British government's global warming ads banned for false warning of extreme weather

A British government ad campaign utilizing children nursery
rhymes to warn about the dangers of climate change has been
rebuked by a government watchdog. (DECC)  See more of the
advertisements in the slideshow below.

Scare tactic newspaper advertisements from Britain’s Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) have been banned by a government advertising watchdog agency. Two ads in a series which used child nursery rhymes to warn about the purported dangers of manmade climate change were found to have unsubstantiated claims in them.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) reviewed the ads after receiving more than 900 complaints from British citizens – the most complaints it received on any ad last year.

The two offending ads were based on the nursery rhymes of ‘Jack and Jill’ and ‘Rub a Dub Dub’ and warned of the effects of extreme weather, a claim which has long been disproven.

Without a background in climate science, the ASA relied on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) reports to determine the accuracy of the ads. In its conclusion, the ASA said the ads failed to meet code based on a lack of substantiation, truthfulness and their environmental claims.

It was the definitive statement that the severe weather events will happen that caused the ASA to take action as they are presented as if there is no doubt.

In one ad, two children are depicted looking into a water well with large, accompanying text that says, “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.”

In smaller print the advertisement then says, “Climate change has serious implications for our way of life. For example, extreme weather conditions such as flooding, heat waves and storms will become more frequent and intense. If we carry on at this rate, life in 25 years could be very different.”

• In pictures - See the ads from the British government's nursery rhymes series in the slideshow below

The second ad showed three men floating in a bathtub among a flooded British landscape. The dominant text said, “Rub a dub dub, three men in a tub, a necessary course of action due to flash flooding caused by climate change.”

It continued, “Climate change is happening. Extreme weather events such as storms, floods and heatwaves will become more frequent and intense. If we carry on at this rate, life in 25 years could be very different.”

Both ads feature in bold print a footer that reads, “It’s our children who’ll really pay the price.”
The claims of an increase in natural disasters have been used since the earliest days of the global warming theory.

Al Gore brought the idea to the forefront in his movie and book “An Inconvenient Truth” when he stood in front of a picture of Hurricane Katrina warning of the dnagers. He continued to report the claim until this past year when he was forced to pull slides that inaccurately depicted a rise in disasters from the presentation he routinely gives.

President Barack Obama, in a town hall meeting in April echoed the Nobel laureate’s comments saying, “You're now looking at huge, cataclysmic hurricanes, complete changes in weather patterns.” He followed that in September when in a speech before the United Nations he claimed, “More powerful storms and floods threaten every continent.”

These claims have however failed to stand up to scrutiny of empirical data. Tropical cyclone activity continues to be at a 30 year low and there has not been a noted increase in other weather-related disasters as some try to portray.