Earth-awareness run amok: WWF's ad company apparently produced 9/11 "respect the planet" video in June 2009

The video spot showing 2 planes flying into the twin towers, followed by even more, is probably the most tasteless and stupid environmental advertisement I’ve ever seen.
Probably?
That is like saying communism was probably bad.
REPLY: You’re right, what was I thinking? Fixed. -A

Never mind the callousness! What about the blatant stupidity!? What does a tsunami have to do with human actions other than being a victim of a totally natural event?

WWF acronym should be changed to…. [snip]

What was the WWF going to do about the Indonesian tsunami?
Its like, “send us money and we will keep the powerful Earth from causing tsunamis”?
Does the WWF protect people from natural disasters, I thought they were interested in animals. Maybe they can help save a few animals from natural disasters but why bring up the point that 260,000 people died then.
Throw in 9/11 and it is just, overall, a rather awkward/dense/dumb/beyond dumb set of connections to make.

Right on Schedule the AGWers play their “Look at me I’m a fringe group of radical environmentalists” card to derail their 15 minutes of “social relevance”, talk of the town and favorite fund-raising cause status after riding into the mainstream on the back of the UN and MSM, and at their own hand they start the move back to the fringe where they belong. Such is the fate of all fanatics.
They will stop being the topic du jour and become again the cocktail joke of the month while MSM abandons them and issues claims that they were “mislead”, the articles are already starting to turn except op-eds from the faithful.

I had an old client.He was a firefighter in New Jersey.From across the river he saw the towers hit.Then the Bell rang.I wil never,ever give to the WWF in good times and bad but I’ll get this out too.I will send my old client a copy-if he’s still alive.COPD and all that from the smoke and debris…
Never Forget.Never…

The known universe is serene, but broken by periods of intense calamity.
There are many ways this has been expressed. Mostly in science films where you have researchers out in the field digging through sites and rock formations, etc.
Preying on primal fears has become a plaything of warmist agenda.
They aren’t the first to do this, but they have taken it to the limits.
Like their reasoning, which does not follow through to the consequences of that which they propose as their final solution, so it is with this video.
It is very obvious they are in a big hurry.
We must act quickly.

Now anthropogenic global warming / man made climate change / jargon of the day has a hand on undersea volcanic activities? That is brilliant.

Anthropogenic tsunamis blamed on the heavy footsteps of Indonesians I suppose. I’ve seen everything now.

Ah heck, just delete my previous message. I am too angry to type anything usefull, even if I do understand their “intent.”
U.S. Army for 20 years…

I won’t believe this was “not done or authorized by the agency” until the DDB and the WWF sue the daylights out of the guilty party—whoever that could be. But even then both parties could set up a fake guilty party and sue them just to feign justice. And apparently, judging by this video, that wouldn’t be beyond them to undertake.
There are some strange minds involved in environmentalism—‘a tree is known by its fruits’.

Arww come on… Mr. Moderator… I thought my play on acronymns between WWF and the snipped — is not all that bad. But, OK….understood. This is your blog.
Regardless….that is not the main point here: If this video is authentic, then individuals need to be held accountable for using “funds” [from private donations no doubt] to produce such rubbish.
Again…people who capitalize on tragedies to advance their political agenda, should never be given the chance to ever bring it to the light of day.
May all of the grieving parties of both tragedies know [when unintentionally stumbling upon this WWF garbage] that some people, many people, in this world, simply respect the solemnity of the events, and give their respects to the souls that perished. End of story.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

But this video is endemic of a deeper, more systemic problem….the one Crosspatch and RBateman is speaking of in their posts above.
An Inconvenient Truth shown at a public school??????
Yes. We must act quickly.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

Some interesting data:
World Wildlife Fund
Carter S. Roberts, President/CEO
Annual Compensation (Fiscal Year ending 6/2008) = $439,327

If this ad and video get wide exposure thanks to the Internet, it can serve as a test for one’s degree of stupid. Anyone who suggest that the tsunami was caused by anthropogenic global warming should be required to give up their voting rights and wear a big “S” for stupid on a bright orange hoodie for the next three months in Copenhagen. The tsunami was caused by a large tectonic slip—an earthquake—30 km below the surface of the Indian Ocean, not the climate or even in the atmosphere.
As Steven Colbert would say, a perfect example of dumbassity.

evanmjones (21:18:21) : Kids need to sleep too.
Thanks for the laugh Evan. Got my mind off this video.

