Ofcom to investigate government's ‘dodgy' climate adverts

Posted by TonyN on 30/10/2009 at 7:48 pm The Climate, TV Adverts 70 Responses »
Oct 302009

Last week it became clear that the Advertising Standards Authority had launched an inquiry into the Government’s £6m TV advertising campaign aimed at climate change sceptics. Now it appears that the UK broadcasting regulator, Ofcom, will also investigate complaints that the advert is politically motivated and therefore breeches the ban on broadcasting political adverts. They would seem to have good reason for deciding to do so.

This is what the advert tells viewers about climate change:

(If the video viewer does not appear on your computer then use this link)

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So far, the ASA has received over 650 complaints and rising. That score ranks with the most complained about advert of 2008, which attracted 840 complaints. According to a letter that I received from the ASA this morning the following points will be investigated: Continue reading »

No warming: why scientists become sceptics

Posted by Dr David Whitehouse on 23/10/2009 at 2:19 pm The Climate 6 Responses »
Oct 232009

[Back in December 2007, Dr David Whitehouse, who was for many years a science correspondent and then science editor at the BBC, wrote a very controversial article for the New Statesman entitled ‘Has Global Warming Stopped?’. This sparked a heated blog debate that accumulated some 3000 comments before the New Statesman closed it and the discussion then transferred to Harmless Sky. A further 7000 comments have been posted since then. 

This is an update to that article and was written in response to a report by the BBC’s David Shukman which can be found here. It’s worth looking at this before reading on, and also noting that David Whithouse’s article pre-dates Paul Hudson’s What happened to global warming? story on the BBC website]

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It took quite a while for the fact that global annual average temperatures haven’t altered for a decade to become accepted by mainstream science, even if there are many who still doubt that it is either happening or important. Likewise one must also be glad that the media is catching up. Especially glad because it is the BBC.

One should take encouragement from the broadcast version of the Met ffice’s “Four degrees of warming ‘likely'” in that when referring to the recent temperature standstill it says that scientists have questioned it. The report did not call these questioners sceptics. Lets hope this nomenclature is applied consistently in the future by the organisation that said in 2005 that the science was settled.

However, the report did let a scientist get away with a biased interpretation of why the standstill has occurred, or rather bypassing the problematic nature of its existence. Dr Myles Allen said that one should look at the figures that are relevant, that is decade to decade changes. He said that temperatures are rising exactly as predicted as long as 30 years ago.

Well, I will leave the comment about as long as 30 years ago for your perusal in the context of climatic variations.

Dr Allen is wrong. The latest spell of warming began about 1980 following 40 years of standstill (still not adequately explained) and 90 prior years of warming. His decade to decade change is a less than two decade spell of warming, to the mid 1990’s, during which the warming increased at a rate much faster than the IPCC estimated the CO2 effect could account for. Since then there has been no change although of course it is warmer than it was in the 70s. This is another example of scientific double standards. The recent standstill is, of course, natural variability, the recent rise is, of course, man-made. It couldn’t possibly be the other way around? (Computer models can explain the recent trends, or more accurately, it is possible to select a few models that do from amongst the many that do not.)

Let’s look at decade-to-decade variability. In the past 15 decades it has warmed in 10 of them and stayed static in 5. But 8 of those decades were pre-1940 when we are told that man-made climate change had not taken effect. Since it has taken effect – a review of papers suggests a consensus of 1950 as a starting point – there have been 4 decades of standstill and 2 of warming. The recent warm decade is also no further above the mean global temperature than the cold Victorian age was below it.

It is alarming that the argument is moving away from real-world data and its inconvenience. The computer models point decades ahead and cannot be refuted. The UK Met Office says that global warming will resume 2009-2014, other scientists disagree. But even if the Met Office is proven wrong in its 2009-2014 forecast then it can still look to future decades and say it’s easier to predict 50 years ahead than 5!

