The CEI ads

Posted by David Roberts at 3:33 PM on 17 May 2006

Read more about: messaging | green living | TV | climate | climate change skepticism

OMFG, so, I finally went and watched the TV ads to be aired by the Competitive Enterprise Institute a week before An Inconvenient Truth is released.

I'm not sure what I expected, but these things are genuinely funny. They look like nothing so much as a parody produced by Saturday Night Live. The tag line -- the last line of the ad, read dramatically as a little girl blows a dandelion -- is: "Carbon dioxide. They call it pollution. We call it life."

It's a pro-CO2 ad. Seriously. It turns out, we breathe CO2 out. And plants absorb it. It comes from animals! And oceans! Who could hate it?

As though there were a huge cabal of people out there who viewed this particular molecule as intrinsically evil.

Obviously, I'm not in the target audience. But I can't imagine anyone being persuaded by something so self-evidently absurd. I guess we'll see, though.

(One thing to note: It's "some politicians" and "global warming alarmists" making these claims about global warming. Not, say, scientists.)

Update [2006-5-17 15:48:57 by David Roberts]: Oh, I also meant to draw attention to a classic interview with CEI founder Fred Smith, from which this amazing passage is drawn:

Mr. SMITH: Look, the point - what we do know and don�t know, we know that carbon dioxide is increasing. We know carbon dioxide is a plant fertilizer which is a positive benefit to the peoples of the world. We know that there are these elaborate computer models that have never been right before, may be right this time, that suggest climate changes, possibly good, possibly bad. Most of the indications right now are it looks pretty good. Warmer winters, warmer nights, no effects during the day because of clouding, sounds to me like we�re moving to a more benign planet, more rain, richer, easier productivity to agriculture -

KINSLEY: Wait a minute.

Mr. SMITH: We�re basically to a world now that�s a lot closer to heaven than hell.

For story: The CEI ads
13 Comments | Post a Comment

They should all move to Venus

"Carbon dioxide -- they call it pollution, we call it life."

Venus has 90 atmospheres of "life." Balmy temperatures too -- 900 degrees Fahrenheit, day and night. They'd love it there.

http://www.dailykos.com/User/Cassiodorus

by LegumeSam at 9:30 AM on 18 May 2006

Hot chicks dig CO2

everything can be parodied

by Sir Oolius at 11:44 AM on 18 May 2006

*headdesk*

Dear God, what's next? Fresh air: scourge of humanity?

by worstedwitch at 12:21 PM on 18 May 2006

Global Warming Is A Natural Cycle

I've posted a full commentary about these ads and the internet frenzy surrounding them at greenr.

If you look at it, there have been 4 cycles of cooling in warming of +/-5 degrees C over the past 450,000 years, and I'm betting there weren't CO2 humans to blame back then, so why should they be to blame now?

We are in the MIDDLE of a warming cycle, that still has +5 degrees C to go. Of course we are seeing global warming.

See my site for the full details.

by greenr at 7:50 PM on 18 May 2006

Who will believe them?

Dear David,

Who will believe such silly ads? Many many people who don't have other sources of information.

A lie repeated over and over again can easily overwhelm a truth infrequently heard.

And I suspect these folks will get the money they need.

It will be a long summer....

patrick

by bookerly at 8:03 PM on 18 May 2006

Are you serious, greenr?

I completely understand your point. I understood it 10 years ago when people just like you were saying the same thing. However, this "post hoc fallacy" of correlation=causation is shared by the overwhelming majority of climatologists. The data that has been gathered over the past 10 years has shown that the models put in place that accounted for human CO2 emmisions were more accurate than those that didn't.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a2/Climate_Change_Attribution.png

by socratesone at 5:28 PM on 20 May 2006

You Call It Life?

I have sent this to the CEI, and blogged it, so others can see the absurdity of their idiotic work. Interestingly they have set bounces on their pr@cei.org and info@cei.org addresses where something mentions the ads - they don't like the reaction, do they?

