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Frequently asked questions

To view an answer, click the [show] link to the right of the question. To view references used by an answer, you must also click the [show] for references at the bottom of the FAQ.

Q1: Is there really a scientific consensus on climate change?

A1: Yes. The IPCC findings of recent warming as a result of human influence are explicitly recognized as the "consensus" scientific view by the science academies of all the major industrialized countries. No scientific body of national or international standing presently rejects the basic findings of human influence on recent climate. This scientific consensus is supported by over 99% of publishing climate scientists.^[1]

Q2: How can we say climate change is real when it's been so cold in such-and-such a place?

A2: This is why it is termed "global warming", not "(such-and-such a place) warming". Even then, what rises is the average temperature over time – that is, the temperature will fluctuate up and down within the overall rising trend. To give an idea of the relevant time scales, the standard averaging period specified by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) is 30 years. Accordingly, the WMO defines climate change as "a statistically significant variation in either the mean state of the climate or in its variability, persisting for an extended period (typically decades or longer)."^[2]

Q3: Can't the increase of CO₂ be from natural sources, like volcanoes or the oceans?

A3: While these claims are popular among global warming skeptics,^[3]^[4] including academically trained ones,^[5]^[6] they are incorrect. This is known from any of several perspectives:

Current human emissions of CO₂ are at least 100 times larger than volcanic emissions. Measurements of CO₂ levels over the past 50 years do not show any significant rises after eruptions.^[7] This is easily seen in a graph of CO₂ concentrations over the past 50 years: the strongest eruption during the period, that of Mount Pinatubo in 1991, produced no increase in the trend.
Isotopic analysis of atmospheric carbon dioxide shows the observed change in the ratio of carbon isotopes reflects the isotopic ratios in fossil fuels.^[8]
Atmospheric oxygen content is decreasing at a rate that agrees with the amount of oxygen being used to burn fossil fuels.^[9]
If the oceans were giving up some of their carbon dioxide, their carbon dioxide concentration would have to decrease. But instead we are measuring an increase in the oceans' carbon dioxide concentration, resulting in the oceans becoming more acidic (or in other words, less basic).^[10]

Q4: I think the article is missing some things, or has some things wrong. Can I change it?

A4: Yes. Keep in mind that your points need to be based on documented evidence from the peer-reviewed literature, or other information that meets standards of verifiability, reliability, and no original research. If you do not have such evidence, more experienced editors may be able to help you find it (or confirm that such evidence does not exist). You are welcome to make such queries on the article's talk page but please keep in mind that the talk page is for discussing improvements to the article, not discussing the topic. There are many forums that welcome general discussions of global warming, but the article talk page is not such a forum.

Q5: Why haven't the graphs been updated?

A5: Two reasons:

There are many images used in the articles related to global warming, and there are many reasons why they may not be updated with the latest data. Some of the figures, like the Global Warming Map, are static, meaning that they are intended to show a particular phenomenon and are not meant to be updated frequently or at all. Others, like the Instrumental Temperature Record and Northern Hemisphere Sea Ice Extent Anomalies, use yearly data and thus are updated once per year—usually in mid- to late-January, depending upon when the data is publicly released, and when a volunteer creates the image. Still others, like Mauna Loa Carbon Dioxide, use monthly data. These are updated semi-regularly.
However, just because an image is 6 months or a year old does not mean it is useless. Robert A. Heinlein is credited with saying, "Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get", meaning that climate is defined as a long-term average of weather, usually about 30 years. This length was chosen to eliminate the year-to-year variations.^[11] Thus, in terms of climate change, any given year's data is of little import.

Q6: Isn't climate change "just a theory"?

A6: People who say this are abusing the word "theory" by conflating its common meaning with its scientific meaning. In common usage, "theory" can mean a hunch or guess, but a scientific theory, roughly speaking, means a coherent set of explanations that is compatible with observations and that allows predictions to be made. That the temperature is rising is an observation. An explanation for this (also known as a hypothesis) is that the warming is primarily driven by greenhouse gases (such as CO₂ and methane) released into the atmosphere by human activity. Scientific models have been built that predict the rise in temperature and these predictions have matched observations. When scientists gain confidence in a hypothesis because it matches observation and has survived intense scrutiny, the hypothesis may be called a "theory". Strictly speaking, scientific theories are never proven, but the degree of confidence in a theory can be discussed. The scientific models now suggest that it is "extremely likely" (>95%) to "virtually certain" (>99%) that the increases in temperature have been caused by human activity as discussed in the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report. Global warming via greenhouse gases by human activity is a theory (in the scientific sense), but it is most definitely not just a hunch or guess.

Q7: Does methane cause more warming than CO₂?

A7: It's true that methane is more potent molecule for molecule. But there's far less of it in the atmosphere, so the total effect is smaller. The atmospheric lifetime of methane (about 10 years) is a lot shorter than that of CO₂ (hundreds to thousands of years), so when methane emissions are reduced the concentration in the atmosphere soon falls, whereas CO₂ accumulates in the atmosphere over long periods. For details see the greenhouse gas and global warming potential articles.

Q8: How can you say there's a consensus when lists of "skeptical scientists" have been compiled?

A8: Consensus is not the same as unanimity, the latter of which is impractical for large groups. Over 99% of publishing climate scientists agree on anthropogenic climate change.^[1] This is an extremely high percentage well past any reasonable threshold for consensus. Any list of "skeptical scientists" would be dwarfed by a comparably compiled list of scientists accepting anthropogenic climate change.

Q9: Did climate change end in 1998?

A9: One of the strongest El Niño events in the instrumental record occurred during late 1997 through 1998, causing a spike in global temperature for 1998. Through the mid-late 2000s this abnormally warm year could be chosen as the starting point for comparisons with later years in order to produce a cooling trend; choosing any other year in the 20th century produced a warming trend. This no longer holds since the mean global temperatures in 2005, 2010, 2014, 2015 and 2016 have all been warmer than 1998.^[12] More importantly, scientists do not define a "trend" by looking at the difference between two given years. Instead they use methods such as linear regression that take into account all the values in a series of data. The World Meteorological Organisation specifies 30 years as the standard averaging period for climate statistics so that year-to-year fluctuations are averaged out;^[2] thus, 10 years isn't long enough to detect a climate trend.

Q10: Wasn't Greenland much warmer during the period of Norse settlement?

A10: Some people assume this because of the island's name. In fact the Saga of Erik the Red tells us Erik named the new colony Greenland because "men will desire much the more to go there if the land has a good name."^[13] Advertising hype was alive and well in 985 AD.

While much of Greenland was and remains under a large ice sheet, the areas of Greenland that were settled by the Norse were coastal areas with fjords that, to this day, remain quite green. You can see the following images for reference:

A map of the Eastern Settlement
A satellite image of that area today
A map of the Western Settlement
A satellite image of that area today
A zoom in on the general area where the Brattahlíð (Erik the Red's farm) and Garðar farms were located

Q11: Are the IPCC reports prepared by biased UN scientists?

A11: The IPCC reports are not produced by "UN scientists". The IPCC does not employ the scientists who generate the reports, and it has no control over them. The scientists are internationally recognized experts, most with a long history of successful research in the field. They are employed by various organizations including scientific research institutes, agencies like NASA and NOAA, and universities. They receive no extra pay for their participation in the IPCC process, which is considered a normal part of their academic duties.

Q12: Hasn't global sea ice increased over the last 30 years?

A12: Measurements show that it has not.^[14] Claims that global sea ice amounts have stayed the same or increased are a result of cherry picking two data points to compare, while ignoring the real (strongly statistically significant) downward trend in measurements of global sea ice amounts.

Arctic sea ice cover is declining strongly; Antarctic sea ice cover has had some much smaller increases, though it may or may not be thinning, and the Southern Ocean is warming. The net global ice-cover trend is clearly downwards.

Q13: Weren't scientists telling us in the 1970s that the Earth was cooling instead of warming?

A13: They weren't – see the article on global cooling. An article in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society has reviewed the scientific literature at that time and found that even during the 1970s the prevailing scientific concern was over warming.^[15] The common misperception that cooling was the main concern during the 1970s arose from a few studies that were sensationalized in the popular press, such as a short nine-paragraph article that appeared in Newsweek in 1975.^[16] (Newsweek eventually apologized for having misrepresented the state of the science in the 1970s.)^[17] The author of that article has repudiated the idea that it should be used to deny global warming.^[18]

Q14: Doesn't water vapour cause 98% of the greenhouse effect?

A14: Water vapour is indeed a major greenhouse gas, contributing about 36% to 70% (not 98%) of the total greenhouse effect. But water vapour has a very short atmospheric lifetime (about 10 days), compared with decades to centuries for greenhouse gases like CO₂ or nitrous oxide. As a result it is very nearly in a dynamic equilibrium in the atmosphere, which globally maintains a nearly constant relative humidity. In simpler terms, any excess water vapour is removed by rainfall, and any deficit of water vapour is replenished by evaporation from the Earth's surface, which literally has oceans of water. Thus water vapour cannot act as a driver of climate change.

Rising temperatures caused by the long-lived greenhouse gases will however allow the atmosphere to hold more vapour. This will lead to an increase in the absolute amount of water vapour in the atmosphere. Since water vapour is itself a greenhouse gas, this is an example of a positive feedback. Thus, whereas water vapour is not a driver of climate change, it amplifies existing trends.

Q15: Is the fact that other solar system bodies are warming evidence for a common cause (i.e. the sun)?

A15: While some solar system bodies show evidence of local or global climate change, there is no evidence for a common cause of warming.

A 2007 National Geographic article described the views of Khabibullo Abdusamatov, who claims that the sun is responsible for global warming on both Earth and Mars.^[19] Abdussamatov's views have no support in the scientific community, as the second page of the National Geographic article makes clear: "'His views are completely at odds with the mainstream scientific opinion,' said Colin Wilson, a planetary physicist at England's Oxford University. [...] Amato Evan, a climate scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, added that 'the idea just isn't supported by the theory or by the observations.'"^[20]
There is no reliable source claiming that Jupiter is warming. However, observations of the Red Spot Jr. storm suggest Jupiter could be in a period of global climate change.^[21]^[22] This is hypothesized to be part of an approximately 70 year global climate cycle, characterized by the relatively rapid forming and subsequent slow erosion and merging of cyclonic and anticyclonic vortices that help transfer heat between Jupiter's poles and equator. The cycle works like this: As the vortices erode, heat exchange is reduced; this makes the poles cool down and the equatorial region heat up; the resulting temperature difference destabilizes the atmosphere, leading to the creation of new vortices.^[23]^[24]
Pluto has an extremely elliptical orbit with a period of about 248 years. Data are sparse, but two data points from 1988 and 2002 indirectly suggest that Pluto warmed between those two dates.^[25] Pluto's temperature is heavily influenced by its elliptical orbit – it was closest to the sun in 1989 and has slowly receded since. Because of thermal inertia, it is expected to warm for a while after it passes perihelion (similar to how a sunny day's warmest temperatures happen during the afternoon instead of right at noon). No other mechanism has so far been seriously suggested. Here is a reasonable summary, and this paper discusses how the thermal inertia is provided by sublimation and evaporation of parts of Pluto's atmosphere. A more popular account is here and in Wikipedia's own article.

Q16: Do scientists support climate change just to get more money?

A16: No,

Scientists participate in international organizations like the IPCC as part of their normal academic duties. They do not receive any extra compensation beyond possibly for direct expenses.
Scientific grants do not usually award any money to a scientist personally, only towards the cost of his or her scientific work.
There is not a shortage of useful things that scientists could study if they were not studying global warming.
- Understanding our climate system better brings benefits independent of global warming. For instance, more accurate weather predictions save a lot of money (on the order of billions of dollars a year), and everyone from insurance agents to farmers wants climate data.^[26]^[27] Scientists could get paid to study climate even if global warming did not exist.

Q17: Doesn't the climate vary even without human activity?

A17: It does, but the fact that natural variation occurs does not mean that human-induced change cannot also occur. Climate scientists have extensively studied natural causes of climate change (such as orbital changes, volcanism, and solar variation) and have ruled them out as an explanation for the current temperature increase. Human activity is the cause at the 95 to 99 percent confidence level (see the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report for details). The high level of certainty in this is important to keep in mind to spot mention of natural variation functioning as a distraction.

Q18: Should we include the view that climate change will lead to planetary doom or catastrophe?

A18: This page is about the science of climate change. It doesn't talk about planetary doom or catastrophe. For a technical explanation, see catastrophic climate change, and for paleoclimatic examples see PETM and great dying.

Q19: Is an increase in global temperature of, say, 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) important?

A19: Though it may not sound like much, a global temperature rise of 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) is huge in climate terms. For example, the sea level rise it would produce would flood coastal cities around the world, which include most large cities.

Earth's climate has varied significantly over geological ages. The question of an "optimal temperature" makes no sense without a clear optimality criterion. Over geological time spans, ecosystems adapt to climate variations. But global climate variations during the development of human civilization (i.e. the past 12,000 years) have been remarkably small. Human civilization is highly adapted to the current stable climate. Agricultural production depends on the proper combination of soil, climate, methods, and seeds. Most large cities are located on the coast, and any significant change in sea level would strongly affect them. Migration of humans and ecosystems is limited by political borders and existing land use. In short, the main problem is not the higher absolute temperature but the massive and unprecedentedly fast change in climate and the related effects on human societies. The IPCC AR6 WG2 report has a detailed discussion of the effects of rapid climate change.

Q20: Why are certain proposals to change the article discarded, deleted, or ignored? Who is/was Scibaby?

