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:
1. The ad was political in nature and should not be broadcast;
2. The theme and content of the ad, for example the dog drowning in the storybook and the depiction of the young girl to whom the story was being read, could be distressing for children who saw it;
3. The ad should not have been shown when children were likely to be watching television;
4. The ad was misleading because it presented human induced climate change as a fact, when there was a significant division amongst the scientific community on that point;
5. The claim “over 40% of the C02 was coming from ordinary everyday things” was misleading;
6. The representation of C02 as a rising cloud of black smog was misleading;
7. The claims about the possible advent of strange weather and flooding, and associated imagery in the ad, in the UK were exaggerated, distressing and misleading;
They also say that:
Points (1) and (4) in relation to the TV ad may be subject to Section 4 of the CAP (Broadcast) TV Advertising Standards Code, which is administered by Ofcom. We will therefore be referring to Ofcom objections to the TV campaign raised in respect of ‘political’ objectives; Ofcom will in due course be publishing a Finding of its determination. When both bodies have concluded their investigations, we plan to notify complainants of both our and Ofcom’s determinations.
This is what Section 4 of the CAP (Broadcast) TV Advertising Standards Code says:
SECTION 4: POLITICAL AND CONTROVERSIAL ISSUES
No advertisement:
(a) may be inserted by or on behalf of any body whose objects are wholly or mainly of a political nature
(b) may be directed towards any political end
(c) may have any relation to any industrial dispute (with limited exceptions)
Note to 4(c):
The Broadcasting Act 1990 specifically exempts public service advertisements
by or on behalf of a government department from the prohibition of
advertisements having ‘any relation to any industrial dispute’.
(d) may show partiality as respects matters of political or industrial controversy
or relating to current public policy
Notes to Section 4:
(1) The purpose of this prohibition is to prevent well-funded organisations from
using the power of television advertising to distort the balance of political debate. The rule reflects the statutory ban on ‘political’ advertising on
television in the Broadcasting Act 1990.
(2) The term ‘political’ here is used in a wider sense than ‘party political’. The
rule prevents, for example, issue campaigning for the purpose of influencing
legislation or executive action by legislatures either at home or abroad. Where
there is a risk that advertising could breach this rule, prospective advertisers
should seek guidance from licensees before developing specific proposals.
(3) The setting of standards and investigations of complaints in relation to
political advertising have not been contracted out to BCAP and the ASA and
remain matters for Ofcom. The ASA refers complaints about political advertising to Ofcom.
[my emphasis]
http://www.cap.org.uk/The-Codes/~/media/Files/CAP/Codes/BCAPTVAdCode.ashx
Note (2) has particular resonance in view of the imminence of the Copenhagen summit.
The ASA’s letter ends with the following rather strange request:
Please treat all correspondence as confidential until such time as a decision is published on our website.
Had I given an undertaking to treat whatever the ASA told me in confidence before receiving this letter I would of course abide by that commitment. But no such request was made and it would seem to me that it is in the public interest that what is happening should be in the public domain. In fact I can think of absolutely no reason for requesting confidentiality other than to spare the government’s blushes, and I certainly hope that was not what motivated the ASA. Both the ASA and Ofcom can take a very considerable time to reach decisions that appear on their web sites, so it is very strange to expect that there should be no public discussion of these matters in the meantime.
All this is very embarrassing for the government, and for Ed Miliband’s Department of Energy and Climate Change in particular. They commissioned the advert in the run-up to the Copenhagen climate change summit in December because opinion polls indicate that there is still widespread scepticism about global warming.
A report at the TIMESONLINE – apparently based on pre-launch media briefings – says that the advertising campaign ‘will be the first to state unequivocally that Man is causing global warming and endangering life on Earth’, and that is precisely what it does. But scientific evidence does not endorse that claim, as many of those who have complained to the ASA have pointed out.
In defending the campaign, climate change minister Joan Ruddock told the Guardian that:
‘It is consistent with government policy on the issue, which is informed by the latest science and assessments of peer-reviewed, scientific literature made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and other international bodies.’
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/oct/16/complaints-government-climate-change-ad
In fact neither the IPCC nor the Royal Society, the UK’s national academy of science and an international body of great repute, have made unequivocal statements about the causes or effects of global warming. The IPCC says only that ‘most’ of the mid-20th century global warming was ‘very likely’ caused by human influence. This leaves considerable scope for other, natural, causes.
