In 1988, with drought sweeping much of the United States, NASA scientist James Hansen wiped away the sweat from his brow and told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, “The greenhouse effect has been detected and it is changing our climate now.” Four days before Hansen’s Senate appearance, the G7 summit in Toronto had declared, “global climate change, air, sea and freshwater pollution and acid rain require priority attention.”

By October 1988 Margaret Thatcher was addressing the Royal Society as a scientist and a Fellow on the same topic. She warned, “Humans have unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the systems of the planet itself”. “We are told,” although she didn’t say by whom, “that warming of one degree would greatly exceed the capacity of our natural habitat to cope.”

And so, it was in 1988 that the climate agenda was attracting massive media interest and political support and The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established with US funding by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). A fuller account of this can be read in The Age of Global Warming: A History, Rupert Darwall

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Age-Global-Warming-History/dp/0704372991

This was a step change in political influences, as unlike the 1972 Stockholm conference and the creation of UNEP (United Nations Environmental Programme), the IPCC was formed as an inter-governmental body with close and pervasive relations with its sponsoring governments.

But a conflict of interest lies at the heart of the IPCC. Failing to find significant evidence of anthropogenic climate change would make the IPCC redundant. On the other hand, producing worrying evidence of danger can only elevate its standing. The regularity of its various reports and predictions seems designed to feed media interest and to keep governments engaged.

The IPCC produces regular Assessment Reports (ARs) with the First Assessment Report (FAR) produced in 1990.

The Guardian called the 2021 Assessment Report “its starkest warning yet” of “major inevitable and irreversible climate changes”. News coverage all called this report “Code Red for Humanity” although this phrase appears nowhere in the report. This is to leave aside that the IPCC does not do prediction. It outlines a range of outcomes called RCPs (Representative Causal Pathways) and assigns a likelihood to each. What the Guardian and others had eagerly seized upon was RCP 8.5, of which Nature says,

“RCP 8.5 paints a dystopian future that is fossil-fuel intensive and excludes any climate mitigation policies, leading to nearly 5 °C of warming by the end of the century. RCP 8.5 was intended to explore an unlikely high-risk future, but it has been widely used by some experts, policymakers and the media as something else entirely: as a likely ‘business as usual’ outcome.”

But there is something far more worrying about the IPCC and journalist Donna LaFramboise has unusually shone a flashlight on the inner workings of the it. Her book The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert breaks with the consensus in journalism.

Commonly journalists who describe the IPCC use such phrases as gold-standard, authoritative and pre-eminent. Of the IPCC, Time Magazine writes, “The IPCC has shown us the way”. The Irish Independent says of it, “It is chapter and verse, it is holy writ.” The New York Times gushes, “Scientists have been awed by the IPCC’s deliberate work” and the Guardian not to be outdone writes, “the greatest feat of global scientific cooperation ever seen…utterly unique and authoritative.”

LaFramboise is one of few journalists questioning this narrative and probably the only one questioning the authority and legitimacy of the IPCC.

According to the IPCC chair, at the time the book was written, Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC consults “thousands of the world’s best scientists”. Robert Watson who previously chaired the IPCC also said, “The IPCC consults thousands of the world’s best scientists.”

Not entirely true says LaFramboise. She writes that in 2005, atmospheric science professor William Gray of Colorado State University told the U.S. senate committee,

“Despite my 15 years of metrological experience and my many years of involvement in seasonal and climate production, I have never been asked for input to any of the IPCC reports.”

The reason he was never invited to the party, he says, is because he doesn’t think warming causes more or stronger hurricanes. “They know my views and do not wish to have to deal with them.”

Nor are the people it does consult all experts, writes LaFramboise. Paul Reiter reported to the British House of Lords that whilst a large portion of the 1995 edition dealt with malaria not one of the lead authors had written a paper on the subject. Only those with limited knowledge of the field could produce such “amateurish work”.

Paul Reiter is a researcher with a private research foundation called the Institut Pastuer in Paris, France and is the chief of their “Infectious Disease Unit.”.

But even if you are included or cited in the report, as Dr John Christy (climate scientist at the University of Alabama) reports, “It is little known to the public that most of the scientists involved with the IPCC do not agree that global warming is occurring. Its findings have been consistently misrepresented and/or politicized with each succeeding report.”

Dr Willem de Lange (Senior Lecturer, Earth Sciences, Faculty of Science and Engineering, University of Waikato, New Zealand) states, “In 1996 the IPCC listed me as one of approximately 3000 scientists who agreed that there was a discernible human influence on climate. I didn’t. There is no evidence to support the hypothesis that there is runaway climate change due to human activities.”

LaFramboise clinically dissects the IPCC and exposes one by one its serious faults:

Lack of transparency

For years the IPCC has boasted that the IPCC is a model of transparency. Chairman Pachauri told newspapers in 2007, “you can’t think of a more transparent process than what we have in the IPCC” in 2009, “the IPCC is a totally transparent organisation … whatever we do he is available for scrutiny at every stage”.

In 2010 more than 250 U.S. scientists signed an open letter defending the IPCC . The letter declared that, “we conclude that the IPCC procedures are transparent and thorough”.

The but when the committee that examines IPPC policies posted a questionnaire on its website and those with direct experience of the organisation were given an opportunity to voice their concerns it turned out that few people understand how the IPCC make some of its most informed decisions. They said things like,

“The selection of lead authors is in my view, the most important decision in the IPCC process and it is not transparent.”

And

“After being a lead author several times I have still no idea how I was selected. This is unacceptable.”

In fact, the climate report authors are chosen via a secretive process. The IPCC receives nominations from governments and does not make public the names of the nominees. The IPCC does not explain what selection criteria are used. When it does announce the who has been chosen it only feels obliged to provide the name and the country the author represents.

Unsuitability

The IPCC is commonly perceived as utilising the worlds top climate experts. But this, LaFramboise reveals, is far from the truth. She asks, as above, if malaria experts aren’t writing the sections on malaria and sea level experts aren’t writing the sections on sea levels then who is?

LaFramboise exposes a culture of employing authors who are below PhD level, young and often with activist backgrounds. Given the examples that LaFramboise documents, the description of amateurish by real experts like Reiter seem to make sense.

LaFramboise also exposes where the scientific evidence it relies on is gathered.

“We carry out the assessment of climate change based on peer-reviewed literature, so everything we look at and take into account in our assessments has to carry the credibility of peer-reviewed publications … We don’t settle for anything less than that.” Rajendra Pachauri, 2008

But having discovered and verified an allegation by economist Richard Tol that the IPPC whilst hiding behind a shield of peer review in fact uses non-peer reviewed material, LaFramboise set out to audit, using an army of volunteers, all forty-four chapters of the 2007 Assessment Report.

When the results were all in, she had found that of 18,531 references 30% were from non-peer-reviewed sources. In some sections the peer reviewed references were as low as 59%.

Among the sources used to support IPPC assertions on climate were newspaper articles, unpublished Masters and doctoral theses, Greenpeace and World Wildlife Fund documents and press releases.

The shortcomings of the IPCC are legion and too many to list here, but LaFramboise documents them in 36 short chapters. Her book exposes a litany of rent-seeking, falsehoods, political bias and amateurish and corrupt behaviour. It is authoritative, well-researched and short, and should be read by anyone who is sceptical of the climate narrative.

You can buy The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert from Amazon here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Delinquent-Teenager-Mistaken-Worlds-Climate/dp/1466453486 or here: https://www.amazon.com/Delinquent-Teenager-Mistaken-Worlds-Climate/dp/1466453486/