So much for keeping a lid on this. The story just ran on Fox News/Hannity’s program nation wide. Hannity called for an apology from the parties who produced it.
Gene: (21:29:00) : like I said . . . a measure of stupid and dumbassity.

If WWF can outright lie about Polar Bears, it’s pretty obvious they have no scruples or truth on their side.

PPS–if would make anyone feel better, you can put a WWF logo on the side of the panda.

Here’s the connection between 9/11 and the 2005 tsumani, as I see it. The earthquake and tsunami occurred near a mostly Muslim nation, Indonesia. Many (but not all) of those killed in the tsunami were Muslims. Many in the media claimed this was God’s revenge for the 9/11 attacks. This was very wrong on many levels.

I believe the big earthquake and tsunami was on December 26, 2004, not 2005 as I wrote above.

” Mick (21:54:16) :
Disgusting!
Is there any financial connection between WWF and Al Gore & co. ?
[snip] ”
sorry moderator(s), I meant to “highlight” the connection, therefore he’s responsible as well. My bad.

Does anyone else remember during President Bush’s second campaign, they used about 2 seconds of 9/11 footage in an ad, and the left went into FITS about it?
But, I guess, this insulting piece of trash is intended to be “for a good cause”. Tell you what… in my mind, saving the world from Kerry was a much better cause!

How can you capture this video?
It will not be around in a few hours and nobody will know what you are talking about.

Steve Huntwork (22:38:50) :
Real and Firefox both have add-ons that download YouTube videos to your computer.
BTW, according to a comment above this video was on Fox News channel/ Hannity tonight. So the horse is out of the barn.

Analogy of an “accident”:
Didn’t look/didn’t think/didn’t ask.
Didn’t look both ways before assuming “wow, this will really knock ’em over”.
Didn’t think that it could possibly be highly offensive.
Didn’t ask “Should we be doing this?”.
After the last election where trumped up associations got dumped, some people didn’t get the message. They’ll hear it now.

Steve Huntwork (22:38:50) :
How can you capture this video?
It will not be around in a few hours and nobody will know what you are talking about.
In Firefox, the “Download Helper” plug-in can snag and reformat it to AVI. (or save it in it’s native FLV)
Question about the Vid. It infers that the Tsunami deaths could have been prevented due to “global awareness?”
umm… How?

