Last summer, a University of Missouri researcher reported that part of Antarctica was gaining ice mass although global warming was thought to be melting ice everywhere else on the planet.

Now a business-supported think tank has launched a television advertising campaign using the research to discredit news reports about global warming as nothing more than alarmist journalism.

The researcher, University of Missouri-Columbia engineering Professor Curt Davis, says the think tank has twisted his findings to mislead the public.

"On one of those ads, they chose to use the result I published last year to basically say the ice sheets are growing and not shrinking," Davis said. "It’s a blatant misuse of our result to create confusion where confusion does not exist."

The ads are sponsored by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, based in Washington, D.C., and financed by oil and automobile industries, among others. The ads, which are running in 14 U.S cities during a 10-day period this month, focus on claims by environmental groups that seek reduction in fossil fuel use to curb carbon dioxide emissions.

The ads claim that despite "global warming alarmist" reports, glaciers in Greenland are growing, not melting and the Antarctic ice sheet is getting thicker, not thinner.

"Why are they trying to scare us?" one ad asks. It says fossil fuels grow food, transport children and brighten lives.

"Carbon dioxide: They call it pollution, we call it life," the ad concludes.

Davis said the ad selectively uses his research and is not telling the entire story to the public.

"They are using only one piece of the puzzle and representing it as the entire piece of the puzzle," Davis said.

One finding in Davis’ report was that the thickening of the ice sheet was a byproduct of global warming. As the atmosphere heats up, more moisture is created. That moisture causes more snow to fall. In places such as the South Pole, it builds up over time, thickening the ice sheet.

"Our result is specific to one part of the ice sheet," Davis added. "You can’t use that to say the whole continent is growing. It’s undisputed in the scientific community that global warming is occurring."

The director of the Center for Geospatial Intelligence at Mizzou, Davis used satellite data to measure the snow pack on the east Antarctic ice sheet between 1992 and 2003. He found that it was the only terrestrial body of ice that was gaining mass, probably as a result of increased precipitation caused by global warming.

Davis said the CEI ads were misleading because his study only referred to the east Antarctic ice sheet and not the entire Antarctic ice sheet. He said the study referred to interior regions and not the coast.

"Coastal areas are known to be losing mass, and these losses could offset or even outweigh the gains in the interior areas," Davis said.

Sam Kazman, general counsel for CEI, said the organization does not dispute the fact that global warming is taking place.

"What we do dispute is where the amount of warming is approaching the catastrophic levels that global warming alarmists make it out to be," Kazman said. "Our main point is that the optimistic studies do not make front page news."