ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Critics of Arctic offshore petroleum drilling have used climbing gear, kayaks and polar bear costumes to protest industrial activity in the Arctic. They’re now trying humor.

Actors Alexander Skarsgard of “True Blood” and Jack McBrayer of “30 Rock,” along with Andy Bichlbaum of “The Yes Men” activists, are on a Greenpeace ship in the Greenland Sea with a team from the Funny or Die production company to make a comedy series focused on industrial threats to the Arctic.

Alexander Skarsgard and friends are making a comedy series on threats to the Arctic. The Associated Press

“It’s really important that we reach as many people as possible with the message that the Arctic deserves our protection – it’s not just another resource to be exploited until it’s exhausted and broken,” Greenpeace Arctic campaigner Sune Scheller said by email Thursday from the Arctic Sunset, a 160-foot Greenpeace icebreaker.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center on Tuesday said the Arctic hit its summer minimum last week with 1.7 million square miles of sea ice, down 240,000 square miles from 2014. Environmental groups say burning oil extracted from the Arctic Ocean seabed will accelerate climate warming and that industrialization will harm polar bears, walruses, whales and ice seals.

Arctic issues reached an apex two weeks ago when Barack Obama became the first sitting U.S. president to visit the Arctic. Eroding Alaska villages, he noted, were once protected by sea ice.

Critics of Arctic drilling, however, target the Obama administration for granting permits to Royal Dutch Shell PLC for exploration wells in the Chukchi Sea.

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