A20: Scibaby is/was a long term abusive sock-master (or coordinated group of sock masters) who has created 1,027 confirmed sock puppets, another 167 suspected socks, and probably many untagged or unrecognized ones. This page lists some recent creations. His modus operandi has changed over time, but includes proposing reasonably worded additions on the talk page that only on close examination turn out to be irrelevant, misinterpreted, or give undue weight to certain aspects. Scibaby is banned, and Scibaby socks are blocked as soon as they are identified. Some editors silently revert his additions, per WP:DENY, while others still assume good faith even for likely socks and engage them.

Q21: What about this really interesting recent peer-reviewed paper I read or read about, that says...?

A21: There are hundreds of peer-reviewed papers published every month in respected scientific journals such as Geophysical Research Letters, the Journal of Climate, and others. We can't include all of them, but the article does include references to individual papers where there is consensus that they best represent the state of the relevant science. This is in accordance with the "due weight" principle (WP:WEIGHT) of the Neutral point of view policy and the "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information" principle (WP:IINFO) of the What Wikipedia is not policy.

Q22: Why does the article define "climate change" as a recent phenomenon? Hasn't the planet warmed and cooled before?

A22: Yes, the planet has warmed and cooled before. However, the term "climate change" without further qualification is widely understood to refer to the recent episode and often explicitly connected with the greenhouse effect. Per WP:COMMONNAME, we use the term in this most common meaning. The article Climate variability and change deals with the more general concept.

Q23: Did the CERN CLOUD experiment prove that climate change is caused not by human activity but by cosmic rays?

A23: No. For cosmic rays to be causing global warming, all of the following would have to be true, whereas only the italicized one was tested in the 2011 experiment:^[28]

Solar magnetic field must be getting stronger
The number of cosmic rays reaching Earth must be dropping
Cosmic rays must successfully seed clouds, which requires:

Cosmic rays must trigger aerosol (liquid droplet) formation,
These newly-formed aerosols must grow sufficiently through condensation to form cloud-condensation nuclei (CCN),
The CCN must lead to increased cloud formation, and
Cloud cover on Earth must be declining.

Perhaps the study's lead author, Jasper Kirkby, put it best: "...it [the experiment] actually says nothing about a possible cosmic-ray effect on clouds and climate, but it's a very important first step."^[29]

Q24: I read that something can't fix climate change. Is this true?

A24: Yes, this is true for all plausible single things including: "electric cars", "planting trees", "low-carbon technology", "renewable energy", "Australia", "capitalism", "the doom & gloom approach", "a Ph.D. in thermodynamics". Note that it is problematic to use the word "fix" regarding climate change, as returning the climate to its pre-industrial state currently appears to be feasible only over a timeframe of thousands of years. Current efforts are instead aimed at mitigating (meaning limiting) climate change. Mitigation is strived for through the combination of many different things. See Climate change mitigation for details.

References

^ ^a ^b Powell, James (20 November 2019). "Scientists Reach 100% Consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming". Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society. 37 (4): 183–184. doi:10.1177/0270467619886266. S2CID 213454806. Retrieved 15 November 2020.
^ ^a ^b "Commission for Climatology Frequently Asked Questions". World Meteorological Organization. Archived from the original on 5 May 2020. Retrieved 14 July 2020.
^ Harris, Tom. "Scientists who work in the fields liberal arts graduate Al Gore wanders through contradict his theories about man-induced climate change". National Post. Archived from the original on 30 August 2011. Retrieved 11 January 2009 – via Solid Waste & Recycling. {{cite web}}: |archive-date= / |archive-url= timestamp mismatch; 4 February 2012 suggested (help)
^ Arriola, Benj. "5 Good Arguments Why GlobalWarming is NOT due to Man-made Carbon Dioxide". Global Warming Awareness Blog. Retrieved 11 January 2009.
^ Ahlbeck, Jarl. "Increase of the Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration due to Ocean Warming". Retrieved 11 January 2009.
^ Kirby, Simon (11 April 2007). "Top scientist debunks global warming". Herald Sun. Retrieved 11 January 2009.
^ Brahic, Catherine (16 May 2007). "Climate myths: Human CO2 emissions are too tiny to matter". New Scientist. Retrieved 11 January 2009.
^ "More Notes on Global Warming". Physics Today. May 2005. Retrieved 10 September 2007.
^ Battle, M.; et al. (2000). "Global Carbon Sinks and Their Variability Inferred from Atmospheric O2 and d13C". Science. 287 (5462): 2467–2470. doi:10.1126/science.287.5462.2467.
^ The Royal Society (2005). "Ocean acidification due to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide". Retrieved 9 May 2012.
^ "Met Office: Climate averages". Met Office. Archived from the original on 24 February 2009. Retrieved 23 January 2009.
^ Climate Central (18 January 2017). "2016 Was the Hottest Year on Record". Climate Central. Retrieved 1 February 2017.
^ The Saga of Erik the Red, 1880, English translation by J. Sephton, from the original Eiríks saga rauða.
^ "Cold Hard Facts". Tamino. 8 January 2009. Retrieved 21 January 2009.^{[dead link]}
^ Peterson, T. C.; et al. (2008). "The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus". Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. 89 (9): 1325. Bibcode:2008BAMS...89.1325P. doi:10.1175/2008BAMS2370.1.
^ Gwynne, Peter (28 April 1975). "The Cooling World". Newsweek. p. 64.
^ Verger, Rob (23 May 2014). "Newsweek Rewind: Debunking Global Cooling". Newsweek.
^ Gwynne, Peter (21 May 2014). "My 1975 'Cooling World' Story Doesn't Make Today's Climate Scientists Wrong". insidescience.org.
^ Ravilious, Kate (28 February 2007). "Mars Melt Hints at Solar, Not Human, Cause for Warming, Scientist Says". National Geographic News. Archived from the original on 2 March 2007. Retrieved 6 March 2008.
^ Ravilious, Kate (28 February 2007). "Mars Melt Hints at Solar, Not Human, Cause for Warming, Scientist Says (page 2)". National Geographic News. Archived from the original on 2 March 2007. Retrieved 6 March 2008.
^ Marcus, Philip; Shetty, Sushil; Asay-Davis, Xylar (November 2006). Velocities and Temperatures of Jupiter's Great Red Spot and the New Red Oval and Implications for Global Climate Change. American Physical Society. Retrieved 9 May 2007.
^ Goudarzi, Sara (4 May 2006). "New Storm on Jupiter Hints at Climate Change". Space.com. Retrieved 9 May 2007.
^ Philip, Marcus S. (22 April 2004). "Prediction of a global climate change on Jupiter" (PDF). Nature. 428 (6985): 828–831. Retrieved 9 May 2007.
^ Yang, Sarah (21 April 2004). "Researcher predicts global climate change on Jupiter as giant planet's spots disappear". University of California, Berkeley. Retrieved 9 May 2007.
^ Elliot, J. L.; et al. (10 July 2003). "The recent expansion of Pluto's atmosphere". Nature (424): 165–168. doi:10.1038/nature01762.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^ Foerster, Jim. "What's The Difference Between Private Weather Companies And The National Weather Service?". Forbes.
^ Eilts, Mike (27 November 2018). "The Role of Weather—and Weather Forecasting—in Agriculture". DTN.
^ "What do the CERN experiments tell us about global warming?". Skeptical Science. 2 September 2011.
^ Brumfiel, Geoff (23 August 2011). "Cloud Formation May Be Linked to Cosmic Rays". Scientific American.

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This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on June 21, 2006.

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This article has been mentioned by multiple media organizations:

Sarah McBroom (March 27, 2007). "Conservapedia.com -- an encyclopedic message from the right". Scripps Howard News Service.
Michael Booth (April 30, 2007). "Grading Wikipedia". The Denver Post.
Lawrence Solomon (July 8, 2008). "Wikipropaganda On Global Warming". CBS News.
"Topics that spark Wikipedia 'edit wars' revealed". BBC News. July 18, 2013.
Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies (August 15, 2015). "On Wikipedia, politically controversial science topics vulnerable to information sabotage". Science Daily.

This article was reviewed by The Denver Post on April 30, 2007.
Comments: "a great primer on the subject", "Following the links takes the interested reader into greater and greater depth, probably further than any traditional encyclopedia I've seen", pleasantly surprised how the main articles "stick to the science and avoid confusing the reader with political controversy.", wishes Wikipedia offered better links to basic weather science. Please examine the findings.
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/Terminology section /General discussion

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Tipping points clouds

I've just removed the 2019 study that predicted a tipping point in cloud cover because:

It's not a secondary source, so we should be critical to start with
After speaking to an expert on cloud physics today, it became clear to me that the study has assumptions that might make it not that valid to the real world. From the cited source: Some of the large-scale interactions, including how oceans exchange heat and energy with the atmosphere, were simplified or neglected, he says. This makes it hard to know the precise carbon dioxide levels at which stratocumulus clouds become unstable.
The study extrapolates from one spot to a global estimate. This extrapolation is done in a simplified way and quite some experts believe that this artificially introduces a tipping point, while reality is more smooth: Discussion in Science. Femke Nijsse (talk) 7 June 2019 (UTC)

"Citation standards" review

After reviewing the citation standards I propose making, in the "Full citations" section, the following addition (item "p", regarding newspapers) and tweaks.

Full citations

+ a: Every source to have exactly one full citation with ~~complete~~ full bibliographic details.
+ a': "Full bibliographic details" requires attribution of authorship, date, and title.
+ b: ~~Those~~ Full citations are put in the "Sources" section (not in the text, not in <ref> tags).
+ c: For consistent formatting, templates are used for full citations.
+ d: ~~There are two systems of formatting in Wikipedia: Citation Style 1 and 2 (CS1 and CS2). CS1 formatting style is preferred here: use {{cite xxx}} templates, or {{citation}} with |mode=cs1.~~
+ d: Full citations to be formated as Wikipedia "CS1" style. Use {{cite xxx}} templates, or {{citation}} with |mode=cs1.
+ d': {Cite} templates ~~to include~~ need |ref=harv (or similar) to enable linking from short-cites ~~(see f)~~.
+ e: ~~Reports with different authors/editors for the chapters and full report (such as the IPCC) can be cited using a separate full citation for the chapters and the full report.~~
+ e: Full citations for sources contained in a work (such as separately written chapters in a report) need not include the details of the work if they include a link to a full citation for the work.
+ e': Citation of IPCC reports should be done as recommended at WP:IPCC citation.
+ p: Full citations of newspapers and similar periodicals (but not journals) should be listed chronologically under the publisher.
+ f: Dates in DMY format
+ g: Multiple authors: only the first five need be listed. If more than four ~~add "|display-authors=4"~~ set |display-authors= to 4.
+ h: For human authors and editors, use |last= and |first= or equivalent separate name parameters, not |author= or |editor=. Use |author= for group or institutional authors.
+ i: Initialization, or not, of authors' personal names per source.

I'll have suggestions for the rest tomorrow. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:51, 10 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'm okay with all of your edits, except the removal of the explanation of CS1 and CS2. 99% of editors will have no idea what that means, and please please let's make it as easy as possible, even if that mixes statement of the standard a bit with explanation. Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:32, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Please remind me, where is this list going to appear? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 10:43, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

You can find it in: Talk:Global warming/Citation standards, which also includes some example of how to actually do it. This is linked at the top of talk page (This page has agreed on a consistent citation style blah blah). We were also thinking of providing a link to this page in the editing screen (which now only screams Discretionary sanctions).

(This probs goes against guidelines, but innovatingly having multiple tabs on top of this talk page would really be lovely. We can cram things that are interesting, but not directly relevant (such as Denver Post review) into a separate tab. We could alternatively make one of our archives dedicated to outdated/historical top banners. This way the FAQ and the citation standard are more obvious). Femke Nijsse (talk) 13:50, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I bet there are some eds who are masters at cleaning up that stuff in a sexy way without inventing any new wiki toys. Maybe ask for help at the V:Pump? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 14:25, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Having additional "tabs" at the top of the page – such as "Read/Edit/New section" etc. — is not a matter of any guidelines, but of the underlying Wikimedia software. Which I suspect is not an option. On the other hand, an edit notice (in the editing window) can link to the standards, and should suffice. More on this later. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:30, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's more like 50%, but still: There's a question of just how much explanation of CS1 is warranted. (Is "a WP citation formatting style" sufficient?) I think a wikilink could suffice, but the obvious candidate (HELP:CS1) is more about using the templates than what the style is. (HELP:CS2 is a bit more informative, but linking to CS2 to explain CS1 would undoubtedly spur many "fixes".) I think we really need a good, little essay explaining the CS1/CS2 style differences, which could be a fun project, but a bit tricky, and not likely to show up any time soon. So: the floor is open for suggestions. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:36, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I have inserted "Wikipedia" in 'd' to qualify "CS1", which may help. I think a wikilink would be most helpful, but, as before, I don't see anything useful to link to. If we find there is any confusion on the point we could put a brief explanation in the (yet to be written) explanatory text. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:49, 14 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

[Belated insertion of introductory sentence.]

I propose that the remainder of the citation standards be split between short-cites and notes, and augmented (new items bolded), as follows.

Short-cites

j: In-line citation of content to be done with short-cites (such as created with {{harvnb}} templates or similar).

l: In-line citations to should show location (e.g., page or section number) of cited material within the source.

q: Short-cites for IPCC reports should be as recommended at WP:IPCC citation.

r: Short-cites for periodical articles (including non-peer-reviewed news articles in journals) may use an identifier that combines the publication's name and date. (See examples.)

