Here’s Here are some reviews:
Blooming brilliant. Devastating” – Matt Ridley, author of The Rational Optimist
“…shines a hard light on the rotten heart of the IPCC” – Richard Tol, Professor of the Economics of Climate Change and convening lead author of the IPCC
“…you need to read this book. Its implications are far-reaching and the need to begin acting on them is urgent.” – Ross McKitrick, Professor of Economics, University of Guelph
Donna writes on her blog:
Two editions of my IPCC exposé are now available.
The Kindle e-book is here – at Amazon.com for the reasonable price of $4.99 USD.
UK readers may purchase it for £4.88 from Amazon.co.uk here.
German readers can buy it from Amazon.de for EUR 4,88.
French readers may buy it at the same price here at Amazon.fr.
If you don’t own a Kindle you can read this book on your iPad or Mac via Amazon’s free Kindle Cloud Reader – or on your desktop or laptop via Kindle for PC software.
Digital option #2 is a PDF – also priced at $4.99. Formatted to save paper, it’s 123 standard, printer-sized pages (the last 20 of which are footnotes). Delivered instantly, it avoids shipping costs and is a comfortable, pleasant read.
A 250-page paperback edition priced at $20 should be available by the end of next week from Amazon.com – which ships internationally.
Amazon has posted a sample of the book that extends well into Chapter 7. Click here to take a peek.
h/t to Bishop Hill
Congratulations, Donna!
I’ve read it. The IPCC must be abolished, vanquished to to the town square stocks for public shaming. Perhaps somewhere down the line, this book will prove to be its undoing. The potential is certainly there. Some rather vain quibbles about Y2K to one side, this book contains more than enough stunning revelations to turn the sailed IPCC ship of public opinion around. The importance of Donna’s work – and I know it took many months – cannot be overstated. Would that other professional journalists have worked so hard on what could have been the story of their professional careers. Well, you’ve been beat. Congratulations, Donna!
Currently ranked #9 Overall in Kindle Movers & Shakers!
Holy Crow this appears to be going Viral!
Chapters 17, 18 and 19 are astounding! Donna L., wow!
This is skeptical journalism. I forgot what it looked like.
Reading on now from chapter 20 at an invigorated rate!
John
The following comment from Bishop Hill is the best review that I have seen and thought that I would cross post it here.
“The point DlaF is making relates to the alarmist habit of claiming that because the IPCC sayts something it must be true. I’m paraphrasing, but not very grossly and I’m sure you’re familiar with the argument.
The technical name for this argument is the argument from authority, whereby one asserts that because so-and-so is an authority, something they say is true. It is akin to the doctrine of papal infallibility.
What DlaF is demonstrating is that the IPCC is not an authority at all. It claims to be, but is not. It is staffed by non-experts lacking significant qualifications, and by political activists, notably from the WWF, FotE and Greenpeace.
Any claim that it is authoritative thus fails twice over – once because argument from authority is spurious anyway and again because it isn’t even an authority.
This differs from an ad hominem attack because it goes precisely to the argument made for the IPCC. An ad hominem would be to say that William Connolley has a stupid pony tail and thus nothing he says should be believed. Thyat’s not what’s being said. What’s being said is that he and others of his ilk are not scientists but activists and that their work is politically tainted and unreliable, not the neutral source of wisdom often claimed.
It does not follow that Ross McKitrick can be dismissed in the same way because he’s a fellow at wherever. The strength of MacIntyre and McKitrick’s arguments comes not from who they are. Nobody says we should all believe McIntyre because he’s an engineer. What people say is that we should believe him because of what he reasons, what he says and the transparent way in which he concludes what he does.
When you understand this point then you may be better able to engage with Donna’s argument.
Oct 15, 2011 at 7:02 PM | Unregistered CommenterJustice4Rinka”
I agree there ought to be an offline way of submitting these fixes. (Maybe the mods could forward such comments and not post them online? Or maybe there could be separate “Leave a Correction” text box, if WordPress allows such a thing. (But then that would encourage multiple fixes of the same error, since other readers wouldn’t know it had already been submitted. (Unless error-fix comments were posted with only the poster’s handle showing, plus a note saying, “Click to open this typo-fix comment.”) Or there could be a tab atop the site for submitting them.))
In the case here, where only Anthony’s introductory comments were being “fixed” (arguably), there’s not much justification for posting them–an offline procedure would be best.
But, in the case where the thread’s main article is being fixed, I don’t think that such corrections amount to “correcting the host’s table manners.” Such corrections are part of the online peer-review process. The analogy that occurs to me is of alerting someone that his fly is open. It spares him further embarrassment down the road from hostile critics on The Other Side looking for any stick to beat him with. Look at how we’re mocking the author of the paper under discussion in the recent thread, “Our Sustainable Mirth” for his solecisms and misspellings for an example of how that works.
