Enhanced photocatalytic removal of nitric oxide over Ag-decorated ZnSn(OH)6 microcubes

Presently, most of the population has been facing a string of severe climate change problems that primarily come from the intensive emission of nitric oxide (NO), which requires a practical approach to sustain our living conditions. Herein, Ag nanoparticles-decorated ZnSn(OH)6 microcubes (Ag:cZHS) photocatalysts were synthesized rapidly and used for photocatalytic NO removal under solar light activation. The properties of the newly prepared photocatalysts are comprehensively characterized by a series of routine methods. The NO removal performance over the ZnSn(OH)6 microcubes (c:ZHS) photocatalysts was increased markedly upon being combined with Ag nanoparticles through the surface plasmon resonance effect. The contribution of e−, h+, •OH, and •O2 was extensively investigated through trapping tests and electron spin resonance analysis (ESR). Also, the by-products and apparent quantum efficiency of the cZHS photocatalysts were studied.

Who May Geoengineer: Global Domination, Revolution, and Solar Radiation Management

This paper uses a novel account of non-ideal political action that can justify radical responses to severe climate injustice, including and especially deliberate attempts to engineer the climate system in order reflect sunlight into space and cooling the planet. In particular, it discusses the question of what those suffering from climate injustice may do in order to secure their fundamental rights and interests in the face of severe climate change impacts. Using the example of risky geoengineering strategies such as sulfate aerosol injections, I argue that peoples that are innocently subject to severely negative climate change impacts may have a special permission to engage in large-scale yet risky climate interventions to prevent them. Furthermore, this can be true even if those interventions wrongly harm innocent people.

Unsustainable Borders: Globalization in a Climate-Disrupted World

Climate change and the responses to it reveal starkly different assumptions about borders, security and the ethical communities for whom politicians and activists speak. Starting with the contrasting perspectives of international activist Greta Thunberg and United States President Donald Trump on climate change this essay highlights the diverse political assumptions implicit in debates about contemporary globalization. Rapidly rising greenhouse gas emissions and increasingly severe climate change impacts and accelerating extinctions are the new context for scholarly work in the Anthropocene. Incorporating insights from earth system sciences and the emerging perspectives of planetary politics suggests a novel contextualization for contemporary social science which now needs to take non-stationarity and mobility as the appropriate context for investigating contemporary transformations. The challenge for social scientists and borders scholars is to think through how to link politics, ethics and bordering practices in ways that facilitate sustainability, while taking seriously the urgency of dealing with the rapidly changing material context that globalization has wrought.

Better Understanding Insurance Mechanism in Dealing with Climate Change Risk, with Special Reference to China

Climate change risk has become an important challenge for global sustainable development. The insurance industry can play an important role in coping with the increasingly severe climate change risk. This paper first describes the increasing climate change risk and the difficulties of the insurance mechanism in dealing with it. Then this paper summarizes the international practice of using the insurance mechanism to deal with climate change risk from ten different aspects. Based on the summary of the role of the insurance mechanism in dealing with this risk in developing countries, this paper puts forward the main application areas for climate change risk insurance and discusses the policy implications of developing climate change risk insurance in China.

The Community, the Nation, and Obligations to Future Generations

Prima facie one’s obligations to the nation and to future generations might clash because of the tension between the particular, the concrete, and the contemporary versus the universal, the abstract, and the future-oriented. However, the nation is and should be regarded as an intergenerational community; this mode of thinking, called here “thinking like a nation,” yields concrete obligations to the not yet born, based in current persons and their strong belief that the nation constitutes their self, a self that transcends into the future. According to the transgenerational theory which is based on the nation, depleting resources or creating severe climate change harms contemporaries who regard the transgenerational community of the nation as what constitutes their self. However, some reasons why one should be cautious about thinking like a nation, especially when this becomes a chauvinistic attitude, are noted.

