El Niño/La Niña

Because the of our significant "rain event" this week, and the fires in Tahoe, I thought I'd look up some information on El Niño/La Niña to see how much longer this crap might last. What I stumbled on, however, is an interesting homework assignment that a student turned in on this very subject:

Coming in like El Niño!
by Jeremy Lavine
Period 3

El Niño is spanish. It is the spanish word for child. Like all things spanish, it is dangerous. It kills people and burns down trees.

Warm water usually builds up around australia. But not anymore with el niño. El Niño moves the warm water from australia somewhere else, namely to other places. Where are these other places? These are places that also have water, but water that is usually not as warm as the warm water El Niño moves to these said other places. These other places are to the east. Of the water.

In Peru, they have many names for many things. One of the things they have names for is for people who go fishing, go fishing to make a living. If we had a word for this kind of people that word would be "fisherman". But we don't. In Peru, they have different names for things than we do in America. They call that kind of people "pescadores". That's Spanish. That's what they speak in Peru. When El Niño comes, these "pescadores" can't catch any fish. El Niño is caused when the Peruvian gods get angry. They have been angy for millions of years and have made El Niño for millions of years. Many many moons ago, the peruvians committed human sacrifice to satiate their gods and end the flood that was caused by El Niño. In today's modern dog-eat-dog work-a-day world of scientists, diplomats, McSalad Shakers, and George Bush Jr., we no longer have access to such solutions. We are too proud. We will not commit human sacrifice. We refuse to satiate the Peruvian gods. Thus, they remain angry and keep killing us and burning down our trees with El Niño.

Instead of satiating the gods, many of these "scientists" have tried to control El Niño with "science". They put up expensive fish-attracting-buoys that run on flashlight batteries. Imagine, fighting the power of the gods with flashlight batteries! Needless to say, this didn't work and everyone died.

The best part of this particular paper from Jeremy is the note that his teacher wrote at the bottom of the page: