Will Copenhagen make a difference?

And as it increasingly becomes evident that planet earth is getting a little warmer for the comfort of mankind and other forms of life, it is the poor of this world bearing the brunt. For the past 100 years the average temperature on earth has increased from 0,3 to 0,74 degrees Celsius and weather conditions have become more and more unpredictably hostile, shifting seasons, changing rainfall patterns, thawing the polar axis and raising ocean levels.
Although the issue of climate change is shrouded in controversy as scientists argue over facts and nations trade accusations and counter accusations, the fact still remains:  “Global temperatures are already climbing, so we have no choice but to adapt to changes we face now and to anticipate those we expect in the future,” says the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in its latest State of the World Population 2009 report.
“Climate change threatens to worsen poverty and burden the marginalised and vulnerable groups with additional hardships,” further warns the UNFPA report titled: Facing a changing world: women, population and climate.
The report, released just weeks ahead of the 15th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework on Climate Change now underway in Copenhagen, Denmark,  set the tone for what promises to be one of the UN’s most explosive debates yet.
“The United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen will be a turning point in the fight to prevent climate disaster. The science demands it, the economics support it, future generations require it,” said Yvo de Boer, the United Nations Fram-ework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) executive secretary.
The Copenhagen conference hopes to turn the Kyoto Protocol, which bound 37 major polluting industrialised countries including the European Union to reduce the level of greenhouse gas emissions by five percent by 2012, into reality.
The Kyoto Protocol, which preceded the 1992 Rio de Janeiro UNFCCC environmental treaty that simply encouraged countries to reduce greenhouse gases emissions, was adopted in Kyoto, Japan in 1997 and entered into force on February 16 2005. Though 184 parties of the convention have since ratified the Protocol to date, the world’s biggest polluter, the United States, has refused to sign as it sought to protect its industries from collapse.
UNFPA executive director, Thoraya Ahmed Obaid believes: “A Copenhagen agreement that helps people to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change by harnessing the insight and creativity of women and men would launch a genuinely effective long-term global strategy to deal with climate change.”
However, the outcome of the Copenhagen climate change conference, which ends Friday next week, is as unpredictable as the weather itself because sharp differences between the industrialised countries and the poor developing nations mainly over reducing the amount of greenhouse gases massing in the atmosphere that have been largely blamed for triggering global warming.
The greenhouse gasses in question, which include water vapour, carbon dio-xide, nitrous oxide, methane, ozone, chlorofluorocarbons from manufactured substances used as coolants and computer-chip cleaners that absorb and emit infrared radiation, have over the decades accumulated in the atmosphere causing the heating up of the surface of the planet, which is commonly referred to as the greenhouse effect.
Scientists stumbled upon the greenhouse effect phenomenon some two centuries ago after discovering that while 50 percent of the sun’s heat energy is absorbed by the earth the rest is reflected back by the earth’s solids, liquids and gases in the form of infrared radiation and in the process some of the infrared radiation is reflected back to earth causing the greenhouse effect. According to web-based Carbontracker, scientists have also discovered that ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun plays a role in the formation of the ozone layer, part of the stratosphere, which shields the earth from the UV radiation that is harmful to life on earth. The UV acts as a catalyst for a chemical reaction that breaks apart oxygen molecules which then recombine to form the ozone.
Now, mankind’s activities on earth over time have largely been blamed for the rise in greenhouse gases, which are said to be breaking down and destroying the stratospheric ozone in the process, creating the infamous “Ozone Hole” that is appearing in the Southern Hemisphere over Antarctic.
There is, however, still fierce debate on whether what is happening is climate change or climate variability and even over whether there is anything to fear for or not.
Climate change experts who have been supplying key data on the global warming phenomena to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have also been dragged into the furious debate and are now being accused of possibly cooking up the whole issue.
While climate change is any long-term change in the patterns of average weather of a specific region or the Earth as a whole, climate variability refers to variations in the mean state and other statistics of the climate on all temporal and spatial scales beyond that of individual weather events.
Barnabas Chipindu, a meteorologist with the University of Zimbabwe department of physics believes what is happening at the moment is most likely climate variability, which he says will eventually lead to climate change if the current warming of the earth continues unabated.
Chipindu however, added: “But if we wait until we ascertain whether it’s climate change or not it may be too late to act. There are so many uncertainties in the climate change issue. Although the changes in weather are too rapid, we need more research. The weather has become extreme. But weather has always been changing.”
Currently, on average temperature and rainfall has decreased in southern Africa. Days have become hotter and nights warmer. There is also an increase in diseases and pests. Malaria now exists where it never used to exist.
Zimbabwe’s night and day temperatures have been above normal. Since 1900 average rainfall has decreased by five percent and temperatures have increase by 0,04 degrees Celsius. But for Zimbabwe, the country has to continuously rely on external data on this phenomenon due to brain drain as 25 experienced meteorologists have left the country since 1990 and currently there are two senior meteorologists at the met department.
Chipindu also added: “Because of poverty we are the least adaptable to the adverse effects of climate change. We need political will. There is extreme urgency in taking real action to mitigate the negative impacts of climate change such as shifting from rain-fed agriculture to irrigation. We do not have the capacity to adapt.”
After all has been said and done all eyes are now on US President, Barack Obama, whose message many are wishing will not only bring hope but also commit his country to mitigating the effects of climate change.