Everyone who’s anyone is predicting a monster El Niño this year and, of course, while an El Niño cycle is not climate change to everyone who’s anyone it’s nothing but climate change. As for instance in the New York Times early May headline “A Strong El Niño May Be Coming. Global Warming Is Changing Its Effects.” And some might wonder how they can be certain about the effects of something they can only speculate might happen. But it’s how things work in the wacky world of climate, as Reuters in June did it too: “A strong El Nino may be imminent. Climate change will make its effects worse”. Which prompts various further sarcastic thoughts including how is it that for three years we were told a horrifying hurricane season was coming because climate, and then when things were quiet suddenly climate doesn’t matter. And this year we’re told a quiet season is coming which, judging by their record, means people in Florida should begin stocking up on plywood. And when they’re wrong what will they say? We’re all going to die, of course, including from, it seems, the El Niño from hell.

Although we note that when pressed for details the certain impacts become decidedly more speculative. For instance David Gelles in another New York Times piece, this time a “Climate Forward” item from later in May, said:

“Over the years, El Niño patterns have led to intense flooding in some parts of the world, while other areas, including some of the planet’s most important agricultural lands, face drought. Already, countries are preparing for the possibility of food shortages. While it’s not possible to know exactly how this El Niño will affect global weather patterns, experts are making dire predictions about what the next couple years might bring.”

So we don’t know if it will happen or what the effects will be but we are certain it will be dire. Look, just stop. Predictions, especially dire ones, are about what will happen, not what might. And if El Niño has been infamous for causing foul weather since long before mankind incinerated the planet, what would be unusual, let alone proof of said incineration, if it did so yet again?

El Niño and its sister El Niña are part of the “ENSO“ or “El Niño-Southern Oscillation” that has been going on since long before Henry Ford invented climate, indeed for at least a quarter of a billion years so the notion that we recently destabilized it is somewhat implausible. But as usual the scientists who say want to weigh in, as in Reuters’:

“The El Nino weather pattern is forming, and is expected to cause extreme weather around the world this year, the WMO said on Tuesday. Scientists say climate change will make its impact especially severe...That higher baseline supercharges the effects of El Nino - enabling higher temperature spikes, more intense droughts, heatwaves, rains, and the resulting disasters, including bushfires, floods and crop failures. ‘When we get an El Nino, because of the underlying climate change ... these things become more intensified and they’re more impactful,’ said Piers Forster, Professor of Physical Climate Change at the University of Leeds.”

Although to be fair in this case the scientist said rather little, while the reporter did most of the saying. And neither provided evidence that previous El Niños were less impactful, for instance the one in 1877-78. Or the ones that hammered ancient Egypt. Or is evidence for losers in our Brave New World that has such science in it?

It seems so. The Economist joins in the fun with:

“The coming El Niño could be the strongest ever recorded/ That is bad news for a warming world”

But it’s not news unless it actually happens. “Could be” is not “read all about it”. Moreover, The Economist babbles:

“El Niño is not caused by climate change. But the two phenomena amplify each other’s effects (see chart).”

And then there’s a chart showing that El Niños have varied in strength since 1990, plus a “Forecast” big one not an actual. And then this admission, or statement:

“The El Niños of 1997-98 and 2015-16 caused havoc in eastern and southern Africa, Central America and Oceania. Similarly baleful effects are possible this time, too.”

So it’s not something new, it’s the way it’s always been and thus proof of something new? How does that work?

It helps to ignore evidence. A June 19 “The Climate Issue” newsletter The Economist apparently can’t manage to post online hollered:

“NOAA’s forecasters put the odds of the event being ‘very strong’ by northern-hemisphere winter at 63%; some models suggest sea-surface temperatures in the part of the Pacific that sits at the heart of El Niños could climb more than 3°C above the long-run average, which would be without precedent in the 75 years of record-keeping. Like the El Niño of 2023-24, it will be boosted by the effects of global warming. Some scientists believe the El Niño will make this the hottest year ever; many think it will have that effect on 2027 (the effects on global temperature tend to lag behind the El Niño proper).”

Now in addition to it being all speculation, rather than something that did happen and thus got into what used to be quaintly called “the news”, the newsletter admits that we have only 75 years of “record-keeping”, a term evidently here meaning of the modern mathematical sort since if we know about droughts 3000 years ago it’s because someone recorded them. Which also means that “hottest year ever” isn’t a term meaning hottest year ever, just hottest year in the last three-quarters of a century or some such. There could well have been a scorching El Niño in the Medieval or Roman Warm Periods, or the Holocene Climatic Optimum, producing a scorching year, and The Economist would dump it down the memory hole by treating “ever” as a synonym for “since World War II.” It’s how it works.

Thus a classic piece of gooblahoy from the Associated Press in general, and from chronic climate offender Seth Borenstein in particular, said:

“Experts said the El Nino, a natural warming cycle, should further heat a globe already warming from fossil fuel pollution and will likely turbocharge extreme weather across the planet. Meteorologists forecast it will rival – or exceed – a record El Nino that began in 1997 and helped trigger billions of dollars in damage from heat waves, floods, droughts, tornadoes and wildfires.”

So you admit they were just as bad before climate change changed the climate, although admittedly playing fast and loose with when the catastrophe now engulfing us and about to engulf us already engulfed us? Then toss that evidence away as for losers. What happened in 1997 might happen again for the first time. Got it?

Well, that earlier New York Times item really gave the game away with its subhed before you even got to the tendentious prose, saying that the past is no guide to the future so we can just make stuff up and yell:

“As the planet warms, past episodes of the natural weather phenomenon may no longer be a reliable guide of how the next one plays out.”

Wait, we thought they were certain about the effects. But of course they aren’t. And that “may no longer” admits that actually El Niños are natural phenomena and that there’s no evidence that they’ve become climate-related because climate is all bad and everything bad is climate, before saying they’ll become climate related because climate is all bad and everything bad is climate. Unless they don’t because the whole thing is speculation.