Notes

s: In-line citations and explanations are usually placed in notes (created using the <ref>...</ref> tags).

n: Use of named-refs (the "<ref name=" construct) to duplicate notes is strongly discouraged.

m: We don't use the {{rp}} template, which inserts a number directly into the main text.

k: All notes, including {{Reflist}}, ~~to be~~ should appear in the "Notes" section.

t: All of the in-line citations and explanations pertinent at a given point in the text should be bundled into a single note.

Not yet perfect, but striving for better. Comments? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:08, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Again, I'm against strongly discouraging named refs. Let's just discourage it without a adjective? The word pertinent can be changed into about, so that people without an academic education can understand. Rest of it, nice! Femke Nijsse (talk) 07:50, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

To paraphrase Lord of the Rings, The way is shut. It was made by the Harv and the Harv keep it. The way is shut! So instead

Delete n and m

Add New editors are strongly encouraged to learn the citation guidelines above, and all editors are asked to convert any nonconforming citations to this system.

NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 10:06, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Femke: I thought "strongly" was your addition, no? Well, I am strongly for discouraging named-refs. Even more so today, as I just reverted an extended edit by RL0919 that undid a bunch of my previous work by re-introducing named-refs. I can put up with named-refs being introduced initially (because an editor used sfn?), but I am pretty annoyed at havng my work undone. (And hot enough that today might not be a good time to argue about it.)

Perhaps we can strike "strongly", but "n" should be kept, as nmaed-refs are endless trouble. We should also keep "m", as 1) we really don't use {rp} (which is a bit of hint), and 2) we really shouldn't use it. It is an ugly bit of mystification that is quite unnecesary.

NAEG's "New editors ..." statement is not actually a standard. But a good comment, and I like it well enough I have already added it. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:20, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Was strongly my addition? If so, I've changed my mind a bit towards not wanting to scare off people new to the citation standards. I'm okay with named-refs and okay with the compromise to discourage it. Femke Nijsse (talk) 10:51, 16 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Use of {rp}

So let's consider {{rp}}. Is there any reason we should allow it? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:09, 13 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

While in general I don't mind {{rp}}, we're already using short-cites, so there is no advantage here. Let's be clear and not use it. Femke Nijsse (talk) 10:48, 16 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yes: let's be clear about not using it.

In our previous discussion of this NAEG was inclined to use {rp} as being intuitive, but in his last comment on this (above, at 23 August) he allowed that "intuitive" is learned. Some years ago I argued against it, but I don't know if we need to present an argument (or rationale). Let's just say we don't use it, and hopefully that will be sufficient. Any instance of someone using it is indicative of other problems, such as not understanding the use of short-cites. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:33, 16 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Examples

What's our specific purpose for the examples? A quick explanation of how to use harvnb for those that don't want to click over to {{harvnb}}? Examples illustrating the standards? (And I should add an example of citing newspapers, but I haven't worked out just how to fit it in.) Reassurance? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:24, 13 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

All three of those yes! :). Also showing the nice formatting we use. Femke Nijsse (talk) 10:46, 16 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

and formatting pictorially to set up a sexy visually attractive comparison with examples of what NOT to do NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 19:58, 16 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I understand the concept of "visually attractive comparison", but not clear on specifics. Also, sometimes it is best to not show "wrong" examples as that may reinforce the image. But I'll see what I can come up with. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:40, 16 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

How about adding

~~New editors are to be THANKED for any RS-based addition that passes bare minimum WP:Verification. It's OK to ask them to reformat their additions to match this protocol, but in the interest of editor retention and [{WP:DONTBITE]], experienced editors are encouraged to either try to teach editors about these standards or just fix citation formatting. Either way, do not revert otherwise acceptable additions purely on the basis of citation formatting. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 20:03, 16 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Quite aside from the mistaken notion that "bare minimum WP:Verification" guarantees inclusion, or this red-herring of reversions "purely on the basis of citation formatting": perhaps you would take on the task of thanking new editors, and teaching them about these standards? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:53, 16 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I have revised Talk:Global warming/Citation standards as discussed, and resequenced the enumeration. And am working up some examples. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:41, 19 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

And I have just finished revising the "Examples" section – now "Tutorial with examples" — to concisely and clearly cover all of the basic cases. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:17, 5 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Additional work needed (September)

The small "Food and water" section (under "Effects/Humans") needs revision. Partly because half of it relies on a derivative EPA webpage now withdrawn (which I am about to tag), and partly because the points cited are Afro-specific. I would be very surprised if a more global view could not be found in AR5 WG2, which is, after all, the successor to AR4 WG2 sources the EPA report was based on. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:17, 15 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for pointing it out. Should have some time maybe this week to tackle this. AR5 WGII has a very annoying structure, where all regions are treated separately. Some problems are more accute in certain regions, but that's not always that easy to distill from the reports. I'm sure all the information is there, so I'll dig a bit (or I'll try to find some review papers discussing this). Femke Nijsse (talk) 10:43, 16 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Summarizing so broadly can be challenging, but that's why we're paid so grandly. Right? :-]

I haven't looked closely, but doesn't the WG2 SPM have a suitable summary? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:01, 16 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It might be my lack of expertise here, but I find the WG2 summary vague in quite a few aspects. I'll have a closer look at it & at other reliable sources. Femke Nijsse (talk) 10:46, 17 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

BTW: while I am thankful for all the work you are doing, I am particularly thankful to see the Met Office bit about "Arctic sea ice" gone. That looked to be definitely obsoleted by later work, and even dubious. Which is a persistent problem – I'm seeing quite a few really soft bits that need not only re-writing, but even re-researching. I'm glad I don't have to do it all myself! ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:51, 25 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I spent quite some time trying to find an updated version of that claim, but it seems that this metric (when is Arctic ice-free for first time) is not really used that much anymore, but instead at what temps do we get ice-free summers. There is little inertia in the Arctic sea ice, so it does make sense to frame it in this way. I'm really happy that you're tagging all these claims, as I've been working on failed verification for this article for too long to still see what's wrong. At some point, we must have found all errors, right? Femke Nijsse (talk) 11:25, 26 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, at some point. Though as you know, the challenge is not so much in the finding (which is why we need in-source location), but fixing, replacing, and/or re-writing. But I think we are making good progress. And I think I'll have some stuff just for you later today. :-) ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:51, 26 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Dang, didn't get it done. Sorry. Okay, likely tomorrow. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:02, 27 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

SROCC is in! These are all marked as "DRAFT" (I have adjusted your short-cites) because (per the IPCC) they are "Subject to Copyedit". Case in point: you may notice a discrepancy in the author listing for chapter 4. The draft did not alphabetize them, contrary to the other chapters and other information on-line; I am anticipating they will be alphabetized. When there is a finished, published report I'll add the new (and possibly revised) forms, and the existing short-cites can be switched as they are verified. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:18, 28 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

"feared" vs "stoked fears"

A couple days ago, I changed the following sentence...

"[American conservative think tanks] challenged the scientific evidence, argued that global warming would have benefits, feared that concern for global warming was some kind of socialist plot to undermine American capitalism, and asserted that proposed solutions would do more harm than good."

...to...

"[American conservative think tanks] challenged the scientific evidence, argued that global warming would have benefits, stoked fears that concern for global warming was some kind of socialist plot to undermine American capitalism, and asserted that proposed solutions would do more harm than good."

...based on the cited source, which says:

"... the conservative movement continues to push against such calls with warnings that the agenda for climate action is part of a socialist plot to undermine the American way of life."

I didn't expect this to be controversial since it was simply a closer re-phrasing of the source, but my change was reverted, twice. I'm open to other re-phrasings, but "feared" is a poor fit, IMO. The think tanks are clearly not just passively "fearing" a socialist plot; they are actively promoting this fear, per the citation. Kaldari (talk) 16:55, 18 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The source is Montlake 2019 ("What does climate change have to do with socialism?"), available here.

The sentence in question could be written better, but the addition of "stoked" makes it worse. Note the structure of the sentence: American CTT challenged, argued, feared, and asserted. Changing "feared" to "stoked fears" suggests that the CTT were stoking fears. That is, making those fears greater, with the target of that stoking – whether themselves, or others – left unspecified. Which is not what Montlake says. The introductory note says (emphasis added): "... One of the most vocal strains of opposition to mainstream climate science appears to be rooted in fears of socialism." Further on the article quotes someone: "Climate skepticism is deeply rooted in the foundational priors on the right" (emphasis added). Further on the author refers to "their long-standing fear". It is possible that talk of climate action – and particularly of climate effects and climate responsibility – "stokes" these fears in some conservatives, but that is not what Montlake says. I see no indication in this source that conservatives are "are actively promoting this fear".

An improvement to the sentene would be moving the "feared" clause to the end, casting it in a form such as: "It has been suggested that these responses arise not just from protection of economic interests, but also from a deep seated fear of a 'socialist plot to undermine the American way of life.'" ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:28, 18 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the article contains other sentences about the public's fear of socialism, but the sentence we're editing is about the conservative think tanks and their actions, which is most directly addressed in the sentence I quoted above (and the surrounding context). Kaldari (talk) 23:37, 26 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Since the only person to offer an opinion is the person who reverted my changes (J. Johnson), I'm going to list this at Wikipedia:Third opinion, and see if we can get a 3rd opinion. Kaldari (talk) 23:30, 26 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps one is enough, if backed with a valid argument. And you have not responded to my point that no where does the source say "stoked", nor to my point that your changed also changes the structure of the sentence. Nor have you explained how you get "stoked fears" out of "push against such calls with warnings". or where this source says the CTT's are "actively promoting this fear, per the citation." In short, you have shown nothing to support your view on the matter. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:00, 27 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The article first talks about how opposition to climate change is related to fears of socialism, then it says that "one faction in the conservative movement" is blocking progress on climate change by warning that it's a socialist conspiracy. Then they cite some specific conservative think tanks as examples. If you put that all together, it's saying that conservative think tanks are stoking fears of socialism. That's basically the gist of the entire article. But if you're going to insist that we avoid any interpretation whatsoever, I'm fine with making it a more exact reflection of the source. And I have no idea what you're talking about as far as changing the structure of the sentence. I changed one verb to a different verb. The sentence structure is still identical. Kaldari (talk) 06:12, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

For future reference, I changed "feared" to "warned", per the source. Hopefully that's a more acceptable (and accurate) paraphrasing. Kaldari (talk) 22:00, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Your "put that all together" is the kind of extrapolation we should avoid doing.

I am not entirely happy supporting content about what the deniers have done (argue, warn, etc.) with a source that is focused on only one reason for why they have done so (fear of socialism). The source's discussion of the latter is incidental to the main topic, and therefore weaker. Additional sources would be good here, but probably good enough for now. 23:48, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

Edit notice

I think we are about ready to implement an edit notice that advises editors of the citation standards applicable here. Any suggestions how that should be worded? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:56, 20 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say something like this might be sufficient: Note that this article has agreed on a set of citation standards. Please follow those or ask help on the talk page when adding any reference. Femke Nijsse (talk) 12:47, 22 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

That might work. I was thinking along the lines of: Per WP:CITEVAR: this article has established citation standards ("style") to which all edits should conform. See Talk:Global warming/Citation standards for details. I don't want to say "reference" (as that would reinforce a bad usage), but I think a small "<ref>" icon might serve to indicate what this mainly about. I just spent half an hour searching, but couldn't find anything suitable. I may explore this further tonight. Or maybe just do text, with some kind of highlighting. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:00, 22 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not entirely satisfied with either of our formulations, so still hoping for more suggestions or comments. (Edit notices are not as readily changeable as other templates, so it is preferable to try to get this good at the outset.) As a side matter: I haven't found a suitable icon (yet?). I can make one, but have forgotten how get a transparent background in svg format. A background task. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:06, 26 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

This might work:

WP:CITEVAR caution: please see this article's established citation standards regarding the addition or modification of citations ("references").

And perhaps with a catchy "<ref>" icon. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:50, 6 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Caution = poison and downed power lines. How about inspiring the reader to think "These people will appreciate my citation effort even if I make a mistake" instead of making them think "Oh my god, what if I fuck up?" NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 22:46, 6 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

HELP!! Editors have done a TON of work to clean up the citations and standardize their formatting. We would be really grateful if you fit your own work into that system. It's not hard; if you need help, just ask! For starters, please read [Talk:Global warming/Citation standards|citation standards]] NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 22:49, 6 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

You're thinking of "danger"; I don't see "caution" as so extreme. But it could also be: "Per WP:CITEREF: ...." And note that it does say "please".

A general consideration here is to have the most concise effective message, to avoid eating up screen space. While that tends towards brusqueness, what I have proposed is no more brusque than "Content that violates any copyrights will be deleted", etc. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:35, 6 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with the slight modification of removing the word caution. Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:19, 7 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@JJ, it's a poor analogy. Copyvio is a legal issue that we are compelled to obey. Cite standards are optional. Being pushy about them is counterproductive to recruiting new editors and cultivating the cooperative culture that makes this more fun. Yours without the caution would be acceptable bu this would be better and use less screenspaceNewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 10:33, 7 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Working with references? Please help us maintain the agreed citation standards for this page

NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 10:33, 7 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't heard of anyone being electrocuted for copyvio. Even so, "will be deleted" could be stated much more gently. And the following non-legal requirement that "content must be verifiable" could also be cast into your "We would be really grateful" format – but it isn't.

