Korea’s climate will change much faster than previously believed, a government report says, and the country will see the same amount of change over the next decade as over the whole of the last century.

Temperatures will rise four times faster than in the last four decades (1971-2010), when the average rise was 1.4 degrees Celsius. Over the next 10 year they will increase by up to 1.5 degrees.

The Korea Meteorological Administration, which led the study in collaboration with eight governmental bodies including the Ministry of Environment, analyzed climate change in Korea based on climate change scenarios released by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last year.

The report is released Tuesday but the Chosun Ilbo has seen an advance copy. It says Korea’s temperature rose 1.8 degrees on average over the last century, but the annual average temperature will be 13.8 degrees by 2020, up 1.5 degrees over the decade, and 15.5 degrees by 2050.

A government official said, “According to the IPCC’s earlier prediction, the temperature will increase 2 degrees Celsius on average by 2050. But the new report predicts an increase of 3.2 degrees, up 60 percent from the IPCC’s. This means climate change is proceeding much faster than expected.”  [Chosun Ilbo]

These latest Doomsday prediction are based off of the discredited IPCC report.  The amount of errors in the IPCC report is just staggering.  It makes you wonder how such a faulty report was ever published but you just have to look at the corruption within the IPCC to include its chairman who is one of the fools going around claiming global warming is causing earthquakes.

Oh by the way here is the latest on ClimateGate 2.0 with more e-mails showing coordinated attempts to silence critics of global warming as well as coordinated attempts to explain away the lack of warming the past decade since all their predictions were wrong.

Anyway back to Korea, what is interesting about the alarmism in the ROK is that the Korean right is pushing it because they see it as a growth industry for Korean battery manufacturers that many consider the best in the world.  The Korean business conglomerates are also making a big push into exporting wind turbines that the Korean President Lee Myung-bak has been active in promoting as well.  Notice how there is no push in Korea to have a carbon exchange like many of the left in western nations want.  This is probably because this is something the Korean business conglomerates look at as a profit killer.

(1939) Thorne/MetO:

Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical
troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a
wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the
uncertainty and be honest. Phil, hopefully we can find time to discuss these
further if necessary…
(3066) Thorne:

I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it
which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run.

(1611) Carter:

It seems that a few people have a very strong say, and no matter how much
talking goes on beforehand, the big decisions are made at the eleventh hour by
a select core group.

(2884) Wigley:

Mike, The Figure you sent is very deceptive… there have been a number of
dishonest presentations of model results by individual authors and by IPCC …
(4755) Overpeck:

The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guid[e] what’s
included and what is left out.

(3456) Overpeck:

I agree (with) Susan (Solomon) that we should try to put more in the bullet about
“Subsequent evidence” … Need to convince readers that there really has been
an increase in knowledge – more evidence.  What is it?

(1104) Wanner/NCCR:

In my [IPCC-TAR] review [...] I criticized…the Mann hockey(s)tick …My review was
classified “unsignificant” even I inquired several times. Now the
internationally well known newspaper SPIEGEL got the information about these
early statements because I expressed my opinion in several talks, mainly in
Germany, in 2002 and 2003. I just refused to give an exclusive interview to
SPIEGEL because I will not cause damage for climate science.

Here are some very damaging e-mails that shows how these scientists are more concerned with helping “the cause” than practicing real science.  These e-mails also show how they were conspiring to delete e-mails and hide files in an effort to avoid Freedom of Information requests:

<3373> Bradley: I’m sure you agree–the Mann/Jones GRL paper was truly pathetic and should never have been published. I don’t want to be associated with that 2000 year
“reconstruction”.

<3115> Mann:  By the way, when is Tom C going to formally publish his roughly 1500 year
reconstruction??? It would help the cause to be able to refer to that
reconstruction as confirming Mann and Jones, etc.

<3940> Mann:  They will (see below) allow us to provide some discussion of the synthetic
example, referring to the J. Cimate paper (which should be finally accepted
upon submission of the revised final draft), so that should help the cause a
bit.

<0810> Mann: I gave up on Judith Curry a while ago. I don’t know what she think’s she’s
doing, but its not helping the cause

<2440> Jones: I’ve been told that IPCC is above national FOI Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 would be to delete all emails at the end of the
process

<2094> Briffa: UEA does not hold the very vast majority of mine [potentially FOIable emails] anyway which I copied onto private storage after the completion of the IPCC
task.

<1577> Jones:

[FOI, temperature data]
Any work we have done in the past is done on the back of the research grants we
get – and has to be well hidden. I’ve discussed this with the main funder (US
Dept of Energy) in the past and they are happy about not releasing the original
station data.

