Bishop Hill Climate cuttings 41
Nov 14, 2010 Climate: Cuttings This week marks the first anniversary of Climategate and it looks as though the media are not unaware of this. As a result there are a number of stories on the climate front today.
The Guardian sets out their case that the scientists have been exonerated but that damage may have been done to "the cause".
Booker reckons the climate change movement is dying on its feet, but says that politicians are carrying on regardless. Booker's ideas seems to be echoed by Investors.com who report the Scientific American poll results and conclude that it's curtains for the warmists.
If the global warming movement is about to meet its demise, then it's probably a good idea for warmists to have their fun while the going is still good. A trip to Bangladesh to play with the idea of a court where poor countries could sue rich ones over climate change probably sounded like a good wheeze.
It was only a mock tribunal, organised by Oxfam, but it explored the growing idea that the largest carbon emitters should be bound by international law to protect the lives and livelihoods of those most at risk from the impacts of climate change.
I can hear standing orders to Oxfam being cancelled as we speak.
David Henderson has picked up on the Deutsche Bank sceptic-bashing paper and the embarrassing shambles the scientists concerned seem to have got themselves into. As Henderson asks "It would be interesting to know whether The Deutsche Bank officials who sponsored and approved this deeply flawed initiative took the precaution of submitting a draft for expert review to persons not already firmly convinced that the 'skeptics' have been refuted."
The Scotsman reports that the lights are going to go out in Scotland shortly. The politicians can't say they didn't know.
Reader Comments (50)
I remember a year ago (on November 17th) glancing at Climate Audit and seeing the 1-sentence blog: "A miracle just happened", and thinking "Oh no, he's never going to tell us he's just won some squash tournament or other, is he? Think I'll just see what Lucia's up to instead."
http://camirror.wordpress.com/2009/11/23/a-miracle-just-happened/
The Guardian/Observer keeping up the expected standards quoted in their editorial policy, p.2: "The voice of opponents no less than friends has a right to be heard..." (C.P. Scott, Guardian editor 1921)
The usual balanced piece of journalism on the CRU emails release starts off with "hacked" in the subheadline, goes on to quote John Abraham, Phil Jones, Muir Russell, Bob Ward, Michael Jacobs, Gavin Schmidt, Trevor Davies and Vicky Pope. The only person mentioned who cannot be called part of the warmist side is Sarah Palin.
Editorial policy, p.11: "The public is not undiscerning...it has a shrewd intuition of what to accept and what to discount..."
According to the World Nuclear Association, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam currently has more nuclear reactors on order or proposed (14) than the UK (13).
The USA has 21 on order or proposed while China – no surprise here – beats everyone with 39 on order and 120 reactors proposed (169 total).
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/reactors.html
You've got to read this: http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/11/82-billion-prediction.html
The usual culprits; climate modellers, models, huge pits of money.
Meanwhile the IPCC leaves more errors uncorrected...
http://abcnewswatch.blogspot.com/2010/11/ipcc-errors-remain-un-corrected.html
From The Guardian:
"19 Nov Rumours begin to appear on climate change denier blogs that a hacker had obtained emails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) computers."
Nivce to know where the stand --- climate change DENIER blogs!
Read the Scotsman article. Was taken by an advert for an Antarctic cruise with promo images including ice cliffs, penguins and polar bears. The bears are obviously not as endangered as we thought.
Barry, there's the 'hacker' meme repeated again...
Re Soames' statements reported by the "The Scotsman", "The Times" had further reporting in yesterday's edition about what Soames said at that conference about "Plan B": "We have to move from the days of holding hands and singing Kumbaya to the great green god, or believing that Scotland is going to be the centre of the universe for renewables."
(no link available as "The Times" now behind a paywall).
Oxfam is running an email campaign to tell Huhne "to think outside of the box on climate finance":
http://www.oxfam.org.uk/get_involved/campaign/actions/huhne.html?intcmp=hp_actions_email-chris-huhne_181010
Oxfam really should change direction and start writing comedies.
These statements caught my eye:
"# In Thailand, farmers are learning to forecast increasingly erratic weather." - It sounds like the MetOffice could learn something from Thailand.
"# In Tanzania, farming families are switching to drought tolerant seeds." - I hope those are not GM seeds or they'll be in trouble.
