We just issued this press release. Call you station managers and demand that these misleading ads be pulled from the public airwaves.
Assemblywoman Hancock Calls on Local Station Managers
to Pull Misleading Advertisements
Ads meant to mislead public about the real dangers of global warming
Sacramento, CA — State Assemblywoman Loni Hancock (D-Oakland) called on local Fox television stations to decline airing commercials by a conservative Washington-based group until the false statements about global warming are corrected. The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a Washington D.C. based think tank funded in part by the oil and automotive industries, recently purchased time in California television markets to run ads which dismiss the dangers of carbon emissions and climate change.
“The ads distort legitimate scientific problems by implying that the Earth’s climate is not threatened by increased carbon emissions resulting from human activity,” explains Hancock in a letter she sent to the station managers who are running the ads. “The commercials quote a portion of a study that has found that interior ice mass in Greenland and Iceland has been increasing. They conveniently neglect to mention that the study also found that exterior ice is melting, offsetting or even outweighing gains in ice mass made in the interior.”
The researcher whose study was quoted by CEI has challenged the ads. “These television ads are a deliberate effort to confuse and mislead the public about the global warming debate. They are selectively using only parts of my previous research to support their claims. They are not telling the entire story to the public,” said Engineering Professor Curt Davis of the University of Missouri in a press release.
“A 2001 study conducted by eleven of the nation’s leading climate scientists for the National Research Council concluded that climate change is occurring right now. Recent changes are mostly a result of human activities,” said Hancock.
