From WUWT on October 7th: The surprising real story about this year’s Northeast passage transit: The media botched it
One newspaper is making the most of this “first ever event”, according to a story in the UK Register:
The Times has liberally papered London underground carriages with a fascinating new ad campaign. One poster shows a ship navigating some treacherous icy waters, with the accompanying copy reading:
Climate change has allowed the Northeast Passage to be used as a commercial shipping route for the first time.
The Times advertisment
Impressive – if only it were true.
In fact it wasn’t, and now the Times has been forced to recant:
From The Register
An advertising campaign touting the depth and quality of the Times newspaper’s environment coverage has been slapped by an industry watchdog for inaccuracy. The paper has agreed to modify the advertisements, which are based on a false climate change claim.
The Times ads claimed that global warming had caused the North East shipping passage, the icy Arctic route which in summer links Russia’s European ports to the Bering Strait, to be opened for the first time. In fact, the North East Passage opened in 1934, and was opened to overseas traffic after the fall of the Soviet Union. Modern technology, specifically radar, has permitted a safer passage in recent years.
Read the entire story here at The Register
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
It goes to show: there are lies, damn lies and the anthropocentric climate change concensus.
I was one of those who forwarded complaints to the ASA. The article in “The Register” agrees with the reply I have received from ASA detailing the amendment the Times is required to make.
Frankly, this is no more than a linguistic fudge. The “retraction” is simply a rewording to say that the global warming has made the NE passage MORE accessible. Notice the addition of that one little word. Yet they have not retracted the basic AGW alarmism.
Regrettably they have been able to wriggle off the hook with a duplicitous manipulation of words. I now wait eagerly for the “big” complaint – against the UK goverments propaganda campaign.
I was one of the 29 complainants.
The recantation is obviously unacceptable, since it still maintains that ‘climate change’ is a factor in opening the NE passage, when in fact political and technological alterations have achieved this.
What I noticed about the letter they sent back to me was the requirement to ‘keep this finding confidential’. I am still wondering why this was required……
I have just been to the Times website and there is no mention of this story.
Isn’t that strange!!!!!!!!!!
We knew that about 2 days after they printed the bogus story.
The 2 commericial German ships were led by 2 nuclear-powered ice-breakers delivering heavy machinery to E. Siberia, and the only thing special about it was that Russia now escorts ships of foreigners.
All stories like that do is lend a false-sense of warming security.
And Polar Bears don’t wear sunglasses and drink Coke to cool off.
It’s called “keeping up with The Guardian”.
I also wondered about the ‘keep this finding confidential’ in my response, but am happy that the regulatory authority have acted promptly to stop the use of this spurious claim.
More lies from the MSM – nice when they get caught out 🙂
I used to find the Times one of the UK’s better papers, but of recent years it seems to have lost the plot! In it’s own way it has become even worse than the Sun, for pushing political agenda.
Best paper for a reasonable balanced view of the news in 2009 was the Telegraph – lets hope they keep up the good work in 2010.
Could not similar “truth in advertising” laws be applied to Al Gore’s political AGW messages?
The Register article provides no source for this claim. I have no reason to doubt it, but can someone provide a link with more detail?
I would like to see a UK law passed that required the retraction of any dubious headline to be printed in the same font/type size as the original and on the same page, not hidden away [usually in 9 pt or less!] amongst pages of ads that no one reads.
At my local Village Shop this morning, guess which newspaper hadn’t been delivered due to eight inches of Global Warming.
Great result! I was one of those who sent a complaint to The Times at the time reminding them that Russia had been using the North East Passage for seventy years (prompted by the article I saw here).
I just read today in the Times that the film Avatar will save the planet!
It’s not just this mendacious advertising campaign, it’s the rock-bottom quality of research you get from so-called quality newspapers (and the agencies) these days.
I lost count of the number of press articles that described the world’s most powerful ice-breaker – 50 лет Победы – as a merchant ship… Trouble is, it’s hard to figure out which journos are just incompetent and which set out deliberately to deceive…
In answer to my question, the Wikipedia Northeast Passage article does confirm commercial use of the NEP from 1935 to the end of the Soviet era. Wiki isn’t authoritative, but at least this is a start.
Yep, I complained to the ASA as well.
I felt that if I didn’t take such action – when given the link to ASA complaints on this site – I would be just someone full of hot air and a bit of a hypocrite. Glad I complained!
I will also be making use of this link I gleaned from another contributor at WUWT:
http://www.writetothem.com – for emailing UK politicians on their AGW policies…
The Times is part of the Murdoch media empire, but unlike Fox News, which is under Rupert’s ulitmate control, The Times (and Sky TV) belong to New Corp Europe which is run by James Murdoch who is married to a global warming alarmist.
Geez !!!
Do you want Climate Change stories or the facts???
Can’t have both !!!!
Soros funded Joe Romm on Climate Progress is also still talking up heat. The neurosis is hard to shake. The CO2 was at 400 ppm in 1942 and he claims it is setting records today. If the warmists don’t like the facts, they just change them.
Hu McCulloch (04:36:44) :
isn’t it curious that the NE passage opening supposedly occurred right around the same time as the alleged “warmest” year on record, yet there is no mention of the correlation.
“The Register article provides no source for this claim . . . can someone provide a link with more detail?”
Earlier “The Register” reports cited sources. See:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/14/north_eastern_passage/
See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North-east_passage
for further references.
Dave
I’m sure the London Times new before publication that the NE Passage story was a bit off. Journalists are trained to check statements such as first time. But then alarm sells newspapers not normalcy. They are playing with fire though (pun intended) as I have highlighted in an example below.
CORRECTION:
Piers Corbyn of Weather Action said back in July 2090 – [2009]
heres an intresting post that deserves more coverage
http://bnp.org.uk/2010/01/climate-change-fanatics-shocked-as-new-scientific-paper-reveals-zero-atmospheric-carbon-increase/
Dave
ukwebspider