Are you local enough to notice this change?
Posted by JLow on Nov 2, 2009
Last week I attended our partner Wild Asia’s workshop on Responsible Tourism. I sat next to a lady from UK, Sarah, who is/was a business and travel writer (she now freelances still for the travel industry).
Still learning the ropes regarding my role in MAS’ Environment, I shared with her my personal take on this global issue. “… I’ve been saying to people, we live in a tropical country where it’s green everywhere and constantly raining..’What climate change?’ was usually the unspoken response I got when I talk to people about what I do now at MAS and this issue on the wider global scale..”
She looked at me and said “Really? My uncle, who’s been here since 1954 and living in Perak since then, has actually told me that he has in fact noticed that the temperature here in Malaysia HAS been getting warmer throughout the years….”
Not that I cannot take criticism or be told that I am wrong- I was dumbfounded that it took an expat to tell me this.
Personally I have always thought that it’s because my own family’s social economic status has improved through the decades while I was growing up. As a boy our home didn’t have air conditioning and we made do with what we had, which were the floor-standing or ceiling fans during warm days and nights- which wasn’t all that often. My parents’ room did have a big-hole-through-the-wall type of AC unit (the house was build in the 70′s), but it was a real luxury to have it switched on. As we “progressed” and upgraded to a bigger home my own room did have AC but again it was rarely used.
Somewhere along the way, I started using it, had my own place when I joined the workforce and slept with the AC on at nights, married and had kids, and they too are now accustomed to the AC.
It is now a little too warm at nights for us now not to have the AC on. At least for me.
This is my personal justification of not “realizing” the now-warmer local temperature, if indeed this is the case.
I have no reason to doubt Sarah and her uncle. I am however questioning why it had to take an outsider to tell me that he and others like him have noted this change when locals have been giving me the “what climate change” look.
Do you know if this is noted anywhere in our local met services? Found any literature on this?
Do you notice any change in our local weather since your schooldays?
John Low
Malaysia Airlines
Having lived in Malaysia all my life, and then moved to a foreign country in ’05 — whenever I go home for a visit, I noticed I (along with most Malaysians, if not all) tend to sleep with the AC on EVERY night. Everyone knows AC is bad for the environment. However, we can hardly be blamed for cocooning ourselves in AC offices, malls, cars and increasingly our homes especially with the sweltering heat in Malaysia.