A statement on climate change at the Royal Society website says that rising temperatures, changing sea levels, and impacts on global weather are a ‘possible’ consequences of climate change and that these changes ‘could’ have serious impacts. Far from claiming that there is unequivocal evidence of human influence they refer only to ‘an international scientific consensus’.
Then there is the growing realisation, now accepted by climate scientists and increasingly being reported in the media, that global average temperatures have failed to rise for a decade. The advert provides no hint of this but portrays global warming a growing threat which is entirely due to human activity, and preventable by changing our lifestyles.
So it is hard to see how the ASA can fail to condemn this advert as being misleading, but what about the political motivation that seems to underlie such an eye-catching initiative? This is not a matter for the ASA, but for Ofcom who are responsible for enforcing legislation that forbids political advertising.
The Copenhagen climate change summit in December could see the UK saddled with massive contributions to the annual payments that will have to be made to the developing countries, including China and India, if they are to be persuaded to cut carbon emissions. In the run-up to a general election, how do you sell that kind of commitment to a public that is by no means convinced that there is a problem, but is increasingly concerned about spiralling public debt?
The political stakes are high. Ed Miliband has been widely tipped as a possible successor to Gordon Brown as leader of the Labour Party. The foreign secretary, who is likely to play a major role at the summit, happens to be his brother David. He is thought to have his sights set on becoming the EU’s new High Representative (foreign minister) when the Lisbon Treaty comes into force. For both of them it is very important that whatever is agreed at Copenhagen should be applauded by the public when they return and not derided as an act of New Labour folly.
In a speech to the Major Economies Forum in London last week the prime minister, Gordon Brown, claimed that there was only 50 days left to save the world from global warming, and that there was no ‘plan B’ if the Copenhagen negotiations fail. He too is in desperate need of public support. A great deal of political capital is riding on the effect that those adverts may have, and this makes claims that they were politically inspired, and therefor illegal, all the more credible. The Copenhagen summit is beginning to look more and more like a political minefield where career-terminating damage may be inflicted if the government’s policies cannot be made to look sensible by mid-December.
The prime minister is fond of boasting that Britain leads the world in the war on climate change, and this is not the first time that our government has been spooked by lack of public support in the run-up to a war. What seems to be happening now is horribly reminiscent of the prelude to the invasion of Iraq, when scepticism about the need for military intervention was an obstacle to government policy.
Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell’s solution was the ‘dodgy dossier’, providing what appeared to be unequivocal evidence that Saddam Hussein was in possession of weapons of mass destruction and claiming that this was based on robust intelligence. Now it would seem that Gordon Brown’s administration is employing the same techniques to win support for policies for which they might otherwise be cold shouldered by the electorate as a general election approaches. The TV adverts are being funded by six million pounds of taxpayer’s money.
It will be interesting to see whether the electorate are as gullible the second time round, and just how independent and courageous the ASA and Ofcom prove to be when confronted with very politically sensitive decisions.
Update 02/11/2009: See comment #4 below for something new about this.
Jack #50 brilliant observation. I teach English at a small French university, and I’m always rabbiting on about how the Anglo-Saxon words are for the normal, everyday things. It was in 1066, at the height of the MWP, that a warming world became “changement climatique”. Maybe there’s some kind of race memory operating among us Anglo-Saxons which associates warm weather with foreign invasions…
Robin – excellent message of complaint from Mrs G. She has put very eloquently and succinctly in a few paragraphs what I struggled to express in a much wordier letter.
Geoff, Jack, just to chip in, “flood” is another word with Anglo-Saxon ancestry (from Old English “flod”.) While looking this up, I found a good quotation from Stephen Crane’s novel The Red Badge of Courage: “A serious prophet upon predicting a flood should be the first man to climb a tree.”
The advert is intentionally misleading the viewer because is contains two separate fictional events and fails to make clear at the end which event the voiceover is referring to.
The first fiction is that of two actors – and the event played out is that of an adult male terrorising an infant girl in the dark. The second fiction is that of an event which is defined as being both make-believe and historical by the word “once” when it is introduced to the viewer.
