Bishop Hill Joe Biden, ambulance chaser
Sep 23, 2015 Climate: WG2 ;)
Despite the fact that the Sahel has experienced relatively benign weather conditions for many years now and despite the fact that there has been a striking and well-documented greening of the region, attempts to link the wars and strife that still bedevil the region to the climate are still being made.
And the people spinning these yarns are often those who should know better. Last weekend US vice-president Joe Biden claimed that the Darfur conflict, which started more than ten years ago, is "all about" climate.
You think there’s a migration problem in Syria? Watch what happens when hundreds of millions of people in the south, south Asia are displaced trying to find new territory to live. Look what’s happened with Darfur. Darfur is all about climate change. It’s about arable land being evaporating, figuratively and literally, and warring over land.”
Unfortunately for Mr Biden's hypothesis, this review of Sahelian climate by UEA's Nick Brooks takes a different view:
- 20th century changes in climate probably not unusual...
- Darfur conflict from 2003 at time of climatic improvement
- Earlier droughts may have helped set stage, but no climate change “trigger”
I think we can conclude that Mr Biden is engaging in a bit of ambulance chasing. How low the office of VPOTUS has fallen!
Reader Comments (18)
Ah, the old dear is just plagiarizing from the Green Blob.
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Joe Biden has form.
Read Radley Balko's book about the failed 'War on Drugs'. At every stage of that gigantic sociological mis-step there is one name that keeps popping up, again and again. Regardless of the administration in power, Biden is always there, front and centre, calling for more laws, more cops, more money, more prisons.
And now, standing at the right hand of a black president who is supposed to be helping his fellow blacks, is a man who has done unspeakable damage to the US and particularly its black citizens.
It's beyond parody. The man's a monstrous hypocrite.
If that happens, then they will mostly die, Mr Biden. And it could, possibly, happen, the next time a severe natural drought occurs in that part of the world.
The best defence is increased material prosperity and financial security. And an improved infrastructure to deliver food from where it is available in the world to where there is a need. The best proven way to do that is economic development along Western lines, powered by cheap energy. The cheapest source of that on a large scale is, and will remain so for a generation at least, coal. What they do not need, is dewy-eyed Cider-with-Rosie environmentalist types slathering twaddle about carbon dioxide.
You should go to Paris in November/December, Mr Biden. There, a senior Indian delegate will tell you the same thing. And then they will, in very polite officialese, tell President Obama to take his global-warming leg(acy), turn it sideways, and... well, you can guess the rest.
It's what is to be expected because if the geezer came out and said x conflict is all due to a certain religion of peace then the collective heads of the left would explode!
Mailman
Is stress from a difficult climate the sole cause of conflict in Darfur?
Obviously not. The timing doesn't work.
Is stress from a difficult climate a contributing cause of conflict in Darfur?
Probably. Subsistence farming is very dependent on the weather. Prosperity reduces the risk of conflict as people have more to lose.
Is stress from a difficult climate a necessary cause of conflict in Darfur?
Probably not. There are many stresses other than weather. The rise of an extremist ideology blended with ethnic tensions has been enough to cause conflict throughout history,
But that nuanced approach is hard to convey in a political speech. Politicians like simplicity.
Because they are mainly talking through journalists, who have to be expert on every subject (and so are expert on none).
Haha. Both figuratively and literally? Wow.
"How low the office of VPOTUS has fallen!"
Well, considering the previous two incumbents, Cheney and Gore, the level was already sub-zero.
Not a fan of Biden, but I think much of the blame must lie with his advisors who couldn't find their own bottoms without the aid of a mirror.
Looks like he's caught something off Obama. Just goes to show how far America has fallen.
Sahel report by Nick Brooks at UEA
Good to see signs of intelligent life, emerging out of the Climategate chaos and conflict at the University of East Anglia. Climate Science is a treatable condition, but requires deprivation of money, and removal of the oxygen of publicity.
A bit like Joe Biden syndrome really.
I'm sure you guys on the east side of the pond can well appreciate how hard it is to find a politician who isn't off the wall on something that is important to you. Stuff like this grinds my stomach, but I, like I suppose some others, have to take into account whether he could ever really do anything to support this bizarre view, balanced against the hazards some of his possible competitors may pose were they to find themselves in high office.
I feel, maybe like Geoff Chambers, while in great agreement with the views expressed here on the magnitude (if any) of the threat of the human component in the changing climate, much less threatened by the potential of the mega-maniacal drive from the Left to control every iota of our lives.
maybe i could make this clearer, but this hasn't been a good day so far.
john
Don't worry, it's only Joe (and he isn't president.... yet)
And Then There's The Pope, with apologies to Ken Rice
"How low the office of VPOTUS has fallen!" The classic description is that "it ain't worth a bucket of warm piss".
Biden is the "big idea guy" behind the disaster in Iraq. It was his idea that Iraq should be effectively subdivided into Sunni, Kurd and Shia zones with no long term outside peace keepers.
So of course he and his other "big idea guys" would blame their failures on the weather.
Dearieme @ 8.28pm: The author was John Nance Garner, FDR's vice president 1933-1941 when he ran against FDR for the democratic nomination and lost. On his 95th birthday 22.11.1963 he was visited by President John Kennedy on his way to Dallas. I expect Cactus Jack Garner wished him all the best for the future.
Well, he could be kind of right about Darfur. The conflict there is basically a classical nomadic pastoralist against sedentary agriculturist (the Darfuri) conflict, and it may well be sparked by the fact there is in fact greater resource to control in Darfur, so it is worth investing in fighting for it. But he is only right in a way that undermines the thesis he is promoting.
In fact, I can't think of any wars caused by scarcity at all - people in scarcity tend to co-operate rather than fight - and it is in fact attempts to control expanded wealth that is likely to be the major economic cause for war (and indeed, for most revolutions - short-term hardships may be the ignition, but they are normally experienced as middle classes or peasantry are getting richer). So it appears that Mr Biden is both scientifically and historically illiterate; bit of an issue for an ideas man perhaps.
And the fact climate changes causes wars by making land more productive (no doubt with technological changes helping) and causing people to try and sieze the additional wealth doesn't really work as well as a rallying call, apart from perhaps for free marketeers who have a system to distribute the wealth effectively.
The status of VPOTUS in the USA has always been at a fairly low level. The fall in the status of POTUS has been much greater recently and far more noticeable and significant.