The problem with the "nice" "Please help us ..." approach is that many editors are oblivious to that. As a case in point, just today Cosmicseeds has again added a full citation in a note, despite being previously advised/asked nicely multiple times (here) to not do so. It's fine with me if you want to take on persuading editors to comply, or to clean-up after them when they won't, and the current case would be a fine place to start. But lacking that, I think we need to state a little stronger that consistency with the standards is not 'entirely voluntary on your part and we are fine if you can't be bothered to do so'. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:13, 7 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

NewsAndEventsGuy How about "inspiring" Cosmicseeds to abide with the citation standards? Or to clean up after him? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:55, 11 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

We need a template for flagging petty bickering NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 21:58, 11 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

You are being non-responsive. (Do we need a template for that?) I have pointed to a problem, and am asking how you would like to respond. If the matter is too petty for your response I will deal with it as I see fit, and don't bother complaining about that later when you didn't respond now. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:59, 12 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Femke: what do you think about this:

Per WP:CITEVAR: before adding or modifying citations ("references") please see the citation standards established for this article.

Does that work for you? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:01, 13 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yes!! The edit notice is in, and everyone editing the article is now advised of the citation standards. Hopefully we won't have to keep cleaning up after editors that weren't aware of them. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:39, 28 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Great, and despite my pushback on the "vibe" thanks for all the hard work you've put in on it. I do hope others (A) pay attention and then (B) show appreciation by trying to do follow it! On the other hand, I've seen many comments in WP space questioning how well people pay attention to edit notices, and especially new people. So I'm doubtful this will erradicate the disease. Did you (we?) already discuss a supplemental DONTBITE instructional template for user talk, when the inevitable good faith editor doesn't pay attention and does things the old fashioned way? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 21:21, 28 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Captions, and figures near top of article

@RCraig09: Nice work simplifying the captions! In this way technical notes are indeed not necessary. I think the caption and / or the map figure is a bit off or problematic. It now says that some areas have cooled, implying that we can see some type of trend in this figure. Pedantically, this is incorrect. We have a comparison of two snapshots, where the second one only covers a 5 year window. If you look at trends (with all data), most of the blue regions have actually warmed iirc. We need to find a better figure here that averages over a longer period. Femke Nijsse (talk) 09:48, 21 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The present line chart: The average annual temperature at the earth's surface has risen since the late 1800s, with year-to-year variations (shown in black) being smoothed out (shown in red) to show the general warming trend.

Proposed new line+stripe composite: The average annual temperature at the earth's surface (1850—2018) has risen from being relatively cool (shown by blue stripes) to progressively warm, especially in recent decades (shown by stripes of increasingly intense reds).

I've simplified the heat map's caption to remove the incorrect implication. Wikimedia Commons doesn't seem to have a recent heat map in Categories Climate_change_diagrams or Climate_change or Climate_diagrams or Global_warming_graphs or Global_warming_diagrams etc. . . . I plan to search NASA.gov etc. since a heat map (especially a GIF or movie) conveys more than the existing single line graph. A third graph as you suggested (similar to "Options to reduce GHG emissions..." above), is also a good idea. —RCraig09 (talk) 17:49, 21 September 2019 (UTC) Update: new NASA heat map animation, 1880—2018, has been posted. —RCraig09 (talk) 03:47, 22 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that is precisely the kind of problem that must be dealt with to avoid miscommunication. The original figure had a scale showing the coloration being plus and minus of a certain temperature, but I don't recall if it specified that temperature (the average global temperature over that period?), or why it is the basis. For illustration, consider how a line graph could show the average global trend, and then how the variances, even when the lag behind the trend, are (in most cases?) still increasing. For doing something like this with the warming stripes, you could (e.g.) take the average global temperature (or each region's temperature?) at the start of the period, with blue, and red, and redder showing regions that have gotten cooler, warmer, and much warmer. The caption could say something like "Increases (red) or decreases (blue) in average temperature since ...." ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:16, 21 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Generating warming stripe diagrams is a non-trivial project (plopping data into a spreadsheet is only the beginning), so I propose avoiding the above problems by replacing the current line chart with the "Rosetta Stone"-ish (composite) chart on the right. The line+stripe graphic avoids the need to explain "baseline" temperature, and avoids "smoothing" (because similarly-colored stripes visually "smooth" the choppy line chart). The original data (from Berkeley Earth) is reliable. —RCraig09 (talk) 03:47, 22 September 2019 (UTC) Make suggested changes to the caption here, rather than the article page. —RCraig09 (talk) 12:21, 22 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

If it was trivial someone else would have already done it, right? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:34, 22 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know where publicly available data is, for separate regions/continents, which makes your 22:16, 21 Sept region-related suggestion essentially impossible for me.

P.S. If I understand the last part of your region-related suggestion correctly, the closest thing to a solution would be the comprehensive color-array graphic that has already been removed from this GW article once (shown at right). —RCraig09 (talk) 02:36, 25 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I think you misunderstand. My suggestion is regarding the basis for calculating the variances. Your original graphic (and all subsequent revisions?) appear to calculate the variance (intensity of color) from an average calculated over the entire period, which might be considered a mid-point. (The equivalent line graph might show a horizontal line for this average value.) My suggestion is that the basis be the initial global average temperature. Initially some regions are warmer than that, some are colder. And further on some regions might even show cooling spells that drop them into "blue". But the overall trend would be as seen: red, and redder. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:30, 25 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

There are no warming stripes "rules" per se, but FYI: Ed Hawkins' graphics use a baseline temperature that is an average over a reference period (often 30 years long, e.g., 1951-1980). Temps below the baseline are blue, those above are red; a two-color graphic was probably chosen as being more demonstrative. (This one by RSJones is single-colored.) —RCraig09 (talk) 22:10, 25 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand why should have any data problem, as it is the same data you are already using (right?). Even if it is only the variances, they can still be adjusted to use the initial global average as the basis. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:30, 25 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The comprehensive color array^{(196 countries x 118 years = 23,128 data points)} was made by Ed Hawkins, not by me. I've laboriously made some simpler warming stripes diagrams, like the one with yellow dots, above. —RCraig09 (talk) 22:10, 25 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I see. I thought you were cranking these out yourself, and had a broad range of options. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:41, 25 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Subsection: Figures near top of article

— I think that to make the public understand the basics of global warming, we should provide, grouped together, a set of three successive line charts of temperature that would provide all-important context for recent temperature increases:

1. A temperature graph like the one in this 800,000 year NASA chart, or this NOAA chart], or this EPA chart or similar,

2. Milena's 2,000 year chart File:Temperature reconstruction last two millennia.svg), presently in the "Observed temperature changes" section,

3. The current 1880-2018 line chart File:Global Temperature Anomaly.svg, also shown a few inches above.

— The trio could go either at the top, or where Milena's 2,000 year chart is in the "Observed temperature changes" section.

— If the trio goes in the "Observed temperature changes" section, then the above composite linechart/warming stripe graphic File:20190705 Warming stripes BEHIND line graph - Berkeley Earth (world).png, (above, with yellow dots) would be a good color match to the snazzy updated NASA heat map animation at the top.

— I could combine the three graphics into a single file, also.

— I'm not married to the details. Your thoughts? Better sources? Suggestions? I'm willing to generate new chart(s), but want to get some consensus, so the work isn't wasted effort. —RCraig09 (talk) 02:32, 25 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Confirming I've read, but will reply when I'm actually awake. Barely slept last night :(.

More awake now! Thanks again for your proposals :). For me, in choosing which graphics to use, I'm primarily concerned with what other comprehensive sources do. My preference is that this page is primarily drawn from scientific sources, with addition of the political and societal aspects from other sources. As such, for scientific figures, I'm looking mostly at what summaries of scientific assessments use in their report. For assessing suitability I've looked at two comprehensive scientific sources, as well as comprehensive sources for science communication:

A) IPCC AR5 Summary for policymakers Synthesis report

B) Executive report of National (US) Climate Assessment

C) NASA's climate site

D) Met office

I think that, especially for the lede, we should restrict ourselves to the type of graphs that these sources use, and none of them use figures of paleoclimate to talk about current climate change, except for the CO2 figure. If we were to give those more prominence in our article, we'd give them WP:Undue weight in my opinion. Also, for the 'observed temperature changes (which might become observed climate system changes or smth), one paleofigure is probs sufficient. The 2000 yr graph, I think, is better known in public perception (considering the whole Hockey stick controversy), so I have a slight preference for that one. I do like your NOAA chart as well, but it's almost too smooth and good. I'd expect a weaker correlation, especially since they've not taken the logarithm of the CO2 concentration. (Our theory says temperature change is approximately proportional to log(CO₂), not to CO₂ itself.). Does that make sense? Femke Nijsse (talk) 18:55, 27 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It does seem to make sense. (Perhaps a fool's delusion?)

Off-hand I can't speak to how the experts approach this. But it seems to me the essential and most central point in all of this is not so much how warm the climate is getting, but how fast it is warming. That is, the unprecedentedly rapid rise of temperature. (Well, except for one Bad Day For Dinosaurs.) And I think a suitable graph of paleo-temperature over some period best illustrates that. So if we have any figures in the lead there should be at least of such figure. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:17, 27 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, what you say makes sense, Femke Nijsse.
Sadly^{(in my opinion)} this Wikipedia article focuses on the informal/popular use of the term global warming (rather than its literal interpretation), and^{(just as sadly)} even reliable scientific references also focus mainly on the most recent 150-170 years, avoiding comparisons to earlier (slower) periods of warming.
After reading your comments (Femke), I can now see how juxtaposing an 800,000-year chart with two shorter-term charts (my suggestion) might raise issues of WP:SYNTHESIS—even though I think readers should see the "recent" (~170 year) warming in that broader context in order to truly understand the overall phenomenon.
J. Johnson (JJ), I agree completely about showing how fast temps are changing, but the current 150-year warming would be almost invisible on an 800,000-year chart (example), so its main purpose would be to show by juxtaposition with shorter-term charts how fast the globe is warming now.
Bottom line: I personally favor three juxtaposed charts,^{(or a combination chart I could make)} but I understand that opinion conflicts with how this article has^{(unfortunately)} evolved to surrender to the popular (narrow) definition of the term "global warming".
Interestingly, Femke's link to the UK Met Office page (here) shows a climate spiral and warming stripes, their designer Ed Hawkins (scientist) being British. —RCraig09 (talk) 21:48, 27 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

An 800,000-year chart of temperature is not suitable for showing either the amount or rate of current warming. The hockey-stick figure shows these, but doesn't show that this is unprecedented at paleo scale. What we need is a figure showing the rate of change of temperature) in (say) the past 800,000 years. I don't know if anyone has done that. Lacking that, I believe CO2 levels have been used as a millennial-scale proxy. The problem with that is explaining to the generality of readers how that demonstrates "unprecedented". ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:03, 27 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

True. For there to exist a paleoclimate rate-of-temperature-change^{(first derivative, or slope)} graph to exist—and I've never seen one—one would need proxies or record-keeping in relatively short time intervals (much less than 150-year intervals, going back ~500,000 years). I don't think Fred Flintstone & Barney Rubble were up to the task! The best we can do is compare different-timespan charts, explain the evidence in words, and hope readers get it. —RCraig09 (talk) 01:10, 28 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Well, temperature follows the CO2 levels, and with the removal rate of CO2 being about a thousand years it would seem there's a footprint big enough to catch at millennial scale.

"Words" is where lot of people stumble, which is why we need good graphics. (A "small matter of graphic design".) Lacking those, the words need very careful attention. After I get the citations shaped up I'd like look into the scientific basis for "unprecedented". Perhaps I'll find a good graphic! ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:10, 28 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hot off the press. After much inspiration and even more perspiration, I boldly propose the figure at right to convey GW within the perspective of geologic time periods. Its graphics and caption are designed to emphasize—in quickly understandable terms—how unusual the current warming is. I think it should replace the current 1880-2018 chart that's at the top of the article. (The animated heat map should stay, so we would show AGW over both time and space.) Let me know your thoughts on the substance. Aside: now that I have the raw data, I can explore rate-of-change over time. —RCraig09 (talk) 22:14, 4 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, I think I like it. [I also moved the figure down so it's next to the current comments.] ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:24, 4 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your hard work! Per my previous comment, I don't think we should tackle paleoclimatology more than we do now in an article about current climate change. Could you remove the green background and change the colour of the arrows? To me, they come over as shouty. Femke Nijsse (talk) 09:42, 5 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

(Two small scientific side-notes for claims about unprecedentedness. Note that the IPCC doesn't say warming is unprecedented over the last 800 000 years. As far as I understand this is partially because we don't have a high enough resolution. If we only have data points 500 years apart, we don't know how fast they were warming. Second one: please don't do OR with taking the rate of warming. Taking the rate of warming from an uncertain time series is actually a COMPLETE FIELD OF SCIENCE because uncertainties propagate in difficult ways. Just taking the difference won't do if you have missing data). Femke Nijsse (talk) 07:17, 5 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your always-thoughtful responses. You're absolutely correct about resolution; the caption describes time frames and avoids rates of change. The chart shows current (A)GW with the perspective of paleoclimatology. Sources with paleo-charts: NASA, NASA, EPA, NOAA.

(P.S. I can adjust colors if we agree on content; I purposely used complementary colors for the general audience, but kept the graphs mostly black/white="scientific". Blue=cool, red=warm, purple=red+blue=alternating during paleo.)

I agree we should not tackle paleclimatology, because the topic of this article is (as should be) the current change of climate. But even though "unprecedented" applies only "over decades to millennia", it might be appropriate to show the longer term (800 millennia) background. Or not; I am undecided.

