Donna Laframboise's new book causing reviews in absentia amongst some AGW advocates

I had to laugh after reading the reviews on Amazon.com for Donna Laframboise’s book: The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate ExpertThere’s some double fun here, because the title reminds me of the language used in the 1 star review given by Dr. Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute.

The first fun part: Gleick apparently never read the book before posting a negative review, because if he had, he wouldn’t be intellectually slaughtered by some commenters who challenge his claims by pointing out page and paragraph in the book showing exactly how Gleick is the one posting false claims. You can read the reviews here at Amazon, and if you’ve bought the book and have read it, add your own. If you haven’t bought it yet, here’s the link for the Kindle edition. Best $4.99 you’ll ever spend. 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.

The other fun part? Gleick apparently doesn’t realize he’s up against a seasoned journalist, he thinks Donna is just another “denier”. Another inconvenient truth for Gleick is that she was a member of the board of directors of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association – serving as a Vice-President from 1998-2001.

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Lies, misrepresentations, and a bible for climate change deniers,

This book is a stunning compilation of lies, misrepresentations, and falsehoods about the fundamental science of climate change.

It compiles the old arguments, long refuted, about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which summarizes the state of science on climate change. The IPCC reports — the most comprehensive summary of climate science in the world — are so influential and important, that they must be challenged by climate change deniers, who have no other science to stand on. LaFramboise recycles these critiques in a form bound to find favor with those who hate science, fear science, or are afraid that if climate change is real and caused by humans then governments will have to act (and they hate government).

Are you already convinced that climate change is false? Then you don’t need this book, since there is nothing new in it for you.

If you respect science, then you ALSO don’t need this book, since there’s no science in it, and lots of pseudo-science and misrepresentations of science. See, especially, the section trying to discredit the “hockey stick” — long a bugaboo of the anti-climate change crowd. Seven independent scientific commissions and studies have separately verified it, but you won’t find out about that in this book.

Really: save your money and battery life.

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COMMENTS BY READERS IN RESPONSE:

Audrey says:

Peter Gleick offers no evidence for his unsubstantiated claims. This book is not really about science. It is entirely about the IPCC process: for example, several of the lead authors of the IPCC reports lacked experience, qualifications and appear to be chosen for their connections to WWF, EDF, Greenpeace and other environmental NGO’s – all of which is exposed in this book including names, dates and full references. Furthermore, the book confirms that over 5,000 references (including some of the strongest high impact claims of the IPCC showing evidence of the dangerousness of man-made Global Warming) are to “grey literature” – i.e. to reports that were NEVER verified by peer review – all this despite assurances from the head of the IPCC that the IPCC ONLY use peer-reviewed science in their “climate bible” report. Worse the book also provides conclusive evidence that some influential people within the IPCC were well aware of deficiencies and yet took no action to correct inadequacies in these processes (the book includes explicit examples where IPCC authors elevated their concerns about the poor quality and misrepresentation of the scientific consensus by the IPCC process …but these concerns were simply swept aside!)

If you respect science (as Peter Gleick states and presumably aspires to) then be absolutely sure that you read the entire book because it is a real eye opener! What you may have believed was an IPCC authoritative synopsis of “settled climate science”, according to the august IPCC, will start to smell like the most rotten, disgusting and corrupt fraud of the last century! In short,this book by Donna Laframboise, is an investigative journalistic shocker that is to our modern era as Watergate was to the Nixon era!

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Roger Knights says:

P Gleick writes: “See, especially, the section trying to discredit the “hockey stick” — long a bugaboo of the anti-climate change crowd. Seven independent scientific commissions and studies have separately verified it, but you won’t find out about that in this book.”

Oh yes you WILL find out about it in the book, at Kindle location 2099 in Ch. 32. Here’s what it says:

“Depending on whether you’re talking to a climate skeptic or a climate activist (people in the second camp control the Wikipedia page on this and many other topics related to global warming), the hockey stick graph has either been totally discredited or remains a sound piece of science whose findings have been confirmed by several independent studies. (footnote 32-2). As Montford’s book explains, such claims of independent corroboration are suspect, since these studies were conducted by many of the same small clique of researchers, use similarly flawed statistical techniques, and/or rely on the same dubious sources of data.”

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PGleick: “This book is a stunning compilation of lies, misrepresentations, and falsehoods about the fundamental science of climate change.”

I notice that PG isn’t listed as having purchased the book. This gives him an “out” for his misleading statement above. The book isn’t primarily about “the science.” It’s about the IPCC’s claim, trumpeted by its Chairman, to be an impartial collection of the best experts on the topic, to rely on peer-reviewed science only, to have rules in place to ensure that proper procedures are followed, to intensively peer-review its draft documents, to be above the fray as far as policy prescriptions are concerned, etc., etc. This focus on the misbehavior of the IPCC (not its scientific claims) is apparent in the next paragraph from the book (after the one just quoted above):

“For the purposes of this discussion THE IMPORTANT POINT IS THAT THE IPCC PERFORMED NO DUE DILIGENCE before according the hockey stick graph such prominence.

……………… [27 paragraphs on the topic follow, and then this summing-up:]

“The essential point here is that the IPCC aggressively promoted a graph that had been produced by a young scientist who’d just been awarded his PhD. Even though the graph overturned decades of scholarship, even though it negated a widespread consensus about what the temperature record of the past 1000 years looked like, the IPCC didn’t bother to verify its [statistical] accuracy. What has been described as ‘one of the most rigorous scientific review bodies in existence’ felt no need to ensure that its case wasn’t being built on quicksand.”

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PGleick writes: “It compiles the old arguments, long refuted, about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ….”

And:

“Are you already convinced that climate change is false? Then you don’t need this book, since there is nothing new in it for you.”

Wrong again. The book stresses (in Chs. 33 & 34, primarily) the report of the InterAcademy Council (IAC), presented in August 2010, which is recent. And this book contains important NEW material from its inquiry into the IPCC. Here, starting at Location 2557 in the Acknowledgments, are the relevant passages:

“Hilary [Ostrov] single-handedly shook loose 678 pages [footnote link] of material on which this book relies. During its 2010 investigation of the IPCC, the IAC committee posted an online questionnaire. We were told the responses would be made public, but months after the report was released that still hadn’t occurred. Hilary tirelessly pursued the matter until some (but not all) of these responses were divulged.

“From a journalists perspective, they are solid gold–being the equivalent of interviews with dozens of people about their IPCC experience. Until I read that material the IPCC was still a remote and confusing organization.”

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Buy, but more importantly, READ the book, so you too can be prepared to refute non-readers like Dr. Gleick. Oh and be sure to read the story just above this one (publishing soon) about the next train wreck the IPCC has gotten itself into.