I liked Soames's comment:
"At the moment we as a nation are turning up to meetings with the bank manager in jeans and a T-shirt that says: 'Jesus loves you'," he said.
"All of this leaves investors shaking their heads.
It also leaves the intelligent man on the Clapham omnibus shaking their heads. When will the numpties actually look at facts rather than rehash optimistic hopes.
Interesting that (so far) the overwhelming number of 'recommends' floowing McKie's Guardian article are for posters who point out that he is writing crap and that CAGW is hooey.
A year ago this would not have happened and anyone who doubted the True Faith would have been excommunicated from 'Arbeit macht Frei' pronto. Even the Grauniad must eventually realise that when 80%+ of their interested readership are unconvinced/actively hostile to this scam, it will soon be time to stop flogging the dead horse. Surely?
Cumbrian Lad said
Much to my chagrin, the Federal government of Australia is reassessing its support of solar rebates. This means my plans to install solar panels for free (after rebates) and then get the other electricity consumers to pay for my residual power may fall in a heap.
I'd better start installing now while the RECs are still at good value and the AUS dollar is so strong that solar panels are really cheap.
The truly sad fact is that some people still seem to labour (sic) under the delusion that Oxfam is a charity!
This Oxfam thing is frightening.
The whole narrative about Bangladesh and climate change is mired in falsehoods and misrepresentations. Encouraging people there - or anywhere - to abuse international law by suing developed economies for supposed culpability in changing the weather is absolute insanity.
Because they will most certainly go and do it. Think how much money there is in 'climate justice'.
But the claque of stupid, self-righteous activists promote this damaging lunacy ever-more frenziedly and we'll all have to foot the bill forever.
For the nth time: Bangladesh suffers from flooding, coastal erosion and salination of the water table which damages agricultural land.
These are caused by subsidence of the entire delta and widespread felling of coastal mangrove forest. These factors are exacerbated by a large and growing population much of which is in harm's way.
The role of climate change, if any, is unclear. But see how, for years now, bloody Oxfam and all the rest have been braying on about climate change killing people in Bangladesh (and elsewhere). It is infuriating beyond measure.Such total, self-interested misrepresentation is what is truly criminal and is what should be punished by law.
We assume that there is a conflict of interest when Deutsche Bank hires climate scientists in an apparent attempt to promote green investments. Roger Pielke, Jr. leaves no doubt about the conflict of interest when a disaster insurance group hired scientists to proclaim that global warming would cause more hurricane damage during the next five years, hurricane damage which did not happen.
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/11/82-billion-prediction.html
Yep, Barry and stuck-record, it's well worth taking another look at that key entry in the timeline from Komment Macht Frei (I think that was Delingpole's brilliant and devastating recasting, Latimer):
Even by the nornal standards this is an unbelievably stupid sentence. The whole point of the insult 'deniers' is that as a group we can't face reality. But on 19th November (Saturday 21st in my case, being typically slow on the uptake) we were all trying to face a completely new reality. Even as I looked at the burgeoning material that weekend people on the sceptical side were being very careful about whether the leak was real. Gradually though, mainly because UEA tacitly accepted that they were genuine, we began the hard work of assessment (and note that even Steve McIntyre is finding new things to think about in this dark treasure trove, even a year later, with help from his interlocutors on Climate Audit).
In this case anyway we weren't the deniers, we were those trying to face the very complicated reality. In many ways I like the verdict of George Gilder, perhaps one of the few intellects on the planet equally at home with science and economics:
That was after reading The Hockey Stick Illusion apparently. I increasingly think of the global stink about the emails as a signpost to read the book (and Mosher and Pearce, if one's really dedicated). As growing numbers of thinking people do so the climate of opinion is shifting decisively, as Investors.com has noted. And however slow the politicians may be to follow, in the end they will. There's enough democracy left in Europe for that to be a certainty. What terrible timing Climategate was for those whose plans were in another direction entirely.
And as the heroic Booker makes clear, there's still tons of work to do, plenty of noxious weeds to pluck out, whether unjust subsidies so harmful to the poor or the lunatic, self-interested show trials of Oxfam, as BBD has just laid out. Even so, this Remembrance Sunday there's one other small sacrifice for us to be thankful for. A whistleblower working in solitude this time last year who should stand tall in the annals of those who ever spoke truth to power. We owe him or her our lasting gratitude.
