This isn’t all good news. Not all of the claims by the British government used in a series of global-warming public service announcements based on nursery rhymes (no, really) got rejected by the Advertising Standards Authority. Most laughably, the ASA used the now-discredited 2007 IPCC report to settle almost a thousand complaints against the Department of Energy and Climate Change — and still had to publicly scold Ed Miliband for making false claims (via Watts Up With That):
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were not supported by solid science and has told the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) that they should not be published again. …
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.
That’s hardly the only embarrassment for the DECC. The ads themselves read like a bad parody of politically-correct fairy tales, which may be appropriate for the fairy tale of AGW:
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.”
What’s next? Three little pigs, where the wolf is actually a hurricane made stronger by carbon emissions, huffing and puffing and even blowing the brick house down? Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother actually died in a heat wave? Perhaps the DECC sees the British public as children. I suspect that the British public sees the DECC as condescending hysterics.
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