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the emperor has no clothes, October 17, 2011

It never ceases to amaze me to regularly come across so-called “reviews” of books on amazon by people who have not read the book in question. Pick any book on a controversial topic and you will find a stream of such outpourings masquerading as reviews by ideologically driven non-readers.

Are such people so insecure in their own positions or worldviews, or so dogmatic that they cannot even bother to read a book that takes a stance different from the one they hold? Instead they need to immediately login and launch into abusive tirades, putdowns and ad hominem attacks? Real reviews may be positive or negative, laudatory or critical, but reviews by non-readers are dishonest, hypocritical and pathetic. That some of these non-readers are recognisably well known names and partisans in the very issues or debates covered in a particular book compounds the hypocrisy.

Let me repeat, one cannot honestly review a book one has not read. Nor can one attack an author without giving chapter and verse examples from that book of where he or she has committed the heinous and fallacious errors of which he/she is accused.

I have read Donna Laframboise’s “The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert”. It has a cleverly provocative title that some true believers in catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) could consider sacrilegious. The book is however not an argument against CAGW as such. It is neither an academic treatise nor a polemic, but an investigative report into the operations of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)… an investigation that uncovers a sleazy underbelly to a powerful and prestigious organisation before which much of the world’s media, opinion makers and political leaders genuflect.

Laframboise brings a reporter’s eyes and nose to the IPCC. The book is an easy and fast read but Laframboise’s breezy writing belies the extensive research and explosive details contained therein. It’s revelations and allegations are disturbing – and are supported by extensive footnotes and links that build a persuasive case that the IPCC is, in fact, a law unto itself – a hotbed of cronyism, shoddy science in the service of political activism, and politically-correct hand wringing. If she is even half correct, the IPCC has a serious case to answer. Read it for yourself, follow her links, examine her footnotes and then give your critique or rebuttal. Until then hold your tongue… and your typing fingers.

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A devastating yet heartfelt critique of the IPCC, October 17, 2011

The origins of the book lie in the enormous amounts of hype and characterizations that have followed since the IPCC was given a Nobel Peace prize in 2007. We have been alternatively told and made to believe, an array of comforting facts about the IPCC – perhaps the only influential UN-related body that enjoys a positive reputation. What if someone who believed every word of it, but ended up accidentally taking a peek behind the curtain?

A book like this, would be the result.

Author Donna Laframboise is fairly well-known in the climate debate now. Her blog-nofrakkingconsensus.com and the (earlier) noconsensus.org have been around for a while. When the author’s forays focused into a team effort of examining the IPCC reports for the state of affairs regarding the use of peer-reviewed literature, it catapulted her into attention. The result? Ground reality did not match the hype – more than 5000 references were not peer-reviewed, and they originated at times, from the most dubious of sources. Laframboise subsequently examined the Interacademy Council’s report on the IPCC – which contain detailed insider opinions about the IPCC’s workings, having played a small part in persuading its public release.

The book itself, is a coalescing of these efforts. What is entirely surprising is, how well the book flows. One finds the story kicking into high-gear on page one and the relentless pace continues to the last page. Hit after hit – the author lays out one small fact about how the IPCC works (the sources are linked), provides the absolute minimum of background, and before the reader can take it in, the next one rolls in. One could read this book if only, for the sheer number of Greenpeace, WWF and other activists that parade through its pages as IPCC authors and high officials. “The best climate science assessment – performed by a slew of Greenpeace activists” – that is not the IPCC is sold to us, is it?

The next big surprise is, how well the book works, even if you are familiar with the landscape of the climate debate and ongoing IPCC criticism (since Nov 2009). Laframboise does not delve into excessive detail or indulge in prolonged “he said, she said” type of litanies. Instead as the points of IPCC criticism follow one another, a certain picture emerges all on its own. The reader will connect the dots. The author does not take a wholly cynical tone; nor is this akin to the more acerbic demolition work carried out by blogger Richard North on the IPCC’s Himalayan glacier and Amazon rainforest errors.

Fully recommended. A most-read.

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Great Investigative Journalism!!, October 16, 2011

By 

Timothy K. Hulsey “drhulsey” (Bowling Green, KY, USA) – See all my reviews

  

In The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert, Donna Laframboise blows the lid off the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Instead of being a neutral body evaluating whether there has, in fact, been unprecedented global warming, the IPCC started with the premise that global warming was increasing at an alarming rate. Instead of investigating whether this warming was due to natural temperature cycles related to natural phenomena, human induced production of a trace atmospheric gas, carbon dioxide, was the cause celebre from the beginning. Instead of convening the world’s experts, Laframboise exposes many of the IPCC “scientists” as being young, un-degreed, sometimes unpublished fledglings! She shows abundant examples of true world experts, purposely avoided by the UN IPCC, because they disagreed with the anthropogenic global warming party line.
Surprisingly, instead of gathering scientists with no preconceived notions of climate change, Donna Laframbroise lays bare the high percentage of IPCC scientist who had been closely associated with and many times employed by the powerful and monied environmental activist groups, such as the World Wildlife Fund, The Environmental Defense Fund, and others. Thus, these IPCC staff were following an agenda. They were “more activist than scientist!” She exposes The IPCC as a shoddy organization who didn’t even follow what few rules it had, but portrayed itself as the indisputable oracle of impending climate disaster backed by the consensus of “thousands” of the world’s most best scientists!
The Delinquent Teenager… is a fascinating unraveling of the world’s most powerful voice for redistributing trillions of dollars in the name of the unproven theory of anthropogenic global warming, a theory rapidly losing many of its early proponents.
If Donna Laframbroise hasn’t put the final nail in the coffin of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, I’ll be surprised!

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