Donna Laframboise

Credentials

Degree in Women’s Studies, University of Toronto (1989).¹

Background

Donna Laframboise is a journalist, photographer, and founder of NOconsensus.org, a website critical of the IPCC and skeptical of climate change. In late 2013, Laframboise became a senior fellow for the Frontier Center for Public Policy, a freemarket think tank based in the US and Canada.² ³

Laframboise is very critical of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In 2010 she organized a “citizen audit” of the IPCC, and produced a report where she claimed that many of the report’s sources were not peer-reviewed. She published her views in her book The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert.⁴ ⁵

The IPCC has clear guidelines regarding the use of non peer-reviewed sources, and a 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.”⁶

Between 1993 and 2001, Laframboise was a member of the Board of Directors of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, serving as a Vice President from 1998-2001. Prior to 2002, she wrote for the National Post, Globe & Mail, Toronto Star, Chatelaine, Toronto Life, and other publications. She now works as a photographer.⁷

Laframboise is also the author of the blog NoFrakkingConsensus, and was behind the now-defunct website DeSoggyBog (which attempted to parody DeSmog – archived here), which she describes as a “project of NOconsensus.org.”⁸ ⁹

Stance on Climate Change

March 2015

“Climate change is constant and natural. I live in Canada. A mere 20,000 years ago, 97 per cent of my country was covered with ice. The fact that that ice melted away on its own tells us that Mother Earth has her own rhythms. As a journalist, I have no opinion on whether human activity is having a significant (as opposed to a minor) impact on the world’s climate. What I can tell you is that there are many highly credentialed, experienced, reputable scientists who doubt this. I consider it my job to let the public know that those views exist.”¹⁰

Undated

“Despite media claims to the contrary, the debate is not over. There is no consensus among scientists concerning global warming.”¹¹

Key Quotes

September 2016

Speaking about electric cars, and criticizing the Obama administration for not delivering:

“Anyone can stand at a podium and promise to make all manner of green fantasies come true. But even US presidents with billions at their command aren’t magicians. Barring unexpected developments, changing the way we fuel our cars and heat our homes will be a long term, gradual process.

There aren’t any silver bullets. We need to stop imagining otherwise.”¹²

November 2014

“Keen to pose as saviours of the planet, politicians across the political spectrum have spent two decades announcing UN-inspired emissions targets that no one has any realistic hope of meeting. When discussing these matters, Roger Pielke Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, uses phrases such as ‘fantasy island’ and ’emissions impossible.’”

”[…] This is the dirty little secret lurking behind every new emissions deal: when emissions disappear, so do jobs, economic opportunities, and human well-being.”¹³

June 2010

“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 [environmentalists] has pulled off a bank heist while the other [skeptics] has been panhandling in front of the liquor store.”¹⁴

Key Deeds

May 2, 2016

A brief clip of Donna Laframboise was featured in Marc Morano’s film Climate Hustle, which began showing on May 2 in the U.S.¹⁵

“I wasn’t interviewed by those involved and haven’t seen the film, but have been advised it includes a brief clip from a lengthy interview recorded by Australian filmmaker Topher Field in 2013. Others appearing in Climate Hustle include climate scientist Judith Curry who blogs about the film here, Greenpeace founding member Patrick Moore, economist Richard Tol, and biology superstar Daniel Botkin,” Laframboise wrote. “Personally, I’ll take the irreverence and good humour of Climate Hustle‘s creators over puritanical authoritarianism any day.”¹⁶

December 1–3, 2015

LaFramboise was a speaker at the “Paris Climate Challenge” (PCC) an event organized by the the Independent Committee on Geoethics (ICG) with the goal of “Challenging the groupthink of COP21.” Her talk was titled “Three Things Scientists Need to Know About the IPCC.”¹⁷

She offered a transcript including a PDF with slides and notes, and a slide-only PDF on her blog.¹⁸

December 2014

Donna LaFramboise is a contributor to the book Climate Change: The Facts published by the Institute of Public Affairs and featuring “22 essays on the science, politics and economics of the climate change debate.” The Institute of Public Affairs, while not revealing most of its funders, is known to have received funding from mining magnate Gina Rinehart and at least one major tobacco company.¹⁹

The book includes essays and articles from a range of climate change skeptics, with contributors including the following:

According to Editor Alan Moran in a post at Catallaxy Files blog on Climate Change: the facts 2014, “Donna Laframboise notes the scandalous attribution of Nobel Prize status to all involved in the IPCC” in her contribution to the book.²⁰

January 28, 2014

Donna Laframboise was a witness at the UK Parliament’s Energy and Climate Change Committee, alongside prominent climate change skeptic Richard Lindzen. Her full testimony can be read here (video below).²¹ ²²

November 20, 2013

Donna Laframboise spoke before the European Climate and Energy Institute (EIKE), working to discredit the UN’s Climate Panel:²³

September 1, 2013

Donna Laframboise was interviewed by the 50 to 1 Project on her critiques of the IPCC:²⁴

February 3, 2013

The website What’s Up With That Watts?, which more commonly reviews the articles and blog posts of climate change skeptic Anthony Watts, published a review of Donna Laframboise’s blog/website Noconsensus.org.²⁵

In particular, the critique notes how Laframboise uses the often-debunked Oregon Petition as proof of a “consensus of disbelief.” According to the author, Laframboise also “manipulates with words” in her comparison of global warming and the Soviet Union in the time of Stalin.²⁶

The article concludes that “The content at noconsensus.org makes clear that we are dealing with a writer who does propaganda, not any investigative journalism driving by an honest desire to learn and understand.”²⁷

November 30–December 1, 2012

Donna Laframboise was a speaker (PDF) at the Eighth International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC-8)/Fifth International Conference on Climate and Energy (ICCE-5) sponsored by both the Heartland Institute and the European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE). Her speech, titled “The IPCC – Almost nothing you’ve been told about this organization is actually true” can be viewed below.²⁸

