Bishop Hill The greens' next deception
Jan 4, 2016 Climate: WG2 Greens 
Just before the end of the year, Oxfam put out a press release about the impacts of El Niño on developing countries, which they said is happening at a time when the humanitarian system is under unprecedented strain.
The press release went on to note that niños are not climate phenomena:
Although El Niño is not directly caused by climate change, global warming makes it more likely that strong El Niños will develop.
The press release was picked up by Ed King of Climate Home who headlined his article as follows:
Oxfam: ‘Unprecedented’ humanitarian crisis unfolding in Africa
Aid agency says increased funding essential to provide drought victims with food, water as impacts linked to El Nino and climate change start to bite
So the aid system under unprecedented strain is neatly transformed into an unprecedented crisis and climate change is put centre stage. It's the UK floods all over again, isn't it? An impact that is hypothetical and even if true is only marginal, is put centre stage to promote a political agenda.
Expect to hear El Nino conflated with climate change much more often as the effects are felt in coming months.
Reader Comments (29)
Nice to see Oxfam have suddenly become experts in meteorology as well as all their other achievements!
Long ago stopped giving money to Oxfam. So many of the big time charities have completely lost their way - witness Miliband Major's mob, International Rescue, who boast that they give every available penny to the needy - yet see fit to pay Miliband over £400,000 pa.
Well spotted.
Of equal stupidity are 2 items which have been up on the Biased BBC teletex pages for about 5 days now.
Both refer to El Nino. I suppose two canards are better than one!
The first one " Worries grow over strongest El Nino. - strongest el nino weather cycle on record is likely to increase hunger and disease for millions of people in 2016" aid agencies say.
Then without stopping for breath another item on their so called Science section "----nasa has warned the effects 'could' be as bad as those of 1998 (note) the stronger on record."
The Beebs level of biased science reporting can only be described as shameless.
A happy New Year to our indefatigable Bishop and all his little Bishops.
This makes it quite difficult (impossible?) to feel anything but contempt for these people. It is clearly yet another mendacious attempt to co-opt / link something perceived as useful. Somehow I think contempt is inadequate....
It comes to a pretty pass when so-called 'charities' are themselves neck-deep in exaggerations, mis-directions and outright lies. It seems absolutely nobody in authority has any morals or integrity these days. Principles be damned.
Give me money, unprecedented climate change, humanitarian disaster, my £200,000+ salary is dependant on crisis.
This will no doubt become an article of faith for the Guardian's gallery of shameless berks. It's probably already been incorporated into the Twitter output.
That internet thingy is full of dire warnings about the effects of this El Nino on coral reefs (bleaching), but they all seem blind to the fact that 1998 was stronger and the coral reefs survived and have recovered nicely, as we can see from the excellently timed visit of David Attenborough to the Great Barrier Reef.
Hypothesis: Coral bleaching is like forest fires, an entirely natural and beneficial process, if only we could have something similar to clear out the dead wood of climate activism.
Amazing.
There has never, ever been an "unprecedented humanitarian crisis in Africa" ever, ever before.
[Is that enough "evers" and "nevers"?]
El Niño also brings benefits, such as rain and snow to California.
Two things, El Nino is typically rated by the Multivariable ENSO Index (MEI) which still shows the 1998 as the stronger El Nino. Only the Nino3.4 gauge shows the current one as strongest (which measures temperatures over only half the equatorial Pacific region looked at for El Nino) so a cherry pick. https://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2015/12/08/december-2015-enso-update-shouldnt-be-long-now-until-the-el-nino-starts-to-decay/ The second thing is that if there is a humanitarian crisis, perhaps some of the crops going to biofuel ought to be diverted to feeding the hungry.
Sadly, few of the crises in Africa are really attributable to the weather – most are the result of a combination of human greed, incompetence, ignorance and prejudice.
I gave up being contributing to “aid” for people in other lands many years ago as it is just another way of training them that they can rely upon the white man to rush to their help at every opportunity, hence they have no need to help themselves. Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you have saved yourself the cost of a fish.
