{#1}Updated-LaFramboise Delinquent Author - A Closer Look

{revised in light of the first ten chapters 2/20/2013
a small addition 3/4/2013}

I know this character who's been trumpeting the "sharp sighted" investigative journalism of Donna LaFramboise.  I find it irritating because from what I've read and heard in her lectures she is pretty shallow and comes across as an agenda driven propagandist - not any sort of objective journalist.  

Since this character shared a video of Donna lecturing in Germany he was quite proud of... and I was appalled with...  I decided to do a review, but while writing up my comments on that video, I realized it was no good.  This had gone too far and I needed to breakdown and actually purchase LaFramboise's "The Delinquent Teenager." 

This afternoon I read to chapter seven and now I can better understand why serious scientists refuse to acknowledge her or to waste their precious time dealing with her, even after being maliciously slandered by Ms. LaFramboise.  To them, she seems a lost cause and simply not worth their effort.  

Still, it seems to me Donna's been getting too much of a free ride.  It would be good to have a compendium cataloging LaFramboise long string of manipulations, errors, omissions.  

I also want to examine the way she frames her wording; the way her attitude filters her facts; the way she arranges snippets of cherry-picked information; including the way she morphs very questionable assumptions into her self-certain truths.  (2/4/2013)

Excuse me if I slip into a virtual dialogue with Ms. LaFramboise from time to time by asking some questions I wish I could confront her with.  In fact, in revisiting this chapter I've decided to intersperse the following with questions I'd like to ask "Skeptical" Laframboise believing 
right-wing leaning, climate science distrusting persons.

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Chapter One:  "A Closer Look at the World's Leading Climate Body"

{Courier font identifies LaFramboise's words

Laframboise, (2011-10-09). T D T W W M W T C E (Kindle Locations 195-201). Ivy Avenue Press. Kindle Edition. }

I've made it to chapter ten.  And considering the continued conversation at other venues, I decided to revisit this chapter.  New and improved, in light of my learning curve with the first ten chapters.     2/20/2013

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Chapter #1 - 

A Closer Look at the World's Leading Climate Body

This book is about a spoiled child. Year after year, this child has been admired, flattered, and praised. There has been no end of self-esteem-building in his life. What there has been little of, though, is honest feedback or constructive criticism. 

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Notice that instead of spending her opening words introducing her topic. . . which would be an investigation of the IPCC process.  Donna is off weaving a let's pretend'n-imagine situation.
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When we're young, our parents ensure that we confront our mistakes. When our ball shatters a neighbor's window we're required to apologize - and to help pay for a replacement. What happens, though, if a child is insulated from consequences? What if he hears his parents tell the neighbor that because he's special and precious he hasn't done anything that wrong by trampling the neighbor's flower bed? 

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Notice Donna sculpting her main character while weaving a make-believe situation.  See how she has textured the character.  
You are watching a fiction writer's imaginative process in action.
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The answer is obvious. A child who is never corrected is unlikely to develop self-discipline. A child whom everyone says is brilliant feels no need to strive for excellence. Nor does he have much hope of developing

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Donna fills in the details and conjures a dilemma.
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The child at the center of this book was brought into the world by two United Nations bodies - one focused on the weather, the other on the environment. Called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - IPCC for short - this child arrived more than 20 years ago. 

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Here Donna bonds her fictitious invention, a Voodoo Doll of the teenager everyone hates, with the IPCC.  

At this point I gotta ask the right-wing leaning audience for whom this book was written: Do you care, at all, about what the IPCC and it's process is actually about?  

Or are you in this just for the wish fulfillment and entertainment value?

Donna goes on. . .
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"... Any child with over 100 godparents is bound to be spoiled. Even when he torments small animals there will always be those who think he can do no wrong. Which means that disciplining this child is next to impossible. Having morphed into an obnoxious adolescent, the IPCC is now everyone's problem."

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Notice how Donna ratchets up our distain for her Voodoo Doll?  Then with a few swift key strokes Donna again bonds her Voodoo Doll with the IPCC - all without presenting one bit of actual information about the IPCC process.  

Didn't she promise us an investigation?!

How's that work?  

Dear LaFramboise fan: Has the notion of fair-play totally disappeared from the right-wing leaning world?
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"... These reports are informally known as the Climate Bible..."  

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Can we get serious for a moment?  
The only time I hear that term "Climate Bible" being used, it's an insult.  Donna takes poetic advantage of it, repeating it over a hundred times.

Everyone who deals with IPCC reports knows they are reports regarding the current state of the science, learned people know these reports are a "best-effort" and they know that they will be superseded with new information.  

That is NOT a "Bible"... and to get obsessive about repeating that "Climate Bible" mantra indicates that we have propaganda, not science or learning, going on here.  

You know: 'repeat something often enough and everyone starts to believe it, even if it's nonsense.' 

And Donna sure loves repeating this juvenile taunt as though repeating her mantra over a hundred times will make it true.  

Does any of that have to do with investigative journalism?
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{Here's a funny irony for someone who panders to audience with comments such as:}

What most of us don't know is that, rather than being written by a meticulous, upstanding professional in business attire, this report was produced by a slapdash, slovenly teenager who has trouble distinguishing right from wrong.  

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This is who she gets her expert economics advice from, the controversial and much criticized by his peers

 

Dr. Richard Tol 

I don't bring this up to disparage Dr. Tol's looks, there seems to be plenty enough about his work to disparage.  I simply want to point out LaFramboise's dishonest melodramatic tactics, her only purpose can be to emotionalize and prejudice her audience - it definitely has nothing to do with teaching or learning about what's happening with our climate.
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As I have shown in later chapters, those 20-somethings Donna derides have been the backbone of scientific progress for centuries.  For her to spin this sub-plot reveals a certain ruthless disregard for the truth.

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Beyond that, reading LaFramboise's words. . .  there was a tad too much emotional investment when attacking young scientists.  I got the feeling there were issues other than science gnawing at LaFramboise.  

Which is what we really should be concerned with here.

{Incidentally Donna, when have your "professional" types "in business attire" ever achieved any serious 'boots on the ground' Earth observations/science?}  

Seems like one of those politically emotional appeals to all those right-wing leaning types who want to believe they can discount anyone with scruffy hair. 

Is it that easy to buy folks off?

Another example of propaganda rather than investigation.

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. . . Yet even though the IPCC is one of the world's most influential bodies, and even though it evaluates matters in which trillions of dollars are at stake, well into the 21st century it saw no need to even discuss conflict-of-interest. This organization is so arrogant, so used to being fawned over, that its leaders failed to take the most ordinary of precautions.

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Sounds near hysterical!

NO. The IPCC promises to present the best effort state of the science to politicians and business leaders - all of whom have their own agendas and brains who will do with the reports what they will.  Most the time it's turned out to be absolutely nothing!  I mean, easy on the hysterical exaggeration please.

Come on Donna, how about some examples of these trillion dollar decisions hanging on the IPCC's word?

Beyond that, the science reported by the IPCC is echoed throughout the scientific community.  

Yea, yea, Donna can point to her outliers... what does it add up to?  Maybe <5% learned folks who claim to be neo-Galilieo's unveiling a massive scientific hoax? Interestingly, some folks believe these outliers are supposed to outweigh the accumulated "established" global scientific network?  Why?

I realize Donna's indignation convinces many but please notice how all this time - all she has done is lathered her audience into a hostile attitude towards what? . . .  some imaginary character she has artfully manifested?  

What about the real IPCC organization and the real human working a complicated process, when do they get their fair hearing?

Isn't that rather bizarre?  Don't right-wing leaning folks believe in fair play anymore?

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