From The Times
Ed Miliband’s adverts banned for overstating climate change
by Jonathan Leake, Environment Editor
TWO government advertisements that use nursery rhymes to warn people of the dangers of climate change have been banned by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for exaggerating the potential harm.
The adverts, commissioned by Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, used the rhymes to suggest that Britain faces an inevitable increase in storms, floods and heat waves unless greenhouse gas emissions are brought under control.
The ASA has ruled that the claims made in the newspaper adverts were not supported by solid science and has told the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) that they should not be published again.
It has also referred a television commercial to the broadcast regulator, Ofcom, for potentially breaching a prohibition on political advertising.
The rulings will be an embarrassment for Miliband, who has tried to portray his policies as firmly science-based. He had commissioned two posters, four press advertisements and a short film for television and cinema, which started appearing in October last year in the run-up to the Copenhagen climate talks.
They attracted 939 complaints — more than the ASA received for any advertisement last year. The deluge posed problems for the ASA, which is not a scientific body, so it decided to compare the text of Miliband’s adverts with the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Based on that comparison, it ruled that two of the DECC’s adverts had broken the advertising code on three counts: substantiation, truthfulness and environmental claims.
Of the two banned adverts, one depicted three men floating in a bathtub over a flooded British landscape, and the text read: “Rub a dub dub, three men in a tub — a necessary course of action due to flash flooding caused by climate change.”
It then explained: “Climate change is happening. Temperature and sea levels are rising. Extreme weather events such as storms, floods and heat waves will become more frequent and intense. If we carry on at this rate, life in 25 years could be very different.”
The second showed two children peering into a stone well amid an arid, post-climate-change landscape. It read: “Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. There was none as extreme weather due to climate change had caused a drought.”
It then added: “Extreme weather conditions such as flooding, heat waves and storms will become more frequent and intense.”
It was these additional claims, rather than the nursery rhymes or illustrations, that fell foul of the ASA, which ruled it was not scientifically possible to make such definitive statements about Britain’s future climate.
The ASA said: “All statements about future climate were based on modelled predictions, which the IPCC report itself stated still involved uncertainties in the magnitude and timing, as well as regional details, of predicted climate change.” It added that both predictions should have been phrased more tentatively.
The ASA did, however, reject other complaints, including one suggesting the DECC adverts were misleading because they presented human-induced climate change as a fact.
Miliband said: “On the one issue where the ASA did not find in our favour, around one word in our print advertising, the science tells us that it is more than 90% likely that there will be more extreme weather events if we don’t act.”
Greg Barker, shadow minister for climate change, said: “It is so unnecessary to exaggerate the risks of global warming, and also counterproductive.”
Read the complete article here
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Here’s the website where the ads originate from ActOnCO2
Here are some of the advertisements in question:
Wren (22:21:47) :
“After reading the Times article by Jonathan Leake, read ASA’s Final Adjudication, available at guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/mar/13/scienceofclimatechange-climate-change
Now ask yourself if Leak is an accurate reporter?”
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On a point of accuracy for you last sentence – that would be ‘Leake’?
Unless there are multiple journalists named Jonathan Leake there seems to be a history of articles by someone so named on the Times/Sunday Times web site. Until very recently wherever they could Leake’s articles gave staunch support to the AGW/HiCC concept. Now they seem to me to be slightly less strident and more seeking likely to seek angles that cover some middle ground. (Not easy in this area of discussion.)
I don’t claim that he (and his sub editors) get it right. But if you claim they are always wrong then at least we who dislike the idea of paying for government propaganda of any stripe can take comfort that several hundred articles written about climate science by Mr. Leake since the start of the millennia can also be considered highly suspect.
Since those articles may then be directly compared with all the others written by different journalists at the time it would suggest that you are saying that almost the entire body of journalistic output related to AGW/HiCC for the last 10 years is suspect.
Is that what you are saying? Or are you simply spouting opinions from the Deltoid who, interestingly, seemed not to be too interested in publishing the list of Leake articles that I had prepared some weeks ago and offered to him as evidence for his anti-Leake campaign.