When the female voice-over states in conclusion that “it is up to us how the story ends” it is not made clear to the viewer which story she is referring to. That is, would I stop little girls being abused by their fathers at night by cutting back on the amount of CO2 I produce? Or would the same effort on my part result in a make-believe infants book having a ‘happy ending’?
Clearly, the first proposition is absurd. I doubt very much that there is any scientific evidence showing man-made CO2 as a cause of child abuse.
If the first story is edited out of the advert, the proposition becomes doubly absurd to its adult target audience. The government conveys its supposed seriousness about CO2 by reading me an infant’s book – believing I am infantile enough to care how it might end and thereby submit to its demand that I ‘act on CO2’.
Peter S #53
I agree with your analysis but I’d avoid using expressions like “little girls being abused by their fathers” in official complaints. It makes us sound hysterical, when the hysteria is all on the other side.
The campaign is so pathetic, it can only be because the government was afraid of precisely the kind of complaints we’ve been making. You don’t spend £6 million without first testing the ads on the public, and surely the first reaction in the focus groups must have been, “it’s all a fairytale” to which the response was presumably “maybe, but let’s do it for the kids, just in case”.
What we have here is a key part of the government’s election manifesto, wrenched out of the political context, presented as scientific fact (without the science) and paid for by the taxpayer. It would be handy if we could find extracts from speeches from government ministers which recall the copy of these ads. That would be a clincher for the argument to put before Ofcom.
Congratulations to everyone for the high level of seriousness in the complaints. I’m sure the people at the ASA and the Central Office of Information will appreciate that. Fairness and neutrality is a big part of their job description, and it must give them some satisfaction to tackle intelligent well-argued complaints. I’m optimistic we’ll get a fair hearing.
Alex, the quote from Stephen Crane is a gem. I get so fed up hearing the same ones (Mencken etc) bandied around.
Yesterday’s Sunday Times Magazine carries this gem over the ACTONCO2 logo:
See B&W *.pdf scan here:
http://ccgi.newbery1.plus.com/DECC_AD_SUN_TIMES_08_11_2009.pdf
Correct me if I’m wrong, but from my understanding of the physics’ is there is no such thing as a “heat trapping gas” This description doesn’t even come close to describing the part CO2 plays in radiating heat from the sea and land back into space, but is more a convenient description if one rolls in together the unproven feedback or forcing theories. Or is this “artistic licence” allowed in advertising
Surely when we as the electorate are faced with fundamental and draconian changes as articulated by the current government, we deserve to be treated as educated adults as my expectation at least is that we have the exact process explained to us. Surely this fairytale stuff is unlawful based on the fact that it is simply untrue. Is it not a fact somewhere that public information must be factual and not based on imagined storylines? The latter is for Politics, and if that is the case then this is a misuse of public money.
Re comments #53-#56, basically the nursery-rhyme aspect of these ads makes them appear simultaneously creepy, patronising, unreal, surreal, offensive, divorced from science and poorly planned. You have to wonder what exactly the £6 million was spent on.
They are almost beyond parody – but not quite! Here’s one I just made up:
Old Mother Hubbard / Went to the cupboard, / To give the poor dog a bone: / When she came there, / The cupboard was bare, / And so the poor dog had none, because a severe drought due to dangerous Climate Change wholly caused by man-made CO2 had killed all the livestock, which then also forced Old Mother Hubbard to eat her poor dog and become a climate refugee, expiring at last of dengue fever just before a storm surge washed away the entire refugee camp. Goodnight children – sleep tight.
geoffchambers #54
I agree with you about overstating the ‘abuse’ part of the advert (and it did cross my mind at the time of writing).
Once it can be established that the ad contains two separate ‘stories’ – one within the other – it could be challenged on the grounds that the voiceover fails to identify which ‘story’ is being referred to… and is therefore intentionally misleading the viewer.
The first ‘story’ is the formula of the ad itself… a young child in secure space at night… an adult male enters that space… the adult male does something which causes the young child psychological or physical distress. The intent is to place the viewer of this story in a corresponding state of distress which he/she acts – in the prescribed way – to stop.
The second ‘story’ (within the first) is the content of the book object which is knowingly used by the adult male to cause distress.
Taken in isolation, the second story (the contents of the book) would be highly ineffective in causing any distress – let alone corresponding action – in the advertiser’s target audience (the advert itself clearly acknowledges that such material is only distressing to infants – who have not yet developed the capacity to place values on information and challenge it).
