We’ve seen a lot of stupid videos lately, such as the 10:10 fiasco of blowing up school children because they were ambivalent about reducing their carbon footprint. Now, we are treated to a “behind-the-scenes” video of how Hyundai shot a commercial for a gasoline-powered car, using no gasoline and leaving no carbon footprint. There’s all sorts of clever human-powered props, and the whole set resembles some sort of Rube Goldberg contraption. But the real punch line is: they had some guys push the car to get it going for one scene.

Honestly, I don’t see the point. It seems beyond ridiculous to make a zero carbon footprint commercial for cars that use gasoline. Note all the trucks, rentals, and equipment vans surrounding the commercial shoot. How did all those get there? Pedal power? Watch this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GI0RfNO8fk

Here’s another video aptly titled “Creating the illusion”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9W3mbdWa8U

And yet another on the alternative power sources:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gF90vblUK0

Nice, but the thing that makes this a candidate for the FAIL blog is this: transporting all this equipment to the shoot couldn’t be done “carbon free.”

If they really wanted to create an “illusion,” you’d think they would have had the good sense to keep the U-haul and Ryder rental trucks out of the video scenes. But when you are on a mission, details like this apparently don’t matter. On the plus side, at least they didn’t blow up anything or anyone.

Here’s the final product, the actual commercial:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1-Dwd-7bSk

[h/t to Tom Nelson]

Mr. Watts operates the most visited blog on climate science in the world, www.wattsupwiththat.com now with over 57 million visits. He has spent 30 years on air in radio and television as a weather forecaster, and still does daily radio broadcasts. In 2007, he founded the surfacestations.org project, which with the help of volunteers nationwide found that only 1 in 10 of the weather stations used for monitoring climate in the USA met the government’s own standards for station siting quality. He also operates a weather technology business, embraces energy efficiency with solar power on his home and drives an electric car.