This goes double for any thread-article that might be submitted for publication later–it makes a bad impression on editors if there are obvious unfixed usage errors when it’s submitted, reducing its chances of acceptance.
@ur momisugly Reed Coray,
Suggested pronounciation of “Tiljander” by another Finn: “i” short as in “big”, “j” like a short “y”, “a” like the “u” in “tug”. The “e” is like the “a” in “stay”.The “r” short and pronounced. Simplified: Tilyundar
I hope this helps more than it confuses. Also congratulate you on being able to discuss climate issues with actual live people, and not just in cyberspace like the rest of us;)
Robin Guenier says: ..Y2K… the established but false notion that it was another exaggerated scare.
DirkH says:
View from the Solent says:
I was one of a small team that spent 1-2 years fixing an essential financial system for a *very* large international, erm, computer corp. If that hadn’t been done, on Jan 1 2000 the brown stuff would have left the fan and coated the walls to a depth of several feet…
Dave Springer says:
I actually coded the fix for about 50 million computers circa 1998. Everyone knew how overblown it was. But it was also the biggest sales tool in the history of personal computers…
CodeTech says:
I had people who SHOULD know better telling me that cars wouldn’t start, cable descramblers would freeze…
Anders N says:
Y2K made me a very rich man back in the nineties. Most programmers back then knew it was bogus… Maybe I am beginning to understand why climate scientists react as they do.
Alan Esworthy says:
son of mulder says:
…3 decades worth of embedded Y2K problems in [my] company’s backbone application code… in the case of heritage mainframe systems very complex… and labour intensive… using YY instead of YYYY on date fields was worth money and the industry wisdom was that the old code wouldn’t still be running in 2000.
So many brilliant programmers here on this side theme 🙂 So Y2K like AGW was overblown and people were suckers – but unlike AGW, action did avert real problems.
Michael Larkin says:
October 15, 2011 at 10:35 am
Thank you.
MarkG says:
October 14, 2011 at 7:03 pm
As for 2038, Linux at least seems to have been using 64-bit times
I’ve got plenty of 20 year old stuff that used 32 bit time still running.
OK, after reading just part of the sample I decided not to wait for the birth of my Kindle Fire, download the Kindle for PC (free) from Amazon and buy the full version of The Delinquent Teenager.
Now I can not leave it aside, I have to keep on reading.
Again, congratulations Donna, great work!
Personally, I find the style a bit to relaxed. I like it, but I think making it more ‘formal’ and objective would greatly enhance its wider long-term impact. Having said that, my review is:
Robin Guenier,
I’m not saying Y2K wasn’t a real problem. Just that the consequences were exaggerated.
It happens I was a software developer for a large bank in the late 1990s.
They did little Y2K remediation work, having taken the rational (IMO) decision to replace any major systems that had Y2K issues, starting around 1995.
Donna’s Y2K reference may yet teach us something. Wildly overhyped by certain members of the population, it was a “real” problem. Thanks to the guys who fixed it! Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think it was a lot easier to fix if source code was available than if it wasn’t.
Does that suggest anything about how “source” (both “raw data” and literal source code) should be archived? Not only in “Climate Science”… Quite a while ago, Anthony brought us a story about a guy who had to lovingly restore an “obsolete” video-tape machine in order to salvage footage of the Moon landings. We’re in danger of losing stuff we “know”…
Best,
Frank
That’s a nice “summing up.” Donna ought to include it among the testimonials in her book.
Fun dispute! Was there a year 0 A.D., and a mirror year 0 B.C.? If so, 1999 was the last year of the 20th. If not, then 2000 was.
AFAIK, no one has ever referred to “0 A.D.” or “0 B.C.” So I agree with you.
Lucy Skywalker says:
October 15, 2011 at 2:47 pm
So Y2K like AGW was overblown and people were suckers – but unlike AGW, action did avert real problems.
Imho there is absolutely NO comparison between Y2K and AGW. The Y2K issue was a known problem. There is no “known” AGW problem. Y2K may have been hyped by the media to the general public but to equate that to the [C]AGW MSM hyping is just wrong.
-The corporate programmers who “benefited” from Y2K were not the ones doing the hyping.
-There were no calls for the government to implement a Change Date and Trade(Tax) scheme to mitigate the problem.
-While governments did spend tax dollars to fix the issue, the vast majority of the final cost was borne by corporations/private enterprise (and that out of their own IT budgets).
-There were no Spencers, Lindzens, or McIntyres out there claiming that the data or its interpretation was wrong and we didn’t need to do anything.
-There were no Gores, Manns, Hansons or Jones hyping the issue while simultaneously trying to undermine any ‘deniers’.
-AFAIK there weren’t any companies that said after it was over that they had wasted the money on mitigation since things didn’t go badly. No, it was BECAUSE they spent the money that things didn’t go badly.
Other than that, Donna’s book spot on!
