( CNN ) -- A recent CNN.com op-ed asked `` Was the Shell Oil hoax ethical ? '' We at Greenpeace , along with the activist group Yes Men , are behind the Shell Oil website ArcticReady.com , which we created to call attention to the company 's Arctic destruction . So we were intrigued by this question . The writer , Paul Root Wolpe , director of the Center for Ethics at Emory University , said the spoof website did not announce itself as a parody and that omission could be called misrepresentation . And that could possibly be called unethical . But we revealed our role just hours after the site went up , and the site is so over-the-top -- it has a kids ' game called `` Angry Bergs '' -- that people realize very quickly that it is fake . But mispresentation is Wolpe 's concern , which is why he should have addressed the ethics of Shell 's multibillion-dollar international hoax perpetrated on Earth itself . A hoax the company has failed to reveal to the public . Royal Dutch Shell made $ 31 billion in profits last year , while its CEO took home $ 15 million in compensation during one of the worst economic crises in a century . The company 's lobbyists in Washington , London and other global capitals work to slow the development of clean technologies and renewable energy , preferring instead a status quo that benefits their shareholders and leaves the massive costs of climate change to the 99 % . And yet Shell proudly advertises itself as a corporation deeply concerned with developing clean energy and ensuring a viable energy future , even going to great lengths to organize well-branded `` eco-marathons '' completely at odds with its relentless fossil fuel extraction . In the Arctic , the oil giant is exploiting melting sea ice to drill for more of the oil causing global warming in the first place . All of this is happening despite clear evidence from the best scientists that global warming is already causing extreme weather events and it 's only likely to get worse . In the past few weeks , Shell 's communications team has been busy trying to spin its way out of a series of recent crises , but it ca n't change the facts . The Shell fleet 's 14,000-ton drill ship in Alaska , the Discoverer , slipped anchor two weeks ago . The same drill ship ca n't meet the Clean Air Act standards the company agreed to earlier this year , and so Shell is asking the EPA to bend the rules at the 11th hour . An oil spill response barge , the Arctic Challenger , which Shell promised the U.S. Coast Guard was `` Arctic ready , '' is in Washington state , beset with technical problems . The company plays down these events and seeks to reassure investors that these major errors are par for the course , but these systematic attempts to mislead the public are clearly unethical . Shell has been relentlessly conducting its own PR campaign to distort the truth about what the company is doing in the Arctic . To get the truth out , we wanted to make a website that imagined a world in which Shell was a little less guarded about the implications of drilling for oil in Alaska . We asked ourselves : What if Shell really did ask people what they thought ? What would that look like ? We came up with ArcticReady.com . The response has been staggering -- nearly 4 million page views , 12,000 user-generated ads and a cascade of tweets . This reaction from the public shows Shell has serious problems in the court of public opinion , and that it ignores Arctic defenders at its peril . By using the most popular form of contemporary communication -- social media -- to bypass Shell 's billions , our supporters undermined the company 's social license to operate and brought global attention to its greed and willful ignorance of science . The site is a parody . And when people realize it 's a parody , they like it even more . We 've announced it as a parody after it went up and over and over again in the media since then . We have an ad generator : We provide a gallery of photos and readers provide the captions . New ads keep pouring in . People clearly want an opportunity to tell Shell what they think of the company 's Arctic drilling program , and our site has provided them with a voice . It 's also highlighted some of the major environmental issues with Arctic drilling that have been green-washed away . For example , the U.S. granted Shell an `` incidental harassment permit '' allowing the company to work near whales and seals while drilling this summer , which could interfere with their breathing , breeding and nursing . To put this issue forward , we created an online `` Mercy Poll '' in which users can vote for which Arctic mammal they 'd like Shell to harass the least as a funny way to draw attention to these brutal facts . But Shell and its sympathizers would like people to talk about Greenpeace and the Yes Men rather than what the company is doing in the Arctic . That 's fine . We welcome the discussion . As Wolpe himself says , `` Let 's keep it clean , everyone -- tell us who you are , and then take your best shot . '' We 're Greenpeace and the Yes Men , and we 're ready to sit down with Shell any time to debate the ethics of Arctic drilling . Let 's go . The opinions in this commentary are solely those of Travis Nichols .
Travis Nichols : The first thing I noticed was that the water had a very strong chlorine smell. But , he writes , creators announced it was fake hours after it went up . Greenpeace , Yes Men wanted to point out unethical behavior of Shell Oil , he says . Nichols : Shell is exploiting the Arctic with dangerous drilling and trying to fool public .