In December 2011 Ökowatch published a review by Steffen Hentrich on the release of "The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World's Top Climate Expert". What follows is an exclusive interview with author Donna Laframboise and Ökowatch.

Ökowatch: Ms Laframboise, in your recently released book you refer to the IPCC as a "delinquent teenager". That seems like a harsh allegation for a supposedly prestigious and trustworthy institution?

Donna Lamframboise: When a young person is described as a delinquent it means society has not yet abandoned hope for their redemption. So, actually, I think I'm being kind when I compare the IPCC to a delinquent teenager. Many critics of the climate change industry use much harsher language. They speak of scams, con artists, corruption, fraudsters, and criminals. They speak, in other words, of deliberate deception, financial self-interest, and naked power grabs.

Having studied the IPCC carefully, I think it is unlikely that it can be redeemed. And yet I also believe that many individuals who've participated in the IPCC did not set out to deceive. They were simply naïve – oblivious to the fact that they were being used by UN officials like pawns in an international chess game.

Bureaucracies strive to expand their scope, their budget, and their prestige. That is what they do. It therefore isn't difficult to understand why a grand global emissions treaty is attractive to UN bureaucrats. Such a treaty places these people at the center of the action.

I was genuinely shocked when, during the course of researching this book, I discovered that IPCC officials freely admit that the primary purpose of IPCC reports is to make emissions negotiations possible – to achieve "buy in" from all the countries of the world.

First and foremost, therefore, the IPCC serves UN bureaucrats – bureaucrats who decided more than 20 years ago that emissions reduction was required. It's important to understand the sequence of events. The cart was put before the horse. The UN campaign to regulate greenhouse gas emissions officially launched back in 1992 at the Rio Earth Summit. That was long before climate science was anywhere near mature.

For many Germans the IPCC is an unquestioned scientific authority. What compelled you to investigate this institution?

I didn't set out to investigate the IPCC. My original intent was to write a book about how journalists were hyping, exaggerating, and over-simplifying the climate change issue. When I compared media reports to what really goes on at the IPCC I began to realize that almost nothing I'd be told about the IPCC was actually true. It then became obvious that that was the book that needed to be written.

I think it is remarkable that an organization as influential as the IPCC has been around for 22 years, has been awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, and yet mine is the first book to take a close, critical look at it.

Your book uncovers some inconvenient details and problems regarding the IPCC. What facts will most likely cast doubt over its integrity?

I find it alarming that the IPCC doesn't describe its own personnel, its own reports, or its own procedures accurately. These are basic, minimum standards anyone who wants to be taken seriously surely has to meet. I mean, if a child care center makes untrue claims about the qualifications of its employees, I'm not going to leave my child there.

We've been told that IPCC reports are written by the world's finest scientific minds, but that is not the case. Among IPCC lead authors we find graduate students 10 or more years away from completing their doctorates. We find employees of activist groups such as Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund. We find "unqualified" and "incompetent" personnel from the developing world (those descriptions are used by IPCC insiders themselves).

If an organization can't or won't describe its own personnel accurately why should we trust anything else it says?

Your book focuses on the IPCC, and not the underlying science. But you don’t seem to be convinced about the scientific statements of the IPCC. Did your investigations influence your perception of climate research generally?

Numerous, profound conflicts-of-interest are inherent in the IPCC structure. Climate research is not being evaluated by neutral third parties. Rather, the people writing IPCC reports routinely pass judgment on their own research – and on that of their academic rivals. How can that be sound science?

The book pictures most journalists as being biased and credulous regarding the IPCC statements. What do you think is behind this faith?

Journalism, I am sorry to say, has become just another job. Many people are attracted to journalism because they think it is glamorous, not because they have a burning desire to ensure that large institutions are held accountable.

Like most human beings, journalists are pack animals. Rather than thinking for themselves they follow the intellectual fashion of the day. Since at least the first Earth Day in 1970 it has been fashionable to believe that the planet is fragile, that human beings are reckless and rapacious, and that we are perpetually on the verge of eco-apocalypse. The mass media has endorsed and promoted these ideas rather than reporting on them with one-tenth the normal journalistic skepticism.