Leon LaPorte is going to love these e-mails that have heavy religious overtones:

<4394> Houghton [MetO, IPCC co-chair]

[...] we dont take seriously enough our God-given responsibility to care for the
Earth [...] 500 million people are expected to watch The Day After Tomorrow. We
must pray that they pick up that message.

<0999> Hulme:

My work is as Director of the national centre for climate change research, a
job which requires me to translate my Christian belief about stewardship of
God’s planet into research and action.

<3653> Hulme:

He [another Met scientist] is a Christian and would talk authoritatively about
the state of climate science from the sort of standpoint you are wanting.

This final excerpt I will share verifies what I have always said that the warmists wanted to change the term Global Warming to Climate Change in order to hedge their bets when the world’s temperatures doesn’t warm:

(1939) Thorne/MetO:

Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical
troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a
wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the
uncertainty and be honest. Phil, hopefully we can find time to discuss these
further if necessary…
(3066) Thorne:

I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it
which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run.

<4141> Minns/Tyndall Centre:

In my experience, global warming freezing is already a bit of a public
relations problem with the media

Kjellen:

I agree with Nick that climate change might be a better labelling than global
warming

For those new to the ClimateGate scandal I recommend reading this prior ROK Drop posting on the issue as well as this explanation from a professor of physics at Berkeley on how the ClimateGate scientists hid the decline in temperatures.  It is also worth reading how NOAA and NASA were caught manipulating temperature data.  When I get more time I will read through more of the 220,000 e-mails that were leaked, but for now I recommend reading Andrew Bolt and Anthony Watts for updates on this latest scandal.  I fully expect the Global Warming faithful to rally around their clergy who will do an investigation of themselves that clears them of any wrong doing like they did with the first ClimateGate scandal.  If the faithful can make excuses for their clergy flying around in private jets I am sure they will make excuses for ClimateGate 2 as well.

Er, isn’t Leonardo DiCaprio all about saving the planet?

He heads up an eco-charity that he named after himself, he’s best mates with Al Gore, he only drives hybrid cars …and he flies in a private jet.

Leo’s been living here in Oz for a few months filming The Great Gatsby, but he had to pop back to the states last week to launch his new movie J.Edgar.

With his promotional work done, the megastar and his entourage returned from New York to Sydney yesterday in a private jet.  [NineMSN via Tim Blair]

I’m sure he bought carbon offsets to prevent him from having any guilty conscious.  It just does make you wonder how these prominent warmists can be so blatantly hypocritical flying around in all their private jets?

The U.S. Department of Energy has just published its estimates of global carbon dioxide emissions for the year 2010, concluding emissions rose by 6% from 2009 to 2010. This constitutes the largest rise yet recorded and means global emissions are rising faster than any of the scenarios advanced by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its 2007 report. Global warming activists are claiming the 2010 rise proves global warming is even worse than previously feared, but exactly the opposite is the case.

The new emissions data support the arguments of skeptics asserting carbon dioxide emissions do not impact global temperatures as much as IPCC computer models predict. In light of the 2010 data, global carbon dioxide emissions have risen by fully a third since the year 2001, yet global temperatures have not risen during the past decade. Global warming activists argue that carbon dioxide emissions are the sole or primary factor in global temperature changes, yet global temperatures show no change despite a 33% increase in global carbon dioxide emissions. The fact that global temperatures are not rising despite such a significant increase in carbon dioxide emissions provides validation of skeptical arguments, not a cause for heightened alarm.  [Forbes]

You can read more at the link.

House Republicans are demanding White House paperwork related to a $535 million loan guarantee to a solar company that shut down this week.

The Republicans are probing the White House role in the 2009 federal loan guarantee to Solyndra Inc., a California solar panel manufacturing company that ceased operations and is filing for bankruptcy, resulting in 1,100 layoffs.

The shutdown is a bit of an embarrassment for the administration, as the company was the first selected to receive the loan guarantee under a stimulus-backed renewable energy program. President Obama visited the company just more than a year ago to tout White House green energy efforts.  [The Hill]

You can read more at the link, but I think solar energy for home use is a worthy thing to promote.  However, trying to pick which companies are winners and losers is not something the government should be doing.  Instead of giving out money to these green companies why doesn’t the government offer greater tax incentives for consumers who install solar panels on their homes?  The tax incentive would need to be enough to where it makes sense for middle class home owners to purchase the solar panels and thus create a larger demand for the technology.