Bangladeshi are praying midterm for more rain and floods, in the face of the huge scale irrigation projects of China and India, which sap away water from them.
Sure sure more rain would mean instead of 5 critical flood days a year, maybe they would get 10 critical flood days. But flood mgmt can deal with that.
reference: Prof G Webster, Georgia tech.
Webster is the one world expert on water in that corner of the world.
Latimer correctly points out that on McKIe’s quite astoundingly silly Observer article, sceptic comments get far more “recommends” than warmists. However, it’s not true that a year ago this wouldn’t have happened. Sceptics have always got more recommends, by a margin of 3 or 5 to 1.
What’s interesting is that this article, like many recent ones, is not filed under “climate change” or even under the umbrella “environment”,but under “hacked e-mails”, so many regulars miss it . The sceptics are nearly all new names to me, and good luck to them.
I wonder what grand and noble cause célèbre these idiots will push next? My suggestion is they try to get the excess nitrogen out of the air. After all, it is 78%, and that is clearly too much!
By the way, any word on the police investigation into the email Hacking? Surely they must have tracked them down by now.
And in a couple weeks we can all head off to Cancun for fun in the sun in the name of Global Warming -- err-- Climate Change -- err -- bad weather -- err -- cold weather.
Phinnie
Interestingly, in the comments following the Guardian piece, someone (apparently a Bangladeshi) says exactly what you do - that Indian damming and irrigation projects are reducing the flow-rate of the Ganges (Mrgrameen, 13 Nov 3.25am).
He suggests the visiting 'court' be used to punish India for this act.
BTW I was referring mainly to coastal inundation from storm surges, not flooding caused by excessive rainfall. The usual lie put about by pseudo-charities and activists is that 'rising sea level' is 'drowning' Bangladesh.
Judging from the Guardian report, the focus is being switched to a rather harder to prove increase in the storminess at sea. Just coincidence I imagine.
I wonder if the increase in SSTs caused by the Indian Brown Cloud (of black/brown carbon aerosols produced by cookstoves and smokestack industry) will be up in the dock alongside the UK's 1.84% contribution to annual CO2 emissions?
Elevated SSTs are after all supposed to increase the incidence and strength of storms at sea. Wouldn't it be ironic if it turned out - yet again - that they are going after the wrong aspect of anthropogenic warming?
What an offensive farce that Oxfam tribunal is! 'The West is guilty of killing Bangladeshi fishermen.' 'Why?' 'Because the sea has got rougher.' 'Who says?' 'Grieving Bangladeshi widows and professional activists from the Bangladesh Institute of Made-Up Numbers.' 'And these rougher seas are our fault, are they?' 'Yes.' 'Oh. OK, then. We'd better pay millions in damages.' The late, great Dr Heinz Kiosk would have been proud of them.
George Monbiot says that he first became concerned about climate change while he was working for Oxfam in Kenya. Grieving Turkana widows (their husbands had been killed in a cattle raid) told him that local droughts had become more frequent and more severe. This isn't what the record showed but George didn't bother checking that (and still hasn't). If illiterate and half-starved feuding nomads said that the climate had changed for the worse, it must have changed for the worse. George sallied forth to spread the word - and by spreading a climate legend, himself became a climate legend. Hurrah!
Clearly, the innate wisdom of picturesque and unhappy illiterates is still worshipped at Oxfam. The record shows that cyclones have become significantly less frequent in the Bay of Bengal in recent decades (and that, contrary to what Dr Ahsan Uddin Ahmed told the tribunal, there have been three cyclones there so far this year, not fifteen) but Oxfam doesn't care about the record. Wheel out the illiterate widows and the made-up numbers and hand round the begging bowl. We are all guilty! Hurrah!
As it happens, next month the FAO is co-hosting a conference on improving safety for fishermen in the Bay of Bengal. The prospectus for the conference says that there are no systematic records of fatalities among the region's fishermen but that if, as seems likely, deaths have become more frequent then that's because of three things: poor communications (radios, search-and-rescue), poor safety skills (not helped by levels of illiteracy that are shocking even by local standards - only 1 in ten Bangladeshi fishermen can read) and, perhaps most of all, too many fishermen chasing too few fish. 'With coastal resources dwindling, small-scale fishermen are moving offshore for their catch – using vessels not designed, constructed or equipped for offshore fishing. Result: hundreds of fishermen die every year leaving families destitute. Many drift and end up on alien land – and in jail. A harrowing experience for them, and for those who await them at home.'
