External links
- Exploring the American Memory Collection at the Library of Congress, by Donna Laframboise
- NoConsensus, Laframboise site on global warming
- Tripod Girl, her photo gallery
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Donna Laframboise is a Canadian investigative journalist, writer, and photographer. She has published critical reviews of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and its reports for the United Nations.
Laframboise has worked as a freelance photographer and journalist. She describes herself as a libertarian feminist, and earned a bachelors degree in women's studies at the University of Toronto in 1989. [1] [2] Laframboise has written articles and editorials for Canada's National Post , The Globe and Mail , Toronto Star , and others. [1] In 1992, she asked for reconsideration of the guilty verdict for Guy Paul Morin, [3] who had been wrongly convicted of the 1984 rape and murder of a nine-year-old girl. He was sentenced to life in prison in 1992. Renewed DNA testing led to overturning of this verdict in 1995. From 1993 to 2001, Laframbroise served on the board of directors of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. [1]
In 1997, Laframbroise published The Princess at the Window: A New Gender Morality, a book critical of many aspects of contemporary feminism. Gender studies scholar Joan Sangster went so far to call Laframboise an "anti-feminist", and dismissed her "frontal attack" on abuse accusations against Grandview Training School for Girls staff in the 1990s. [4]
Laframboise is an outspoken critic of the scientific assessment of global warming published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In 2010, she commented on the outcome of the Climatic Research Unit email controversy enquiries, echoing the complaints of others such as the Global Warming Policy Foundation. [5]
In 2010, Laframboise organized a "citizen audit" of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, to determine how many of the report's sources were peer-reviewed. The audit claims that 21 of the report's 44 chapters used fewer than 60% peer-reviewed sources, with the other sources being non-peer-reviewed material, commonly called "grey literature". [6] [7] [8] The IPCC has clear guidelines allowing the use of non peer-reviewed grey literature where appropriate, subject to evaluation by the IPCC authors. An IPCC spokesman has stated that such sources include government statistics or reports from industry associations, and said "We do not believe that it is appropriate to keep out such material from the process." [2] [9]
In 2011, she published a book about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World's Top Climate Expert. She promotes her perspective on Global warming on her noconsensus.org blog. Laframboise claims that the IPCC's appeal to authority doesn't live up to its own promises, [10] and this book has received some critical attention. [11]
In 2013, Laframboise received leaked drafts of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report WG II section on Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, and commented on them on her blog. She wrote that NGOs like the World Wide Fund for Nature, Conservation International and Germanwatch had provided comments based on grey literature, to push a political agenda. [2] IPCC Spokesman Jonathan Lynn commented that the data leak broke a confidentiality agreement which did not have legal force. Authors of the report also included industry representatives such as the insurer Munich Re and the oil company ExxonMobil. [2]
Because it is increasingly apparent that materials relevant to IPCC Reports, in particular, information about the experience and practice of the private sector in mitigation and adaptation activities, are found in sources that have not been published or peer-reviewed (e.g., industry journals, internal organisational publications, non-peer reviewed reports or working papers of research institutions, proceedings of workshops etc) the following additional procedures are provided. These have been designed to make all references used in IPCC Reports easily accessible and to ensure that the IPCC process remains open and transparent.
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Scientific studies have investigated the causes of climate change. They have found that the main cause and driver of recent climate change is elevated levels of greenhouse gases produced by human activities. Natural forces add climate variability as well. Based on many scientific studies, it is "unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land since pre-industrial times." Studies on attribution have focused on changes observed during the period of instrumental temperature record, particularly in the last 50 years. This is the period when human activity has grown fastest and observations of the atmosphere above the surface have become available. Some of the main human activities that contribute to global warming are: (a) increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, for a warming effect; (b) global changes to land surface, such as deforestation, for a warming effect; and (c) increasing atmospheric concentrations of aerosols, mainly for a cooling effect.
Global warming potential (GWP) is an index to measure of how much infrared thermal radiation a greenhouse gas would absorb over a given time frame after it has been added to the atmosphere. The GWP makes different greenhouse gases comparable with regards to their "effectiveness in causing radiative forcing". It is expressed as a multiple of the radiation that would be absorbed by the same mass of added carbon dioxide, which is taken as a reference gas. Therefore, the GWP is one for CO2. For other gases it depends on how strongly the gas absorbs infrared thermal radiation, how quickly the gas leaves the atmosphere, and the time frame being considered.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an intergovernmental body of the United Nations. Its job is to advance scientific knowledge about climate change caused by human activities. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) established the IPCC in 1988. The United Nations endorsed the creation of the IPCC later that year. It has a secretariat in Geneva, Switzerland, hosted by the WMO. It has 195 member states who govern the IPCC. The member states elect a bureau of scientists to serve through an assessment cycle. A cycle is usually six to seven years. The bureau selects experts to prepare IPCC reports. It draws the experts from nominations by governments and observer organizations. The IPCC has three working groups and a task force, which carry out its scientific work.
There is a strong scientific consensus that the Earth has been consistently warming since the start of the Industrial Revolution, and the rate of recent warming is largely unprecedented. This warming is mainly caused by the rapid increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) since 1750 from human activities such as fossil fuel combustion, cement production, and land use changes such as deforestation, with a significant supporting role from the other greenhouse gases such as methane and nitrous oxide. This human role in climate change is now considered "unequivocal" and "incontrovertible".
