Climate change adverts in hot water for overstating risks of flooding

Two Government advertisements which used nursery rhymes to raise awareness of climate change have been banned for overstating the risks.

The Advertising Standards Authority ruled that the advertisements created on behalf of the Department of Energy and Climate Change and based on the children's poems Jack and Jill and Rub-A-Dub-Dub made exaggerated claims about the threat to Britain from global warming.

The campaign went beyond mainstream scientific consensus in asserting that climate change would cause flooding and drought, the watchdog said.

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It noted that predictions about the potential global impact of global warming made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change "involved uncertainties" that the advertisements failed to reflect.

Two posters juxtaposed adapted extracts from the nursery rhymes with prose warnings about the dangers of global warning.

Upholding the complaints, the authority said the text accompanying the rhymes should have used more tentative language in both instances.

The advertisements were part of a Government campaign last year which attracted a total of 939 complaints. The watchdog found other elements of the campaign did not breach its guidelines.

Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband, MP for Doncaster North, said: "We will continue to provide public information about the dangers of climate change."