What can be done about rising temperature? DE 17 May, 2015

What can we do for the rising temperature?

 We in Sabah had been tested and challenged daily by the worsening climate even in land once below the wind for a few decades already since the 1990s, but all the effort to address the climate change or better temperature rise had fallen on deaf ears of most residents.

 Now we are told “Urban heat making KK real hot” (Daily Express May 3, 2015). In that report by Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) Climatologist Dr. Ramzah Dambul said “From 1995 to 2004 the average temperature ranged from 26 degrees Celsius to 28 degree Celsius. But over the last few months, it has peaked at 33 degree Celsius around 33 degree Celsius around 2 pm” I think what had prompted the Climatologist to come to the press is that in the first few months in Sabah little rainfall had been observed with rising temperature especially in the midday.

 I asked God why not much rain the last few months and the reply is that God would only rain selectively because the majority would not change even is He brought us much rain. So we can go on praying for rain and then reflect ourselves in the prevailing environment.

 What is God speaking to us now? What is wrong with our lives? What have we treated with his Creation of a majestic rainforest in Sabah and also in Borneo? Is it a pay back time by all of us being passive when the rainforest had been overrun by some most greedy people on earth everywhere where once rainforests prevailed. After the much destruction of the rainforest since 1970s till 1990s, illegal logging is still ongoing.

 Would oil palm being the replaced trees in such hot and dry seasons be productive at the level expected? Our immediate challenge around us in our own home environment is do we plant more trees in our residential areas or maintain those trees with regular watering to keep them alive despite some trees around the city are also drying up with fire hazard risks?

 We know our present scenario of hot urban heat can be due to several other factors namely more concrete jungles are replacing empty land once covered with trees. I think we have no solution to bring back the lower temperature in Kota Kinabalu.

 We are losing to the global climate change or rising temperature. I had done some simple research on the temperatures as recorded in the Kota Kinabalu International Airport (1961-2003) with several revealing facts.

 The day time high was already 33 degree Celsius in 1961 rising slowly and surely to 36 degree Celsius in 2000 and over the same period we were experiencing longer hours of high temperature daily and today even at 8am, the heat is already very hot comparatively with previous decades.. The other observation is that the gap of high and low extreme temperatures has been widening over the forty years. These observations are published in my book “Water” (2005).

 There had been some small measures by certain quarters including some NGOs to mitigate on the impact of the rising temperature. So today the high temperature for longer hours daily with little rainfall in KK and elsewhere in Sabah is indeed very worrying.

 We can pretend that the high temperature would just go away if the rain comes back to us soon. What happen if the rain in abundant quality and regularly pattern would not come? There would be plenty of consequences and how would we address those consequences some likely to be unthinkable? None of us are in control of the rain even with clouds seeding and the heat and what do the majority need to do in the context of God? Joshua Y. C. Kong 8th May, 2015