The IPPC’s next assessment is due in 2014, but since the last one did not take into account the overwhelming major aspect of climate change of our time – the recent standstill – a more urgent review is needed.

[Dr Whitehouse’s comments were originally addressed to Benny Peiser of CCNet and I am posting them here with David’s kind permission.  Another article by David Whitehouse, dealing with the controversy at the New Statesman, and particularly with the reaction of its environment columnist Mark Lynas, will be posted here shortly.]

Government's £6m advertising campaign targets sceptics

Posted by TonyN on 15/10/2009 at 11:21 am The Climate, TV Adverts 130 Responses »
Oct 152009

From the TIMESONLINE website:

Climate change sceptics are to be targeted in a hard-hitting government advertising campaign that will be the first to state unequivocally that Man is causing global warming and endangering life on Earth.

The £6 million campaign, which begins tonight in the prime ITV1 slot during Coronation Street, is a direct response to government research showing that more than half the population think that climate change will have no effect on them.

Ministers sanctioned the campaign because of concern that scepticism about climate change was making it harder to introduce carbon-reducing policies such as higher energy bills.

The advertisement attempts to make adults feel guilty about their legacy to their children. It features a father telling his daughter a bedtime story of “a very very strange” world with “horrible consequences” for today’s children.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6867046.ece

You can also watch the advert using the link above to the TIMESONLINE website

Some  Harmless Sky readers have made complaints about the advertisement and I have started this thread because there is obviously going to be a lot of discussion about how the regulators react.

Alex Cull’s complaint can be found here

The full text of Robin Guenier’s complaint is here

Robin has also written to his MP, Peter Lilley, who was the only member of the House of Commons to speak out strongly against the Climate Bill.

I have received the following updates form Robin. Things seem to be moving very rapidly.

14/10/2009 16:13

I called Karen Harms [at the ASA] to discuss this. My fear was that, by turning this into a “political” issue the ASA might wash its hands of the affair & simply dump it on Ofcom – who, in turn, would prevaricate as they have with you, even deciding in the end that it isn’t political after all. But her line was busy & I left a voicemail. Then she called me, but I was on another important call &, this time, I missed her. However, she sent me an email with more detail which, to some extent, allays my fears. In my complaint, I cited ASA’s TV Code section 4 (d) [it’s interesting that they’ve already considered my complaint in some depth to get down to this detail!] – Section 4 is about “Political and Controversial Issues” and 4 (d) says that “No advertisement may show partiality as respects matters of political or industrial controversy or relating to current public policy”. That seems to distinguish “current public policy” from “political controversy” and I was concerned with the former not the latter.  She now (her latest email) relies on a note to Section 4 that says (para 2) “The term ‘political’ here is used in a wider sense than ‘party political’ – e.g. “campaigning for the purpose of influencing legislation or executive action …” and goes on to say (para 3) “The … investigation of complaints in relation to political advertising … remains a matter for Ofcom.”

She is (per her latest email) relying on that to say the 4 (d) part of my complaint is a matter for Ofcom not the ASA. Essentially that meets my concern – I refer to about 16 other sections of the Code and they stay with the ASA so my “dumping” fear is unfounded. But I’m unsure about 4 (d) anyway – I’m talking about “partiality” re “current public policy” and that, if I read ASA’s Code correctly, is not a “political” matter (see above) – unless they argue that the ad is designed to “influence” “executive action”. Why would the Government wish to influence its own action.

Anyway, I called her to discuss all this. And, once again, had to leave a voicemail – asking her to call me back. I’m waiting.

14/10/2009  16:33

I’ve now spoken to Karen. She was very helpful. She listened to my interpretation of their Section 4 and understood my points, saying she wasn’t herself able to agree or disagree with me although she appreciated my logic on the matter. She said, therefore, that she would contact Ofcom herself and get their view and contact me when she had done this. In the meantime, she confirmed that ASA (i.e. Karen) would be considering my overall complaint with specific reference to my other 16 Section references, noting that this would not preclude her from referring also to other relevant Sections that I might have missed.

