Comments on: La Niña is dead – and good riddance

By: Wrong

Wrong — Thu, 10 May 2012 08:28:50 +0000

It’s gonna be a threepeat La Nina.

By: Messier Tidy Upper

Messier Tidy Upper — Wed, 09 May 2012 11:55:23 +0000

I am very happy to see a very unwelcome visitor go away: La Niña is dead.

Nah, La Nina ain’t dead, BA! She’s just taking a break and letting her brother run the weather show for a few years! She’ll be back eventually – like her or not.

By: Alan Couch

Alan Couch — Wed, 09 May 2012 08:43:53 +0000

La Nina has been great – we have had a decade of drought down here in Australia before that – please don’t disparage La Nina!

By: Ythaca

Ythaca — Wed, 09 May 2012 06:32:50 +0000

@ dlanod All the grape growers near us and a lot of the other crop growers lost crops just prior to harvest. It would be nice if we didn’t have to have drought or flood. Something in between would be nice.
I think Australian weather patterns are actually an argument against there being a god. No god would design weather like this!

By: dlanod

dlanod — Wed, 09 May 2012 05:06:01 +0000

@Ythaca Speaking to my mother-in-law (lives in western Queensland, home of plenty of the floods) overall the rains (even the floods) of La Nina were much better for farmers than El Nino. Yes, they lost some crops to the deluges, but they also got some bumper crops out of land that was previously marginal at best.

By: Ythaca

Ythaca — Wed, 09 May 2012 04:02:22 +0000

It’s so nice to be able to get the washing dry – even as the days get colder. But the rain was good to a point, it would be nice if we could get rain without it drowning the place. In Australia it seems it never rains but it pours…

@redartifice – what of all the farmers who have lost what had look like good crops to too much rain. It was not just the two freak floods there was far more damage than just that.

By: redartifice

redartifice — Wed, 09 May 2012 02:19:21 +0000

Apart from two freak Floods, La Nina is pretty good for us in Australia.

By: Jeff Keogh

Jeff Keogh — Wed, 09 May 2012 01:29:42 +0000

@omeoide

Nothing at all wrong with that. You’ll note that that is what I have done, so I take no issue with lauding local benefits.

Please read Phil’s post again. It speaks of La Nina as a universally negative phenomenon, and that is what I take issue with. (And ‘take issue’ is too strong a term, really, for what I intend).

But let’s be honest here. La Nina is a net positive for a greater percentage of the global population, and El Nino a net negative. So to applaud its departure is Amerocentric. That’s nice if you’re talking to a fellow American, but the internet is available to the rest of the world, you know.

By: Muzz

Muzz — Wed, 09 May 2012 01:23:01 +0000

He did have nothing good to say about it, on at least a trans-pacific scale, regardless of his opinion being local based. It is worth pointing out that la Nina conditions in Australia have been, on the whole, very good and for much of the country calling it life saving is not an exaggeration.

By: omeoide

omeoide — Wed, 09 May 2012 00:55:59 +0000

@Jeff Keogh – What’s wrong with allowing local consequences of global phenomena affect one’s opinion of them? What’s really the big difference between “dislik[ing] the dry conditions” and “applaud[ing] La Ninas departure?” So you like the local conditions brought by La Niña. Lament its passing. Tell us you do. Correct his facts if you think he’s wrong about the costs/benefits of heavy rains in Australia.

But don’t say he shouldn’t feel happy to see it pass for his own local reasons, or be expressive about it. There’s no need to assume its coming from some hidden imperialist bias or a blindness to global experience and opinion.