A review of Nyoongar responses to severe climate change and the threat of epidemic disease—Lessons from their past

Nyoongar people have lived in the South West of Western Australia for at least 50,000 years. During that time, they experienced significant climate change, including wide variations in temperature and rainfall, and hundreds of metres’ difference in sea levels. Nyoongar people have a long memory, and climate change is described in their stories and in the knowledge they hold about how life was lived in earlier times. There are artifacts and places that have been manipulated to be productive despite severe drought. COVID-19 disrupted the writing of this article, and the authors felt it appropriate to include Nyoongar responses to the threat of epidemic disease brought by Europeans early in their settlement of the area. This review collates existing material generated through Koodjal Jinnung (two-way seeing), a research method that incorporates traditional knowledge and contemporary social and natural sciences about Nyoongar history, to create a description of the resiliency of Nyoongar people under threat from climate change. The article identifies key values and resilience factors underpinning the successful implementation of behavioural and technological mechanisms to negotiate severe climate change and the threat of epidemic disease.

Hysteresis of tropical forests in the 21st century

Tropical forests modify the conditions they depend on through feedbacks at different spatial scales. These feedbacks shape the hysteresis (history-dependence) of tropical forests, thus controlling their resilience to deforestation and response to climate change. Here, we determine the emergent hysteresis from local-scale tipping points and regional-scale forest-rainfall feedbacks across the tropics under the recent climate and a severe climate-change scenario. By integrating remote sensing, a global hydrological model, and detailed atmospheric moisture tracking simulations, we find that forest-rainfall feedback expands the geographic range of possible forest distributions, especially in the Amazon. The Amazon forest could partially recover from complete deforestation, but may lose that resilience later this century. The Congo forest currently lacks resilience, but is predicted to gain it under climate change, whereas forests in Australasia are resilient under both current and future climates. Our results show how tropical forests shape their own distributions and create the climatic conditions that enable them.

Managing mixed stands can mitigate severe climate change impacts on ecosystem functioning

Climate change affects forest ecosystem processes and related services due to increasing temperature and increasing extreme drought event frequency. This effect can be direct through the alteration of the physiological responses of trees, but also indirect, by modifying interactions between trees and thus changing communities’ composition. Such changes might affect species richness with high impacts on ecosystem functioning, especially productivity.Regarding management issues, mixed stands are usually considered a good option to maintain forest cover and ecosystem services under climate change. However, the possibility to maintain these mixed stands with management actions with positive effects on forest functioning under climate change remains uncertain and deserves further investigations. Relying on a simulation-based study with a forest gap model, we thus addressed the following questions: (1) Are monospecific stands vulnerable to climate change? (2) Would mixed stands significantly mitigate climate change effects on forest productivity and wood production under climate change? (3) Would conversion to mixed stand management affect significantly forest productivity and wood production under climate change compare to monospecific management?With a 150 years simulation approach, we quantified potential climate change effect (using RCP 8.5) compared to present climate and managements effect in the French Alps, focusing on five tree species. The gap-model we used included a management module, which allowed testing six silvicultural scenarios on different stands, with various composition, structure or environmental conditions, under climate change.These simulations showed that monospecific stands currently growing in stressful conditions would be too vulnerable to climate change to be maintained. Managing mixed stands or conversion from pure to mixed stands would make it possible to maintain higher productivity in the long-term than monospecific stands, even under severe climate change. This pattern depends to species and sites considered. Our results will feed into discussion on forest management in the context of climate change.

Hysteresis of tropical forests in the 21st century

<p>Tropical forests modify the conditions they depend on through feedbacks on different spatial scales. These feedbacks shape the hysteresis (history-dependence) of tropical forests, thus controlling their resilience to deforestation and response to climate change. Here we present the emergent hysteresis from local-scale tipping points and regional-scale forest-rainfall feedbacks across the tropics under the recent climate and a severe climate-change scenario. By integrating remote sensing, a global hydrological model, and detailed atmospheric moisture tracking simulations, we find that forest-rainfall feedback expands the range of possible forest distributions especially in the Amazon. The Amazon forest could partially recover from complete deforestation, but may lose that resilience later this century. The Congo forest lacks resilience, but gains it under climate change, whereas forests in Australasia are resilient under both current and future climates. Our results show how tropical forests shape their own distributions and create the climatic conditions that enable them.</p>