Indeed. Very sad. And perhaps if Oxfam went back to doing what it does best - reducing and ameliorating poverty - there would be fewer drowned and jailed fishermen. But it has lost its way. It has become obsessed with climate change (almost all of its press releases now mention it) and prefers worthless grandstanding like this tribunal in Dhaka. It's so much easier and more fun to propose fantasy solutions to misdiagnosed problems than to do tedious stuff like lobbying for better infrastructure, better government and better education.
'I've had a great idea, Tristram! Let's put the wrong people on trial for a crime that didn't happen!'
'Tamara, that's too, too brilliant! Hurrah!'
'Hurrah!'
@Richard Drake
I am covered in embarrassment at my howler. Apologies to all concerned and due credit to Dellers. A more devastating (and apt) title it is difficult to imagine.
When ridicule comes through the door, credibility flees through the window. And 'Komment macht Frei' has long lost all of theirs IMO.
Vinnie Burgoo
Many thanks for the additional information.
The original article made me so angry that I've been gnawing at the edge of my desk ever since reading it.
You mention Monbiot and Kenya.
What George always misses is that Arap Moi ensured that Kenya was substantially deforested during his rule so that the timber could be sold to the evil West. Apparently he had a fondness for foreign currency.
This altered the hydrological cycle, which was further disturbed by a burgeoning population extracting groundwater at a furious rate.
It is now universally believed that any Kenyan drought is caused by AGW/CO2, but in fact this is more regional anthropogenic climate change that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with CO2.
Unless you are an activist like George et al.
hockey stick illusion ordered. thankyou ta.
Oh foolish Oxfam, you won’t save
The Bangladeshis on the wave,
By raising fines severe and steep,
But there’s an answer that is cheap.
Let’s give good charts and GSP
To those in peril on the sea!
BBD, you say in an earlier comment that rising SSTs are predicted to increase the frequency and strength of storms. It's worth nothing that this hasn't happened in the Bay of Bengal. Low-pressure areas have increased in frequency but fewer of them are turning into storms.
Also, in general isn't the prediction that storms will become less frequent but slightly more of them will be severe?
As for Kenya, any trend in effective drought would have to be due to land-use etc because all the models predict (and the records show) a decrease in meteorological droughts in the region.
Dreadnought: Very nice! (My favourite hymn.) I've tried to do a second verse but all I've come up with is a last line: 'Self-congratulatory'. And that would only work if you gave it very odd stresses.
So I give up.
So thats thirteen months since Richard Black of the BBC received the emails.....
Picking up on the Oxfam story, and as I'm on the move from my current flat some of my 'heavy stuff' ended up there as it was the nearest charity, I still don't understand quite what physical process they think is happening to cause 'stormier' weather off of the coast of Bangladesh. Sea temperature change is the only direct thing that I would think is relevant to 'storminess' and as pointed out land use change for other potential effects.
I'm well aware of where someone like Oxfam stands, but with overtly political stance just like these might just go and have to reclaim my donated heavy things and walk with it down the road to the local charities I prefer to support.
Oops! GSP?
Oh foolish Oxfam, you won’t save
The Bangladeshis on the wave,
By raising fines severe and steep,
But there’s an answer that is cheap.
Barometers from Negretti
For those in peril on the sea!
If losses in the bay of Bengal are due to severe weather then barometers would be of more use than navigational aids. The RNLI used to provide simple rugged barometers from Negretti and Zambra to fishermen. If some charity were to start a similar scheme I would willingly chip in.
http://www.bonds-nautical-antiques.co.uk/items-for-sale/rnli-dollond-barometer.html
(Vinny Burgoo - My reaction on reading the Guardian story was to utter the first two words of the second verse.)
Paul Hudson?
Stephen Schneider called him "Lead Author of the BBC". Drunk no doubt on a never-exhausted supply of IPCC arrogance.