October 17, 2012

Donna Laframboise presented at the Friends of Science (FoS) Ninth Annual Luncheon on October 17, 2012 in Calgary, Alberta:²⁹

July 23, 2012

Donne Laframboise spoke to members of the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) in Melbourne about “the flaws she has discovered in IPCC reports”:³⁰

November 30, 2011

Donna Laframboise spoke at a UK Government Public Meeting alongside Phillip Stott, Ian Plimer, and Matt Ridley among others. She spent most of her speech discrediting the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), a view she presented in her recently published book, The Delinquent Teenager :³¹

October 9, 2011

Donna Laframboise published her book, The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert with Ivy Avenue Press. According to her book’s introduction, “What most of us don’t know is that, rather than being written by a meticulous, upstanding professional in business attire, this [IPCC] report was produced by a slapdash, slovenly teenager who has trouble distinguishing right from wrong.³²

Climate scientist Peter Gleik posted a review of the book, calling it 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.”³³

One source has made an “open note” to Donna Laframboise regarding her book’s assertions that: ”[…] rather than being written by a meticulous, upstanding professional in business attire (aka the world’s top scientists & best experts), the Climate Bible is produced by a slapdash, slovenly teenager who has trouble distinguishing right from wrong (aka, activists, 20-something graduate students, people appointed due to their gender or their country). The world needs to confront the folly that is the IPCC.”³⁴

According to this source, Laframboise’s “derision of young scientists scientists totally ignores the fact that young men and women have been the backbone of science through the generations.” To back this up, the author points to some of the young graduate students and scientists that were an essential part of the Manhattan Project.

According to an article in the The Heartlander, which praises the book, “Laframboise also sheds light on the extreme political agenda of IPCC Chair Raj Pachauri, IPCC’s scientifically unjustified reliance on Michael Mann’s hockey stick temperature graph, Climategate, and a host of other IPCC-related issues.”³⁵

Laframboise has also appeared on the Bolt Report to promote her book.³⁶

October 13, 2010

Laframboise criticized David Suzuki for fathering five children, concluding “a man who spends his time preaching that humans are desecrating the environment due to our sheer numbers nevertheless indulged himself five times in this regard.”³⁷

One blog examined the “Smoke and Mirrors” behind her article, and describes how her article is a red herring primarily concerned with evoking emotions in her audience.³⁸

June 4, 2010

In an article titled BP, Greenpeace & the Big Oil Jackpot, Laframboise suggested that the oil industry is donating large sums of money to environmental causes. Sourcewatch suggests that the article erroneously implies that Greenpeace receives “large cash donations from BP.”³⁹ ⁴⁰

Although the article appears to be pinpointing the group Nature Conservancy, not Greenpeace, it does state that the “big oil jackpot was awarded to those on the Greenpeace side of the debate.”

The article does not mention that many environmental groups, including Greenpeace, do not accept donations from corporations, governments, or political parties. Most donations come from individuals. This differs many of the organizations skeptical of climate change, of which a large number regularly accept large donations from corporations with vested interest in the issues.⁴¹

April 2010

NOconsensus.org called for volunteers to examine the IPCC’s 2007 report, as she claims that the report does not cite a large amount of peer-reviewed literature.⁴² ⁴³

The crowd-sourced project, which includes contributions by numerous “Anonymous” auditors, concludes that the IPCC has “misled the public” about the amount of peer-reviewed material in the report. Laframboise concludes that this means the IPCC“s “ability to accurately describe more complex topics is called into question.”⁴⁴ ⁴⁵

August 2009

According to a WHOIS Lookup, “Desoggyblog” was registered by Donna Laframboise on this date.⁴⁶

Donna Laframboise is behind this “parody” site that actively criticizes (and twists) the position and philosphy of DeSmog. She describes Desoggyblog as a “project of NOconsensus.org.”⁴⁷

Her website consists of only two pages: a Homepage and and a “Critique.”⁴⁸ ⁴⁹

April 1, 2009

According to a WHOIS Search, Donna Laframboise registered NOconsensus.org on April 1, 2009. The premise of the website, as suggested by the title, is that “there is no consensus among scientists concerning global warming.”⁵⁰ ⁵¹

The website’s purpose is to “link you to points-of-view you deserve to hear – to expand the debate at a time when some people are trying to shut it down.”

The scientific portion of the website, “Global Warming Theory 101” offers the following sections: “Weather,” which suggests that while we cannot accurately predict next summer’s weather, we “we claim to know – within a few degrees – how hot it will be 100 years from now” (this claim has been debunked by SkepticalScience), “Petition” which links to the infamous (and many-times-debunked) Oregon Petition, “Questions,” which claims that the UN is suppressing the views of climate change skeptics, and “Crusade” which criticizes Al Gore’s film, “An Inconvenient Truth.”⁵² ⁵³ ⁵⁴ ⁵⁵

Others have noted that Laframboise already contradicted her first section, as she has said herself that “weather is not the same as climate.”⁵⁶ ⁵⁷

The main arguments of NoConsensus have also been debunked at SkepticalScience. Some examples include “Climate Change Myth” #4 (“There is no consensus”), #61 (“Scientists Can’t Even Predict Weather”), and #125 (“The IPCC Consensus is Phony”).⁵⁸ ⁵⁹ ⁶⁰

Laframboise suggests that we do not need to act on climate change now, because in the future we will have superior technology:

“It’s almost certain that, 50 years from now, humanity will be better prepared to address climate change than is anyone alive today. Not only will future generations be smarter than we are, but five more decades of technological innovation will equip them with tools we haven’t yet dreamed of.”⁶¹