The global CO2 emissions growth after international crisis and the role of international trade

In this paper, we decompose the driving forces of global CO2 emissions for the post-crisis era 2008–2011 from both production-based and consumption-based aspects. The results suggest that non-OECD economies have become the major drivers for the rapid global growth of CO2 emissions after the crisis. More specifically, the increasing consumption and investment of non-OECD economies, as well as stagnation of their emission intensity reductions, have largely contributed to global growth of CO2 emissions after 2009. On the contrary, OECD economies have a less carbon-intensive life style. Coupled with a decrease in investment and stagnation of consumption, the OECD economies have successfully reduced both their production-based and consumption-based emissions. However, the magnitude of their reduction is much lower than the increase led by non-OECD economies. In addition, both OECD and non-OECD economies have started to increase their purchases of intermediate and final products from non-OECD economies. Such changes of international trade caused an additional 673 Mt of global emissions from 2008 to 2011. The results of our decomposition provide both worries about and insights into future global climate change mitigation

Impacts of Policy Measures on the Development of State-Owned Forests in Northeastern China: Theoretical Results and Empirical Evidence

State-owned forest enterprises (SOFEs) in northeast China and Inner Mongolia play important roles both in timber production and in the maintenance of ecological security. However, since the late 1970s, forest resource and economic crises have seriously restricted these functions. Based on a theoretical and an empirical analysis of the harvest and investment behavior of the SOFEs, we examined the effects of forest policies and the socioeconomic conditions on the behavioral choices of the SOFEs. Both the extent to which SOFE supervising authorities emphasized improvement of forest resources in their annual evaluations and the increases in expenses necessary to manage SOFEs had significant impacts on harvest and investment decisions as well as development of forest resources. Promoting the management and utilization of non-timber resources, as well as reforms to increase the efficiency of forest protection and management, have reduced timber harvests as intended, which in turn has increased investment and improved forest resources. The effects have been relatively small, however. In contrast, reforms aimed at timber harvest and afforestation activities actually contributed to increasing the timber harvest, which affected the development of the forest resources negatively.state-owned forest enterprise, “double crises,” sustainable forest management, forest policy

Partial Removal of Phenolics Coupled with Alkaline pH Shift Improves Canola Protein Interfacial Properties and Emulsion in In Vitro Digestibility

The effect of polyphenol removal (“dephenol”) combined with an alkaline pH shift treatment on the O/W interfacial and emulsifying properties of canola seed protein isolate (CPI) was investigated. Canola seed flour was subjected to solvent extraction to remove phenolic compounds, from which prepared CPI was exposed to a pH12 shift to modify the protein structure. Dephenoled CPI had a light color when compared with an intense dark color for the control CPI. Up to 53% of phenolics were removed from the CPI after the extraction with 70% ethanol. Dephenoled CPI showed a partially unfolded structure and increased surface hydrophobicity and solubility. The particle size increased slightly, indicating that soluble protein aggregates formed after the phenol removal. The pH12 shift induced further unfolding and decreased protein particle size. Dephenoled CPI had a reduced β subunit content but an enrichment of disulfide-linked oligopeptides. Dephenol improved the interfacial rheology and emulsifying properties of CPI. Although phenol removal did not promote peptic digestion and lipolysis, it facilitated tryptic disruption of the emulsion particles due to enhanced proteolysis. In summary, dephenol accentuated the effect of the pH shift to improve the overall emulsifying properties of CPI and emulsion in in vitro digestion

The Global CO2 Emission Cost of Geographic Shifts in International Sourcing

In this paper we simulated the global direct CO2 emission cost of geographic shift of international sourcing for the period 1995–2011 by comparing the scenarios with and without geographic shift. Our simulations indicate that in 2011, had the share of trade by the sourcing economy remained at the level of 1995, 2000, 2005, and 2008 whereas the global final demand remained the same, global CO2 emissions in production processes would have been 2.8 Gt, 2.0 Gt, 1.3 Gt, and 540 Mt, respectively, lower than the actual emissions. As there is a general outsourcing trend shifted from developed economies to developing economies, the overall direct emission costs have always been significantly positive. Further investigations by economy and industry show that such a geographic shift was mainly dominated by developed economies themselves and occurred in high-tech industries, such as production of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) goods and machinery, leading to positive emission cost in developing economies, especially China. Moreover, there is potentially even larger influence of geographic shift of sourcing on global CO2 emissions, as such a shift would stimulate the economic growth and consumptions in developing economies, consequently this may bring additional energy demand and CO2 emissions. Our results addressed the urgency of eliminating in carbon emission intensity gap between developing and developed economies and the successful development of new, scalable low carbon energy sourcing and technologies across the world

Impacts of different urban canopy schemes in WRF/Chem on regional climate and air quality in Yangtze River Delta, China

AbstractYangtze River Delta (YRD) region has experienced a remarkable urbanization during the past 30years, and regional climate change and air pollution are becoming more and more evident due to urbanization. Impacts of urban canopy on regional climate and air quality in dry- and wet-season are investigated in this paper, utilizing the Weather Research and Forecasting/Chemistry (WRF/Chem) model. Four regimes of urban canopy schemes with updated USGS land-use data in actual state of 2004 base on MODIS observations are examined: (1) SLAB scheme that does not consider urban canopy parameters (the control experiment in this paper); (2) a single-layer urban model with a fixed diurnal profile for anthropogenic heat (UCM); (3) multilayer urban canopy model (BEP-Building effect parameterization); (4) multilayer urban models with a building energy model including anthropogenic heat due to air conditioning (BEP+BEM). Results show that, compared with observations, the best 2-m temperature estimates with minimum bias are obtained with SLAB and BEP+BEM schemes, while the best 10-m wind speed predictions are obtained with BEP and BEP+BEM scheme. For PM10 and ozone predictions, BEP+BEM scheme predicted PM10 well during January, while the best estimate of PM10 is obtained with UCM scheme during July, BEP+BEM and SLAB schemes best estimated ozone concentrations for both the two months. Spatial differences of meteorological factors between canopy schemes and control scheme show that compared with SLAB scheme, BEP and BEP+BEM schemes cause an increase of temperature with differences of 0.5°C and 0.3°C, respectively, UCM scheme simulates lower temperature with decrease of 0.7°C during January. In July, all the canopy experiments calculates lower air temperature with reduction of 0.5°C–1.6°C. All the canopy experiments compute lower 10-m wind speed for both January and July. Decreases were 0.7m/s (0.8m/s) with UCM, 1.7m/s (2.6m/s) with BEP, and 1.8m/s (2.3m/s) with BEP+BEM schemes in January (July), respectively. For chemical field distributions, results show that, compared with SLAB scheme, UCM scheme calculates higher PM10 concentration in both January and July, with the differences of 22.3% (or 24.4μg/m3) in January, and 31.4% (or 17.4μg/m3) in July, respectively. As large as 32.7% (or 18.3 μg/m3) of PM10 increase is found over Hangzhou city during July. While 18.6% (or 22.1 μg/m3) and 16.7% (or 24.6 μg/m3) of PM10 decreases are fund in BEP and BEP+BEM schemes during January. Compared with control experiment during January, 6.5% (or 2.6ppb) to 10.4% (4.2ppb) increases of ozone are computed over mage-cities by canopy experiments. All the three canopy schemes predict lower ozone concentrations and as large as 30.2% (or 11.2ppb) decrease is obtained with UCM scheme, and 16.5% (6.2ppb) decrease with BEP scheme during July. The SLAB scheme is suitable for real-time weather forecast while multiple urban canopy scheme is necessary when quantify the urbanization impacts on regional climate