The UK’s advertising regulator has banned two government climate change ads, ruling their claims breached standards on substantiation and truthfulness.

Over 900 people filed complaints with the Advertising Standards Agency about the government’s ‘fairytale’ climate change awareness adverts, which included a TV campaign and four print adverts (see: Worst. Climate. Campaign. Ever.). Eventually the ASA started telling callers the adverts were already being investigated and they didn’t need to file official complaints unless they really wanted to (statement).

Complaints covered nine points, including that the adverts were political, that they falsely presented anthropogenic climate change as an established fact, and that they exaggerated the changes to weather and flooding that would result in the UK.

The ASA can’t rule on the first of those, as that’s a matter for a different regulator. It also kicked the second complaint into touch, citing the IPCC’s work.

The TV advert and two of the print adverts were found to be fine by the ASA. However, it decided that the other two print adverts (images, top) breached the advertising code.

These two ads claimed that “extreme weather events such as storms, floods and heat waves will become more frequent and intense” and “extreme weather conditions such as flooding, heat waves and storms will become more frequent and intense” (view image).

The ASA ruling states: “… we concluded that the claim … in ad (b) and the claim … in ad © should have been phrased more tentatively”.

None of the other points of complaint were upheld.

Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband told the BBC, “We should have phrased the advert better and we will do so in the future. We probably should have made it clearer that this was a prediction and we should have made it clearer the basis of the claim.”

The ASA did not consider whether the television ad should have been banned on the grounds of taste. In case you missed it the first time, here it is again.