For the record – I am naturally suspicious of press articles no matter the side(s) of a subject they seem to put forward. Re-hashed press releases are the least acceptable. ‘Investigative’ work can be more pertintent but that is not guaranteed. Once a suitable amount of material has been read one can make the likely adjustments to content from different writers and sources quite readily. I think I get better than 90% accuracy.
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OK, I’ll correct my sentence.
Incorrect: Now ask yourself if Leak is an accurate reporter?”
Correct: Now ask yourself if Leake reported the ASA’s adjudication accurately.
Like you I am “naturally suspicious of press articles.”
Digsby (05:14:59) :
““We’re just fiddling around. It is worth thinking that what we are doing in creating all these carbon emissions, far from being something frightful, is stopping the onset of a new ice age.”
I noticed that stance of Lovelock’s too recently, as I continue to see parallels between his Gaia theory of the Earth having self-regulating properties being borne out more and more by the actual science. In response to one of the more recent threads (not sure which), I happened to search for of some of what he actually said, and as so often happens got side-tracked.
Even though he’s wrong about our C02 being able to stave off an ice age, he’s certainly right that C02, far from being our enemy is our friend (I don’t know, but am guessing he’s aware of the beneficial effects the increased C02 has had on plant growth).
I also love that quote “The earth doesn’t behave like model predictions”. He gets it. We should welcome him to the ever-burgeoning ranks of climate realists. It should be fun to watch as the cargo cultists prepare the bus to throw him under.
In other related ASA news on 2 other climate change ads:
The separate ASA adjudication on the 2 TV/cinema ads (the one with the drowning dog, and the one with the car exhaust chimney) has already been made on March 10th. There is a press embargo until March 17th… although I expect that anybody who was one of the complainees will now know the result, having received a letter from the ASA.
Without wishing to reveal the result of these adjudications, I would suggest that nobody get their hopes up about the ASA criticising these 2 ads.
The main substantive issue of complaint for these ads is whether “Scientists say….” (followed by AGW explanation) is misleading, since it implies all scientists say, as opposed to some scientists. The ASA is using the IPCC as the source of what scientists say.
@Digsby
Lovelock is also in the Sunday Times, today 14/3/2010
@ur momisugly son of mulder you dig the well where the aquifer is. When I was growing up our house was on the top of a local ridge. We had significant problem with flooding basements every time he had a lot significant rain. If the stuff under the top of the hill is sand, and the stuff at the bottom of the hill is clay, you dig the well at the top of the hill.
Son of mulder (05:25:04)
LOL
“I never did understand the physics of that.”
Digging a hole for a well on top of the hill does seem like a waste of effort.
@Mike It depends on what they are reporting on. I will believe the UK Telegraph on some issues like health care, and reject them on others.
It is nice to see that not everyone has gone off the deep end (i.e. the ASA). I would be furious if my tax dollars were used to pay for this kind of advertising.
Funny or sad?. A former world empire turned into a climate change joke.
son of mulder (05:25:04) :
“Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water.”
I never did understand the physics of that.
Jack was in fact hoping that Jill would exhibit the same lack of comprehension. It never was anything to do with water.
It rarely is.
It’s just an allegory.
He is everywhere.
I love the idea of nursery rhymes used this way!
What’s hysterical is that one of them points to drought, the other flooding….??? I guess you could have a flood during a drought, maybe even a drought during a flood!!
Mary Mary quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With CO2 and flooding,
and drought now,
Don’t you know?
Works for both sides, though….like There Was A Crooked Man for Pachauri,
Humpty Dumpty for the IPCC….
And a host of others just crying to be warped!!
http://www.famousquotes.me.uk/nursery_rhymes/nursery_rhymes_index.htm
I’m with Tom Arnold on this. As another complainant, the ASA’s decision was as close to a whitewash as possible. The ASA has form for “green washed” decisions. Most complaints by wind farm objection groups are brushed aside while those by developers against objectors are upheld. Our own group only got a sensible decision by appealing to the independent adjudicator.