"Of course you call it life - the life that the businesses that fund the CEI depend on. It's called money. Carbon Dioxide makes money.

Imagine if there was no oil. What would you make money out of?

You are scared people, scared of being found out. It's not about caring, is it, it's about growing the profits of your sponsors.

You want people to believe, don't you?

http://streams.cei.org/

Put a person in a room full of carbon dioxide, they die.

But it's life to you, isn't it.

Keith Farnish
http://www.theearthblog.org"

Keith Farnish www.theearthblog.org

by farnishk at 7:17 AM on 21 May 2006

I just emailed this to them:

The contact guy for the ads is Richard Morrison. (rmorrison@cei.org) I just emailed this:

I just saw your ads with the tag line "Carbon dioxide. They call it pollution. We call it life." It sounds like a parody of an some 50's "better living through chemistry" style ad campaign.

When I heard about this web site I thought it just had to be a joke. But wow, you're actually serious. Your ad campaign is sure to become a classic like those "better living through chemistry" or "reefer madness" ads. Thanks for your addition to American pop culture.

How about you make a campaign called "Uric Acid. They call it urine. We call it lemonade". You can talk all about how natural and yellow uric acid is. How animals pee it out. How its yellow like lemonade, and refreshing when chilled.

-Rafael Baptista

by rafael baptista at 6:06 AM on 23 May 2006

Too much of a good thing

You can't live without water, but you can drown in it, too. Nobody's saying that CO2 is "evil"-it's simply that we can have too much to be healthy.

Let the jaguars return!

by Storm Dragon at 8:12 AM on 23 May 2006

Bouncing e-mail

Interestingly they have set bounces on their pr@cei.org and info@cei.org addresses where something mentions the ads - they don't like the reaction, do they?

Or they could be worried that their server can't handle a targeted e-mail campaign from mocking websites. I used to work for a small free-market think tank, and when a flood of traffic hit in response to some public controversy, it wreaked havoc on our systems. Incidentally I don't know anyone at CEI. You might try asking them why they're bouncing messages to the pr and info addresses before jumping to conclusions.

(I had to give my name, e-mail, zip code and country to Grist to comment here - does that make them malevolent? E-mail is open, for better or worse, unless you use AOL.)

That said, I think the point of the ads, hyperbolic as they are, is that your preferred policies would have severe effects on the Western economy - something Al Gore surely knows. And the science behind predictions of global catastrophe a hundred years away is murky at best. This is what too many environmentalists don't realize - policy changes have real effects now, and uncertain (if any) benefits later. Have a little compassion for today's inhabitants of Earth.

by gregmobile at 3:43 PM on 23 May 2006

Greg,

First of all, what's "free market" got to do with anything? We don't have one of those. Particularly when it comes to energy, land use, and agriculture.

your preferred policies would have severe effects on the Western economy

That is repeated frequently by conservatives, but frequent repetition doesn't make it so. Every new regulatory initiative has been met by cries of doom from conservatives, and those grim predictions never pan out. Among other things, it strikes me as a truly unflattering assessment of America's strength and ingenuity.

grist.org

by David Roberts at 4:06 PM on 23 May 2006

Time

Viable carbon-neutral energy will always be less expensive than the consumer cost of fossil fuels, otherwise fossil fuels will be used.

Fossil fuels will continually cost more with time while new technology energy will continually cost less with time.

Always challenge the message that solving global warming is expensive and will make people poor. The opposite is true.

by sunflower at 5:53 PM on 23 May 2006

Try a group effort

Always challenge the message that solving global warming is expensive and will make people poor. The opposite is true.

Capitalism is expensive, and makes people poor. The message that "solving global warming is expensive" is a reflection of the individual costs of individuals "solving global warming" separately.

http://www.dailykos.com/User/Cassiodorus

by LegumeSam at 6:48 PM on 23 May 2006

ADVERTISING POLICY

You are not logged in. Thus, you cannot post a comment. If you have an account, log in. If you don't have an account, well, by all means go make one! Meet you back here in five.