RC: There is a problem with scaling, as some of the details are too small to see. (I suspect these charts were designed for a full page display.) I have done a little tweak with |upright= to get a size slightly larger than the default "thumb" size; you might want to play around with that. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:00, 5 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not "tackling" paleoclimatology; the charts simply put current GW in perspective timewise, unlike the current 1880-2018 basic chart. (P.S. The large white legends and the basic shape of the graphs tell the story; readers can click on image to get details.) —RCraig09 (talk) 22:08, 5 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

In my browser (YMMV) clicking on the image doesn't make it bigger, because the height already fills the screen. I can make it bigger, but this gets back to the problem of how much work a reader has to do to get the details, especially if they are not familiar with their browser's features. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:09, 5 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@J. Johnson: Click on the image three consecutive times... it should become full-sized (1500 pixels wide). Let me know if there's still a problem. —RCraig09 (talk) 15:43, 6 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Huh? I don't quite know what you mean by three clicks. At first I thought it was browser-specifc behavior (and therefore YMMV). But on trying this from Chromium same result: the size of the image is constrained to fit its height within the browser window. (That is controlled by the WikiMedia Media Viewer.) The only way I have found to get full size is download the image (which takes four clicks in the right spots), and display it locally with my own tools. Nice as these graphs are, there are details unreadable at size presented. Like I said earlier, they appear to have been designed for full-page display. As a comparison, see the map I did at 1976 Tangshan earthquake#Damage: by design it has no text smaller than the surrounding text when displayed at the intended size. While the graphs here are a bit tight at this scale (I think I set |upright= to 1.2, where 1.3, or even 1.4, might be preferable), the titles and labels do need to be bigger to be readable. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:58, 6 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

In my Chrome (Mac desktop), clicking on the image yields a somewhat-larger image, clicking on that somewhat-larger image leads to the huge (Yuge!) original. In iOs (iPhone), 'clicking' on the image yields an image I can expand with my fingertips. —RCraig09 (talk) 21:37, 6 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Femkemilene: @J. Johnson: Would you agree with a TWO-chart image (with ONLY the 2,000-year and 1880-2018 charts)? That image would essentially replace two images that are already near the top. Joining the two charts in one image provides extremely valuable perspective for current AGW. I see only ONE mention of paleoclimatology in the article and think that all three charts provide the best perspective (links below, to four 800,000 year charts by NASAx2, NOAA, EPA), but joining two charts seems a reasonable compromise here. —RCraig09 (talk) 15:44, 6 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. I would retain some textual reference to ice age cycles in the caption, to try to keep the largest perspective. —RCraig09 (talk) 15:49, 6 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Femke: do you have specific suggestions re colo(u)rs? I use NON-gray complementary colors to be "friendlier" for non-scientists. —RCraig09 (talk) 15:44, 6 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that somewhere we should provide the broader million-year context, but I think that need not, and likely best not, be in the lead. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:00, 6 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Providing one two-panel figure for paleocontext is fine with me, but still not entirely convinced that they should be combined. In terms of design: note that colours are meant for drawing the eye to a certain aspect of the graph. That's why you want to have very mute for the background, such as white, black, off-white, off-black. For inspiration, Google infographics (definitely meant for lay audience), to see what they're doing. All of the background (except one ugly one) are mute colours. Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:08, 7 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Alrighty then! I've (essentially) combined Femke's 2,000-year chart with the existing 1880-2018 chart to show CurrentAGW in perspective. It's gray and black, with blue indicating cool and red indicating warm. I've used simple language in the captions; maybe sourcing would add weight to the captions. I hope you'll all continue to consider that a third (800,000-year) chart would best emphasize how unusual CurrentAGW is, but this compromise is better than nothing. +In view of my not finding an updated free-use causation/attribution chart anywhere, I've also added File:Climate Change Attribution.png to the top. In 2019, attribution/Causation is still critical. —RCraig09 (talk) 20:39, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Attribution charts found. I've just discovered at https://science2017.globalchange.gov/chapter/3/ two "attribution" charts (probably public domain from U.S. government Fourth National Climate Assessment), similar to what I want:

https://science2017.globalchange.gov/img/figure/figure3_1.png (right side; has clutter)
https://science2017.globalchange.gov/img/figure/figure3_3.png (separate charts take up space)

I'm considering converting to Wikiacceptability & uploading. Thoughts? —RCraig09 (talk) 22:13, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The figure3_3.png stacked charts are rather nice, except for the matter of different scales, that make the contribution due to (e.g.) solar (barely reaches 0.1{{deg} F. once) and natural variability (never reaches 0.4° F.) seem comparable in size to the 1.5° anthropogenic component. Rhode's "Climate Change Attribution" chart is much better. We should definitely use that one, though perhaps it is not the best for the lead. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:28, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I've asked Robert A Rohde on his user talk page if he knows of any updated charts. Separately, I will take a stab at merging the "stacked" NCA4 graphs into a common vertical scale (won't be trivial in Photoshop). I strongly favor showing attribution/causality in the lead, because the issue is so critical, as shown by the lead's long-existing text. —RCraig09 (talk) 15:44, 9 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that the lead should address both aspects (former issues?) of reality and cause. I am not entirely convinced that addressing both in the same figure is best. My experience (more with managers than scientists, and strongly influenced with the KISS principle) is that each figure should address exactly one point. I think Rhode's graph (updated or not) is excellent, and the span appropriate, for comparing contributions. But showing that the current GW is anomalous really needs a longer time span, which suggests a separate figure. Keep in mind the lead is supposed summarize the article, and that addressing these points does not mean a detailed explication, which should be done in the appropriate section. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:46, 9 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The point of the composite (two-chart) image is to show current AGW in perspective, which is critical; plus, I've blue/red color-coded the two charts. Question: By "...needs a longer time span" were you implying the 800,000-year chart should be introduced (separately) or merged (into a three-chart image) or otherwise? —RCraig09 (talk) 22:08, 9 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

No, I think the 2,000 year chart is suitable for that. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:50, 9 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I've used Photoshop to manually adjust the varied vertical (temperature) scales in the NCA4 Vol.I Ch.3 Fig.3.3 (2017), and manually merged them to form the composite attribution chart I just uploaded and inserted into the article (File:2017 Global warming attribution - based on NCA4 Fig 3.3.png) to replace the outdated (1990s) attribution chart. —RCraig09 (talk) 17:50, 12 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Very nice. Even better than Rhode's chart. Let's use it. But one little quibble: the subscripts to the labels are too small. Are they really needed? I reckon most readers will understand that the color of label indicates which line. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:25, 13 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Merci, danke, bedank, tack, grazie & gracias. The red "solar" trace is hard to distinguish from the other traces in which it is entwined, so I added the "(red)" sub-label for it, and added the other "(color)" sub-labels to be consistent. I purposely made the sub-labels smaller for the reason you mentioned: that most people will deduce the traces are color-coded. —RCraig09 (talk) 20:54, 13 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

New version with only one tiny label — "(red)" for Solar forcing — has been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. —RCraig09 (talk) 05:14, 14 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

New ocean report

New report, https://www.ipcc.ch/srocc/home/, seems to provide information about tropical cyclones, the collapse of AMOC, sea ice retreat, sea level rise and more! JJ, would you be willing to add it? (I've already added one short-cite to it, but unfortunately, my back has finished working for now). With this report added and implemented, I am even more ready for review (and or discussion about naming)! Femke Nijsse (talk) 12:01, 25 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Sure. I'll work on it tonight. Are you likely to be citing any of the supplementary materials? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:35, 25 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Probably not. I'll probably only use the SPM and the individual chapters. Femke Nijsse (talk) 07:35, 26 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

As I mentioned above, there is now a complete set of full citations for the SROCC at WP:IPCC citation/SR. Currently cited as "DRAFT", as they are still subject to copy edit and re-pagination. I'll add citations for the finished report when it is definitely finished and published. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:19, 28 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 29 September 2019

This edit request to Global warming has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiPIvH49X-E 71.115.81.94 (talk) 08:55, 29 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Try not to be silly William M. Connolley (talk) 09:25, 29 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Reference errors

Harv error: link from CITEREFIPCC_AR5_SYR doesn't point to any citation.
Harv error: link from CITEREFIPPC_SYR_SPM2013 doesn't point to any citation.
Harv error: link from CITEREFNCADAC2013 doesn't point to any citation.
Harv error: link from CITEREFUNEP2010 doesn't point to any citation.
Harv error: link from CITEREFIPPC_SYR_SPM2013 doesn't point to any citation.
Harv error: link from CITEREFIPCC_AR5_WG22014 doesn't point to any citation.

Thank you, DrKay. You may have noticed that we are doing a major revision of how citation is done here, and in the interim will probably be making more of a mess. When things get sorted out (in a month?) it would be good to check these again. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:33, 7 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

They're still happening. DrKay (talk) 19:03, 29 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Re your recent edit summaries here – "User:J. Johnson get it right please" – and here — "it's not worked, and I can't be bothered to track the error" — are not particularly helpful, and perhaps you shouldn't be so quick to shoot from the hip. I have bothered to track "the error". When you attempted to correct an actual link error here you "corrected" the wrong end (at the full citation). I reverted that, and then went to correct the problem at the short-cite. At about the same time you went to a different short cite that links to the same full citation, and changed that.

In case you haven't noticed, there is currently a LOT of work being done on this article, so some "dust" is to be expected. If it bothers you so much to "correct the mistakes of its editors" it would be a good start to make fewer of them yourself. Or at least bother to not proceed blindly. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:02, 29 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

You don't correct incivility by being uncivil yourself. I did very carefully track the error as shown here: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Global_warming&diff=prev&oldid=918666430. You refer to my edits [1][2][3][4][5] as "wrong". They are not wrong. For example, "Kyoto Protocol 1997" didn't link to the short citations, which were called "UNFCC 1997" [2 c's]. Furthermore, "UNFCC 1997" didn't link to any full citation (because they were neither called "Kyoto Protocol" to match the original harvid nor "UNFCCC" [3 c's] to match the new automatic harvid). The citations were wrong at both ends. My edits corrected them. Your comments are both rude and unjustified. DrKay (talk) 20:40, 29 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that this is not something to get agitated or rude about (both of you?). It's only some citation errors that we do fix in due time (usually immediately, sometimes after a week). Is there a particular reason that you want us to fix them faster? Does it show up in some category that should be empty or otherwise interfere with your editing practice? If so, sorry for that. It's a lot of work to convert all of this, and sometimes after having done half an hour of work on some citations, time's up and bed calls (like now). Wikipedia doesn't have a deadline. Femke Nijsse (talk) 20:57, 29 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I misunderstood J Johnson's comment from June as an invitation to help check ref errors in a month. I've been checking every month since. ~~He now tells me~~I infer from his request for me to "make fewer" edits and "at least bother to not proceed" that I am not to make any further edits. So, I will not. The loss is not mine. DrKay (talk) 21:11, 29 September 2019 (UTC) Amended per WP:REDACT. DrKay (talk) 22:16, 29 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

No, I did not refer to your edits as "wrong", and most certainly have not told you "not to make any further edits". If you are going to complain about incivility I will remind you that misrepresentation of others is considered behavior that is unacceptable. What I said is that you "corrected" the wrong end of a link, and that should not proceed blindly. Nothing uncivil are rude there, or in any of my comments; that all seems to be on your side. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:58, 29 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

My comments are no worse than yours. If you've not been uncivil, then neither have I. DrKay (talk) 22:05, 29 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Please do keep in mind that communicating over the internet requires a bit more tact and civility than normal communication, as people can't see you. @DrKay: I think we've found a working routine for fixing the citations here and that it might indeed be a bit difficult for you to help us. I forgot that you offered before (may even have asked the help myself). Thanks for checking in! I think we've got it now, though. Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:30, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@All,
I wish we'd ban the use of the three letter string "you" and instead require various templates such as

Template:You-I have advice and would like to be your friend

Template:You-I would like to know more about your view, please clarify

Template:You-Caution to prevent future problems please read WP:Foo

Template:You-Yeah you, you stupid idiot

Template:You-Fuck off

etc.

One reason Wikipedia is losing editors I believe is our culture that tolerates WP:Gaming the system by those who keep their toxicity to just below the threshold for admin action. But as a general rule if Template:You-I have advice and would like to be your friend feel the need to use "you", its usually better to do it at user talk. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 10:40, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

EPA quote

Fact: Climate change is real and it is happening now. The U.S. Global Change Research Program, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have each independently concluded that warming of the climate system in recent decades is "unequivocal". This conclusion is not drawn from any one source of data but is based on multiple lines of evidence, including three worldwide temperature datasets showing nearly identical warming trends as well as numerous other independent indicators of global warming (e.g., rising sea levels, shrinking Arctic sea ice).

— U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Note #2 ("near the top of the article") quotes the EPA "Myths vs. Facts" statement. This is such a strong, definite statement (see box) that I think it ought be quoted in the text. And perhaps in box as done here. I can see this as an organizing statement which sets the stage for the several figures that follow. Comments? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:10, 29 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

This dates back to the pre-post-facts era, still up on the EPA website but undated. Clearly related to "Denial of Petitions for Reconsideration of the Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act / Regulatory Initiatives / Climate Change / U.S. EPA". Environmental Protection Agency. 14 April 2011. Retrieved 16 September 2011. – which has been vanished from the current website, though presumably still on their archive or snapshot. . . . dave souza, talk 11:50, 30 September 2019 (UTC) Context: Climatic Research Unit email controversy#United States Environmental Protection Agency report, the page was at "Myths vs. Facts: Denial of Petitions for Reconsideration of the Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act / Regulatory Initiatives / Climate Change / U.S. EPA". Environmental Protection Agency. 14 April 2011. Retrieved 16 September 2011. but that link no longer seems to work – the page is now at this page. . . dave souza, talk 12:13, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Huh?