The stance is hardly surprising, the Chairman is a NuLabour apparatchik and the CEO is on record as supporting AGW, climate change, etc etc.
Don’t expect Miliband to be embarassed. It will all be spun away. These people have no sense of shame what so ever.
Still, even this is better than the total whitewash that most of us expected.
The Guardian has a different slant to exactly the same story. This is a good example of “spin” from both sides of the argument.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/mar/13/government-cleared-climate-change-adverts
The final result of adjudication on the TV fairy tail and the 4 press ads a, b, c, and d is that “press ads b and c should not appear again in their current form.”
What the phrase “not in their current form means in practice, is anyones guess. Based on the adjudication, the ads were in violation because they stated probable events with too much certainty, so possibly they will have to add a conditional clause, but not much more.
Interestingly, on the matter of causing distress, this is apparently ok, because advertisers are allowed to alarm people as a warning. “We considered that based on the ipcc analysis of the data and its projections on trajectories plotted from that, the nursery rhyme of possible effects of climate change in the ads were not disproportionate to the risk and were not unduly distressing.”
So there you have it. Climate change is alarming and the ads weren’t distressing anyway.
marchesarosa (04:08:56) :
These ads have NOT been banned. Your Headline is completely wrong! Please correct it.
(…)
The headline at the Times’ article:
“Ed Miliband’s adverts banned for overstating climate change”
Since this post is reporting the Times’ article, “correcting” the headline for this post would be misrepresenting the Times’ headline. Thus the Times has to go first.
Miliband is destroying Englands reputation.
An obvious fascist using totalitarian propaganda ans surpresseing tecniques.
Screaming “Denier” and frightning children trough nurcery rimes.Why dont you Englishmen report him to your MI ? Labour and Miliband is making England Orwellish and Torys have capitulated.Who`s defending democracy in England today?
marchesarosa (07:06:40) :
I am on your side they should all have been banned, but 2 were (sort of).
see my comment here A C Osborn (04:23:55) :
More from the Autonomous Mind blog
“Only one of the ten different groups of complaints has been upheld, a trivial matter that does nothing to prevent this propaganda continuing to be broadcast. The ASA has refused to uphold the other complaints because it has accepted as fact everything the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) said in the response it submitted.
But the real issue here is that DECC – and by definition the government – has relied squarely on information from the discredited Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to justify the alarmist, exaggerated and plain misleading claims made in the advert. ”
http://autonomousmind.wordpress.com/2010/03/14/asa-rejects-complaints-about-alarmist-co2-advert/
Interesting, ironic and sad that it is the Advertising Standards Authority that will stop the promotion of bad science and not the science community and not the other educated, intellegent leaders of our governments.
[snip – saucy variations on Jack and Jill don’t add anything to the conversation]
Slabadang (09:34:05) :
UKIP, one of the very small parties is the only one, even the Royalty buy in to AGW.
[snip – appreciate what you are saying, but we don’t allow religious discussions on WUWT]
P Gosselin (07:28:11) :
Schneider’s Open Letter
http://www.openletterfromscientists.com/index.html
They are still using IPCC quotes that have been discredited by later studies.
Are they Blind, Deaf & Dumb?
Living on another planet?
Does nothing get through to them?
Wren (08:02:28) :
OK, I’ll correct my sentence.
Incorrect: Now ask yourself if Leak is an accurate reporter?”
Correct: Now ask yourself if Leake reported the ASA’s adjudication accurately.
Like you I am “naturally suspicious of press articles”.
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Hmm. Good save! Or it would have been but for the existence of the earlier comment. At least the ad hom is constrained to an unexceptional level of criticism in the second version.
That said I have little interest in how the ASA’s adjudication in presented. The chances of them being any sort of valid assessor of advertising funded, through government, by the tax payer is small to non-existent. After all that is where their own income originates one way or the other.
How the population interprets the information forced upon them is much more interesting to me. The source of the information is of lesser consequence, though most people seem to seek soources with which they feel comfortable.
whoever planned this knew their Jesuit educational philosophy: “give me the child…”