and Jerfunkel duo. Images and GIFs via Jeremy Hoffman/YouTube.
Hoffman has long been fascinated by what he calls "the ability of people to deny overwhelming scientific consensus," and last spring, as he sat in on an online seminar about dealing with climate change doubters, inspiration struck.
15 minutes later, he had written "Sound of Skeptics" to the tune of Simon and Garfunkel's "Sound of Silence."
“Hello, skeptics, not our friends / We've come to share with you again / Data proving that the Earth's warming / Is a phenomenon that we're causing."
The music video he posted to YouTube and recorded in his home studio in Corvallis, Oregon, where he's a doctoral candidate at Oregon State University, is as ridiculous as the task it describes: repeatedly presenting hard evidence to an unpersuadable minority.
In climate science, dealing with the doubters has long been a part of the job. Why not do it with a wig and a song?
But the frustration it captures is real.
"There's this feeling that whatever we do there's still going to be this doubt, and there's really no explanation for it," he said. "When I ask in the song, 'What else will we need to show?' I'm actually asking — realistically at this point — what else is there that we as scientists can do to convince you?"
Hoffman posted the video last month and hopes it reaches people ahead of the UN-led climate change talks in Paris starting Nov. 30, 2015.
"Unless we have everybody on board it will be too late to act on climate change, and our actions will be too slow and will not have a large enough effect," he says.
Like a lot of young scientists today, Hoffman has prioritized outreach as an integral part of his research.
When he's not studying ocean sediment cores to reconstruct historical climate records, he's a science communications fellow at the Oregon Museum of Science of Industry in Portland and is a big proponent of "informal science learning" — learning done outside of the classroom.
But the parody takes a different approach.
Rather than helping viewers understand the science, this song is a way to express some of the frustrations that come with being a scientist today.
"How do you engage the public in understanding this feeling of futility in a fun way?" he said. "Music is a good way to get them to remember, and humor is one of the best ways to connect with people on a basic level."
A scientist showing people data can only get so far. Hoffman said combining his love of music and humor (he performs at some open mic nights in Oregon) was a "nonthreatening" way to show people where scientists are coming from.
Watch "The Sound of Skeptics" here:
Hoffman might not be a one-hit wonder either.
His love of music and humor resulted in another parody song earlier this year — to the tune of "Eye of the Tiger" — about dealing with a group of people who require at least as much patience as climate change doubters: doctoral thesis advisors.
Maybe his climate song won't reach as many people as Simon and Garfunkel's version, but it could get people thinking and talking climate change a bit more — and at the very least drown out some of the doubters.
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Resurfaced video of French skier's groin incident has people giving the announcer a gold medal
"The boys took a beating on that one."
Downhill skiing is a sport rife with injuries, but not usually this kind.
A good commentator can make all the difference when watching sports, even when an event goes smoothly. But it's when something goes wrong that great announcers rise to the top. There's no better example of a great announcer in a surprise moment than when French skier Yannick Bertrand took a gate to the groin in a 2007 super-G race.
Competitive skiers fly down runs at incredible speeds, often exceeding 60 mph. Hitting something hard at that speed would definitely hurt, but hitting something hard with a particularly sensitive part of your body would be excruciating. So when Bertrand slammed right into a gate family-jewels-first, his high-pitched scream was unsurprising. What was surprising was the perfect commentary that immediately followed.
This is a clip you really just have to see and hear to fully appreciate:
- YouTube youtu.be
It's unclear who the announcer is, even after multiple Google inquiries, which is unfortunate because that gentleman deserves a medal. The commentary gets better with each repeated viewing, with highlights like:
"The gate the groin for Yannick Bertrand, and you could hear it. And if you're a man, you could feel it."
"Oh, the Frenchman. Oh-ho, monsieurrrrrr."
"The boys took a beating on that one."
"That guy needs a hug."
"Those are the moments that change your life if you're a man, I tell you what."
"When you crash through a gate, when you do it at high rate of speed, it's gonna hurt and it's going to leave a mark in most cases. And in this particular case, not the area where you want to leave a mark."
Imagine watching a man take a hit to the privates at 60 mph and having to make impromptu commentary straddling the line between professionalism and acknowledging the universal reality of what just happened. There are certain things you can't say on network television that you might feel compelled to say. There's a visceral element to this scenario that could easily be taken too far in the commentary, and the inherent humor element could be seen as insensitive and offensive if not handled just right.
The announcer nailed it. 10/10. No notes.
The clip frequently resurfaces during the Winter Olympic Games, though the incident didn't happen during an Olympic event. Yannick Bertrand was competing at the FIS World Cup super-G race in Kvitfjell, Norway in 2007, when the unfortunate accident occurred. Bertrand had competed at the Turin Olympics the year before, however, coming in 24th in the downhill and super-G events.
As painful as the gate to the groin clearly as, Bertrand did not appear to suffer any damage that kept him from the sport. In fact, he continued competing in international downhill and super-G races until 2014.
According to a 2018 study, Alpine skiing is a notoriously dangerous sport with a reported injury rate of 36.7 per 100 World Cup athletes per season. Of course, it's the knees and not the coin purse that are the most common casualty of ski racing, which we saw clearly in U.S. skier Lindsey Vonn's harrowing experiences at the 2026 Olympics. Vonn was competing with a torn ACL and ended up being helicoptered off of the mountain after an ugly crash that did additional damage to her legs, requiring multiple surgeries (though what caused the crash was reportedly unrelated to her ACL tear). Still, she says she has no regrets.
As Bertrand's return to the slopes shows, the risk of injury doesn't stop those who live for the thrill of victory, even when the agony of defeat hits them right in the rocks.