Not "related", but the very page. There is another source which should document the date.

So are you okay presenting that quote? Does anyone have an objection? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:19, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like more time to think whether to add this US source. Femke Nijsse (talk) 21:26, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It's good to have an international perspective: Femke notes it is a "US" source and not international... Further, (as I understand it) the EPA is "downstream" from NASA, NOAA, IPCC, etc., which may be bad (less directly authoritative) or good (may project more "reliability" as a "secondary" source). It's a great quote, and my only concern is that there might be a more authoritative source for a similar quote. I like quote boxes, but especially on a contentious subject they should be used in moderation (not a problem here). For what it's worth, the earliest Wayback Machine archive is July 2017. —RCraig09 (talk) 22:22, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It is indeed a great quote. I don't believe any source would be more authoritative except the IPCC or GCRP. But the point of the quote is not to simply repeat what other more authoritative sources have said at much greater length (and with all the boring scientific nuances), but to present the key point simply and effectively, and to affirm the authority on which it is based. It is actually a tertiary source (reporting on the secondary review by the IPCC and others of the scientific literature), and yet quite reliable.

That this is a "US" source should not matter. Our principal authoritative sources for all of this are the IPCC reports, which are thoroughly international. As to a US perspective: that the EPA made such definite pronouncement on the matter reflects the reality that the US is the hatchery of climate denialism. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:42, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Looking in the archives, this page states the date and context:
On July 29, 2010, EPA denied ten petitions. "The petitions to reconsider EPA's "Endangerment Finding" claimed that climate science can't be trusted, and asserted a conspiracy that calls into question the findings of the [IPCC, NAS, U.S. GCRP]. After months of serious consideration of the petitions and of the state of climate change science, EPA found no evidence to support these claims." The "Myths v Facts" page is linked there, under "Resources".
So, it's a snapshot from 2010, pre AR5 and before the current administration's efforts to hobble the EPA. But very well stated. . . dave souza, talk 05:20, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The reason I'm emphasized the US focus what A) it's a bit weird to have three US sources so prominently explicitly mentioned and more importantly B) for countries in which climate denial is not really a thing (all countries except Australia & US?), this is such an open door statement that focus on it is weird I think. Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:10, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Because this article seems to be the central location for discussing the issue, I moderately agree it's a good place for the scientific consensus quote box, though it may inspire sniping from drive-by denialist editors. I think the quote box is even more appropriate at Scientific consensus on climate change and Global warming controversy and possibly somewhere in Climate change denial. —RCraig09 (talk) 16:06, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Agree, and with Femke – it's not the ultimate worldwide list of authorities; the U.S. Global Change Research Program, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are cited as [I think] their reports formed the basis for the EPA determination in December 2009 that climate change caused by emissions of greenhouse gases threatens the public's health and the environment, as covered on the main EPA Denial of Petitions page. Eloquent, but a box would take up space better used for an illustration or graph. In my opinion. . . dave souza, talk 20:39, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I like Rcraig09's suggestion of using this on other pages. Agree with dave souza that figures are probably a better use of space, and we've got plenty of those already! Femke Nijsse (talk) 07:49, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know why "figures are probably a better use of space", as the quote gets right down to what (for many people) is the key issue, whereas the figures only show things that indirectly support that key issue, that indirectness giving the deniers scope to quibble and cavail.

I agree that that quote in a box is also appropriate for those other articles. But none the less so for this article, in affirming that GW is real. The differences are in the precise focus and handling in each article. E.g., at the scientific consensus article the focus is on the basis and extent of the consensus, and "real" is the result. Here it affirms the reality of the topic (without which there would be no basis for an article). We give a light-weight overview of why CC/GW is considered real (so the readers don't have to traipse over to other article), then move on to content about GW (such as its effects).

I do not understand why it should be "weird" to prominently mention the US EPA. They pronounced this great quote, and for the audience that matters most the EPA is probably the most authoritative source to be had. Nor do I understand what is meant by "an open door statement". Perhaps the "weirdness" is because non-anglophone audiences don't understand why denial is an issue? Well, they should. The U.S. contributes nearly one-fifth (~18%) of CO2 emissions, and the denial-induced paralysis in the US affects everybody. Even Adaman Islanders that have never heard of the US.

So again: why are figures "probably a better use of space"? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:34, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Rethinking: international perspective is critical for real issues in the real world, but the context we're considering here is the English-language Wikipedia. Accordingly, I favor expressing this (EPA) scientific consensus prominently because of the persistent denialist undercurrent in the U.S. (and, according to Femke, in Australia). The quote box seems appropriate both in the other articles I've suggested above, and also here in this "top level" article. P.S. At this point, it's a good use of space! (The polar bear and helicoptor/wildfire pictures can go!).

First of all, This quote is about denial Stage 1 (denying warming is happening), which is not a big thing anymore, not even in the US. According to the linked Guardian article Most climate contrarians have come to accept that the planet has warmed significantly.

The English Wikipedia is the international wikipedia and a US-focus is explicitly against NPOV policy for topics that are not related specifically to the US (explanatory FAQ: Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view/FAQ#Anglo-American_focus). From hesitatingly being against it, I'm now very strongly against it as it not only gives undue weight to the temperature aspect of climate change, but I have to consider it NPOV as well. Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:45, 4 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

This is likely to be an interesting discussion.

Femke: I submit that GW denial is still "a big thing", particularly in the U.S., and consequently for everyone else on this planet, the U.S. being a major impediment to reducing CO2 emissions.

That this is still a big thing in the States is somewhat obscured since the mainstream media stopped "balancing" the scientific position with denialist views. But polls show that approximately half of the U.S. populace is still in denial. More importantly, a majority of the U.S. Senate opposes any climate change response, and need I mention the current administration's intent to withdraw of the U.S. from the Paris Agreement?

This on-going denial is manifested even on this page. E.g.: just last night there was this edit (since deleted), stating: "Global warming isn't real. Although many think it is, it is just a hoax made up by democrats." Even if most "climate contrarians have come to accept that the planet has warmed significantly", what Nuccitelli was referrng to was the pushing of denialism by prominent deniers; I don't see that most believers have accepted the reality of warming.

Denialism has been, and remains, a significant, even integral, part of this topic, and therefore ought to be addressed in this article. The EPA statement goes straight to the core issue that GW is real, and the need for doing so is not obviated simply because a majority of our readers (or editors) find it obvious. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:33, 4 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate your (Femke's) perceptively distinguishing exactly what people are still denying (the warming itself vs. what is causing it). However, I doubt many non-scientists (WP readers) truly appreciate that distinction, and denier reasoning is still foggy, confused and persistent (example: Trump ridiculing Greta). After compiling the above 3-chart image, I was struck by how the unprecedented nature of recent warming is, by itself, one of the most convincing arguments that humans are causing that warming! The U.S. EPA is merely used as a secondary (tertiary?) source that cites the (international) IPCC, so I don't think it violates NPV (though the sourcing is not ideal). Other WP articles I've mentioned above may be better destinations for the quote box, but the public is less likely to read them and I think it's ~OK here in the absence of a quote or image that is more comprehensive (proves warming PLUS human causation)—if one exists! —RCraig09 (talk) 02:23, 5 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I've just discovered the Robert Rohde chart at right, which is used in several WP articles already. It captures causation. Unfortunately, it's outdated. —RCraig09 (talk) 03:44, 5 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@JJ: I never said climate denial in general isn't still a big thing and my primary goal of editing Wikipedia is making sure that good information about climate is available from a trusted source to fight climate denial. Instead, I said climate denial STAGE 1 is not a big thing anymore. As of May, it was only 5% of the US population that said climate isn't changing at all.^[1] Stage 2 (humans cause it) is still a thing, albeit restricted to a few countries around the world, and I would be more willing to accept a quote refuting this. I've tried to strengthen the article in refuting Stage 3 (it's bad) and Stage 4 (there's nothing we can do).

@ RCraig: I like that figure as well! I've been thinking of recreating it, but haven't found the right data to reproduce it. Might look into it again later. In my assertion the quote might be POV, I'm not trying to argue that EPA brings in the POV, but more so that putting emphasis on Stage 1 climate denial brings in POV. As most recent polling shows that this type of denial is not even a thing anymore in the US, I'd say my major objection has shifted from Anglo-American POV to WP:UNDUE weight. Interacting with a lot of climate deniers, I do very much think they know the difference between denying climate change or denying the cause of climate change. This is not as difficult as to require a scientists background. Femke Nijsse (talk) 07:06, 5 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

FYI: Somewhat-updated similar IPCC figures FAQ Fig. 5.1, page 393 (2013). Sorry, original data not presented. :-\ —RCraig09 (talk) 18:13, 5 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ Harvey, Oliver Milman Fiona (2019-05-08). "US is hotbed of climate change denial, major global survey finds". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2019-10-05.

I recall when denial of any warming, or at least not as long-term climate change (which slides into belief of not human-made), was running over 50% in the U.S. I thought the "Stage 1 denial" was still running around 15%-20%, but perhaps the uptick in progress made in the last year or two has been greater than I had reckoned. If the remaining 5% is not significant (though that is questionable, particularly in the Senate) then it might unnecessary, even unrelevant, to refute it. But I don't see that as being a NPOV issue. And the historical fact of denialism is still important for illustrating the flimsy character of stage 1 denial, and for explaining why we have lost a generation in responding. Both of these points are directly applicable to stage 2 denialism, and therefore the quote may still be relevant. Though I allow perhaps not as the lead figure. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:53, 5 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I do agree that denialism is one of the facets of explaining WHY we've lost this generation is responding. Before we explain WHY we have to maybe state more explicitly THAT we have lost a generation. Currently, the only sentence given context like that is about the Copenhagen Agreement. I'm not entirely sure where and with what kind of sources this information should be added though. Currently, the subsubsection about controversy doesn't have a figure, so there is space there for a quote. I'm still not hugely in favour (because I think we shouldn't focus too much on it), but there it doesn't compete with figures that I find more valuable. Femke Nijsse (talk) 11:24, 6 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yet another section that could be rewritten better, then perhaps a good place for the quote. I could get into some of that, but for now I think the citation work has higher priority. And I may have a suitable edit notice; see above. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:11, 6 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

On having more than one item in a note

@MarnetteD: Thank you for tackling that bare url (here). However, we should discuss your premise for removing the second item ("Official list of current members ...") from that note. In your edit summary you stated that "two items in one set of ref tags doesn't really work". I beg to differ. We do that quite often, and I am not aware of any problem. Perhaps you would explain how you think it doesn't work. I would also note that the link to the list relates to which countries are parties, so it really needs to be where it applies, and not in the External Links section. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 03:38, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I knew that I was guessing at how you would want that item handled in this article and I figured the odds would be good that my guess would be wrong. The first problem is that neither reflinks nor refill will fix bare urls if there are two of them in one set of ref tags. Next, my expectation is that readers will have a hard time distinguishing which ref is what if they click on the link. Or to put it another way how will they know to click on one link - read its info - return to the page and click on a second one in the same numbered ref. Your experience with refs is different and I am not saying that there is anything wrong with it I'm just relating my years of experiencing fixing bare urls. You can certainly move it back but my suggestion is to use a second set of ref tags. After I moved it I also had a thought that the one I moved to the ELs might work better as a footnote than as a reference since it goes to a list rather than a specific item but I can certainly understand it you think that suggestion is wacky. One last request if you still need it converted to a citation after you move it please use a {{Bare URLs}} at the top of the article. That inline bare url tag is difficult to find in a brief article and in this one it took me almost two days to track it down in this one :-) My apologies for any problems I caused in this situation and best regards to all who take care of this article. MarnetteD|Talk 04:44, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Nothing is perfect on the first try, right?

Yes, our experiences differ, which is why we are having this discussion, so we can share and thereby profit. E.g., I did not know that 'reflinks' can handle only one bare url in a note, so that is something to consider. Also, why is tracking down a "bare inline" tag difficult? Does it not suffice to just search for "Bare URL"?

I don't understand what you say that "readers wll have a hard time distinguishing which ref is what if they click on the link", nor this bit about "click on a second one["ref"?]in the same numbered ref." Perhaps you would explain that some more. Do note, though, that we do have a bit of a terminology problem here. E.g., where you said that one url "might work better as a footnote than as a reference", I do not understand how you distinguish "footnote" and "reference". (I have found the latter to be used in eight or ten different ways, so generally avoid using it.)

I look forward to your comments. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:07, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hello again. the inline tag is small and can only be seen in the reference section of the article. In an article with almost three hundred refs like this one it can easily be missed and I had to go through them several times to finally find find it. To see what I mean scroll to ref 231 here. The {{Bare URLs}} sits at the top of the page and also has the benefit of giving easy access to activate refill which the inline one does not. I see that there was some separation of the two items that were in one set of ref tags by having "Official list of current members available at" in black in the ref. If the second item is formatted into a cite that will turn blue and IMO readers will see what looks like one long ref. If you want to move the item back to the body of the article I would suggest formatting it like reference 273 in this article. For the diff between notes and ref sections see the (foot)note section here Claude Debussy#Notes followed by Claude Debussy#References. I notice that this articles ref section headers are different from most that I edit so my suggestion may not be workable. This may still be unclear so whatever you can work out in dealing with this is fine. MarnetteD|Talk 00:52, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The distinction between the sections titled "Notes" and "References" at Claude Debussy (and many other articles) is only one of several possibilities, which close examination shows to be ambiguous. In particular, "references" carries a lot of baggage with most editors; I find it better to use other less loaded, more specific terms.

