TV Ads Take Aim at Global Warming
Thursday May 18, 2006
In a classic example of spin versus substance, a series of television advertisements designed to counter growing concerns about global warming, and to confuse the issue, will begin airing in 14 U.S. cities today.
In one of the ads, a little girl blows dandelion seeds into the air as a voice-over announcer says, “Carbon dioxide: they call it pollution; we call it life.” The same ad shows idyllic beach and forest scenes as the announcer waxes poetic about the benefits of using fossil fuels that create greenhouse gases.
"The fuels that produce CO2 (carbon dioxide) have freed us from a world of back-breaking labor, lighting up our lives, allowing us to create and move the things we need, the people we love," the ad says. "Now some politicians want to label carbon dioxide a pollutant. Imagine if they succeed—what would our lives be like then?"
Another ad is targeted at environmental “alarmists” and media reports of shrinking glaciers in the Arctic and elsewhere. “Why are they trying to scare us?” the ad asks. “And as for carbon dioxide, it isn’t smog or smoke, it’s what we breathe out and plants breathe in.” (View the ads.)
The ads are timed to get out in front of the May 24 release of “An Inconvenient Truth,” the new documentary film about global warming that features former vice president Al Gore presenting compelling scientific evidence verifying the truth and causes of global warming—and the urgency of the issue. But ironically, the ads are reminiscent of another recent film, “Thank You For Smoking,” a parody of how some corporations and industry groups twist the truth, even faking or distorting scientific research, so they can continue to profit from selling harmful products.
The ads were paid for by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a corporate-funded nonprofit advocacy group based in Washington, DC. CEI describes itself as "a non-profit, non-partisan research and advocacy institute dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government." According to the Center for Media and Democracy, however, CEI merely “postures as an advocate of ‘sound science’ in the development of public policy. In fact, it is an ideologically driven, well-funded front for corporations opposed to safety and environmental regulations that affect the way they do business.”
CEI routinely opposes environmental and drug regulations and nutritional labeling designed to protect public health. For example, CEI argues that automobile emissions standards cause consumers to buy smaller cars, resulting in more deaths from auto accidents. The group also argues that drug and nutritional labeling cause “adverse public health effects.”
The ads are scheduled to run from May 18 through May 28 in Albany, New York; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Anchorage, Alaska; Austin and Dallas, Texas; Charleston, West Virginia; Dayton, Ohio; Denver, Colorado; Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Phoenix, Arizona; Sacramento and Santa Barbara, California; Springfield, Illinois; and Washington, DC.
More information:
Scientists Denounces TV Ads for Deliberately Misleading Public 'Carbon Dioxide... We Call It Life,' U.S. TV Ads Say (Reuters/Environmental News Network)
View the ads (Competitive Enterprise Institute)
Learn more about An Inconvenient Truth:
An Inconvenient Truth: Review and other information
Photo gallery of scenes from the film
Al Gore, Progressive Leader of the Moment & Enemy of Big Oil
In one of the ads, a little girl blows dandelion seeds into the air as a voice-over announcer says, “Carbon dioxide: they call it pollution; we call it life.” The same ad shows idyllic beach and forest scenes as the announcer waxes poetic about the benefits of using fossil fuels that create greenhouse gases.
"The fuels that produce CO2 (carbon dioxide) have freed us from a world of back-breaking labor, lighting up our lives, allowing us to create and move the things we need, the people we love," the ad says. "Now some politicians want to label carbon dioxide a pollutant. Imagine if they succeed—what would our lives be like then?"
Another ad is targeted at environmental “alarmists” and media reports of shrinking glaciers in the Arctic and elsewhere. “Why are they trying to scare us?” the ad asks. “And as for carbon dioxide, it isn’t smog or smoke, it’s what we breathe out and plants breathe in.” (View the ads.)
The ads are timed to get out in front of the May 24 release of “An Inconvenient Truth,” the new documentary film about global warming that features former vice president Al Gore presenting compelling scientific evidence verifying the truth and causes of global warming—and the urgency of the issue. But ironically, the ads are reminiscent of another recent film, “Thank You For Smoking,” a parody of how some corporations and industry groups twist the truth, even faking or distorting scientific research, so they can continue to profit from selling harmful products.
The ads were paid for by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a corporate-funded nonprofit advocacy group based in Washington, DC. CEI describes itself as "a non-profit, non-partisan research and advocacy institute dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government." According to the Center for Media and Democracy, however, CEI merely “postures as an advocate of ‘sound science’ in the development of public policy. In fact, it is an ideologically driven, well-funded front for corporations opposed to safety and environmental regulations that affect the way they do business.”
CEI routinely opposes environmental and drug regulations and nutritional labeling designed to protect public health. For example, CEI argues that automobile emissions standards cause consumers to buy smaller cars, resulting in more deaths from auto accidents. The group also argues that drug and nutritional labeling cause “adverse public health effects.”
The ads are scheduled to run from May 18 through May 28 in Albany, New York; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Anchorage, Alaska; Austin and Dallas, Texas; Charleston, West Virginia; Dayton, Ohio; Denver, Colorado; Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Phoenix, Arizona; Sacramento and Santa Barbara, California; Springfield, Illinois; and Washington, DC.
More information:
Scientists Denounces TV Ads for Deliberately Misleading Public 'Carbon Dioxide... We Call It Life,' U.S. TV Ads Say (Reuters/Environmental News Network)
View the ads (Competitive Enterprise Institute)
Learn more about An Inconvenient Truth:
An Inconvenient Truth: Review and other information
Photo gallery of scenes from the film
Al Gore, Progressive Leader of the Moment & Enemy of Big Oil
Comments
If I have learned anything since 2000, it’s how easy it is for people be made to believe just about anything if they hear it often enough.
My question is, exactly who funds the CEI and what special interest groups support it?
• There is an estimated 400 billion tons of methane trapped in permafrost ice.
• An estimated 50% of surface permafrost will melt by 2050, and 90% by 2100.
• Methane is more than 20 times as strong a greenhouse gas as CO2-the sudden release of just 35 billion tons of methane would be like doubling the CO2 in the air.
Massive amounts of methane from melting permafrost ice will soon flood the air-far outpacing human greenhouse gas pollution.
• The effect of methane flooding the air is runaway global warming-this disastrous positive feedback loop has occurred before.
• Ocean bottom ice will start to melt-releasing some of the estimated 10,000 billion tons of methane trapped in it.
• A potential bottleneck for mankind-an existential threat to nations.
• The only solution is biological sequestration-removing the CO2 from the air after it is emitted.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1215-24.htm
http://planetsave.com/ps_mambo/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6724&Itemid=69
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2003/07/04/2003057994
http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article338830.ece
You can learn more about CEI, and its donors and supporters, at this link: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Competitive_Enterprise_Institute
That link is also included in the blog post: http://environment.about.com/b/a/256741.htm