Shell Oil's call to action

[brainpanhandler]

This is the back cover of the December 2010 Harper's. It reads like a call to action, like we need some sort of citizen initiative to make sure northen cities don't run out of sources of heat and freeze this winter.



All of us like to be kept warm.

Damn straight. I'm a kept man. Bring on the global warming. It's cold. Brrrr.

During this winter and the winters to come.

Er, I think my 4ourth grade english teacher called this a sentence fragment. But yah, I want to be kept warm, during this winter and the winters to come, and any nuclear winters to come and the mini ice age to come precipitated by the shut down of the Atlantic thermo-haline conveyor and well, any damn winter at all and, where is that global warming anyway?

To help deliver this heat Shell Oil has developed a range of solutions-from innovative technologies
to unlock difficult to reach oil, to shipping liquefied gas from the frozen islands
off Siberia.

Whew... glad you boys are on the job, but ya know... there's easier ways to make sure that life sustaining heat keeps reaching those northern cities.
Iraq Oil Field Goes to Royal Dutch Shell and Petronas

All in an effort to help keep our cities warm now and in the future.

Awww. You guys really are the best. I feel all snuggly soft and, warm, inside.

And to ultimately help build a better energy future. Let's go.

Go team. Go.

[JackRiddler]

Thank you! Why isn't this GD?

Now this is an example of why subforums are hell. How did I even get here? There must have been a link.

We really should have a thing for highlighting new posts. (For some reason, the latest-posts function ceases to exist if I log in. At that point I only get "view your posts.")

[brainpanhandler]

I know. I thought I'd make an effort to try to use the subforums. Sometimes I don't mind avoiding the hubbub of gd. Sort of like going to a quiet corner of the library. You got here via a link I placed in Hugh's Cia Psyops thread in gd. That will increase traffic, and maybe even the manatee himself will weigh in, but alot of people will be too paranoid to click on a link like that. Oh well.

You're a reader of Harper's... What do you make of this being on the back cover? I'm assuming that's some pretty hefty ad revenue. I'm also assuming Harper's, like every other print publication in the world, is probably fighting to keep it's head above water.

You don't get an option to "view active topics"?

[barracuda]

Now just wait a second here - you're not accusing the fine Royal Dutch Company of hornswoggling the American people by creating the impression that they are taking care of us, are you??

[DoYouEverWonder]

Maybe instead of spending billions for advertising to tell us how great they are, what if they spent the money insulation buildings and installing energy efficient windows. Then we could cut our energy usage in half. But no, we can't have that now can we?

[brainpanhandler]

Now just wait a second here - you're not accusing the fine Royal Dutch Company of hornswoggling the American people by creating the impression that they are taking care of us, are you??

Why on the back cover of Harper's? Maybe I'm prejudiced since I'm a subscriber but it seems to me the typical Harper's reader is not going to look at this ad and be persuaded all is well with the philanthropic folks of big oil and they're just doing their part to keep us snug in our beds.

The whole ad somehow leaves me with the vague impression of a veiled threat - like inviting the reader to imagine what would happen if the Northern cities (code for liberals?) ran out of heating fuel. I mean is there really a danger that american cities might run out of heating fuels this winter? That's news to me.