By doing this instead of trying to pick winners and losers the government would create a marketplace where the solar company with the best prices and service will succeed instead of giving money to companies that were friendly to the Obama campaign, but not well run.

President Barack Obama on Friday scrapped his administration’s controversial plans to tighten smog rules, bowing to the demands of congressional Republicans and some business leaders.

Obama overruled the Environmental Protection Agency — and the unanimous opinion of its independent panel of scientific advisers — and directed administrator Lisa Jackson to withdraw the proposed regulation to reduce concentrations of ground-level ozone, smog’s main ingredient. The decision rests in part on reducing regulatory burdens and uncertainty for businesses at a time of rampant uncertainty about an unsteady economy.

The announcement came shortly after a new government report on private sector employment showed that businesses essentially added no new jobs last month — and that the jobless rate remained stuck at a historically high 9.1 percent.  [AP]

This is the way I look at it, I really don’t mind clean air regulations because they have done great good over the decades cleaning the air around major US cities.  Problem with these regulations however is that they should also be implemented as part of all the trade deals the US has signed.  It is handicapping American businesses when foreign competitors can pollute with no environmental regulations and then import their goods to the US.

So the environmentalists are really not doing anything to protect the environment because the pollution from manufacturing just moves elsewhere.  In actuality the environmentalists are probably causing more pollution by having the manufacturing done in a place like China that has little care for the environment instead of having it done in the US where manufacturing can be done with better care for the environment.

This is a solar energy plant that was built in 2009 in East Germany at a cost of $7.5 million euros that is supposed to have a operating life of 20 years.  So much for that investment.

To the German’s credit this abuse of taxpayers’ dollars is no where near as bad as the $58 million wasted in the US on a solar plant that went out of business in under three years after receiving the money.

The more basic problem is what these solar power plants will resolve. Mr. Son seems to be inclining toward natural energy to shift from nuclear power, but solar power is useless for reducing nuclear power reliance. If all 10 mega-solar power plants are built, they will generate only 200,000 kW, or one-fifth the amount of one nuclear plant. Solar power generation requires 40 times the land area of nuclear power generation. The amount of land required to generate the one million kW of power produced by a nuclear plant would be equal to 1.5 times the land inside JR East’s Yamanote Line in Tokyo. Further, the solar power plants can’t be used on rainy days. It is not possible to rely on them to replace nuclear power.  [Ampontan]

There is a whole lot more to read at the link, but this article is in response to another get rich quick scheme at the expense of the taxpayer, this time in Japan being cloaked in being “green” and saving the planet.  Just like with the wind farms the global warming alarmists refuse to admit how little power is generated,  how much land these turbines take up, and their negative impacts on the local wildlife.  That is why these so called green technology are not a practical source of energy to power a modern economy.  They are nothing more than niche power sources.  Instead of making these mega-solar plants it seem to me it would be better to make it affordable for people to buy solar panels to put on their homes and office buildings.  That way a huge amount of land isn’t being torn up for these solar plants and people are receiving their own electricity without having to be fully reliant on the power grid for electricity.

The NASA scientist who once claimed the Bush administration tried to “silence” his global warming claims is now accused of receiving more than $1.2 million from the very environmental organizations whose agenda he advocated.

In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Washington, D.C., a group claims NASA is withholding documents that show James Hansen failed to comply with ethics rules and financial disclosures regarding substantial compensation he earned outside his $180,000 taxpayer-paid position as director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies.  [Fox News]

You can read a whole lot more at the link, but just to remind everyone that James Hansen is one of the many global warming fear mongers that like to hide their data and was exposed a few years ago for his intentionally incorrect arithmetic.

The difference though with Hansen is that he is a government employee and accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking fees is unacceptable.  What would people think if US military officers were going around making that kind of speaking fee money from defense contractors and then advocating for their products?  That is basically what Hansen appears to being doing and he is being allowed to get away with it.

The Korean media and society can work up a firestorm over pollution anywhere in Korea around US bases any time they want.  They used to about once a year, but not against Korean conglomerates or factory areas or Korean military bases…

Friday 17 June 2011

Another Carcinogen Found in Groundwater Near Camp Carroll (Chosun Daily)

Tiny traces of dioxins found at Camp Carroll (Joongang Daily)

Traces of dioxin found in stream water near US base (Donga Daily)

Thursday 16 June 2011

Dioxin Detected in Underground Streams Near U.S. Bases (Chosun Daily)

Dioxin traces found in streams near U.S. base (Korea Herald)

Tuesday 14 June 2011

‘Defoliants sprayed on DMZ in late ’50s’ (Korea Herald)