Are you losing sleep because of the Carbon Tax? (Click to see a large version. Thanks to MaxL)
It used to be that being Green was assumed to be the done thing in any advert promoting something, especially something that aimed at the professional set (like a herbal sleeping tablet). So I was surprised to see an advert, on the front page of The Australian a few days ago (August 3rd) which unashamedly played to those-who-don’t-welcome-The-Carbon-Tax.
At least one herbal supplement supplier thinks the tax is the hot topic stressor of the moment, keeping business people awake at night.
I wanted to keep this turning point for posterity, for the poor PhD student in 2035 analyzing how the Great Global Warming meme went from Nobel prize winning grandeur in 2007 to well-known-scam status five years later. This is a point along the way. As far as I know, it’s a first in the Australian print media.
There's the Ad, front page, full width at the bottom.
Gillard and co would have to feel a tad queasy when faced with an ad that implied that the top target for a common fear was their not-yet-born-tax. Add this to the PhD student who might be studying the great fall of The Australian Economy and is trying to find supporting evidence for his or her theory that The-Tax-that-makes-no-sense (politically, economically, environmentally or scientifically) was a big part of the reason consumers didn’t spend, weren’t confident, and business ground to a stand-still.
“Carbon Tax keep you up at night?
No matter what’s on your mind, it’s important to get a good nights sleep.
Don’t take the Carbon Tax to bed…”
And if you feel like supporting them: Insomin-X
The Sunday Age wants you to write the agenda
Perhaps the Sunday Age has noticed the quicksand under their assumptions and the opinion polls. Many people have also been pointing me at The Sunday Age’s strange attempt to either appear to be less biased (in the face of such a skeptical community) or to actually (maybe) appeal to readers before they bail on their subscriptions.
Is it a mark of just how detached editors have got that they feel they need to ask the public to write the agenda, or is this just a marketing tactic?
In the launch:
The Sunday Age commits to reporting on the 10 most popular questions and publishing regular updates on how we are going. So if you’ve ever been critical of the media’s coverage of climate change, here’s your chance. We hope you’ll get involved.
From the Our-say site:
Worried about climate change? Furious about the carbon tax? Confused about the science? Walkley-award winning journalist Michael Bachelard will lead The Sunday Age team investigating the 10 most popular questions on OurSay which will be featured and updated on The Age’s Climate Agenda website.
Stephen Harper suggests this:
The claim “the science is settled” is plainly false due to the many problems with the AGW hypothesis (eg. global temperatures have not risen since 1998 despite rising CO2 levels; alarmism is based on flawed models that do not reflect empirical measurements – positive feedback mechanism with water vapour absent/signature hot-spot in troposphere at equator is absent). Why is there no investigative journalism done to examine these flaws? – Stephen Harper,
*I couldn’t get a better copy of this advert, and made some “restoration” edits in the photo-editor to make the Ad slightly more readable. (Has any one got a better copy of Weds Aug 3, 2011?)
UPDATE: Thanks to MaxL, you can now see the ad in full if you click on the top image. Ta Max!