I don't understand what you mean regarding "ref 231". (Your diff is to a name correction.) The note currently numbered 231 is: "IPCC AR4 WG3 Ch1 2007, Executive summary." Is there a problem with that?

Regarding the tag: why do you have "go through them several times" to find that tag? Why not use the search ("find") function? In your browser window, hit ctrl-f, enter "Bare URL" in the box, and your browser should take you right to the spot. Right? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:27, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Use the link I left to scroll down to see what ref 231 looked like before I made my edit - the edits since then have changed things. My browser window does not work the way yours does. MarnetteD|Talk 23:13, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, so you are referring to the note you edited (currently #229), which I had previously tagged with "Bare URL". Your point is that: the tag is small and hard to see, right? Well, this gets back to what I keep saying: use your browser's search/find function. Does your browser not have such a function? What kind of browser are you using? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:51, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'm glad you were able to see how small the tag is. I'm afraid my computer skills are minimal so I look for things in the old fashioned slow way. Thanks for the suggestion though. It might help in future work with bare urls. MarnetteD|Talk 00:35, 3 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

My point is that "small and hard to see" isn't a problem if you use search. Send me e-mail if you'd like some assistance.

On the fixing of bare urls: if reflinks or refill work only on a minimal note (i.e., containing only the URL, which to me is a bug) I would offer the following work-around. Do a temporary edit that splits the note (like inserting "</ref><ref>" tags), fix the bare url, then remove the inserted tags. If I find a suitable candidate for trying that I will bring it to your attention. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:15, 3 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

<ref>{{cite web|url=https://treaties.un.org/Pages/ViewDetailsIII.aspx?src=IND&mtdsg_no=XXVII-7&chapter=27&Temp=mtdsg3&clang=_en |title=UNTC |publisher=Treaties.un.org |date= |accessdate=2019-10-04}}</ref>

OK here is the item as formatted by reflinks. I will let you make any tweaks and then insert it into the proper place in the article as you see fit. You can try asking the programmers about what you want to change re the two ref fix bots. Unfortunately the talk page for both programs seems to get little to no response so you might try at the WP:VPT. MarnetteD|Talk 01:29, 4 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Peer review before TFA

JJ: you previously indicated that you wanted to get some more citation work done before we go to peer review. I'd really like to have the peer review done before the article is featured on the main page, which is now scheduled to happen on December 2. If we don't put it up for peer review soon, I'm afraid we won't have time to properly address all reviewers before December. Can I sign it up? Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:16, 7 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

"scheduled?" What does that mean? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 10:35, 7 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@NewsAndEventsGuy: sup? Check it ——SerialNumber54129 11:08, 7 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Not that much, we can still withdraw or postpone. Wikipedia:Today's_featured_article/requests/pending. It's customary to have a 'hook' on why the article should be refeatured, which is, in this case, the start of the COP25 on December 2. Femke Nijsse (talk) 11:00, 7 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Ach so, a procedure I didn't know about. Thanks NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 11:03, 7 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I generally don't like to have quality driven by schedule, and I think we have a LOT of work to do before peer review. But possibly we could get it done "on schedule". I wonder if there might be other good events/dates later in December, but I can see some desirability of hitting Dec. 2. How soon do want to start peer review? Is the whole of November sufficient for peer review? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:22, 7 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

We could push towards the end of the COP (December 14?). That gives us two extra weeks. I think I need more outside input. A lot of things I don't like about the article still, but don't have the inspiration to know how to improve it. Femke Nijsse (talk) 21:30, 7 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Which is to say that 2 Dec. is a soft target (not a "dead" line), and we're okay if there's a few days slide. With the likely spike in public attention I'd rather aim for the earlier date. I'm willing to give it a try. What kind of schedule are looking at with peer review? And how does that fit in with FA? (I'm okay with not making FA by then, provided the article is "pretty damn close" to it.) ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:30, 7 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, I favor removing it from the schedule until completion of the rename process, and then, depending on teh outcome, making FA quality edits to reflect the outcome. That's far enough down the road that being on the calendar seems premature to me. But that's just me. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 22:55, 7 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@JJ: I don't quite understand your question: And how does that fit in with FA? Could you clarify? @NEAG: would you favour having the renaming discussion first before peer review? That has some advantages. I'd like to start the renaming procedure here at the earliest when there is consensus that climate change's WP:PRIMARYTOPIC is this article and that it shouldn't refer to climatic changes in general. A possible, but tight, schedule is:

- launch renaming discussion for climate change on October 13.

- rename CC to whatever we decide on October 26

- launch renaming discussion for GW on October 27

- possibly rename GW on November 10 + insert changes

- Sign up for peer review November 17

- Have peer review completed December 17??

- Postpone TFA till January.

Considering we won't even make it in these conditions, I concur with NEAG that we should abandon our date in the calendar :(. We don't need a hook (why feature on that particular date) per se, but it would be good to have. Femke Nijsse (talk) 11:04, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Cripes, this again? It is quite a perennial issue.

NAEG is quite right that any considerations of name should precede FA consideration. Indeed, as the name sets the scope and focus of an article, setting the name should precede all other work. I had thought the matter was more or less settled to not rename ("move") this article, the last request to do so (June 2018) having been closed as "No move. It is apparent that there's a lack of consensus for any of the suggested titles", and the last discussion on this having fizzled out just last July. If this is not settled then we should STOP ALL WORK until we agree, permanently, on which direction we should be pulling. Which will certainly blow any schedule, but I don't see any way around that — unless we make a determination that the name is settled, and there is to be no "re-" about it.

Femke: you presume too much. Particularly, you presume that there will be a rename, perhaps anticipating a discussion result that is yet to come. I point out that this matter has already been discussed multiple times over the years, and every proposal to rename has failed for lack of consensus. If we have to do this again I think we should go the whole nine-yards and through every argument, even taking it to Arbcomm for a definite stake through the heart of the issue, so we don't have to keep revisiting it. I see two alternatives: either the name is settled, and we move on, or it is not, and we have a full and proper debate to settle it. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:30, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@JJ. I agree that it's not certain we'll rename. I give it about a 50% chance that it'll work for this page.

Note, there is zero discussion about changing the scope of this article. It is already been written to cover the scope of the IPCC reports, there is little work in terms of content for this article. Only the first paragraph will need rewriting. Frankly, it doesn't make sense to stop all work if there is a renaming discussion coming up.

Let me point out that over the last 6 months I've analyzed past discussions, analyzed use of the terms in literature (Google, Google Scholar, UK parliament archives, Google books), read all relevant policy. Plus, the renaming discussion we're preparing is not a shot in the dark like the previous ones that got shut down before they properly started. This should be a discussion to settle it at least for another five years. I don't see Arbcomm getting involved in here as we have clear policies what to do in case of no consensus (no rename, and new discussions allowed).

Before we can start the discussion here, the 'easy' discussion to rename the climate change article must be held. I've collected ample evidence why its current title doesn't work in User:Femkemilene/sandbox Q1.1. Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:09, 9 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps we should move this discussion into its own thread, especially as I am unclear as to what kind of rename you would do that would entail only a rewrite of the first paragraph. Short of some very cogent argument that settles the matter in very short order, I am doubtful of FA status by December. And I think I shall have to spend more time at Talk:Climate change, which will delay completion of various tasks I have undertaken here. So for your initial question re signing up for peer review: at this point that seems premature. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:38, 9 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, clear. I'll postpone the TFA. There are different options in the air as a potential new name. I would propose climate change (as per UNFCCC definition), which corresponds with this article's scope and the IPCC reports. The article already uses global warming and climate change as near-synonyms. Other people propose things like human-caused climate change or global warming and climate change. I think we should not put the rename under a new threat YET as it is we should have one renaming discussion at the same time and the big fish to fry is the fact that the naming of the climate change article leads to widespread confusion (one example, we've got an estimated 4500 blue links that should come here but instead go to climate change). Femke Nijsse (talk) 20:58, 9 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Renaming of climate change

There has been a long unease on Wikipedia about the distinction between global warming and climate change. Bold proposals have been put forward, but no consensus was ever obtained for to rename global warming into climate change. I've launched a less bold proposal now: making climate change into a redirect to global warming and renaming that article. With the terminology of current climate change shifting from global warming to climate change, the confusion of our (somewhat arbitrary) distinction between the two terms is becoming larger. Feel free to participate in the discussion at Talk:Climate change#Renaming this article to solve confusion. Femke Nijsse (talk) 20:21, 9 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, you have anticipated me. Excellent. I'll start studying this tonight. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:01, 9 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Discussions of the different options has concluded and a proposal has been put forward to rename to climate change (general concept). The proposal will stay up for at least seven days. Femke Nijsse (talk) 15:09, 18 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestion for change to second sentence

What would you think about changing "It is a major aspect of current climate change," to "It is the main cause of current climate change,"?

Chidgk1 (talk) 08:09, 11 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'd argue greenhouse gases are the cause of climate change and global warming is either used as a synonym or it is a major aspect of climate change. Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:11, 11 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

(A) Human activities are the main cause, says IPCC.

(B) The sentence was created in the latest lead tweak that attempted to mollify complaints about the scope and title of global warming versus current form of climate change. When we solve the real issue this lead will likely be redone, and that's the best way to resolve Chidgk1's comment NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 10:17, 11 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I guess I was subconsciously making an assumption of global warming being defined as the average temperature change at the actual surface of the globe i.e. the land and ocean; whereas climate is a property of the atmosphere. But on further reading I understand the satellite to measure the surface temperature was only put up this century. I had not properly read the definition in the first sentence. So although I understand (correct me if I am wrong) in practice the warming is measured to be the same, I am guessing scientists stick with the definition in the first sentence to have a consistent series with 19th and 20th century land based weather station temperature measurements, which would be air temperature slightly above the surface. So I withdraw my suggestion as it would be inconsistent with the definition in the first sentence.Chidgk1 (talk) 14:28, 11 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Satellite? Don't think any satellites were put up to measure surface temperatures, but satellites measurements of microwaves from the troposphere have been used to infer Satellite temperature measurements which are adjusted to relate to surface temperatures in the instrumental temperature record. . . dave souza, talk 19:41, 11 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thinking about this further I think the definition of "global warming" in the first sentence of simple:global warming will be better for non-scientists after I have made a slight tweak over there. Take a look if you have time and especially if you are good at explaining stuff to kids.Chidgk1 (talk) 15:09, 11 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Foote note

As discussed at #Peer review? above, I've rewritten the Global warming#History of the science section to show context, and avoid undue weight to false claims that the greenhouse effect was "discovered in 1856 by Eunice Newton Foote". Her research got very little attention until a 2011 paper proposed that other scientists had conspired to hide her research. As more recent sources show, her 1856 experiments used [glass] cylinders filled with different gases heated by sunlight, an apparatus which could not distinguish the infrared greenhouse effect. There's no evidence she was noticed by subsequent researchers, so even debunking the claim gives her attention which has to be balanced by showing at least some of those who are known to have influenced the science. At the same time, because sexism, it's worthy to give her a mention, so I've worked on that basis. Sources still to be added to match the citations, in particular Huddleston, Amara (17 July 2019). "Happy 200th birthday to Eunice Foote, hidden climate science pioneer". NOAA Climate.gov. Retrieved 8 October 2019., Calel, Raphael (19 February 2014). "The Founding Fathers v. The Climate Change Skeptics". The Public Domain Review. Retrieved 16 September 2019. {{cite web}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help) and Fleming, James Rodger (1998). Historical Perspectives on Climate Change. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-507870-1. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help) . . . dave souza, talk 11:20, 11 October 2019 (UTC) (note: references now added. . . 19:43, 11 October 2019 (UTC))[reply]

Thank you for taking such a skillful interest in a needed area NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 12:23, 11 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Difficult to condense, so hope have struck a reasonable balance. . . dave souza, talk 19:43, 11 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Likewise. And I love the header. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:26, 11 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Good flow, perfect sourcing, interesting. BUT.. I feel is highly disproportianate in terms of length. If you compare it to the section on adaptation to climate change, the section on the climate movement, the section on the effect on the biosphere, all section that are at least as important in my opinion, it does not work. To decide what is due weight to a given perspective, I try (which is difficult) to find some 10-page summary of the entire topic by another source. Many of the sources you've added were not general sources, but specialist sources on the history of science. I'm sure general sources don't have Adolphe Brongniart, de Saussure and all those other people. I've been thinking of removing ALL names out of the section, just rough time periods and when the different lines of evidence were first discovered, but maybe that is too drastic. With the expansion of this section, we're over the 'arbitrary' prose size of 50,000 indicating that the article might be on the long size. A long article per se is not a bad thing when discussing climate change, but I think we should be extra sharp on the WP:SUMMARY style when we are above this threshold. My ideal section length would be about 1/6th to 1/3th of the current section. Femke Nijsse (talk) 18:48, 13 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough, tend to agree and hope we can cover the main thread more concisely: Adolphe Brongniart is useful context for Foote, but rather think she can be dealt with in a footnote. For the greenhouse effect, de Saussure provided the (hotbox rather than greenhouse) analogy for Fourier, whose work was central at that phase. Think it's good to note the Greek origins and the 17th century ideas, otherwise readers may think everyone before the 19th century thought climate was fixed as created. Will treat the current version as a resource, which will feed into other articles. . . dave souza, talk 19:45, 13 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds good. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:01, 13 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Dave souza: When do you reckon you have time to do this? Parallel to the naming discussion, I'd like to do the final touches in preparation for a long-postponed review. Imo, this is the only section in need of a big overhaul still. You might want to consider copying some of it to CC(GenCon), as it also touched upon other causes of change. Femke Nijsse (talk) 15:36, 8 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Current citation work (October, 2019)

The citations for SRCCL (Climate Change and Land) are now available at WP:IPCC_citation/SR. As before these are for the "FINAL DRAFT" versions, which are still subject to "trickleback" and copy-editng, and of course the pagination won't be done until all that is finished. The author and editor lists are also yet to be finalized. When all that is finished and published I will update those citations.

