Abstract:
Greenhouse gas emission from China is projected to exceed that from the U.S. according to the widely cited paper Forecasting the Path of China’s CO2 Emissions Using Province Level Information, published by Professor Auffhammer and Carson from UC Berkeley. This conclusion has important implications on international relations and strategies in combating global climate change. The current work examines the statistical basis of this projection. The results suggest that the conclusion is potentially flawed for the following two reasons. First, the model proposed by Auffhammer and Carson assumes a common relationship between CO2 emission and GDP growth for all 30 provinces over the study period. Second, the preferred models in Auffhammer and Carson’s work failed to properly address time dependence in data. The two structural errors in the models will potentially lead to biased predictions because the models’ incorrectly handled data and model error. The current study developed models that corrected the two model error structure issues in UC Berkeley’s paper. These models result in different CO2 emission trajectory from the ones predicted by Auffhammer and Carson.