Therefore, the concluding voiceover, in stating that “it is up to us how the story ends”, can only be referring to the first story in the ad and the distress this story intends to cause in the viewer – whilst on the surface the statement appears to be referring to the second (more obvious) ‘story’. The only ‘logic’ in the ad’s message is that if the viewer wants to end adult males entering little girls’ bedrooms at night and causing them distress the viewer must cut back on CO2 emissions.
Stop it Alex, its catching!
I tried another version that started:
but decided I had better not go there. How about a whole anthology of ‘Nursery Rhymes for Warming Times’?
In the end, I just couldn’t stop myself:
Now I wonder what one could do with ‘Dr Foster went to
GloucesterCopenhagen …’?TonyN
Before you get out the snippers.
This is not a nursery rhyme, but more in the southern blues style (to the tune of “That man of mine”)
Sea ice is meltin’
And temperature’s high
It’s that carbon dioxide
Way up in the sky
Cain’t help hatin’ them greenhouse blues.
Polar bears drownin’
And penguins all sick
If we change out our light bulbs
That might do the trick
Cain’t help hatin’ them greenhouse blues.
Sea level’s risin’
An inch every day
And if we can’t see it
It’s true anyway.
Cain’t help hatin’ them greenhouse blues.
Floods and tornadoes
A forty-year drought
And tropical cyclones
Will all come about
Cain’t help hatin’ them greenhouse blues.
Them scientists told us
It’s gotta be right
They’ve got them computers
That work day and night
Cain’t help hatin’ them greenhouse blues.
Let’s set up some windmills
They really look vile
But we’re savin’ the planet
So that makes it worthwhile
Cain’t help hatin’ them greenhouse blues.
Politicians they tell us
It’s all based on facts
But they’re gonna save us
With a big carbon tax.
Cain’t help hatin’ them greenhouse blues.
Tony, Max, bravo!
Peter Geany,
You say:
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but from my understanding of the physics is there is no such thing as a heat trapping gas”.
OK then and since you ask: It has been known since the 19th century that the earth is approximately 33 degC warmer than it would be if there were no GHG’s in the atmosphere. The main two GHGs are CO2 and water vapour. Ian Plimer ( and he should know shouldn’t he!) has suggested in his recent book that if there were no CO2 in the atmosphere, the temperature of the earth would be 18 degC lower. I would tend to agree with Max that it may not be quite that much, but nevertheless there is no disputing that CO2 is a significant GHG.
The IPCC have quoted that the likely warming will be about 3 degC if CO2 levels are allowed to double from pre-industrial levels. In that context we might well consider ourselves lucky that this figure isn’t considerably higher.
[TonyN: This tread is about the ACTONCO2 adverts and whether the claims made in them can be substantiated. I don’t want yet another discussion of pet theories about Co2 here. If you can quote a reference that the DECC might use to justify the content of the ads then that’s fine. The claims made in them are not qualified by terms such as ‘likely’, and that is the basis of complaints to the ASA that have been made by contributors to this thread. If you have views about the ads it would be interesting to hear them.]
Just a few questions:
1) Is there really “significant division amongst the scientific community” ? Yes, there are dissenting individuals, but can you name one organisation of any scientific repute that has come out against the findings of the IPCC?
2)The 40% figure is slightly misleading. 385/280 = 1.375. This works out at only 37.5% Is this the basis of your objection?
3)CO2 like many even more harmful substances, is an invisible gas. Any cartoonist would have to use some artistic licence to get the point across. How would you draw it?
4) The political question is difficult. Are we allowed to talk about politics on this blog? President Reagan wasn’t known for his pro-environmentalist sympathies, and I would guess that his prime motivation for passing the problem to the IPCC was to buy him some time, but having done that, it’s somewhat churlish of you guys to argue against the IPCC’s decision.
Much of the opposition to the IPCC’s findings is political but dressed up as science.
There has to be an independent Umpire who can be relied upon to separate the politics from the science. Who would you suggest? A handpicked panel of Lindzen, Spencer, Monckton and others of like mind?