In your book you examined connections between the IPCC staff and scientists and environmental organisations. What kind of connections did you find? There also doesn’t seem to be any influence of sceptical voices at the IPCC. How do you explain that?

In fairness, individuals who have been critical of the IPCC have been part of the process to some degree. Economist Richard Tol, for example, is currently a coordinating lead author even though he has been a vocal IPCC critic. This is a credit to the IPCC.

Some scientists also participated in the IPCC briefly before withdrawing due to concerns about its integrity. Hurricane expert Chris Landsea, malaria expert Paul Reiter, and meteorologist Richard Lindzen are among them. I am aware of no evidence that the IPCC took their concerns seriously, or learned anything from their departures. The train simply rolled on.

If IPCC chapters were routinely led by two people – one known for an allegiance to global warming theory and another known for climate skepticism – IPCC reports would be very different documents. There would be a real contest of ideas, there would be genuine and vigorous debate, the conclusions would be truly rigorous. Instead, the IPCC seems to have been infiltrated by people with agendas. 

"Infiltrate" is not a word I use lightly, but I believe it is appropriate here. In 2004, around the time that the last IPCC assessment report was getting underway, the enormously wealthy green lobby group known as the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) began systematically targeting IPCC-affiliated scientists. By late 2008, according to an internal WWF document, it had recruited 130 "leading climate scientists mostly, but not exclusively, from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change" to join its own, parallel, panel.

In other words, scores of "leading climate scientists" decided to get into bed with a lobby group at the very time that they were supposed to be conducting a neutral, objective assessment of climate research. What was the result? The IPCC's 2007 report had 44 chapters. Two-thirds of those chapters contained at least one - and as many as eight - WWF-affiliated scientists. Even worse, one third of the chapters were led by WWF-affiliated personnel.

There is nothing trivial or incidental about this. The IPCC has been compromised.

You’re sceptical when it comes to reforming the IPCC. Why? In what direction do you think the IPCC will move?

Writing this book has impressed upon me the fact it is not within humanity's power to predict the future, to anticipate all the combinations of possible events, to foresee the technological developments that will alter the picture again and again. So I will say little about the IPCC's future direction.

It is worth repeating, though, that the IPCC was designed by bureaucrats to serve the interests of bureaucrats. It is unlikely, therefore, that it can be transformed into a body that serves the public.

Your book drew a lot of interest and praise among readers. What about your critics? Did they object much?

My book is less than three months old. To be honest, I have been so busy promoting it that I have had little opportunity to read firsthand much of the praise or the criticism.

It is noteworthy that the IPCC has not responded in any way. It appears to be pretending that my book doesn't exist. The IPCC is very good at that. For many years it has pretended that eminent skeptical scientists such as Freeman Dyson don't exist, either.

So called "climate sceptics" are often accused of being financed by “big oil and coal”. Can you confirm this view through your experience?

Some skeptical climate bloggers joke that they are still awaiting their cheque from big oil. That is certainly true in my case. While I have received no funding of any sort from any oil (or coal) company the inconvenient truth is that big oil has been funding climate change research extravagantly for some time.

A year and a half ago I wrote a blog post titled BP, Greenpeace & the Big Oil Jackpot. It talked about the $100 million ExxonMobil has donated to Stanford university so that researchers can find "ways to meet growing energy needs without worsening global warming." It pointed to the $500 million that BP has donated to two other universities so that they can "reduce the impact of energy consumption on the environment." It told readers about the additional $30 million BP has given to yet another university to research "ways of tackling the world’s climate problem."

In that blog post I declared: If the world is divided into two factions – one that believes climate change is a serious problem and another that thinks human influence on the climate is so minimal it's indistinguishable from background noise – one group has pulled off a bank heist while the other has been panhandling in front of the liquor store.

Thank you for this interview, Ms Laframboise!

Donna Laframboise was interviewed by Steffen Hentrich