Like the feather-brained Naomi Klein, or the harder-headed Paul Nurse, Oxfam's leaders have seen great opportunity in the climate commotions for furthering their political and financial ambitions. From now on, any event at all in the climate system can be called on for support, for browbeating waverers, for getting more money, and for attacking their real preoccupation, something they call 'capitalism'. This is heavy theology at work, and examination of earlier cults, madnesses, and 'delusions of crowds' will no doubt increase over the years to come, as appalled people seek some way of either making more sense of these highly-driven busybodies or finding ways to reduce the harms they bring humanity and the environment.
Well, they would say that, wouldn't they.
Our Bishops reputation and outreach apparently knows no bounds.
2 hours after I posted that bit above about the Beebtoid teletex pieces contradicting each other regarding the most fearsome El Nino evvvvavh, one of them was disappeared.
Obviously ' they' read this blog and removed some of the egg from their faces.
I do wish that the Charities Commission would weed out these fake charities, they get genuine Charities a bad name. When I see the salaries the CEOs get together with the knowledge that tax money is being sent their way it is time to stop them, NOW.
Yes, heavy theology, JS. I've enjoyed speculating that Al Gore dropped out of Divinity School just after the lessons on primitive shamanism in which the people are made to fear the weather and to feel guilty for it. This is an ancient tactic for gathering treasure and power.
We thought we'd laid that volcano to rest with our sacrifices, but I don't care for the increasing daily dustings of fine ash.
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is not directly caused by climate change, global warming
Slightly confused they are. A little slip into the old description. Don't they know not to say Global Warming?
It'll be increased ocean salinity next.
"A happy New Year to our indefatigable Bishop and all his little Bishops." --patrick healy
Don't forget us beadles.
"It'll be increased ocean salinity next." --golf charlie
O, the huge manatee!
"This makes it quite difficult (impossible?) to feel anything but contempt for these people...." --tomo
I see dud people.
"I gave up being contributing to “aid” for people in other lands many years ago as it is just another way of training them that they can rely upon the white man to rush to their help at every opportunity, hence they have no need to help themselves." ---Radical Rodent
As the wise Greek Philosopher, Anonymous, once said: "Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day." --Anonymous
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man how to fish and you do yourself out of a job!
@Mike Jackson, Jan 4, 2016 at 6:44 PM
+1
That sums up the thinking and approach of most of today's "aid" charities and Government (ie taxpayer money-tree) funded departments, quangos and the other help/aid organisations.
Pcar;
I totally agree. Such as providing safe water supplies. Send the tech, hardware and guidance and let the locals do the actual work; rather than using the 'aid' money to send and pay gap-year students/volunteers to do the work while the locals sit on their arses watching them whilst imbibing their home-brew etc.
I have stopped contributing to any charity (like Oxfam), which has seized the opportunity to endorse the the 'climate change' CAGW in order to further their political and financial goals. They are usually ineffective, lazy, over-managed and help only themselves.
Give a climate scientist a fish, and he won't believe that anything can live in the sea, and provide Links to loads of websites that prove him right, again and again, as he sighs deeply with disbelief, and accuses the fish of being an oil money funded shill for the Deniers.
The Ehiopian Famine of 1983-5 launched Band Aid and all sorts of charity relief work, that still goes on, because it has to go on.
Nobody blamed it on Global Warming then. Charities like Oxfam are so much more politically savvy, now they can afford to pay such high salaries. What went right?
I stopped contributing to any charity (like Oxfam), after I worked for Oxfam, and saw first-hand how much of people's donations are spent on themselves (plush offices, "competitive" salaries, etc), and gets nowhere near the intented recipients.
The whole West is staggering under the load of government debt, which our grandchildren will certainly have to repay. Meanwhile, the greens get governments to borrow more to pay all sorts of carpetbaggers and money-trough-snufflers to stop "global warming" because (they say) they want to leave a good world to their grandchildren.
This is just the latest scam. The answer, probably impossible to achieve, is to make it constitutionally unlawful for governments to pay out public money other than on sound commercial terms for benefits that are measurable to a high degree of certainty.