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To: Sergio R. Mejia who wrote (7956)	2/28/1998 11:41:00 AM
From: Sergio R. Mejia	Respond to of 116764

Smart money's betting the farm on El Ni¤o Pizarro did well by his El Ni¤o, and the smart money is looking to do well by ours. The smart money is buying futures on every food crop in North America. A wet spring and a parched summer and prices will shoot over the moon. Whistle up an ill wind and the smart money will bask in it. February 28, 1998 The Toronto Star By Slinger Smart money's betting the farm on El Ni¤o IN THE YEARS immediately following 1524, Pizarro led triumphant expeditions along the northwest coast of South America. These provided a strong base for his invasion of the empire of the Inca. He was a bit of a case, Francisco Pizarro - his ambition and greed were so immense that other conquistadors claimed he gave them a bad name. His ultimate achievement was the destruction, through wholesale rape, barefaced deceit, and cold-blooded murder, of one of the most intriguing civilizations the world has known. Of course, the world Pizarro represented barely knew it at all before then. Pizarro was lucky. The coast where he splashed ashore is in normal times a desert, and he and his vandals would have been driven away or would have died if an odd thing hadn't happened. It rained. It rained, and the desert bloomed, and the thriving vegetation kept Pizarro, his men, and their horses in fighting trim. El Ni¤o wasn't born yesterday. Although it always seems to come as news to us. Unseasonal tornadoes across Florida jostle unprecedented floods in California for the headlines, threatening the prominence of Paul Martin's budget and Bill Clinton's calisthenics in the Middle East and the Oval Office. Somehow we fail to connect the dots - we do sort of, but we don't really - with the Great Ice Storm of '98 in Eastern Ontario and Quebec. The long, cold dark, the shattered forests, the hallowed hydro-electric grid unravelling like a cat's cradle on a child's fingers. And way up north, up beyond Sioux Lookout, the ice roads melt more than a month ahead of the scheduled thaw, with the Bearskin Lake First Nation still far from re-provisioned. While hereabouts - this month just ending? - February was invented to separate the hairy-chested Torontonian from the sniffling lamb. You call what we had a February? Pass the gin, but go easy on the tonic. We're running low. Before Vankleek Hill froze into national prominence; before we enjoyed those satisfying pictures of turistas doing the quick-step through snowy San Miguel d'Allende and dreary old Toronto was transformed lock, stock market and TTC into a tropical paradise; long before Florida and California (tornadoes in southern California were unheard of until now); long before the Bearskin Lake ice worms boiled in their nests, the disaster prophet at the Environmental News Network (http://www.enn.com) was giddy with anticipation, cackling - this was back in September - ''batten down the hatches and prepare for the climate event of the century!'' Find out what he likes in the daily double and bet the farm. The previous ''climate event of the century''? El Ni¤o of 1982-83. Total costs worldwide, $18 billion. The El Ni¤o of 1997 wasn't quite a contender, but it boasted the record-high average global temperature. The El Ni¤o of 1990 to 1995 had newsy aspects, but none as memorable as its having been the longest ever. This current El Ni¤o's tally (apart from the foregoing) is championship quality. Unspeakable heat and temperature fluctuations in Peru, Colombia and Chile threaten epidemics of malaria and dengue fever. Five to 10 times the normal rainfall in Kenya, 1,200 dead. Brush fires reminiscent of Los Angeles in Sydney, Australia, thousands evacuated, dozens of homes burned. Drought in Indonesia, drought in Papua New Guinea. New Zealand deluged one minute, bone-dry the next - crop and livestock losses exceed $150 million. Most severe heatwave of the century in central Asia. The monsoon entirely out of whack in Pakistan and India. (Fire and ice. And all the world huddled in houses of straw and houses of twigs waiting for the next blow. El Ni¤o might be the agent of destruction - if El Ni¤o don't get you, global warming will - but some hold that the root cause is the oldest one of all. The original one. Sin. And if that's the case, then it must be something you're doing. I've been good as gold.) It ain't over yet. El Ni¤o winters are regularly followed by lousy springs. Are regularly followed by infernal summers. Already where the ice storm ravaged, the prediction - it was in this very newspaper - is wildfires, all that fallen brush combusting spontaneously. Then what? A tsunami? Pizarro did well by his El Ni¤o, and the smart money is looking to do well by ours. The smart money is buying futures on every food crop in North America. A wet spring and a parched summer and prices will shoot over the moon. Whistle up an ill wind and the smart money will bask in it. ------------------- Slinger's column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday.