Climate change is for real, including Sabah
Published on: Monday, October 19, 2015
Do we really know what is Climate change as it is happening in our
midst and regular haze is part and parcel of climate change?
Based on various views available in the mass media we can come to a
conclusion that much is still unknown to the experts (some so-called)
and in many scenarios when certain things happen usual or unusual we
remained confused. I am not a scientist or climate student but we all can learn something together why Climate Change is very important to us as habitants on earth if only we care about ourselves and the environment.
What I am doing here by writing this article is to bring greater awareness to all especially I was one of the founder members/pioneers of Sabah Environment Protection Association (SEPA) in the early 1980s and am still a “renewed” member of SEPA. We also have an Environment Protection Department (EPD). Also there is an Environment Action Council (EAC). So are we in Sabah in really good hands with SEPA, EPD or EAC in names sake only as what protection if any can we do with climate change which is a global phenomenon when protection can be a misnomer. Instead we see much destruction in Sabah since 1963 with massive deforestation of largely pristine rainforests and still unabated albeit of much smaller scale due to questioned economic development in recent years. So before I write more in local context which I will do later, lets concentrate on the global scenario.
When we talk of climate change it is really our Earth is warming globally. According to one source it is stated that Earth’s average temperature has risen by 1.5°F over the past century, and is projected to rise another 0.5 to 8.6°F over the next hundred years. Small changes in the average temperature of the planet can translate to large and potentially dangerous shifts in climate and weather. But later in the Sabah context, this rather small rise in temperature is misplaced complacency and so no need to do much on global warming for some quarters.
Nevertheless the evidence is clear and undisputable. Rising global temperatures have created havoc by drastic changes in weather and climate. Many places have seen extreme changes in rainfall, resulting in more sudden floods, droughts, or intense rain, as well as more frequent and severe heat waves making life miserable for the masses everywhere. The planet’s oceans and glaciers are going through some big unpredictable changes – oceans are warming and becoming more acidic, ice caps are melting, and sea levels are rising. As these and other changes become more pronounced in the coming decades, they will likely present greater challenges and much adverse impacts to our society and our environment.
That is a general preview of climate change but Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) gave a better description of “Climate change as the consequence of unchecked pollution. When carbon emissions caused by human activity enter the air they have dangerous effects on the environment, the economy, and our wellbeing. But just as humans cause it, we can halt its progress.” But how to do that is every body’s game and hope this article can enlighten everyone.
The causes of climate change are also explained by trapping excess carbon in Earth’s atmosphere. This trapped carbon pollution heats up, altering the Earth’s climate patterns. The largest source of this pollution is the burning of fossil fuels (such as coal and oil) for energy. (source ACF)
ACF goes on to explain that the earth’s atmosphere has evolved to retain sufficient warmth from the sun to encourage a healthy, dynamic ecosystem, while shielding us from its harsher effects. The introduction of huge amounts of excess pollutants thickens this blanket of protective gases, causing heat to remain trapped within, rather than harmlessly escaping skywards. These gases can remain in our atmosphere for up to 90 years, contributing to long-term warming. Temperatures are already rising quickly, with the last decade being the hottest on record.
We are told of the several major consequences of global warming like Sea level rise affects coastal property, people and ecosystems. By 2050 and a 4°C or 0.48m sea-level rise, 130 million people per year are expected to be flooded, 3/4 of them in Asia.
Decades of climate science has found that if we fail to reduce carbon pollution, climate change will have profound impacts on our planet. Climate change isn’t just a temperature change
Warming also affects rainfall and seasons. This in turn threatens food security. Inaction in cutting emissions and a temperature increase of just 4°C would cause rice and maize yields in Asia to drop by 30pc, cutting off food supply to millions. Warming also increases the severity of extreme weather events such as tropical cyclones, bushfires, droughts and flooding.
The magnificent Great Barrier Reef is already experiencing severe bleaching due to a 0.4°C rise in water temperature. Each year, about 60pc of our reef is subject to some bleaching. Professor Ross Garnaut pointed out that we are “likely to see, by mid-century, the effective destruction of the Great Barrier Reef”.
The challenge facing us now requires courage to meet it. We need to drastically reduce the amount of pollution we create. We need to fundamentally change the ways we produce and use energy
Changing weather patterns are making Australia – already the driest inhabited continent – even drier. The result has been historically severe droughts and nationwide water shortages. Droughts could occur twice as often across the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia’s food bowl.
Likewise, some of Kakadu National Park’s unique wetlands are under threat from rising sea levels. Ocean salinity is only 20cm away from devastating this precious natural landmark. Already, two-thirds of Kakadu’s melaleuca forests have been killed by increasing salinity. If sea levels rise by 60cm, 90pc of Kakadu will be hit hard, yet on current trends, things will be much, much worse.
The above few examples of eco disasters as predicted are enough to give us nightmare any time now but why are we incapable to tackle this Climate Change when it was recognised since thirty years ago starting with Rio Summit in 1992 ending with an elaborative Agenda 21 on Climate Change hosting United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). In 1972, Stockholm, Sweden, hosted the first United Nations Conference on the Human Environment which had some relationship with “Climate Change” 50 years earlier. Then later we have Intergovernmental panel on Climate Change [IPCC] till today.
Since then we are still teetering on failure to address the Climate Change especially the recent events have presented a clarion call for greater enhance attention and action on Climate Change.
Such attempts are that Obama and Xi have agreed to tackle Climate Change with greater effort in both nations at the UN General Assembly. The Pope Francis being also a scientist gave his strong views on Climate Change in his first ever address to the UN assembly in New York a few days ago, but he was challenged by some American politicians that the Pope should not lecture on Climate Change and leave it to the scientists and so-called experts on Climate Change even after 50 years of endeavour. So I believe the Pope must have Climate Change close in his heart for decades.
Another major International Conference on Climate Change is to be held soon in Paris over a two weeks period in November and December, 2015 which could be the last change for global challenge to the degenerated scenario in our midst. In conjunction with that event “People’s Climate March” on November 29th, 2015 held globally, we have the best moment of the decade to pressure our leaders to avoid catastrophic climate change. Together we can rise to the challenge and make this the biggest climate mobilisation ever. But this march for greater awareness is not to be held in Kota Kinabalu and so Daily Express with DBKK, SEDIA, IDS and other NGOs should come together to organise one in Kota Kinabalu.
So with the expected March in Kota Kinabalu, I would like to draw our attention to Sabah as what we can do to abate the onslaught of Climate Change. What we do realise now is that Sabah known as the Land below the Wind is no longer so mainly due to Climate Change. The climate clock is ticking fast now.
We in Sabah may also experience that some of this heat is absorbed by gases in the atmosphere, such as carbon dioxide (CO2), water vapour, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone and halocarbons.
We have also observed that after the large chunk of rainforest removed and only to be replaced by oil palms, wet paddy cultivation had been on the decline until we are now told in article “Paddy Growing may soon become a memory” DE 27 Sep 2015. That is despite an inducement for paddy farming of RM70m – much too little- for Sabah out of RM2.2billion of subsidy (DE 22 Sep 2015). Maybe it is partly due to Climate Change that it is no longer profitable to grow wet paddy as the wet seasons are unpredictable. Furthermore in wet paddy farming as it is assessed that between 50 and 100 million tonnes of methane a year, rice agriculture is a big source of atmospheric methane, possibly the biggest of man-made methane sources.
The warm, waterlogged soil of rice paddies provides ideal conditions for methanogenesis, and though some of the methane produced is usually oxidised by methanotrophs in the shallow overlying water, the vast majority is released into the atmosphere. More carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and rising temperatures cause rice agriculture to release more of the potent greenhouse gas methane (CH4) for each kilogram of rice it produces, new research published online edition of Nature Climate Change reveals.
“Our results show that rice agriculture becomes less climate friendly as our atmosphere continues to change. This is important, because rice paddies are one of the largest human sources of methane, and rice is the world’s second-most produced staple crop,” said Dr Kees Jan van Groenigen, Research Fellow at the Botany Department at the School of Natural Sciences, Trinity College Dublin, and lead author of the study.
Maybe it is not a coincidence that paddy growing in Sabah is in the sunset era as the temperature rise in Sabah over 40 years since 1960 has been 3°C as per my graph in Table A. (Water by Joshua YC Kong ISBN 983-2653-12-6 -2005) as attached very much above what one source stated “Earth’s average temperature has risen by 1.5°F over the past century.” So without the natural rainforests, wet paddy cultivation is unsustainable. The 3°C rise is mainly caused by the near total loss of pristine rainforests and irreplaceable by oil palms to mitigate temperature rise. Observe from the graph that the gap is also widening between the maximum and minimum temperatures possible giving instability in Climate Change affecting us. It is also important to observe that after the Quake of 5.9 in Mount Kinabalu on 5 June, 2015, the night temperature had been much lower than usual.
If rice farming is considered very important strategic food item locally and in the region, the Government should consider allocating a much higher portion of financial assistance for Sabah to go into normal dry rice agriculture as a shift from wet fields. In this way we may venture into organic rice farming of much higher value and better productivity as part of the possible high income sector in the agriculture.
Apart from the diminishing paddy fields in Sabah, the other impact is the burning peat in the region made dry or drier for fire by climate change to cause regular harmful smog or haze.
Rice being a major food item for us in the region is not alone to be diminishing in wet paddy cultivation but our vegetables and fruit trees are more difficult to cultivate with rivers also drying up due mainly to less water/rain in regular seasons as of the past.
Other food sources like our sea foods are also facing much decline with our dwindling mangrove swamps – some make way for other industries including mass housing and industrial projects – where young fishes are bred before they enter the sea. Also with less fresh rain water entering the depleted mangrove swamp zones, the breeding grounds for lives of water creatures of all sorts are also less productivity or less fertile for more salinity.
Furthermore, the pristine coral reefs around our coast are threatened by pollution of plastic and domestic wastes and climate change with warmer sea water resulting in the deaths of coral based fishes being our main source of sea foods. So due to these two threats, our food sources would certainly be diminishing fast apart from over fishing by fish bombings and big trawlers.
The publication last week of the Worldwide Fund for Nature’s (WWF) Living Blue Planet report painted a bleak picture of the state of the world’s oceans: marine populations, including reef ecosystems, have halved in size since 1970 and some species are teetering on the brink of extinction. Coral reef cover has declined by 50pc in the last 30 years and reefs could disappear by as early as 2050, the report says, if current rates of ocean warming and acidification continue.
WWF estimates that 850 million people depend directly on coral reefs for their food security - a mass die-off could trigger conflict and human migration on a massive scale.
Have not we had seen how thousands of fishes die in Likas Bay due to climate change and much warmer water in their living habitat? Have we not being in the Zoo in Lok Kawi to enjoy the last Sumatran Rhino Gelugob aged 37, which died on 11 January, 2014 in the warm pool without any adequate shade in the mud pond to keep the water cool like in the natural rainforest? Whose fault is it in the Lok Kawi Zoo?
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 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 Dambu. Has that timely report being acted upon accordingly by the many authority bodies and NGOs alike to plan concerted mitigation efforts? So let start in Sabah with People’s Climate March on 29th November, 2015.
So we must tackle the Climate Change with what is already known here and elsewhere. We need to think Global and act local together we save the earth. Can this message be carried in every sector of our society?
Amongst the possible solution is that we need to switch to clean, renewable sources of energy, and end our reliance on inefficient fossil fuels and wasteful energy habits. Renewable energy is available now. It is safe for the environment and good for our economy. By dealing with climate change, we can make Sabah a good chance to be leader in renewable energy, create thousands of jobs and ensure clean, healthy air for our children and future generation state of the world’s oceans: marine populations, including reef ecosystems. Have we started this in seriousness in Sabah? We also know that natural forests are the sink basin for excessive Carbon and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but the question here short term treatment of the existing forests or green for whatever reasons is unsustainable that we can maintain the already depleted rainforest to provide the oxygen and rain for our daily needs.
It may come a day sooner when we have to use oxygen masks to stay alive as it is already seen in some countries nearby. Climate Change and air pollution can only get worst like it or not.
There maybe some UN incentives in the retention of some trees with carbon credit. But such incentives are too little to attract greater attention and action. So I had proposed that in Borneo Biodiversity Ecosystem Conservation (BBEC) forums since 2006 that we set up something like World Oxygen Network so that the rich nations without trees pay certain incentives to the equatorial nations for retaining and maintenance of the fresh air giving trees in our land – private or otherwise. That would be fair to all.
We must also find immediate solutions to the five important needs namely fresh air, good fair priced food, clean and adequate water, basic education for all, and basic health needs – all based on land, flora, fauna, rivers, atmosphere – in the context of harsher climate change and pollution.
In conclusion, do we still need plenty of warnings from sources such as the Inconvenient Truth on global warming by Al Gore and other western leaders heading to the Paris summit on climate Change in November/December 2015. Every one of us has an obligation to understand Climate Change and then respond in our own local environment.
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