Monday, November 28, 2011

Saddest Countries in OECD

The figure below shows how depressed the OECD countries were in terms of suicide mortality. South Korea, Russia, Hungary, Japan, and Finland were the unhappiest countries in 2009.

Have they been depressed all along? Not really.
Another figure below shows that South Korea's suicide rate was lower than the OECD average in 1995. However, suicide rates in South Korea have been increasing since 1995. This grievous hike in suicide rates in South Korea, the country that doesn't (officially) show major symptoms of economic depression.
What's happening in South Korea?


Source: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). (2011). Health at a Glance 2011: OECD Indicators. Paris, France: OECD Publishing. [Full-text at http://j.mp/OECD_Health_2011]

Sunday, November 27, 2011

Final Cambridge University Press Version of the IPCC Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation

A few days ago, Cambridge University Press made available online the final book version of the IPCC Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation (aka "SRREN"). It is written by the IPCC's Working Group III and was first published online as an unedited version on June 14, 2011. It is 1076 pages long. I'll take time to read through the report and write a little about it later.

Edenhofer, O., Pichs-Madruga, R., Sokona, Y., Seyboth, K., Matschoss, P., Kadner, S., Zwickel, T., Eickemeier, P., Hansen, G., Schlömer, S., & von Stechow, C. (Eds.). (2012). IPCC Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation. Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press. [Full-text at http://j.mp/SRREN]

Contents

Section I
Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii
Preface  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

Section II

Summary for Policymakers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3
Technical Summary  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Section III

Chapter 1 Renewable Energy and Climate Change  . . . . . . . .161
Chapter 2 Bioenergy  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .209
Chapter 3 Direct Solar Energy  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .333
Chapter 4 Geothermal Energy  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .401
Chapter 5 Hydropower . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .437
Chapter 6 Ocean Energy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .497
Chapter 7 Wind Energy  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .535
Chapter 8 Integration of Renewable Energy into Present and
 Future Energy Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .609
Chapter 9 Renewable Energy in the Context of Sustainable
 Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .707
Chapter 10 Mitigation Potential and Costs  . . . . . . . . . .791
Chapter 11 Policy, Financing and Implementation  . . . . . . .865

Section IV

Annex I Glossary, Acronyms, Chemical Symbols and Prefixes  . .953
Annex II Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .973
Annex III Recent Renewable Energy Cost and Performance
 Parameters  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1001
Annex IV Contributors to the IPCC Special Report . . . . . . 1023
Annex V Reviewers of the IPCC Special Report . . . . . . . . 1033
Annex VI Permissions to Publish  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1051
Index  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1059

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Employment Rates (NOT Unemployment Rates) in 15 Countries from 2006 to 2010

Previously (on August 9, 2011), I compared unemployment rates of 15 countries.
I think I made a naive comparison. While unemployment rates are calculated by each country using their own methodologies, employment rates give little confusion by being estimated with obvious numbers. The employment rate measures the ratio of employed people in certain age groups. The unemployment comparison graph in the previous post gave me (us) a misguiding impression that certain countries' economies have been well performing while their actual employment rates were not so good, and vice versa.

Today, I am trying to compare "employment rates" of the same 15 countries from 2006 to 2010.

I want to share two figures of employment rates calculated with different methods.

The first figure is made by the OECD. The OECD calculated the employment rates by measuring the ratio of employed people among the population between ages 15 to 64. (In this figure, China's data are missing.)

Data: OECD (2011)

In this figure, we can see how the employment rate estimation tells us a different story from the unemployment rate statistics. High unemployment rates do NOT mean low employment rates. Contrary to an intuitive conception, some countries with low unemployment rates are NOT always showing high employment rates, either.
In the previous post, Iceland's unemployment rate skyrocketed since 2008. However, as we can see from the above figure, its employment rates are still higher than all countries.
Although Korea's unemployment rates were low in the previous post, they don't translate into high employment rates in the above figure.
Italy's lowest employment rates among these countries are hard to explain, too. In the previous post, its unemployment rates were not worse than those of such countries as Spain, Ireland, and Greece.

The second figure estimates the ratio of the employed people among the population aged 15 or older, without an upper age limit. It is estimated by the International Labour Organization (ILO).

Data: ILO (2011)

In this second figure, most countries have shown downward slopes in employment rates since the global financial crisis shook the global economy in 2008. It is not so much different from the first figure.
However, I want to point out some interesting observations.
Now, China is enjoying the best employment rates. 71% of its working-age population is employed.
Although Iceland has experienced a deep drop of employment rates, it still shows a robust employment rate.
The fact that employment rates in Brazil and Germany didn't get worse during 2008-2010 is consistent with the descending unemployment rates observed in the previous post.
A notable contrast is between the United States and South Korea. In the first figure, the United States' employment rate was well above South Korea's even after the economic recession. In the second figure, however,  the United States' employment rate went down below that of South Korea in 2010. From the ILO's standards, the United States' employment condition became worse than that of South Korea.

I'm not so sure whether these employment rate estimations are better or more correct than the unemployment rate estimations. But we have to look into employment rates if we don't want to be confused by different unemployment rate calculation methods among countries.



Sources:

ILO. (2011). Key Indicators of the Labour Market (KILM) (7th ed.). Genève, Switzerland: International Labour Organization. Retrieved from http://kilm.ilo.org

OECD. (2011). OECD Employment Outlook 2011. Paris, France: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Retrieved from http://www.oecd.org/employment/outlook

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Two Reports: A Lot More Radiation Was Released from Fukushima Dai-ichi Than Japan's Official Estimations

Recent research revealed that far more radiation was released into the atmosphere and ocean from Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant than the Japanese government and TEPCO have estimated.

1. Atmosphere
Stohl et al. (2011) argue that 35.8 peta Bq of cesium-137 was released into the atmosphere, which is twice the Japanese government's estimations (cesium-137 = 13 peta Bq (JAEA) or 15 peta Bq (NISA)).

2. Ocean
Institut de Radioprotection et de Sûreté Nucléaire (IRSN) estimated that 27 peta Bq of cesium-137 was released into the ocean, which is 20 times as much as TEPCO's estimation (Cesium-137 = 1 peta Bq) or 6 times the Japanese government's estimation (cesium-137 = 4 peta Bq (JAEA)).


Notes:
JAEA  = Japan Atomic Energy Agency
NISA  = Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency
TEPCO = Tokyo Electric Power Company


Sources:

Institut de Radioprotection et de Sûreté Nucléaire. (2011). Synthèse actualisée des connaissances relatives à l’impact sur le milieu marin des rejets radioactifs du site nucléaire accidenté de Fukushima Dai-ichi. Fontenay-aux-Roses, France: Institut de Radioprotection et de Sûreté Nucléaire. Retrieved from goo.gl/6Rtql
Rough English translation: http://houseoffoust.com/group/?p=3818

Kawamura, H., Kobayashi, T., Furuno, A., In, T., Ishikawa, Y., Nakayama, T., . . . Awaji, T. (2011). Preliminary Numerical Experiments on Oceanic Dispersion of 131I and 137Cs Discharged into the Ocean because of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant Disaster. Journal of Nuclear Science and Technology48(11), 1349-1356. doi: 10.3327/jnst.48.1349

Stohl, A., Seibert, P., Wotawa, G., Arnold, D., Burkhart, J. F., Eckhardt, S., Tapia, C., Vargas, A., & Yasunari, T. J. (2011). Xenon-133 and caesium-137 releases into the atmosphere from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant: determination of the source term, atmospheric dispersion, and deposition. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussion11, 28319-28394. doi: 10.5194/acpd-11-28319-2011