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Polar bears go splat

Someone should explain to the Plane Stupid activists that if they allowed planes to fly then we could put the polar bears on the planes and the poor bears wouldn't have to fall to their deaths.
 
Airline pollution activists Plane Stupid are on a collision course with the advertising regulator after launching a graphic cinema campaign that sees CGI polar bears falling to bloody deaths to highlight the impact of carbon emissions.
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Advertising regulator? A government has no interest in regulations other than the veracity of them. Either the product is legal or not*.

So in this case, I would have to ask if the number of polar bears "killed" reflects actual decline in their population. Somehow I don't think that's the area of concern.












* Cigarettes are not legal for children, so advertising purportedly targeted at them, either directly, or as softening them up for when they do turn 18, would indeed be a legitimate area of criticism.
 
The OP had nothing to do with the regulator. In fact I agree with you to a point.
What I am pointing out in a round about fashion is that the ad, by AGW alarmists is just that, alarmist. We have polar bears falling from the roofs of office buildings and splattering on the ground

http://blog.seattlepi.com/aerospace/archives/186196.asp?from=blog_last3

Since the launch of the ad, at the rate they fell the polar bear population would probably be zero already. But that isn't really the point either.
Is this alarmist type advertisement appropriate? Who should we show it to? Is it ok to show kids as part of the political indoctination of AGW theory that is under a huge cloud at the moment anyway, given recent revelations?

For mine it is emotive, alarmist and over the top, and even more so when one considers the debate that rages about the truth of AGW anyway.
 
It strikes me there are similarities (but not outright equivalence) between ads like that, and ads that show abortions in progress, or aborted fetuses and the like.

It's an appeal to emotion.
 
They ran a short segment on this ad on NPR last night, with a scientist/fact-checker...

Although the rate of plunging polar bears is rather over-the-top, the figures cited for the amount of pollution produced by airliners is accurate....
 
"Scientific American" this month has a feature on the effect of the melting of the permafrost in the Arctic and the consequent release of enormous amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas.
An unforeseen result of AGW, and would be one of the most difficult to control.
 
Polar bears? They attack everything that moves on sight. Students at the The University Centre in Svalbard has to attend a compulsory course in artic field safety, where the large caliber rifle is one of the most important tools.

And it's interesting to see that they've finally come up with something more stupid than the crocodile tears over "the ice is melting so the polar bears are drowning" (proof: footage of a swimming polar bear). Well, if the polar bears wasn't adapted to be swimming in icy cold water, they would die from hypothermia.
 
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A.A.Alfie said:
The latest alarmist advert seems rather over the top.

At the rate they are falling, the entire population of polar bears worldwide will be gone in, ... well, just hours.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/nov/20/polar-bears-plane-stupid-ad
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The ad doesn't say in any way that polar bears are endangered by ... anything, really.

The point being made is closer to: This is what it would look like if the waste produced by airplanes was solid rather than gaseous.
 
Rasmus said:
The ad doesn't say in any way that polar bears are endangered by ... anything, really.

The point being made is closer to: This is what it would look like if the waste produced by airplanes was solid rather than gaseous.
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You're not serious? :jaw-dropp
Are you suggesting they are not (overly emotively imo) linking the polar bears, the jet exhaust and AGW? :covereyes
 
Rasmus said:
The point being made is closer to: This is what it would look like if the waste produced by airplanes was solid rather than gaseous.
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No. That's what it would look like if the waste produced by airplanes was polar bears.
 
Ziggurat said:
No. That's what it would look like if the waste produced by airplanes was polar bears.
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If you look at it that way, the ad becomes hilarious.

Next in the series, imagine if the light produced by non-CFL lightbulbs was actually tiger cubs.
 
Ziggurat said:
No. That's what it would look like if the waste produced by airplanes was polar bears.
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Hey, we're working on it as fast as we can ok? Soon, all jets will only produce clean polar bears as byproducts and we can take them off the endangered species list.
 
Beerina said:
Advertising regulator? A government has no interest in regulations other than the veracity of them. Either the product is legal or not*.
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The Advertising regulator is an industry body and not the goverment. It's also somewhat questionable if it's actualy illegal to advertise illegal products. Is there an actual law against advertising nuclear weapons or sarin?
So in this case, I would have to ask if the number of polar bears "killed" reflects actual decline in their population. Somehow I don't think that's the area of concern.
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It wouldn't be illegal under english law.
 
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tyr_13 said:
Hey, we're working on it as fast as we can ok? Soon, all jets will only produce clean polar bears as byproducts and we can take them off the endangered species list.
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I think there needs to be a huge effort to clean all the bears. The vast majority I have seen are black and it cannot be healthy for them to be covered in soot like that.
 
A.A.Alfie said:
You're not serious? :jaw-dropp
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I am serious. The ad does say the weight of the CO2 produced per flight per passenger is equal to the weight of a polar bear, right?

Are you suggesting they are not (overly emotively imo) linking the polar bears, the jet exhaust and AGW? :covereyes
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Linking? No, not in any meaningful way. They could have chosen anything of a comprable weight - like "273 rotten tomatoes" or" 4000 packs of office photocopier paper", but that would not have been nearly as funny to watch.

The ad does not claim that flying kills polar bears. It is not a reasonable interpretation of what is actually shown and said in the ad.
 
Rasmus said:
The ad does not claim that flying kills polar bears. It is not a reasonable interpretation of what is actually shown and said in the ad.
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The inference is obvious even to my eleven year year old son and 10 year old neice. Not a reasonable interpretation is laughable.
Tell me, why do you think they used polar bears in the ad and not something else?

My bold
 
Why is the weight of the waste produced by an aeroplane relevant?

I'd rather have a ton of CO2 released in the sky than a kilo of radioactive waste, for instance.
 
gtc said:
Why is the weight of the waste produced by an aeroplane relevant?

I'd rather have a ton of CO2 released in the sky than a kilo of radioactive waste, for instance.
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.
It's relevant in that if there were no airplanes exhausting into the atmosphere, the effects to the atmosphere of such exhaust wouldn't exist.
ISTR the ban on flight post 9/11 had a measureable effect on the weather for the next week.
The contrails I see here that persist and grow larger as they go to the east must have some effect on the weather to the east. This effect might be lessened were there no contrails to serve as the source of the clouds.
 
A.A.Alfie said:
The inference is obvious even to my eleven year year old son and 10 year old neice. Not a reasonable interpretation is laughable.
Tell me, why do you think they used polar bears in the ad and not something else?

My bold
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Because polar bears look hillariously funny when going splat?

The ad *says* what it is about. I think it is utterly ridiculous to debate the rate at which the bears are depicted as falling to see how long until they were extinct.

And if someone sees the ad as saying that polar bears suffer from global warning, I'd say that this is probably an accurate observation. Still, the ad doesn't say so, and it doesn't imply it, either.
 
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