John William Zillman AO is an Australian meteorologist, and former President of the World Meteorological Organization and the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE). He was born and was educated in Brisbane, Queensland. Through his leadership in professional organizations and advisory groups, Zillman has contributed to shaping science and innovation policy in Australia. More widely, he has contributed to raising awareness to the consequences of global climate change through involvement in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The Summary for policymakers (SPM) is a summary of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports intended to aid policymakers. The form is approved line by line by governments: "Negotiations occur over wording to ensure accuracy, balance, clarity of message, and relevance to understanding and policy."
The IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR), Climate Change 2001, is an assessment of available scientific and socio-economic information on climate change by the IPCC. Statements of the IPCC or information from the TAR were often used as a reference showing a scientific consensus on the subject of global warming. The Third Assessment Report (TAR) was completed in 2001 and consists of four reports, three of them from its Working Groups: Working Group I: The Scientific Basis; Working Group II: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability; Working Group III: Mitigation; Synthesis Report. A number of the TAR's conclusions are given quantitative estimates of how probable it is that they are correct, e.g., greater than 66% probability of being correct. These are "Bayesian" probabilities, which are based on an expert assessment of all the available evidence.
The Second Assessment Report (SAR) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published in 1995, is an assessment of the then available scientific and socio-economic information on climate change. The report was split into four parts: a synthesis to help interpret UNFCCC article 2, The Science of Climate Change, Impacts, Adaptations and Mitigation of Climate Change, Economic and Social Dimensions of Climate Change. Each of the last three parts was completed by a separate Working Group (WG), and each has a Summary for Policymakers (SPM) that represents a consensus of national representatives.
The Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) is a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that was published in 2000. The greenhouse gas emissions scenarios described in the Report have been used to make projections of possible future climate change. The SRES scenarios, as they are often called, were used in the IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR), published in 2001, and in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), published in 2007. The SRES scenarios were designed to improve upon some aspects of the IS92 scenarios, which had been used in the earlier IPCC Second Assessment Report of 1995. The SRES scenarios are "baseline" scenarios, which means that they do not take into account any current or future measures to limit greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Climate Change 2007, the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), was published in 2007 and is the fourth in a series of reports intended to assess scientific, technical and socio-economic information concerning climate change, its potential effects, and options for adaptation and mitigation. The report is the largest and most detailed summary of the climate change situation ever undertaken, produced by thousands of authors, editors, and reviewers from dozens of countries, citing over 6,000 peer-reviewed scientific studies. People from over 130 countries contributed to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, which took six years to produce. Contributors to AR4 included more than 2,500 scientific expert reviewers, more than 800 contributing authors, and more than 450 lead authors.
The IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) is a report on climate change created with the help of a large number of contributors, both scientists and governmental representatives. There has been considerable political controversy over a small number of errors found in the report, and there have been calls for review of the process used to formulate the report. The overwhelming majority view of scientists with expertise in climate change is that errors, when found, are corrected, and the issues as identified do not undermine the conclusions of the report that the climate system is warming in response to increased levels of greenhouse gases, largely due to human activities.
The Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the fifth in a series of such reports and was completed in 2014. As had been the case in the past, the outline of the AR5 was developed through a scoping process which involved climate change experts from all relevant disciplines and users of IPCC reports, in particular representatives from governments. Governments and organizations involved in the Fourth Report were asked to submit comments and observations in writing with the submissions analysed by the panel. Projections in AR5 are based on "Representative Concentration Pathways" (RCPs). The RCPs are consistent with a wide range of possible changes in future anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Projected changes in global mean surface temperature and sea level are given in the main RCP article.
The Climatic Research Unit email controversy began in November 2009 with the hacking of a server at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) by an external attacker, copying thousands of emails and computer files to various internet locations several weeks before the Copenhagen Summit on climate change.
Climatic Research Unit documents including thousands of e-mails and other computer files were stolen from a server at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in a hacking incident in November 2009. The documents were redistributed first through several blogs of global warming deniers, who alleged that the documents indicated misconduct by leading climate scientists. A series of investigations rejected these allegations, while concluding that CRU scientists should have been more open with distributing data and methods on request. Precisely six committees investigated the allegations and published reports, finding no evidence of fraud or scientific misconduct. The scientific consensus that global warming is occurring as a result of human activity remained unchanged by the end of the investigations.
In earth science, global surface temperature is calculated by averaging the temperatures over sea and land.
Sonia Isabelle Seneviratne is a Swiss climate scientist, professor at the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science of the ETH Zurich. She is a specialist of extreme climate events.
The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Special Report on Climate Change and Land (SRCCL), also known as the "Special Report on climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems", is a landmark study from 2019 by 107 experts from 52 countries. The SRCCL provides a comprehensive overview of the entire land-climate system for the first time and decided to enlist land as a "critical resource". The IPCC's 50th session (IPCC-50) formally adopted the SRCCL's Summary for policymakers (SPM) and approved the underlying report. The SPM and the full text of Special Report on Climate Change and Land—in an unedited form—were released on 8 August 2019. The report is over 1,300 pages long and includes the work of 107 experts from 52 countries.
The Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the United Nations (UN) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the sixth in a series of reports which assess scientific, technical, and socio-economic information concerning climate change. Three Working Groups covered the following topics: The Physical Science Basis (WGI); Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability (WGII); Mitigation of Climate Change (WGIII). Of these, the first study was published in 2021, the second report February 2022, and the third in April 2022. The final synthesis report was finished in March 2023.
Ronald J. Stouffer is a meteorologist and adjunct professor at the University of Arizona, formerly Senior Research Climatologist and head of the Climate and Ecosystems Group at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL), part of NOAA. He has also served on the faculty of Princeton University.
