SINCE the run up to the end of last year, climate change has been blamed pretty much for everything. The great floods and the disasters that struck the country were attributed to climate change. This year, with climate change still a distant possibility, much of everything is now being blamed on a weather event that is right here right now—El Niño.

The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services (Pagasa) advised the public in January that 2010 will be an El Niño year. The El Niño, properly the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO, is a quasi-periodic (i.e. varies on the average from three to seven years) warming of the surface waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean coupled with the changes in surface pressure in the tropical western Pacific. This affects precipitation patterns and temperatures. The El Niño in the Philippines typically spells less typhoons, a shorter rainy season and weak monsoon activity.

The numbers we deal with everyday can range from the simple to the staggering. When confronted with issues concerning very large numbers, images and analogies become important tools for people to grasp and understand the issue at hand.

San Roque spill blamed for floods
By Nikko Dizon
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 01:23:00 10/13/2009

MANILA, Philippines—Water equivalent to a billion balikbayan boxes tumbling at the rate of 5,000 cartons per second hit 10 hapless towns in Pangasinan province on Thursday when the San Roque dam spillways were opened amid a storm drenching and swirling floodwaters, scientists say.

Corazon Aquino was laid to rest yesterday.

Through a massive outpouring of people in the streets, the Filipino people ousted the regime of the dictator Marcos in February 1986. The event, popularly known as the People Power Revolution, was the culmination of years of mobilizations, protests, strikes and welgang bayan (people’s strike) that preceeded the fortituous date.

In November 2002, the Supreme Court ordered Meralco to return billions of pesos to its customers stemming from an overcharge of 16.7 centavos that the electricity distribution company collected since February 1994. The initial pronouncement of the distribution company was to quote a much lower figure than the accumulated excess collections. Members of Agham quickly turned to simple arithmetic to compute the amount to be returned and announced that for the period of 1994 to 2002, a total of over P29 billion was to be returned to Meralco consumers.

During the Ayala rally last week against the House of Representatives’ Con-Ass resolution, the Computer Professionals Union (CPU) organized a cell phone-to-Twitter link for texters to be able to update and participate in the protest event. Twitter is a micro-blogging tool that allows users to post 140-character messages called “tweets” to keep fellow users updated on any topic of conversation under the sun. “Hashtags” are keywords with the “#” symbol affixed that are included in a tweet used to indicate what topic the message is about.