Over the past week the Advertising Standards Authority has received 202 complaints about the campaign.
There is also No10 Petition (171 signatures and rising) to get this Government propaganda pulled:
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Stop wasting taxpayers' money on climate change propaganda designed to frighten our children.
The government's latest TV advertisement on climate change is pure propaganda designed to frighten our children. Showing kids a puppy drowning in the centre of what looks like a British town is beyond fiction. It shows a weakness of argument for a government to have to resort to fear to bring the public "in line". This advertisement should be pulled immediately.
In the current economic climate, surely the government can find something better to spend six million pounds of taxpayers' money on.
Click HERE to sign the petition.
32 comments:
So which bits are 'rubbish'?
Can you point to a refutation in a peer-reviewed journal - of any substantive point you like?
Go on, have a go.
Please...
@ Anonymous I would suggest that the lack of the word "some" before the (heavily stressed) word "scientists" makes this a blatant attempt to present a state sponsored message as fact when it is nothing more than opinion.
To me that makes it not only "rubbish" but dangerous rubbish.
"... when it is nothing more than opinion."
Propaganda more like.
Anonymous... Do you like taking advice from people who are proven to be untrustworthy?
Are you going to take a Swine-Flu shot?
Do you believe in Liberty?
Do you drive a car?
Do you own a house and/or pay utility bills?
Do you still live with your mum?
It's mentioned in the paper today
http://tinyurl.com/yhxgglh
How is drowning pets going to help with climate change?
Do labradors have a high carbon footprint or something?
D
Anon
Believe what you want. It's free. I won't stop you.
Demand money from me or levy a tax on me for what YOU believe in and you'd better have proof it's real.
You don't. So don't ask.
So, no-one can point to any substantive point that is factually incorrect.
But I knew that anyway
You're armchair experts. Or morons as those of us who are scientists like to call you.
Keep it up.
Dungeekin: yes - that's very constructive comment. You're on a par with the idiot who runs this blog!
The ad says that the scenario described is if "its [CO2] effects were happening faster than they [scientists] thought". So it is explicitly dealing with an extreme scenario and is quite open about that.
Imagine a world in which we are gently persuaded to drive less, not take flights on a whim and purchase fewer disposable consumer goods.
The horror, the horror.
The only complaints about this ad with any merit are the ones about scaring children with the images of a dog drowning. All the others are deliberately mendacious objections by people who think 5% of the consensus should equal 50% of the debate.
How many people saw the ad and didn't complain?
I find it astonishing how much indignant outrage can be generated by an advert that is essentially just a request to people to maybe consider taking a bit of responsibility for the consequences of their own actions.
Trying to present this as Orwellian government coercion or duplicity is simply ludicrous.
Pointing out that the science isn't 100% certain actually doesn't make our behaviour any less reckless, and in fact doesn't make it OK for anyone to go sticking their heads back in the sand in the slim hope everybody's wrong and it will all go away again.
This ad is exactly what this country needs.
Too many people have been fed the rubbish that global warming is made up. They argue their point without giving anything to back it up. How is it misleading Gouldous? Hmm?
The vast majority of scientists agree global warming is real and man made. They have done for years. Many people (and now governments) are starting to accept that we have to do something. Except in the UK. Our government is beginning to accept it, but our people are not yet willing. We need a good kick up the arse like this.
Sadly the ad doesn't go far enough. It's too soft and too sweet but it's a start.
Although I welcome the advertisement, it really doesn't go far enough.
There was once a land where the weather was very very strange
There were awful heatwaves in some parts, and in others terrible
storms and floods
Scientists said it was being caused by too much CO2 which went up
into the sky when the grown-ups used energy
They said the CO2 was getting dangerous. Its effects were
happening faster than they thought.
Some places could even disappear under the sea and it was the
children of the land who would have to live with the horrible
consequences
The grown ups realised they had to do something They discovered
that over 40% of the CO2 was coming from ordinary every day
things like keeping houses warm and driving cars which meant if
they made less CO2 maybe they could save the land for the
children.
Anonymous - there are many, many substantive reports by scientists which debunk much of the 'evidence' purported to be proof of a linkage between rising temperatures and CO2 emissions. Here's one: http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/trc.html (basically a debunk of the hockey-stick, which is still heavily relied upon by climate-scarers).
Here's another one about diminshing ice-caps:
http://www.iarc.uaf.edu/news/news_shorts/akasofu_4_26_06/written_testimony.php
If you actually look for a balanced view instead of just believing either your own hype or others you can find it. Try researching the other side - which I can only assume you haven't as you invite people to find it for you. One of the reasons this ad has made me so angry is that it has only been made so implicit becaase the surveyed people did not fall into line with 'government policy'! OH, and please don't take my first sentence to mean I believe that temperatures are rising.
that's poor science by an economist and a mining engineer I'm afraid and already roundly discredited.
Nice try
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/false-claims-by-mcintyre-and-mckitrick-regarding-the-mann-et-al-1998reconstruction/
you may find this useful
sorry if it's a bit 'scientific'
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/02/dummies-guide-to-the-latest-hockey-stick-controversy/
Roundly discredited by people who want/need to believe their own research in order to ensure continued funding.
And the roundly discredited hockey-stick. The roundly discredited IPCC report, the roundly discredited Stern report, and on and on and on and on. However, this doesn't fit in with the politicised ideology that you cling to. Nice try.
Explain to me why raw data was witheld for 10 years by Mann, and why the source samples that the ongoing evidence have been reduced each time to be now a very biased sample? Why do the climate models not report the true climate? Why have temperatures been dropping since 1998. How are global temperatures measured? Is possibly anything to do with Siberian temp measuring posts being closed down, or the spread of urban heat centres.
And thanks for highlighting it was a bit scientific. I might have struggled with it otherwise. I wish I was as clever as you.
Sorry for another question, but why is the medieval warm period missed out of the data reported on in terms of global temperatures? What's your thoughts on sunpots?
And when you refuted my suggested evidence you didn't include the ice-cap gentleman?
yeah it's all a conspiracy by us scientists.
The science is there. You can't understand it. Have the humility to accept it instead of making yourself look like a shouty bloke down the pub without even a basic knowledge of the subject.
The points you raise are not worthy of discussion anymore. Research the journals and see for yourself.
Sunspots?
The large majority of climate models already incorporate the little or no variability possibly caused by sunspots.
They may have a slightly larger role than we think but paradoxically you won't see that unless carbon emissions are massively reduced anyway.
Hahahahahahahaha!! You cheeky little patronising chappy/chappess. Thanks for taking the time to answer and refute my questions with such authority. Hee hee.
Not worthy of discussion... nice refute. You sound like a squeaky person in their own bedroom (to paraphrase your own metaphor).
er, you could always try addressing the point made in the very first post.
sunspots, hockey sticks and a conspiracy by the scientific community are what I was expecting while all the time hoping for something more intelligent.
Oh well.
by the way, I don't have a politicised ideology, as you imply. You can do what you want, politically, with the information but I do have a fervent passion that the science is presented honestly. Sure there are scientists who deny climate change just as some scientists deny evolution and can reel off argument after argument that 'proves' it doesn't happen.
Do nothing about climate change if you wish but don't deny it on barking mad 'scientific' grounds.
My point, though admittedly not very well put due to my passion on this, is that there is never an end to scientific discussion on any given subject matter. however, there appears to be no further discussion allowed on this topic. Whilst on the surface you appear to agree with this in your latter posts to me, it is always accompanied by a barbed comment which implies that if you do disagree you are clearly wrong (or barking mad). There is perhaps 1% of media coverage on this subject which reports any disagreement - this does not allow a layperson such as myself to explore other avenues of discussion. You, as a scientist, shouold surely be more open minded to other investigations than the politicians with their slightly less altruistic reasons for 'believing' the science. I accept there is strong evidence to support the theories you agree with - what makes me want to know the answers to my questions (which again I admit were put poorly) is the fact that there is a suppression of alternate theories. Perhaps these theories are more widely available and understood within the scientific community, but again, to the person on the street we only see the suppression and dismissal of anything other than the dogma of climate change.
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