Peter M
Some answers, and some questions for you too:
1) Numbers don’t count for a scientific controversy to be significant. Think plate tectonics, the big bang, Einstein’s famous dictum that it only needs one dissenter if they are right. The TV advert does not admit to any dissent. If you think that it does then how about a quote from the transcript here:
http://ccgi.newbery1.plus.com/1st_ad_transcript.doc
2) This assigns the whole increase in atmospheric Co2 to human emissions, or rather more as you point out. I don’t remember seeing an IPCC reference to support this, but perhaps you have.
3) I would depict co2 any way that the client wanted.
4) See links to the complaints earlier in this thread; you’ve missed the point.
Manacker #61
You’ve just ruined a beautiful Lena Horne standard for me. Shame on you. Anyway, for climate change classics, you can’t do better than Ann Kelly in “Kiss Me Kate” singing “It’s Too Darn Hot”, or the Comedian Harmonists (c1929) singing “Stormy Weather” in French and German. Google brothers, google.
WUWT has a post saying that the Science Museum poll has been closed with nearly three times as many people voting ‘Out’ as ‘In’. Given that the profile of people going to this museum would almost certainly show an above average interest in and understanding of science, this really should worry the organisers, including the two senior politicians who launched it.
Has anyone else seen the COP15 opening film: “Please help the World”?
Like the “bedtime stories” ad, it features a little girl in bed. (Nothing sinister here, I feel. It’s just that admen work long hours and only get home in time to tuck their kiddies up with a bedtime story. They probably think children are a race of bedridden hobbits)
Bu the IPCC clearly has more money to spend than the British government , because the little girl gets up, to find herself in a desert. Like a prepubescent Laura Croft, she has to face incredible dangers, starting with an earthquake, which causes her to drop her teddy (a wizened, Gollum-like creature, played by Roman Polanski) into the Crack of Doom. Luckily, the desert is hit by a tornado and a tsunami, and she wakes up screaming.
It was just a bad dream. Her screams wake her daddy, who comes in to comfort her, and does what all good daddies would do in the circumstances – switch on the computer, tune in to the UN website, and show her pictures of Desmond Tutu and Rajenda Pachauri uttering dire warnings about our horrible fate.
The little girl, naturally, jumps up, grabs a camcorder, runs out into the cool night air, up the fire escape and onto the apartment building roof, where she films herself, while her father goes back to bed, to get some well-earned shuteye before another long day of creativity.
Future generations will be watching this masterpiece in dumbstruck amazement, long after the IPCC and all its works are drowned in an ocean of ridicule.
I expect fellow complainers have had the latest ASA letter, which seems to claim that because there are so many potential breaches, it’s taking them longer than usual to sort out!
The TV ad (a) will be investigated under CAP (Broadcast) TV Advertising Standards Code rules 4 (Political and controversial issues), 5.1.1, 5.1.2 (Misleading advertising: general), 5.2.1 (Misleading advertising: evidence), 5.2.6 (Misleading advertising: environmental claims), 6.4 (Harm and offence: personal distress), 7.4.6 (Children: distress), 7.4.7 (Children: use of scheduling restrictions) and CAP (Broadcast) TV Scheduling Code rule 4.2.3 (Treatments unsuitable for children).
The press ads (b), (c), (d) and (e) will be investigated under CAP Code clauses 3.1, 3.2 (Substantiation), 7.1 (Truthfulness), 9.1 and 9.2 (Fear and distress), 49.1 and 49.3 (Environmental Claims).
It doesn’t seem to have occurred to them that this might also be a call for urgency, i.e. to adjudicate before the bloody thing runs its course!
Alex Cull notes on his blog at http://alexjc38.wordpress.com/2012/05/31/bad-ads/ that the 2010 “bedtime stories” climate change ad made it into the top ten of most-complained about ads, (though some way behind an ad that showed people singing with their mouths full).
It’s good to know that lying to children and frightening them with pictures of crying bunnies annoyed 939 people. Looking back over the hundreds of comments to the six articles at Harmless Sky on the subject, it seems likely that a number of them were maybe influenced by this site. 939 is a fairly small number in the national or universal scheme of things, but in this case it was enough to ensure that this particular bit of climate catastrophism won’t be repeated in a hurry.
If the same 939 (or more) could be motivated into action every time a minister, journalist, or climate scientist overstepped the mark, maybe the media would be obliged to acknowledge our existence as a part of the population whose opinions deserve to be heard.