I think it scans better in the GSP version Dreadnought. If I were you I'd claim artistic license, and say that it refers to Global Satellite Positioning.
Slightly off-topic: I make it about a week since there was a global-warming/climate-change story on the BBC news website (Science & Environment). Hitherto there has always been at least one. Sign of the times?
Slightly off-topic: I make it about a week since there was a global-warming/climate-change story on the BBC news website (Science & Environment). Hitherto there has always been at least one. Sign of the times?
I think they are keeping their heads down and hoping 'The Anniversary' blows over LOL
Cumbrian Lad
Positively the last version:
Oh foolish Oxfam, you won’t save
The Bangladeshis on the wave,
By raising fines severe and steep,
But there’s an answer that is cheap.
Just give barometers for free
To those in peril on the sea!
@ LA
Even the Grauniad must eventually realise that when 80%+ of their interested readership are unconvinced/actively hostile to this scam, it will soon be time to stop flogging the dead horse. Surely?
No, they just ban them until normal bias is resumed.
@Vinny
When Oxfam first started their aim was not lobbying for anything - it was actually providing food and medical help to famine-struck countries.
Sadly like most charities they have lost their way and prefer lobbying and grandstanding to practical action. Many are even fake charities - getting most of their income from the taxpayer. Paid by politicians to lobby for political action by the politicians.
Liberate the Liberator. Justice will not be done until the Liberator is publicly lauded as the Saviour of Science.
================
Vinnie says:
Very interesting observation about the increase in lows in the BoB without a corresponding increase in storms. Can I ask for the source? It's not that I doubt you; far from it. I'm always on the lookout for good sources and if you don't ask...
Can you provide a source for the decrease in Kenyan drought (and a time-scale)? Are we talking Palmer index here?
My understanding is that yes, fewer storms in a warming world because the thermocline between equator and poles becomes shallower. But the warmer SSTs mean more energy in play and more powerful cyclones ('hurricanes' in N Atlantic).
However, the alarmists rather got ahead of themselves post-Katrina, and as readers of Pielke Jnr will know, the insurance industry scented gold (pecunia non olet - bollocks!) and went after it with all limbs shoveling frantically.
Frankly, I get a little confused sometimes: more storms, fewer storms, fewer more energetic storms... ?
Tres bon Dreadnought. I shall spend the rest of the evening humming the tune!
Vinnie
'thermocline' - sorry, I should really have said 'thermal gradient'.
'What the papers missed'
Following on from the Muir Russell et al evidence session, the Commons Science and Technology have had some more tasty fish to fry- the story of the mountainous pigs ear response to the mole hill volcanic ash saga. uncorrected minutes now out:
A sample:
'Q110 Graham Stringer: Let me finish. They had no idea what they were doing. They themselves didn’t have the information and they were closing airports down for six hours at a time because that just happened to be how the computer turned out its results from the rubbish information that had been put in. That’s extraordinary. That is just simply extraordinary.
Ray Elgy: No. That’s not a fair reflection of the actual events.
Q111 Graham Stringer: But it is the description that you have just given to us?
Ray Elgy: No. What I am saying is that there is a model that was being used by the Met Office. That model has been used on many other occasions and is constantly validated, updated and corrected. It’s been compared with other VAAC charts-
Q112 Graham Stringer: But it’s not the model I’m questioning just at the moment. It’s the rubbish that’s going into the model. The NATS evidence given to this Committee says that they have no confidence in the information going in.
Ray Elgy: The input to the model was questionable. The major issue was the source data, the source input, i.e. the amount of ash that was being generated at the volcano itself. That was recognised and that is why other inputs were put into the model, such as validating the output against satellite imagery and against ground-based LIDARs.
Q113 Graham Stringer: How were the satellite readings standardised? What were they standardised against?
Ray Elgy: Again, there are limitations with the way in which satellite imagery can be used. So all of those-
Q114 Graham Stringer: So more rubbish information going in?
Ray Elgy: No.'
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmselect/cmsctech/uc498-ii/uc49801.htm
Scotland will be cast adrift soon, no nuclear stations or military bases on its land in 10 to 15 years.Left alone to freeze its balls off, i know you live there bish, but they are only getting what they wished for. The socialist republic of scotland, coundnt happen to nicer place!
