Slight change in plans, where previously at the end of Part 2 I had planned next to show what the genuine “Information Council for the Environment” public relations campaign newspaper ads looked like in their actual publication pages at the Kentucky Bowling Green Daily News and Flagstaff Arizona Daily Sun. However, that will have to wait for Part 4. After I put Part 2 online, I spotted a new big problem that really undercuts the credibility of the people who say these ads prove the fossil fuel industry ran disinformation campaigns in order to deceive the public about the ‘seriousness’ of man-caused global warming.

The problem is within the illustration I had in Part 2, where I showed the difference between the pre- print production ad for the “Minnesota colder” ad, and the first-generation copy I have out of the Fargo North Dakota The Forum newspaper. What I pointed out in a somewhat cursory manner was simply what was very obvious: the lack of coloring and the never-used name suggestion for the ICE ads.

There’s always more questions than answers when it comes to the ‘evidence’ the enviro-activist accusers are enslaved to. Regarding the new big problem here, I’ll readily confess that while I prepared that comparative illustration, I overlooked something which astute observers may have easily spotted on their own; the ad’s text paragraph shapes are different. Why? Because the amount of text in the final published newspaper ad version — the version the public actually saw — is less in the first three paragraphs.

Fortunately, the ‘pre- print production ad’ (if that’s even the correct label for it now) at Kert Davies’ Climate Files PDF file link is significantly larger than the others, which makes the still-multi-generation photocopy sketchy text easier to read. Unfortunate for him, however, and any others who relied on this unpublished text as ‘evidence’ to prove industry-orchestrated disinformation campaigns exist.

Compare what Kert Davies shows for its text (I’ve numbered them for reference’s sake)…..

1. Some scientists, armed with computer models of the earth’s climate, are claiming that increasing amounts of certain gases in the atmosphere are causing the earth’s temperature to rise, or create a “greenhouse” effect.

2. Yet, records of annual average temperatures show Minneapolis to have dropped in the last 50 years. Albany, New York, the city with the longest period (over 160 years) of continuous daily temperature records in the U.S. also shows a cooling trend.

3. It’s the same with global warming. There’s no hard evidence it is occurring. In fact, evidence the Earth is warming is weak. Proof that carbon dioxide has been the primary cause is non-existent. Climate models cannot accurately predict far-future global change. And the underlying physics of the climate change are still wide open to debate.

4. If you care about the earth, but want to keep a cool head about it, make sure you get the facts.

…. to what actually appeared for the public to read:

1. Some scientists say the Earth’s temperature is rising. They say that catastrophic globe warming will take place in the years ahead.

2. Yet, average temperatures records show Minneapolis has actually gotten colder over the last 50 years. And there’s also a cooling trend in Albany, New York—the U.S. city with the longest history (over 160 years) of continuous daily temperature records.

3. Now, most of us aren’t climatologists. But facts like these simply don’t jibe with the theory that catastrophic global warming is taking place. Which seems to say we need more research. And more evidence about this environmental phenomenon before we take any action.

4. If you care about the Earth—but want to keep a cool head about it—now is your chance to get more facts.

The word “Earth” appears twice in the actual newspaper-printed ad, both properly capitalized. It appears four times in the Kert Davies-sourced version, capitalized only once. What’s up with that? But the far more noticeable difference is the tone of each complete text passage. It’s fair to say the tone of the published version the public saw was “we report, you decide, after you see more facts.” The ad in Kert Davies’ collection is poorly worded (“far-future global change?” / “the climate change”??), its opening paragraph essentially undercuts the subsequent paragraphs, and that subsequent wording, particularly in paragraph #3, is overly declarative. Skeptic climate scientists have never said global warming is not happening, despite critics’ false talking point accusations to the contrary.

It might be informative to find out who wrote the text version of this “Minnesota colder” ad version in the Kert Davies’ collection. It’s rather suspect that the poorly written, overly declarative paragraph #3 in that ad is repeated verbatim in the never published “Informed Citizens”-labeled “Chicken Little” / “Doomsday canceled” versions seen in Davies’ Climate Files collection, pages 11 and 10 respectively (which I’ll remind readers that those are also the last two pages of the “Greenpeace USA née Ozone Action” set, a.k.a. the Kert “Greenpeace” / “Ozone Action” Davies set). While I could highlight that verbatim text sharing problem in my own PDF download of the Greenpeace scans collection, PayUpClimatePolluters (who praise Davies’ Climate Investigations Center) have already done so in their own identical PDF downloaded file. I’ll simply feature what they show, while also pointing in red how the scans inadvertently draw attention to the incorrect phone number in those versions …. which also appears in the above “Minnesota colder unpublished version, more clearly seen directly at Davies’ enormous DocumentCloud image upload version. Isn’t it odd how only the “Chicken Little” version labels that as a “toll free” number, when 701 was never toll free?

The far more relevant detail here is how the “Minnesota colder” ad version in Davies’ collection is not what the public saw. As I pointed out in Part 2 of this series, “Merchants of Doubt” book author / documentary film ‘expert’ Naomi Oreskes very recently cited Davies’ Climate Files ad collection pages as a source to prove fossil fuel industry campaigns exist; the law firm handling fifteen of the “Exxon Knew”-style global warming lawsuits cited Davies’ Climate Files for another of the never-used newspaper ad versions right at their own website; their lawsuits’ references to the “Minnesota colder” / “Doomsday canceled” ads use a two-step citation cascade back to the “Greenpeace USA née Ozone Action” collection; and at least one state Attorney General is relying on that same thing for his lawsuit. It’s  – in September 2019, a U.S. political science professor’s presentation in Germany titled “The political organization of disinformation about climate science” asserted that “North American corporate interests” undertook “a series of PR campaigns in the 1980s” to confuse the public with questions like “If the earth is getting warmer, why is Minneapolis getting colder?”

The professor got the genuine ICE name partly wrong, and was off by a decade about the ‘series’ of ICE campaigns – in Fargo, North Dakota / Flagstaff, Arizona / Bowling Green, Kentucky. Who’s actually spreading disinformation in this issue?

Where did he most likely source his material? The safe bet is that it’s from Kert Davies’ Climate Files pages. It’s never been shown in its full layout anywhere else that I can find.

See the perpetual, single-source, highly dubious problem here?

Meanwhile, for Kert Davies to salvage this eroding situation, is there any chance that the “Chicken Little” and “Doomsday canceled” ads were actually published in Flagstaff / Bowling Green, and that the “Minnesota colder” ad that did have an overly declarative third paragraph was also published in those newspapers?

Afraid not. Check out “The Real ICE ads, Part 4.”