I.E. she could hardly have been more helpful.
This seems, so far, to be moving remarkably quickly. I’ll keep you posted.

I am also moving relevant comments to this thread from the New Statesman thread. The problems with references to comment numbers are unavoidable I’m afraid.

UPDATE: It’s proved impossible to move the comments because the vast size of the NS thread makes the software I use fall over. If you want to refer to them you can create links by right-clicking on the comment number, selecting ‘link location’ and then pasting in a link in the usual way.

Discussion of the adverts on the NS thead starts here

Updates: 16/10/2009

If, after viewing the advert, you want to complain about it, then you can do so at the Advertising Standards Authority here:

http://www.asa.org.uk/asa/how_to_complain/complaints_form/

It was broadcast again on Thursday 16th October 2009  on ITV1 between 8.00 – 8.30 PM.

There is discussion of the government’s reaction to a flood of complaints about the advert at The Guardian website here.

Update 18/10/2009:

 Robin has received another response from the ASA. See his comment here.

Update 24/10/2009:

You can sign a petition against the government’s TV climate change adverts on the Downing Street website here:

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/climate-ad/sign

 TonyB, A regular contributor here, has written a paper that adds  very interesting context to the governmen’s TV advertising campain. It can be found at Air Vent here:

http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/10/19/crossing-the-rubicon-an-advert-to-change-hearts-and-minds/

This has also been picked up by WattsUpWithThat as well.

After Holiday Round-up

Posted by TonyN on 14/10/2009 at 11:33 pm The Climate 6 Responses »
Oct 142009

When I am watching the day-to-day unfolding of the AGW controversy it often seems that things are moving slowly and not much is happening. All that changes if I come back after three weeks away and try to catch up.

Here are a few things that have caught my eye.

At Climate Audit, Steve McIntyre’s remarkable blog, a whole new scandal over the failure of climate scientists to make data available for review has blown up. In this case it concerns the Yamal tree-ring series that has played an important role in reconstructions of past climate as it imparts a fashionable hockey stick configuration to scary graphs.

You can unravel just what has happened at Climate Audit if you are at home with heavy-duty statistical analysis, or for an excellent summary for the layman see Bishop Hill’s post here.

This is an important story, as much for what it says about professional standards in climate research as for the doubts that it casts on the integrity of the data. Palaeoclimatology is never likely to be quite the same again; without those hockey sticks it has nothing to contribute to AGW alarmism.

The Tyndall Centre has a bright idea for winning the war on climate change: Continue reading »

Back from holiday

Posted by TonyN on 08/10/2009 at 8:25 pm Uncategorized 3 Responses »
Oct 082009

I only got home last night after being out of the country for most of the last two and a half weeks. It may take a while to catch up, so if I have  missed anything important or urgent please leave a comment here.

Tumbling towards Copenhagen

Posted by TonyN on 06/10/2009 at 1:00 am The Climate 1 Response »
Oct 062009

In December of last year I posted about the efforts at the Poznan Conference (here)  to prepare the way for a successor to the Kyoto Treaty. This was scheduled to be agreed at Copenhagen this December. I suggested that at a time of economic crisis, politicians and activists would find it very difficult to carry public opinion with them on this issue. But in an address to the 11,000 delegates at Poznan, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said:

The economic crisis is serious, yet when it comes to climate change, the stakes are even far [sic] higher. The climate crisis affects our potential prosperity and our people’s lives both now and in the future.

Un Secretary General Ban Ki-moon at the Poznan Conference, Dec 2008

At that time, the developing nations main objection to signing up at Copenhagen was that they wanted to see the US committed to reducing greenhouse gases, through legally binding regulation, before they would do the same. The inauguration of President Obama in the following month unleashed a wave of optimism in the climate alarmism camp, but this was short lived. Continue reading »

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