It was an odd call for compassion from a terrorist who has proudly claimed responsibility for mass murder and who Western intelligence agencies say is still active in plotting terrorist attacks. But two new audio recordings from Osama bin Laden, released Friday and Saturday, urging help for victims of floods he said were produced by climate change, were only the latest of his wide-ranging, idiosyncratic commentaries on current events. 'We are in need of a big change in the method of relief work, because the number of victims is great due to climate changes in modern times,' bin Laden said, in the first of the messages posted to jihadist websites. He recalled his own experience with farming in Sudan, called for creating a 'unique relief agency,' and described watching a father in Pakistan holding his two young children above chest-high flood water, according to a translation by the private SITE Intelligence Group in Washington. The recordings, with similar content, were accompanied by video images of disasters and a smiling portrait of bin Laden, 53, the founder of al-Qaida. Since escaping American troops invading Afghanistan in 2001, bin Laden has issued some 30 messages, in audio, video or electronic text. Intelligence officials say they believe they are passed from hand to hand repeatedly to obscure any trail back to his hiding place, presumed to be in the border region of Pakistan and Afghanistan. The pronouncements sometimes brag of past plots or warn of new ones, and most of his messages attract only fleeting media attention, with the focus on bombastic threats. His less menacing comments, like the latest calling for disaster relief, appear intended to show that his concerns extend beyond attacks on those he sees as enemies of Islam. 'After 9/11 he came to see himself as a world leader,' said Steven N. Simon, an expert on terrorism at the Council on Foreign Relations. 'He thinks he can speak from a kind of Olympian stance. Plus, every time he pops up it implies a poke in the eye to the United States,' where three presidents have vowed, and failed, to capture or kill him. Analysts study the rambling messages for clues to his whereabouts, and the releases give clues about what he is reading. Wherever he is hiding, he follows the news closely. A 2007 message carped that Democratic control of Congress had not ended the war in Iraq (he blamed 'big corporations'), complained that the Bush administration was not moving against global warming and commended the writings of Noam Chomsky, the leftist professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In eight messages last year, he remarked on the tensions between Georgia and Russia, praised Jimmy Carter's book on the Palestinians and cited two American professors' book on the pro-Israel lobby.His mention of a book purportedly by a former Central Intelligence Agency officer which he called 'The Apology of a Hired Killer' set off a guessing game -- including at the CIA -- for which of several books with similar titles he might have had in mind. This year, a January message discussed climate change, even referring by last name to James E. Hansen, a NASA scientist who has warned of global warming. In March, in a brief statement directed to Americans, he warned that executing Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and other prisoners accused of planning 9/11 would prompt al-Qaida to kill any Americans in its custody. Lawrence Wright, who studied bin Laden for his book, 'The Looming Tower,' said the pronouncements on climate, irrigation and agriculture in the latest recordings reflected bin Laden's work as an avid farmer in Sudan in the early 1990s. 'He had a seed laboratory,' Wright said. 'He went around Khartoum showing off his sunflowers and saying they should be in the Guinness Book of World Records.' But he added: 'It's a little galling to hear bin Laden lecturing on flood relief when al-Qaida has never done any socially constructive work, but has only sowed chaos,' Wright said. Bin Laden has occasionally taunted President Barack Obama, whom he accused last year of planting 'new seeds to increase hatred for and revenge against America' by pressuring Pakistan to move against militants. During his presidential campaign, Obama had vowed in one debate, 'We will kill bin Laden.' But as president, keenly aware that intelligence agencies have few clues to the al-Qaida leader's whereabouts, he has not publicly repeated the pledge. Still, finding bin Laden remains a top American goal, said Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top commander in Afghanistan, in an August appearance on the NBC News program 'Meet the Press.' 'I think capturing or killing Osama bin Laden is still a very, very important task for all of those who are engaged in counterterrorism around the world,' Petraeus said. But he cautioned: 'I don't think anyone knows where Osama bin Laden is.' Nearly a decade after the Sept. 11 attacks, bin Laden remains a potent symbolic figure. But American officials believe, based on intercepted communications from second- and third-tier al-Qaida operatives, that bin Laden still has a hand in shaping the network's violent strategy. The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the intelligence about the alleged plots is classified, said he might have encouraged a plan for attacks of the kind carried out in Mumbai, India, in 2008 in European cities that has kept security officials on alert in recent weeks. 'There's reason to believe that bin Laden has become more active in encouraging his terrorist associates in Pakistan, as well as al-Qaida affiliates in other parts of the world, to step up their attacks against Western targets,' one American official said. 'He's delivered that message to them.' 