After reading the SNP government's position in the article ("Scotland can be 100% renewable), I have come to the conclusion that the lights never went on in Scotland in the first place.
"The politicians can't say they didn't know." -
Oh yes they can!
You just wait and see.
I presume that China, being the largest contributor to CO2 emissions, would be happy to accept the OXFAM proposal to fine the biggest polluters.
Latest Guardian article.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/nov/14/climate-change-science-email-scandal
Thought the best advice was 'When in a hole stop digging' LOL
BBD, for Bay of Bengal storms see:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/4016m6745432223m/
(abstract; paper paywalled)
www.imdpune.gov.in/ncc_rept/Met_Monograph%20No.%203_2009.pdf
(full paper)
'Can you provide a source for the decrease in Kenyan drought (and a time-scale)?'
Probably not. I got carried away. I was really talking about Northern Kenya rather than the whole country, and even in Northern Kenya I think there's been no trend rather than a decrease.
And I see that I've conflated two stories. It was the BBC's Richard Black who got all gooey about native Turkana meteorological lore (and his informant was a 'large imposing chief, with the face of Samuel L Jackson and the voice of a giant', not a grieving widow). Monbiot said that in 1992 it was Oxfam that told him that the climate was changing for the worse in Turkanaland. Or perhaps he meant that working for Oxfam there gave him the opportunity to decide for himself that the climate was changing. He wasn't clear. Either way - Sorry, George. I misrepresented the nature of your error.
Right. Kenyan drought. Historical and projected trends. Let's have a look.
Projections are fairly easy to provide but a bit coarse-grained. (The IPCC is particularly weak in this regard. About all it has to offer are a couple of fleeting mentions in AR4 WG2's Section 9.4.1 and Table 9.5. The relevant part of the former deals with population-adjusted water-stress rather than meteorological drought and its cited source is an 'initial assessment' done on a global, not regional, scale; the relevant part of the latter is almost comically uninformative.) The best sources are the maps in various studies projecting PDSI etc. They show Kenya - and particularly Turkanaland or thereabouts - getting more moisture in a warmer world. Even the scary and (thus?) widely cited 2006 Burke et al paper (which Burke and Brown revised to be much less scary in a mostly ignored paper a couple of years later) showed a slightly rosy future for that part of the world. Here are a few such papers:
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/JHM544.1
(Burke et al 2006)
http://www.springerlink.com/content/nh10377k006x6141/fulltext.pdf
(Sheffield and Wood, 2007)
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wcc.81/pdf
(Dai, 2010 - a review of PDSI and similar studies)
Perhaps more useful, though it deals with annual rainfall rather than drought indices:
http://www.knmi.nl/africa_scenarios/East_Africa/region4/
Links from there give a good picture of what various models say about rainfall in various parts of East Africa. They also show historical rainfall. (Note the big bump in the 1960s. That bump was even more pronounced in Turkanaland - which would explain Richard Black's picturesque interlocutor's insistence that drought had increased recently if annual rainfall were a reliable measure of seasonal drought incidence and severity. But it isn't. As studies have shown. But I've gone on long enough. And/or I have to eat something before I keel over.)
Vinny
Many thanks for all this info. Fascinating.
I can’t reciprocate in anything like the length or detail, but I see that you link to Sheffield and Wood (2007). Have you had a look at Sheffield et al. (2009)?
This is a large-scale drought study looking at severity/area/duration over the period 1950 – 2000.
It makes for interesting reading. The authors find no trend globally for the period, and although droughts were more frequent and severe in Africa during the early 1970s and mid-1980s there is also no trend for the full period (Fig 1).
Download full paper here:
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.167.2695&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Not to worry about conflating Monbiot and Black – a forgivable enough error under the circumstances.
For a less forgivable error, how about the recent ASA decision to allow the Oxfam poster claiming that climate change is killing people?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/oct/27/oxfam-climate-change-ad-cleared
Obviously the ASA failed to check the provenance of the original WHO figures (modelled projections, not real-world). Nor did it examine the ‘analysis’ carried out by the mercifully now-defunct Global Humanitarian Forum which merely doubled the WHO number (yes, hard to believe, isn’t it?).
Nevertheless, this effing tripe all that Oxfam’s position rests on. And the ASA has the gall to call it a ‘consensus of scientists’.