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Adorable Little Death Throes

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This ad, from the British company Ecotricity, tries to make the case that Britain should dump other kinds of energy in favor of windmills. It seems to me adorable and a complete misfire because it is adorable.

The benign cartoon cooling towers that collapse into dust, waving their cartoon hands in dismay, is pretty disturbing and would seem to cast the windmills shown at the end into the role of malignant usurpers. This has to be the opposite of what Ecotricity wants to portray. Judge for yourself:

 

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Anonymous said…
Pretty annoying music, too, as well as being kind of violent and destructive. Ironic that they'd throw the "Time to move on" bromide in there. Move on to what? Windmills? That isn't moving on, its moving backward to ancient, ancient technology that re-enslaves mankind to the capricious whims of nature.
February 9, 2012 at 8:45 PM
Fan of predictable energy said…
Back before humans had enough energy to pump water out of aquifers, there was something called "famine" which occurred in those years when the annual variability in rainfall caused droughts. What a crazy idea to move to an energy source also has annual variability (as well as weekly, monthly, and seasonal variability), that would return humans back to this exact same dependence upon weather.
February 9, 2012 at 10:01 PM
Brian Mays said…
The effect that it had on me is that I'm starting to think it might be a good idea to paint smiley faces on cooling towers. You have to admit that they're kind of cute.
February 9, 2012 at 11:08 PM
Anonymous said…
I take it they don't want that cup of tea then...
February 10, 2012 at 8:08 AM
SteveK9 said…
@Fan Wind is variable practically down to the minute time scale.
February 10, 2012 at 9:51 AM
Anonymous said…
Not that we would do it, but can you imagine the outrage from the mainstream press as well as the windies and sunnies if some pro-nuclear organization put out an ad showing windmills or solar panels collapsing because they were uneconomical from being so unreliable and variable? They'd be shouting from the rooftops about those "haters". Heck, even now, if you bring up technical objections based on science or economics, they accuse you of wanting to "poison the world", and call you vile names like "vermin" and "rapists" (of the land). But here is an organization showing nuclear plants being blown up and people cheer about it. Bunch of hypocrites, the lot of them.
February 10, 2012 at 10:40 AM
Septeus7 said…
I find it funny that I can find a lot more video of collapsing windmills than I can of Stream Towers crumbling. Can we say projection?

Brain is right. The Smiley faces to make the Towers look a bit more friendly.
February 12, 2012 at 6:16 PM
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