crosspatch (22:19:27) :
“An Inconvenient Truth shown at a public school?”
Heh, yeah, it was interesting the way it was broached to the parents, too. She sent home a sheet with my daughter that said from time to time the class might have some free time or they may earn a treat through their efforts and she asked permission to show the kids a movie. She listed several candidate movies and offered parents a chance to voice their opinion about whether they find any of the objectionable in any way. They were all things like “little mermaid” and “finding nemo” but in the second column about halfway down was “An Inconvenient Truth”.
~~~~
Want to lay odds most parents never read the second column?

Suggesting the tsunami was caused by CO2 is the height of insanity. Things have gone too far.

I am an Australian and that WWF poster offends and angers me greatly….. I can’t imagine how offensive that would be to an American.
The WWF is obscene.

Someone should ask them to research the health of the Great Barrier Reed 30,000 years ago. I wonder if it will dawn on them that the entire reef at that time was dead as a doornail and well above sea level.

“J.Hansford (00:25:04) :
I am an Australian and that WWF poster offends and angers me greatly….. I can’t imagine how offensive that would be to an American.
The WWF is obscene.”
I am also an Australian, left leaning, green leaning, and that poster offends and angers me. As it should anyone with half a brain.

Crosspatch and others:
The UK government ordered An Inconvenient Truth to be shown in all British state schools. One parent took the government to court. The court found that there were nine factual errors in the film, so now it can only be shown if the other side is put to the children too. Mind you, I don’t reckon a teacher reading through a list has as much effect as a slickly-produced film. That’s the state of British education these days.

“I am an Australian and that WWF poster offends and angers me greatly….. I can’t imagine how offensive that would be to an American.”
Thanks for that, Stu. The sensitivity is much appreciated. And I actually consider myself to be “greener” than most but in a different way than most. My grandfather was a farmer but he was a different kind of farmer than many of our neighbors. Our neighbors were “inheritance farmers”. They did things the way their father did because that is “how things are done”. My grandfather had a degree in agriculture back in the 1920’s when very few farmers were college educated. He taught me that you can not simply keep taking from the land. He taught me that there is a cycle and organic material must be put back if the land is to be sustainable. If you only add chemicals, the soil eventually turns to sand and doesn’t support a crop in drought. His land was the best in the county during periods of dry weather. We rotated animals across the fields. He also had a commercial slaughter house. Bones were saved and ground and the meal spread on the land. The blood was saved and spread on the ground. The awful was cooked, mixed with grain, fed to animals that rotated between the fields. I was taught sustainable agriculture from the time I was old enough to talk. Or better, I was taught that simply taking was unsustainable. The earth is like a bank account, you can withdraw for a time but if you continue without making any deposits, it becomes depleted and there is nothing left.
My grandfather did many studies for the Department of Agriculture during World War II to help increase food production. He was called upon to teach new methods to the local farmers. My father was an engineering type who maintained high performance supersonic jet aircraft in the early 1960’s. My uncle who is more of an older brother to me got his PhD in agriculture and worked toward making safer ways of ridding our food supply of pests. There is a long history of respect for science and at the same time respect for the earth in my heritage.
A saying that has come through the generations of my family is “mother nature bats last” which might not have the same meaning for an Aussie as for a Yank as it refers to baseball. The gist of it is that no matter what you do, it can all be undone in the bottom of the ninth inning when Mother Nature does something completely unexpected.
I believe many of us here have great love and respect for this earth. But we are seeing people use other people’s love and respect to their advantage through a lack of knowledge on the part of the masses. People who sincerely mean nothing but the best for their neighbors and their community are being taken advantage of by appealing to their desire to maintain this planet and stoking fear in them for no real reason. And it should be criminal.

Dang, meant offal, not awful.

Seems to me the ad idea subtext is that Americans don’t care about the world–they’re too selfish–and so we’ll show them what it means in terms of something that they do care about… and we know how they do drone on about 911….
OK, so here’s the same ad idea, adapted throughout the world:
The tsunami killed X times more woman and children than did the Gaza bombings. (Broadcast in Palestine)
