[ExI] Oz Big Dry

[Damien Broderick]

At 09:50 AM 5/6/2007 +0100, BillK quoth:
>On 5/4/07, Damien Broderick wrote:
>
> > Almost everywhere you travel these days, people
> > are talking about their weather ­ and how it has
> > changed. Nowhere have I found this more true,
> > though, than in Australia, where "the big dry," a
> > six-year record drought, has parched the Aussie
> > breadbasket
>
>APRIL 02, 2007
>Desert lake springs to life
>By      Dan Nolan in Lake Eyre, Australia
>
>
>A rare phenomenon underway in Australia's biggest and driest lake is
>part of a change in weather systems that scientists say could end the
>country's worst drought in 100 years.
>
>
>Scientists believe the changes may herald an end to Australia's record drought
>That rain came with the demise of El Nino, the dry weather system
>dreaded by Australian farmers. It occurs when the waters of the
>Pacific Ocean are cooler causing reduced evaporation and therefore
>less rain clouds in northern Australia.
>
>But climate scientists believe it may now be switching to a wetter
>system known as La Nina ­ a system not seen in Australia since 2000,
>the year Lake Eyre last flooded.

Yeah, such are the vagaries of climate. But 
having rain pissing down in the tropics and 
deserts of Oz doesn't automatically mean that 
"the breadbasket" is equally inundated, any more 
than copious rain in Mexico offers much relief to a drought in Canada.

If your implication is that it's dodgy to link 
the recent unpleasantness with human-induced 
global warming rather than natural cycles, I agree, of course.

Damien Broderick