I have downloaded the Book onto our Kindle and am enjoying reading this well researched piece which has good back up links and footnotes. It is also encouraging that the author is an active advocate of free speech because in my country the Greens have called for a media enquiry stating that “news reporting and opinion has become increasingly “blurred” – (especially if News Limited criticises the Greens policies it seems).
The Government will no doubt do all it can to shut down the debate on its introduction of a carbon tax which is planned to come into effect in July 2012. So the quote Donna Laframboise uses from Pulitzer Prize author Archibald MacLeish is just as important to-day as when he wrote:
“Once you permit those who are convinced of their own superior rightness to censor and silence and suppress those who hold contrary opinions, just at that moment the citadel has been surrendered.”
And just as important when Harry Truman said:
“When even one American – who has done nothing wrong – is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth, then all Americans are in peril.”
I do not think Mr Truman would have minded if I added “and so is the world”.
Good work Donna. Keep on defending the citadel and opening your mouth and our minds.
I hope you post your comments as a review on Amazon–and that other readers do likewise.
Reed Coray:
Thanks for your thanks. I suddenly remembered that “framboise” is French for “raspberry”, and found an online sound file here: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/framboise
The clip says “une framboise”, meaning “a raspberry” (it’s a feminine noun). Also, bear in mind that the stress in the clip is on the first syllable, “fram”. In “Laframboise”, I suspect it is on the third: la-from-BWAZ, though stand to be corrected on that.
Donna has done something sweet as her name! 🙂
Re: Jeremy @ur momisugly 10.54 am and 12.02 pm, Oct.15th. when he firstly stated that this book was ranked # 319 for overall sales at Amazon Kindle Store, and then reported that it was # 9 overall in Kindle Movers and Shakers (which represents activity over the preceeding 24 hours), and finished by suggesting that it was going viral.
Some 10 hours later I have had a look at Kindle. This book is locatable by typing in the name of the author or the title. When this is done and the book is viewed, details on the books current status shows an Amazon Best Sellers Rank of:
1. #383 Paid in Kindle Store;
2. #1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Science > Envronment > Conservation
3. #1 in Books > Outdoor & Nature > Conservation
4. #2 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Politics & Current Events > International > Relations
When I went to Best Sellers in Kindle, this book does not appear at # 383 for most popular. When the list of just over 500 titles is sorted by publication date, it does not appear, likewise by customer review, likewise by price. It does not seem to exist on the best sellers list, despite, at the same time, it being stated that it is #383 when viewed independently of the list.
It does not appear on the Movers and Shakers list at all, which seems a remarkable fall from grace.
When the classification is number 2 above, it is displayed as # 2, not # 1 as it is concurrently stated.
When the classification is number 4 above, it is displayed as #2 which is consistent.
When the classification is number 3 above it is displayed as # 26 rather than # 1. It is on the third page.
So this does not appear on general lists as it apparently should, and possibly did previously (if Jeremy got his ranking from the list itself rather than the title details).
Note that in the most general classification, number 3 above, it has been relegated to the pack.
The net effect of the above would seem to be that if the author or the title are not known, or if a potential reader does not have a specific interest in conservation/the environment and/or politics and current affairs, they will be unlikely to encounter this publication. That is, the general reader who may be interested in this but does not actively pursue these topics.
Now, I am completely ignorant about the functioning of Amazon, so it may be that I have misinterpreted their system, although I cannot see how, for example, what is #1 in a classification in one place is displayed at the same time and in the same classification but in a different place on the site as being #26.
Alternatively, there may be something wrong with their site. Or, someone has intentionally done this. One way or another this is less visible than it apparently should be. Since as I say, I am ignorant, if anyone who thinks this is curious and is an issue wants to follow it up hopefully it can be understood.
ML;
Heh. Reminds me — a stellar female curler in Alberta Canada was/is named Laliberte. Anglo pronunciation emphasizes the first syllable: LA-li-bert-ee. The original French is, of course, La Liberté, with emphasis on the last syllable: La Li-ber-TAY (liberty).
Roger Knights says:
October 15, 2011 at 9:49 pm
It will not let me as I bought the PDF from the publishers. I have spend many hundreds of pounds on Amazon UK, but that apparently does not entitle me to add reviews on .com 🙁
Philip Bradley:
You’re dead right: the rational decision was “to replace any major systems that had Y2K issues, starting around 1995” – although that could cause problems with interactions with third party organisations (see page 12 of my paper). I know that a few major UK corporations did just that (M&S for example), but am unaware that “a large bank” did. Was it in the UK? If so, I’m surprised: we had detailed discussions with the Bank of England which issued serious advice and warnings to all UK clearing banks, but I’m unaware that one such had taken that sensible course. Donna unfairly criticises a fellow-Canadian, Peter de Jager, who issued a severe Y2K warning in 1993 (she says it was 2003 (Location 3107) – amusingly, her own date change error) – but, if most organisations had listened to Peter back then and done what your bank did, the problem would not have been so serious.
I downloaded the book and am reading through the early chapters.
Its pretty average so far.