The tsunami killed X times more people than the police did in the Soweto uprisings. (Broadcast in South Africa)
The tsunami killed X times more people than the British army did in the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre. (Broadcast in India)
and so on with the Balkan Massacre, etc.
The ad is a profoundly stupid idea. It serves nothing and nobody, least of all the environment.

Always like to see the wingnuts get teary-eyed about the firefighters who died, and then turn right around and dump on the idea of dedicating this coming 9.11 to public service. Here’s the reality: Wingnuts hate public service, and hate the people who deliver it. But they love the death, because it leads to war, which is what they really list for.

Does any one have a download link for the video, or an alternate YouTube link? Looks like DDB Brazil filed a copyright claim against the video and now its down.

Re: crosspatch (01:44:50)
Very interesting – thank you. I formally studied and worked in soil science for a time. It is reassuring to hear of the wisdom your grandfather passed on to you & your family. Stories like yours are important and sites like RC & Tamino’s (not so) “Open Mind” should be ashamed for banning honest contributors and labeling them anti-environment when nothing could be further from the truth. I had presented myself as a sincere diplomat with a healthy interest in climate, but as soon as I started telling people about my background in parks, ecology, statistics, engineering, forest science, & outdoor-guiding – and explaining that I had only used 8 tanks of gas in my small car during the past 2 years and that I walk almost everywhere I go – I was no longer welcome to argue points at Tamino’s about El Nino & other natural climate factors. The alarmists appear desperate to avoid letting their followers become aware that there are non-alarmists who are more concerned about nature than they are. The distortion is intolerable. Thank you for your contribution to setting the record straight. The video Anthony has posted is a strong reminder to all of us of our shared-responsibility to restore basic honesty in a civilization that is toying with mass-delusion.

I haven’t time to read all the comment so forgive me if I cover ground already mapped.
The tsunami is a natural catastrophe and whether we respect the planet or not it isn’t going to stop the next one happening. And no, tsunamis aren’t caused by global warming.
Terrorism is a man-made atrocity and since terrorists respect nothing we will do our damndest to stop the next one happening. And no, 9/11’s aren’t caused by global warming.
WWF should hang its head in deepest shame.

My apologies to all Americans for the wrong date above.
Anger, and I got it wrong. 9 / 11.
For some totally unknown reason I woke soon after midnight [ in Australia ] on that night and wandered around the house until I switched on the telly.
The Twin Towers were burning and I don’t know why but somehow I felt very uneasy although rationally in my sleepiness, I knew that it was some third grade late night disaster movie.
After a few minutes watching I returned to bed but did not sleep very well as those scenes kept on coming back.
Of course in the morning here in Australia, the real truth of what I had been looking at during that night hit me.
It was not some third rate late night movie but the deliberate destruction of hundreds of human lives based purely on belief in a totally evil ideology.
For the WWF to use this to promote it’s own pathetic ideology really shows just how callous and warped these people have also become.

It occured to me just after I posted that… how can they simultaneously claim they had nothing to do with the video ad yet still hold the copyright to it?

WWF video from youtube, mirrored, 2919531 bytes
http://www.mirrorfox.com/_rxspyxfj

So if, in fact, “… DDB execs first saw the video, which features slightly different copy, on the internet and don’t know who created it.” Why then has the video been pulled from YouTube with the explanation of “This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by DDB Brasil.”

No surprise knowing who are the stupids patrons of WWF.

http://www.dumpert.nl/mediabase/618811/7ab2db2d/index.html#80762061
Another copy on the Dutch shock-site “Geenstijl”

Dear Grant, sorry to say but DDB Brazil has removed your copy, too. 😉

So’s the link I copied.

I thought this was a tad ironic turn of phrase coming from WWF’s Guidance Principles,
“build concrete conservation solutions through a combination of field based projects, policy initiatives, capacity building and education work!” What on Earth does that lot mean?
All that concrete could cause an UHI, all that CO2 from the cement production, reinforcing steel production, the shuttering, delivery fuel costs & that of materials & more CO2 emissions, the infrastructure that goes with it, etc. I thought they were supposed to be trying to stop Big Oil et al concreting over the planet. They don’t seem to mention anywhere anything about conducting their campaigns with the highest of moral & ethical standards, that just wouldn’t do, unless I missed something:-)) Seems to me any time some third world country, especially in Africa, trys to do some “capacity building and education work” WWF go out of their way to stop it happening.

