Is global warming the sun’s fault?

About half the sunlight reaching the surface of the planet is radiated upward in the form of infrared heat, absorbed by the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, warming the surface of the Earth. This “greenhouse effect” is what makes the planet livable. But now, scientific data shows that the warming of the planet is reaching dangerous levels causing a series of alarming disruptions.

“Satellite measurements taken over the past 30 years show that the sun’s energy output has not increased and that the recent warming observed on Earth cannot be attributed to changes in the sun’s activity,” explained WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas. “The rise in temperatures – which are melting ice and heating the oceans – is driven by long-lived greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,” he added.

Independent climate change experts warn that if the current trend in greenhouse gas concentrations continues, we may see temperature increases by 3 °C to 5 °C compared to pre-industrial levels, by the end of the century. WMO’s analysis reveals that the 20 warmest years on record have been in the past 22 years, with the top four in the past four years.

To tackle this, UN Secretary-General António Guterres will be hosting a Climate Summit in New York on 23 September, to galvanize climate action and ambition at the highest levels.

As supporting evidence for the discussions, WMO’s 2018 State of the Climate report will be launched on Thursday 28 March. This report will provide an overview of temperatures, high-impact events, and key indicators of long-term climate change such as increasing carbon dioxide concentrations, Arctic and Antarctic sea ice, sea level rise and ocean acidification. It will be launched alongside a high-level event at the UN General Assembly.

Why the hype around solar energy?

The sun provides us with a valuable source of renewable energy that has the potential to replace fossil fuels like coal or oil, for electricity production, heating, and desalinating water, among other things. Its energy can be harnessed directly with “photovoltaics” or “solar cells”, even in cloudy weather.

According to the International Energy Agency, solar power and other renewable sources have become the technology of choice thanks to falling costs and supportive government policies: by 2040, the share of renewables in electricity generation is expected to rise from 25 per cent today to over 40 per cent.

However, power generation from solar cells is strongly dependent on the weather. Therefore, reliable meteorological forecasts are indispensable for balancing the power grid, and will gain even more importance as the renewable energy sector expands.

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Every March 23 marks the anniversary of the 1950 Convention that established the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO), is the occasion to take stock of the importance of the sun and weather monitoring for the common safety, health and well-being of all living things on the planet.

Through its national meteorological and hydrological services, WMO has been providing expertise, monitoring and forecast services to both harness and protect us from the power of the sun.

“Too little sun impacts our mood and well-being, and increases the risk of Vitamin D deficiency,” said WMO, noting on the other hand that “overexposure to sunlight causes harmful effects on the skin, eyes, and immune system. Experts believe that four out of five cases of skin cancer could be prevented, as UV damage is mostly avoidable.”

https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/03/1035251

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UN announces roadmap to Climate Summit in 2019, a ‘critical year’ for climate action

2019 is a critical year, the “last chance” for the international community to take effective action on climate change, General Assembly President Maria Espinosa said on Thursday, during a briefing to announce the UN’s roadmap to the Climate Summitin September.


Ms. Espinosa was speaking alongside the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General on the Climate Summit, Ambassador Luis Alfonso de Alba of Mexico, at UN Headquarters in New York.

Ms. Espinosa said that, with the deadline for achieving the first targets of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development fast approaching, described by Secretary-General António Guterres as “the UN’s blueprint for peace, justice and prosperity on a healthy planet”, the world stood at a crossroads.

Two-thirds of these targets, she said, depend on climate and environment goals, and a five-fold increase in commitments from their current levels is needed in order to meet the targets set at the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement on dealing with greenhouse gas emissions mitigation, adaptation and finance, due to come into force in 2020.

The General Assembly President walked the representatives of Member States through some of the key events of 2019, leading up to, and following, the Climate Summit. All of the events, she said, share two goals: a doubling of commitments and ambition at a national level, and ensuring the inclusion of diverse groups in the process of climate action.

March will see the General Assembly High-Level Meeting on Climate and Sustainable Development for All, which is intended to build on the success of COP24, the 2018 climate conference in Katowice, Poland, which led to the establishment of a “rulebook” for the reporting of emissions and the progress made in cutting them, every year from 2024.

The March meeting will welcome representatives of the private sector, civil society and young people, and look to harness the enthusiasm of the latter group, who, said Ms. Espinosa, will be most affected by a warming world.

On the 30th of June, in the build up to the Climate Summit, a “stocktaking” event will take place in Abu Dhabi, followed by a High Level Political Forum under the auspices of the Economic and Social Council in July, which will see a review of the progress made in achieving Sustainable Development Goal 13(“urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts”).

The Climate Summit will be followed by the first-ever High Level Political Forum on Climate Action, sponsored by the General Assembly on September 24. The year will be rounded off by the 2019 Climate Conference COP25, which will take place in Chile.

Multilateralism, said Ms. Espinosa, is the only effective to combat climate change, which is one of the main challenges facing the world and can only be overcome with constructive input from all. She concluded with a proverb: “’If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you wish to go far, go together.’ Let’s travel this road together.”

