The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World's Top Climate Expert [Kindle Edition]

It's an all too familiar story - something that when viewed from a distance appears perfectly fine but on closer inspection turns out to be a mess. The flawless makeup concealing a face covered in blemishes, the smooth paint job disguising a lethally decrepit car, the beautiful mansion later found to be riddled with dry rot, the brilliant and charismatic politician with - alas - feet of clay.

This can equally apply to institutions. Take the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Ever since it was established in 1988, the IPCC has been held up as an exemplary organisation, representing a "gold standard" for the synthesis of climate science. Operating with utter transparency and relying only on solid, peer-reviewed material, an army of 2,500 expert reviewers and over a thousand contributing and lead authors from all over the globe have been working tirelessly to build a superlative up-to-date and reliable picture of the science of climate change, which in turn can be used, with absolute confidence, to inform and underpin the policies of governments the world over.

Except - it turns out that this is not exactly the case. Enter Donna Laframboise, Canadian writer and blogger, who, aided by a team of citizen auditors, has painstakingly examined the workings of the IPCC, placed them under the microscope, so to speak, and reports her findings in this very timely book. And what she has uncovered is a picture radically different to the one the IPCC would like the world to see. One by one, she refutes and demolishes a number of key assertions made by the IPCC and its supporters over the years.

The IPCC's material is prepared by the finest scientific minds? Well, no - many of them are little more than activists, who have worked for Greenpeace or for wildlife charity turned climate-campaigning behemoth, WWF. People at the top of their profession? Hardly - quite a few of them have been graduate students in their twenties. The IPCC only uses peer-reviewed scientific literature? No again - many of its sources have been newspaper and magazine articles, press releases and documents from environmental organisations. And authoritative? Some of its bolder claims, for instance that 20-30% of all plant and animal species are at risk of extinction due to global warming, are based on flawed and controversial scientific studies. Behind the crisp, definitive headline statements like Ban Ki-moon's "the world's scientists have spoken, clearly and with one voice", exists something far less clear-cut - a body of work that is more like a perplexing, indeterminate mass of uncertainties, likelihoods, suggestions, coulds, mights and maybes.

In addition, the author describes the IPCC's various underhand practices, its lack of openness, its defensiveness and its arrival at predetermined conclusions. What she reveals is an unattractive picture of an organisation staffed with activists and reliant on "grey material" from partisan lobby groups, an organisation which has been set up to promulgate a certain point of view, and accordingly has employed whatever means it feels is justified, including the frequent breaking of its own rules. An organisation that is meant to be "policy-neutral", but whose chairman is an outspoken advocate for carbon prices, vegetarianism, aviation taxes and, overall, a "radical value shift" in the western world.

The next IPPC report on the state of climate science (AR8) is due out in 2013, and even if a fraction of what Donna Laframboise reports in her book is accurate, an urgent root-and-branch reform of this organisation is sorely needed, at the very least. Whether this will happen in time to make a real difference is another matter entirely.

In The Delinquent Teenager, Donna Laframboise has written a succinct and hard-hitting book, which I think should be read and heeded by those from all sides of the climate debate. It is a product of the sort of methodical investigative journalism the mainstream media have consistently failed to deploy when it comes to climate change, and it arrives at a time when the institutions of climate science, with all their shortcomings, deserve to be under more scrutiny than ever before.

We were told that the IPCC was the embodiment of true climate science. However Donna Laframboise has found out it is a monolith of corruption. Not only has the science been seriously compromised, but the influence of advocacy groups like Greenpeace in my view, border on sinister. The book is well written and although easy to read, has significant detail resulting from a lot of good research. It is comprised of short sections which make it great for busy people with only a limited time to read.

Whether you believe in Anthropogenic Global Warming or not, the validity of the science is extremely important to the current policies being pursued by many governments. These policies will affect all of us in a very profound way, therefore the corruption of the IPCC should be of interest to everyone. My advice is to read this book and make your own mind up, before these policies seriously affect your lives. Let's make sure we do not follow the Australian example and fatally destroy our economy without checking the facts properly.

This is one of the most important books by a journalist in our own or any other age. But it should never have needed to be written. As Donna Laframboise makes clear, the failure of the big names of world media to subject the United Nations IPCC, widely touted as the intellectual foundation of the global warming scare and vastly expensive emission reduction policies enacted in its wake, to any kind of critical investigation is a major scandal. In their stead, a lone Canadian feminist, who once wrote a weekly opinion column for the Toronto Star, has, with the help of volunteer researchers recruited from across the globe via the Internet, achieved a tour de force.

I fully agree with David Holland that every MP should read this book. But so should every UK voter. Ms Laframboise writes with admirable clarity, humour and, where appropriate, passion - about the grave injustices and threats to our democratic freedoms she has uncovered. Something of world importance that many of us have found fiendishly complicated to explain to our friends and colleagues has been rendered not only intelligible but highly readable. If enough of our fellow-citizens take in the findings of this book then it's certain our elected representatives will do so, leading to the most radical re-think of climate policy imaginable.

I cannot thank the author enough, for applying not just her writing skills but the wisdom and compassion accumulated over many years to this complex, multi-faceted challenge. It will surely be judged the project for which she was born.