OK, “puke” was a bit harsh. Made me a bit nauseous, all that Al Gore Warming nonsense.

From Creativity Online:
http://creativity-online.com/
This ad, and video, has shown their true colors. At least people know who they are, and how far they will go.

“The only threat to the planet is the Sun going nova in 5 million years time. And it won’t even notice.”
FYI, according to current understanding, the Sun is too small to go nova. But, as it ages it gets brighter, so in 500 million years that will push the habitable zone out past Earth.
In about 5 billion years, the Sun will leave the Main Sequence and start expanding, certainly engulfing Mercury, possibly Venus and Earth too.

Earth will long be dead before the sun exits the main sequence. The last prediction I saw was the Earth had only about 125 million years left to support life as we know it. CO2 depletion and the oceans outgasing to space will result in our demise long before the sun gets too hot. Life will go on inside rocks but not much on the surface.

Alternate video can be found here. http://creativity-online.com/work/wwf-tsunami-%28tvc%29/17193

I only know one: His royal highness Prince Philip.

” Don S. (05:04:32) :
To our Aussie friends, thanks for the comforting words mates.
@Stu & Paul Vaughan: Isn’t it time to rethink some of your associations?”
Hi Don.
These days I don’t line up with either side of politics. I’ve never been particularly political but when I was younger (I’m still not that old) I voted green, which I guess meant left wing. I’ve also joined the odd forest rally, spent a great deal of time in native reforestation, urban community organic agriculture, never bought a car, etc… I still consider myself green but perhaps more in the sense that Crosspatch describes (thanks for the post btw! 🙂 ie, not very political but deeply felt.
I think it’s his last paragraph (01:44:50) which really resonates with me here though – I’ll have difficulty repeating what he’s said in my own words because I think he’s already done a fine job. It’s exactly what I feel. Basically I worry about my friends worrying so much…
The message is getting uglier and dumber and louder by the day. The media pull and spin is so deep, the vaneer of authority and certainty so great…
I’m tired of the hubris.
I think his last paragraph resonates the most with me, in that I hate the way people are being manipulated to feel

Don’t you think it is time for these snakes to receive a doses of its own venom?

Here’s another YouTube link to the same video. Don’t know how long this one might work for.

Dear Anthony
We just published a post on our weather blog protesting the ad: http://www.metsul.com/blog. The title is in Portuguese and English (Despicable and Disgusting). We tell the same story you reported in Portuguese to our Brazilian audience and we include the pictures and the names of the Brazilians citizens who died on 9/11 in New York.
Best wishes !
REPLY: thank you Alexandre, for speaking out on this issue. – Anthony

Don S. (05:04:32) “@Stu & Paul Vaughan: Isn’t it time to rethink some of your associations?”
I have certainly “rethought” my “associations”. Within 15 days of presenting a substantial finding about local natural climate, my funding was slashed to zero. My access to 100s of my files was suddenly blocked without warning. Note for the severely naive: Science, the education system, & the environmental movement have become corrupted; this constitutes a threat to nature & civilization.
I firmly oppose over-consumption, greed, irresponsible land-use, & toxicity, but CO2 is not toxic (and it does not cause tsunamis). What I want from climate modelers – in order for them to earn my trust – is a forecast of El Nino, La Nina, & regional rainfall patterns that is accurate for decades into the future — it should work like a tide table. When climate science gets to that stage, statistically analyzing the relationship between CO2 & climate might be interesting (& possible).
These people who are promoting eco-terrorism with this video possibly haven’t thought through the natural response to an overstated case — a counter-agency could arise targeting the rain forests & our oceans, for example. Emotionally-militant ‘greens’ should understand that nature will be at more risk in times of instability. Restraint is in order. (Don’t give the devil a reason to finance a strike on the jewels.)

I didn’t know man made earthquakes happend. This is beyond stupid. This is shouting in the dark hoping some simple people will think the world is going bad because of us. Most stupid idea ever. Shame on wwf. They don’t get the money from me.

This makes much more sense:
http://algorelied.com/?p=2758

Interestingly (or should I say predictably) enough if you check this on the liberal sites the comments all say something like – “The adds are offensive but they do have a point”. Typical.