Ambassador de Alba, following Ms. Espinosa, confirmed that the world is falling well behind targets for combating climate change, with only around a third of the necessary work currently completed. He reminded delegates that there are only between 10 and 12 years left to achieve the goals, and called for a ramping up of ambition.

The Special Envoy added that, despite the challenges, an optimistic signal must be given: that it is possible to counter climate change, enjoy economic growth and eradicate poverty. “We can also meet social needs, healthcare needs and human rights needs,” he said, and bring about a “win-win situation to answer the doubters.”

2019 needs to see action, continued Ambassador de Alba, including partnerships with the private sector and civil society, and a huge mobilization of resources ( a target of 1 trillion dollars per year to support developing countries has been set), to invest “in our future, for jobs in a green future.”

https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/02/1032801

Inequality is an “entrenched imbalance”: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development – the UN’s blueprint for a better and more sustainable future for all – calls for a reduction in inequality between and within countries. Nevertheless, global inequality is increasing. So what can be done?

The question of inequality was raised several times by the UN in January: speaking at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, UN chief António Guterres pointed out that, while technological progress and globalization have led to “fantastic improvements” in many areas, they have also increased inequality and marginalized millions.

And, in her annual letter, Lise Kingo, CEO of the UN Global Compact, which supports private sector efforts to do business responsibly, noted that, in 2018, we saw “a small group of individuals are getting exponentially richer as billions are left behind in poverty.”

Inequality is not only rising, it is also an “entrenched imbalance,” according to Richard Kozul-Wright, a globalization expert and Director with the Trade and Development agency UNCTAD.

In an interview with UN News, which you can listen to here, Mr. Kozul-Wright said that notionally high employment rates in many economies mask the fact that wages and working conditions are not improving, and that whilst wages have been stagnant for a decade, dividends on shareholdings have been recovering, benefiting financial asset holders. His remarks came in the wake of the January launch of the 2019 World Economic Situation and Prospects (WESP) report which showed uneven growth (both between and within countries) that is often failing to reach where it is most needed.

Will AI take away our jobs, or transform them?


The beginning of 2019 saw a focus on the role of technology on the world of work, and the impact it is having on inequality. The International Labour Organization (ILO) launched a landmark report in January: the Global Commission on the Future of Work. This study concluded that technological innovations provide “countless opportunities” for workers, but warned that, if these technologies are not deployed as part of a human-centred agenda based on investing in people, work institutions and decent, sustainable employment, we run the risk of “sleepwalking into a world that widens existing inequalities and uncertainties.”

One of the key technological innovations mentioned in the report, one that garners significant media attention, is artificial intelligence (AI). A report from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), published at the tail-end of January, noted a “quantum leap” in AI-related patents, suggesting that AI could soon “revolutionize all areas of daily life beyond the tech world.”

AI inspires as much fear as excitement, evoking a dystopian world in which more and more work is carried out by machines, with society split between a tiny super-rich elite and the rest, an unemployable mass of people with no prospect of finding work.

Kriti Sharma doesn’t see things that way. She has been recognized by the UN as a Young Leader For Sustainable Development Goals, in recognition of her work to ensure that AI helps to create a better, fairer world, through her AI For Good organization, and her role in the Sage Future Makers Lab, which was set up to equip young people around the world with hands-on learning for entering a career in Artificial Intelligence.

UN Sustainable Development Section
Kriti Sharma, United Nations Young Leader for the Sustainable Development Goals.

Speaking to UN News, Ms. Sharma acknowledged that people who live in countries which are on the wrong side of the digital divide (with less access to data) will be at a disadvantage, and pointed to studies that show a gender divide is looming, with women twice as likely to lose their jobs to automation, because of the kind of work they are involved in: “We need to make sure that we give people enough opportunities to reskill themselves, otherwise we end up creating more inequality that we had before.”

However, she believes that one of the biggest risks is failing to embrace this technology, and not equipping people with the skills to use it to solve global problems. Ms. Sharma laid out three ways to help ensure that AI brings about a fairer world.

First of all, it is important that a diverse group of people from many backgrounds are creating this technology, people who “understand society, policy-makers.” The second point is to ensure that AI is being used to solve the “right problems,” such as accelerating the Sustainable Development Goals, by diverting energy, research and funding into this area. And, lastly, international standards must be agreed upon, to make sure that the technology we create is used in a way that is safe and ethical for the world.
No progress without international cooperation

So, what is the way out of the “entrenched imbalance” of inequality? For the UN, a greater emphasis on international cooperation is an important part of the solution. The 2019 World Economic Situation and Prospects report concludes that, at a global level, a “cooperative and long-term strategy for global policy” is the way towards progress in reducing income inequality, and warns that a “withdrawal from multilateralism will pose further setbacks for those already being left behind.”

As the Secretary-General told the audience in Davos, a coordinated and global response is the only way to fight inequality, because “we need to work together. There is no way we can do isolated responses to the problems we face, they are all interlinked.”

https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/02/1031961

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