It is the political left that is now exploiting 9/11. I don’t agree with WWF and I find their AGW agenda deplorable. But aside from offending some people, this ad pales in comparison to the way that the political right has exploited 9/11 – which has resulted in millions dead, trillions of dollars spent in foreign wars, obscene deficits, the emergence of a police state through the implementation of the Patriot Act, the abolition of posse comitatus, torture and rendition, and the list goes on and on. Aren’t these the items to which all the conservatives that frequent this site are supposed to be stringently opposed?
The way that the 9/11 myth has been exploited by those of every political stripe is very offensive.

“Sunfighter (13:16:06) :
I still dont understand this ad other then shock and awe. The message itself makes no sense. The WWF exists on the idea that humans make an impact on the planet. The message this ad seems to be making is that humans are insignificant to the might of the planet. So are they asking people not to give them money because it wont matter ?”
I think the ad tunes into the idea that the Earth will destroy those who destroy the Earth. Basic christian apocalypse type stuff repackaged as new age awareness and projected via big budget special effects (action movie language targeted at teens). It could also be construed as a kind of revenge fantasy or more simply and innocently a warning. But basically I’d agree with TamRob- it’s just politics. Using the biggest thing you can come up with to scare people over to your side of the fence. The right had WMD’s, the left and its associations has climate change. It’s politics.

I dislike the WWF as much as anyone, but the connection of this campaign to them is tenuous at best, and the conjecture and legerdemain that Anthony uses to make that connection is unlike him.
Ad agencies regularly work out concepts hoping to net a client (especially potentially lucrative ones like greenie-funded NGOs), and the ad world (who would know) are all declaring this to be a stupid move on the part of the agency.
It doesn’t do our cause any favours when we all start foaming and raving about the WWF as soon as they’re even vaguely implicated. We’re about questioning scientific process, and comment threads like this make our cause look foolish to anyone who is undecided.
If I were Anthony, I would remove the entire post, because it’s contrary to the mission.

FYI Mainstream UK media:
——————–
An advert designed for an environmental charity has been condemned for featuring an image in which dozen of planes are posed to collide with New York.
In an effort to raise awareness of potential environmental disasters and their resulting casualties, the designer twinned the depiction with the slogan ‘The tsunami killed 100 times more people than 9/11’ and the Worldwide Wildlife Fund’s (WWF) logo.
Although it was published just once in a small Brazilian newspaper, it has provoked widespread outrage after being picked up by bloggers in the US.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1211029/America-shocked-advert-designed-environmental-charity-compares-tsunami-9-11.html#ixzz0Q7oaE0TX

BUT, BY PROMOTING IT FOR THEM… VIA FACEBOOK (WHICH IS WHERE I GOT THIS LINK) OR YOUTUBE ETC… YOU ARE PASSING AROUND THEIR TASTELESS MESSAGE!!!
JUST LET IT DROP PEOPLE! YOU ARE GIVING THEM FREE ADVERTISING!

Do not forget that 9/11 was celebrated by many millions around the world, who have significant overlap with the anti-Western component of climate alarmism. A large proportion of young Europeans also believe also/ alternately that it was a self inflicted American/Israeli plot. This ad preaches to a large converted audience.

Jimmy Haigh: “Don’t you think that the presence of the WWF logo makes the connection somewhat stronger than tenuous?”
Only if I’m really desperate to make a connection. You can get vector-based logos for pretty much any organization, company, etc. online, often from their websites. If I’m an ad agency trying to win a contract, of course I’m going to put the logo of the company on my mockups. If my ad agency wants to win a contract with Coke, our submissions are sure as hell going to include the Coke logo.
My point is just that our efforts to question the science are compromised with threads like these, where we jump to convenient conclusions in spite of flimsy evidence, and then get all worked up about it. Shame on the ad agency, of course, but, then again, ad agencies are consistently idiotic – just turn on a TV!
It’s just important that we as a movement not also look like idiots, and this thread does just that, I’m afraid.

Gaia’s Revenge by any other name . . .
Which is oddly heartening – I predicted to friends & family several years ago that as the AGW scam started to unravel, activist propaganda would become ever more shrilly & hysterical. They have no other options: they long ago abandoned reasoned discourse for repent-sinners-the-end-is-nigh pulpit pounding, and as the public becomes more jaded, the eco-lobby can only make more preposterous (and offensive) claims, further self-marginalizing itself, and so on.
Negative feedback can be a beautiful thing.