I am about tackle implementation of the edit notice. I am also working on getting our missing "In"s in (there's a bit of resistance). ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:32, 13 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

And there's a new icon. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:48, 14 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Great, thanks :). Bonus civility is always a way to decrease resistance. Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:06, 16 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Glad you like it.

Another way of reducing resistance is to just boldly do stuff, without asking for input. But do take a look at what I think is the "keeper" text at #Edit notice. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:57, 16 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Several months ago I had hoped to be done with the bulk of the citation work by now. But alas, it's not. (For the benefit of anyone looking back at this: we've all been largely occupied regarding the rename of "Climate change" to Climate change (general concept).) So, the work will continue into November. Eventually it will be substantially done. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:05, 31 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Feasibility of showing temperature rate-of-change: ideas needed!

My goal: To find or create a graph that conveys the present rate of warming (slope of the temperature graph: bottom chart) compared to historical norms or historical extremes (even if not provably "unprecedented").
Background: I used the 800,000-year ice core data (used in the top chart) to study temperature rate-of-change issues. There are >5,800 ice core data points. There are >80 points for the most recent millennium, but only 2, 1 or even 0 data points for some of the oldest millennia. Therefore, to make the chart, I had my spreadsheet average the data points within each millennium to arrive at the 800 points for the top (purple) trace. To estimate millennial-average rate of change, I merely subtracted the (n-1)^th value from the n^th value; it's like a first derivate/slope.
Findings:

From bottom chart: the temperature change in the last 50 years is about +0.9°C, which extrapolates to about 18°C per millennium. NOAA says it's 0.17°C/decade --> 17°C/millennium and NASA says 0.15-0.20°C per decade --> 15-20°C/millennium.
In the ice core data: temperature anomalies relative to most recent millennium's average ranged from -10.58°C to +5.46°C, with millennium-average temperatures rounding the extremes down to -9.8°C to +3.89°C respectively. Therefore, ice age cycles for 800,000 year cover only <17°C between extremes.
In the ice core data, the temperature difference between some adjacent datapoints extrapolates to -287°C to +260 (12.7°C average absolute value) per millennium!!! As @Femkemilene: described at 07:17, 5 Oct 2019, "uncertainties propagate" from "low resolution" datasets (ones that have substantial gaps).
The millennium-average rate of change that my spreadsheet calculated, varies from -2.25°C to +3.14°C per millennium (0.54°C/millennium average absolute value).

Conclusion: The current 15-20°C rate per millennium far surpasses the "maximum normal" millennium-average change (≤3.14°C), though it's uncertain if more extreme changes (>3.14°C/millennium) have occurred naturally.
Ideas needed: How can one show the exceptional nature of recent temperature growth? I've seen texts describing the temperature climb, but no really convincing graphics. I've considered simple bar charts showing the above comparisons, but they might approach WP:No original research. Does anyone have comments, critiques, ideas, suggestions, or specific links? —RCraig09 (talk) 20:41, 15 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Update: I'm going to experiment with superimposing graphs of global average temperature over various different time frames, onto a common degrees-per-unit-time vertical axis and proportional time axis, so slopes can (hopefully) be compared. —RCraig09 (talk) 23:15, 15 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Cool project, but let me reinstate that I'm against including any figures that are not typically found in summary documents about climate change. Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:00, 16 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Femke Nijsse, many images here are not taken directly from Global Warming/Climate Change (GW/CC) reliable sources (RS); many are WikiMedia "Own work" (examples: works from Robert Rohde and yourself, or graphs made directly from RS data). Definitely, substantive content should have a basis in GW/CC sources, but is there a Wikipedia policy/guideline that formally states that WP images should also be based on sources' images? —RCraig09 (talk) 22:40, 16 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'm perfectly okay with not taking images directly from sources about climate change RSs. However, I do want the data to be in line with the presentation of the data in RSs. Take as an example the figure about the last 2000 years, or the Hockey stick graph. A variant of this figure is used in many summary documents about climate change. I'm just making a Wikipedia variant of it. If you start computing rate of change of data, you start doing OR in my view. Computing rate of change is difficult if your data is uncertain AND there is autocorrelation in the uncertainty. I'm not aware of any WP guidelines whatsoever specifically about images, so we'll have to rely on WP:OR and WP:COMMONSENSE to decide where the boundary lies. Femke Nijsse (talk) 07:46, 17 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I moved the current version of these images down off the top summary level of the article because the top level needs to be understandable at a glance on a smartphone or as a thumbnail on Google and other services. The graphics you are working on (which I think are great) fit perfectly into the section on "Observed temperature changes". That offers an opportunity for more detailed exploration of how current changes vary from the rate of change shown in the geological record.Efbrazil (talk) 17:28, 17 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

We should distinguish between images generally (including photos), and the somewhat more restricted sense of figures, which includes charts (visual depections of data) and similar kinds of illustrations (such as maps, etc.). I think I have seen some guidance on this somewhere, but it is quite incomplete. A significant problem in using many expert-derived, data-based figures from peer-reviewd materials is that the published version is copyrighted. However, data is not copyrightable, so we are allowed to create similar charts that replicate, and are in accord with, the expert-derived, peer-reviewed original. Beyond that it is quite murky as to what might be OR.

Femke: are your "summary documents" only the IPCC's explicitly titled "Summary for Policymakers"? Or would you allow a broader scope? Indeed, as the IPCC's oeuvre is entirely secondary (or even tertiary), it is fairly considered a summary of scientific knowledge. While use in a SPM (or similar) suggests high value, I think that should not be a limiting criterion.♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:00, 17 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

No, every document or website from a highly reliable source will do: the Met Office, NASA, European commission... But not the figure that is on page 1435 of a technical report. We want to communicate what RSs generally communicate to the public and not some obscure angle what we believe is of most scientific interest. Femke Nijsse (talk) 21:51, 17 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the clarification. Your "technical report" (I presume) refers to the primary literature. And just because something was published doesn't mean the scientific community has accepted it, which is why we are (and should be) somewhat diffident about using such sources. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:34, 17 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestion: Thanks for all the interest, but to avoid consuming your time, maybe we should wait for me to construct a particular chart—this one will take a couple of days. —RCraig09 (talk) 20:52, 17 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I was sort of hoping to prevent you putting effort into this if it doesn't get major support. But it's an interesting exercise and maybe maybe we can use it on a different page. Or maybe you can convince me something like it is being used currently by RS to communicate the science. Femke Nijsse (talk) 21:51, 17 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Discouraging update (for those interested): As noted above (and consistent with NASA and NOAA), the recent warming rates extrapolate to about 15°C/millennium (recent few decades) or 7°C/millennium (last 140-170 years). However, using the ice-core data sourcing the top chart of File:800,000-, 2,000-, 139-year global average temperature.png, I have since found that, in steep warming segments recovering from the most recent ice age, from ~17,400 to ~14,300 years ago the average rate was 2.4°C/millennium, and for ~12,500 to ~11,700 years ago the average rate was 5.6°C/millennium — not as dramatically different from recent decadal rises, especially considering "recent" rises were over shorter time spans. Plotting the different curves on a common graph is very messy and not very illuminating, so I've given up on that specific project. I have made a nice graph of ice-core-derived temperatures from 20,000 to 10,000 years ago (data points plotted at 20-year intervals; includes the recovery from most recent ice age), ~~which I can upload on the chance it might become useful somewhere, somehow.~~ which I have uploaded (shown at right). If you have thoughts or suggestions, enter them below. Thanks. —RCraig09 (talk) 20:52, 20 October 2019 (UTC) Adding image. —RCraig09 (talk) 06:08, 21 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I had hopes for an illustrative rate-of-change graph, but perhaps the data is too messy for that. And while there might be some way of doing that, I would say that you gave it good try, so the odds of that are not great. (Or as I once heard someone tell her kids: no bears under that blanket!) It's not effort lost, as now we know what's not there. Thanks for looking into the possibilities. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:02, 22 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, JJ. I want to emphasize that rate-of-change comparisons "can" be made, but the overlapping graphs look like a plate of spaghetti, and, more important, along lines Femke Nijsse has noted, older-era data (example: ice age data points are about 50 years apart) doesn't have the resolution of recent instrumental readings (1 year apart), so it's not possible to confidently compare 1980-2018 A.D. to 11,780-11,818 years ago. In the older-era data, certain adjacent data points imply a >250°C change per millennium (>0.25°C change per year)! —RCraig09 (talk) 22:36, 22 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Preliminary discussion concerning possible Requested Move of "Global warming"

In parallel with the Move Request from "Climate change" to "Climate change (general concept)" and changing the "CC" article to a redirect to the present article "Global warming" (October 30, 2019 closing diff), various suggestions were made to move the present article, which describes current warming of Earth's climate system.

Both colloquially (popularly) and in Reliable Sources, this subject matter is widely referred to both as GW and as CC, raising the issue as to what this destination article should be titled. I open this section in hopes that, eventually, a formal Move Request proceeds with sound reasoning and with all reasonable viewpoints fairly considered. To start things, I list the following proposals that I have noticed so far. Please add to the table, make procedural suggestions below, and discuss your reasoned preferences below, to achieve consensus. —RCraig09 (talk) 22:59, 30 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Subsection: Table to help gauge consensus

Editors:

Add your account name only (no comments or conditions) to the appropriate table box(es). Use a line break ''<br>'' to avoid wraparound.
You may of course amend your entries later.
Do not feel the need to express on each proposed name!

Proposed article name	Strong support	Mild support	Mild oppose	Strong oppose	Neutral or Undecided
Global warming (no change)	J. Johnson	Chidgk1	Femkemilene	RCraig09 Efbrazil EMsmile Mu301 NAEG
Global warming and climate change	RCraig09 Red Slash François Robere NAEG	J. Johnson Chidgk1	Femkemilene Efbrazil	Mu301 EMsmile
Anthropogenic global warming and climate change		J. Johnson		Femkemilene Efbrazil Mu301 EMsmile NAEG
Human-caused global warming and climate change		Chidgk1		Femkemilene Efbrazil J. Johnson Mu301 NAEG
Climate change (global warming)	Efbrazil	Chidgk1		Femkemilene J. Johnson Mu301 NAEG
Global warming (climate change)		Chidgk1		Femkemilene Efbrazil J. Johnson Mu301 NAEG
Climate change	Efbrazil Femkemilene Mu301 EMsmile Chidgk1		RCraig09 Red Slash	J. Johnson NAEG
Global climate change		Femkemilene		Efbrazil J. Johnson Mu301 NAEG
Modern climate change		Femkemilene	Efbrazil J. Johnson	Mu301 NAEG
Anthropogenic climate change (or) Human-caused climate change (or) Climate change (human-caused), etc.	RCraig09			Mu301	NAEG
___
___

Subsection: Reasoning table (Editors: please add to this table)

Be BRIEF and CONCISE! Add others' fair arguments, pro and con, not only your own. Cite policy whenever possible.

Use a line break "<br>" to minimize wraparound, and a hyphen "-" to denote a newline.

Proposed article name	Policy "FOR" Be CONCISE!	Policy "AGAINST" Be CONCISE!
Global warming (no change)	-WP:NATURAL (searches and int. links) -WP:Concise	-RS usage waning -not WP:PRECISE because too restrictive
Global warming and climate change	-Google searches "GW" and "CC" lead here -Internal searches "GW" and "CC" lead here -"GW" & "CC" individually fit WP:COMMONNAMEs -Refutes "they changed the name" myth - WP:NPOV because it doesn't pick sides -WP:CRITERIA puts interests of nonspecialist readers first	-Not WP:CONCISE -Title as a whole not WP:COMMONNAME -Title as a whole not WP:NATURAL -WP:AND should be avoided if possible
Anthropogenic global warming and climate change Human-caused global warming and climate change	--Describes subject matter WP:PRECISION -Shows causality of GW & CC	-Not WP:CONCISE -Not WP:COMMONNAME -WP:AND should be avoided if possible
Climate change (global warming)	-Disambiguates vs "CC(GenCon)"	-Incorrectly insinuates GW=CC -Doesn't follow WP:PARENDIS
Global warming (climate change)		-Incorrectly insinuates GW=CC -Doesn't follow WP:PARENDIS
Climate change	-WP:CONCISE -RS usage growing -WP:NATURAL (searches and int. links)	WP:PRECISION: also has broad definition.
Global climate change
Modern climate change
Anthropogenic climate change (or) Human-caused climate change (or) Climate change (human-caused) etc.	-Describes subject matter WP:PRECISION -RS usage of "CC" growing -Disambiguates vs "CC(GenCon)"	-Not WP:COMMONNAME -Doesn't follow WP:PARENDIS
___
___

Sub-sub-section: comments about "Reasoning table"

I don't think this table is going to work, per the WP:TPG. There isn't any way to sign, and it invites edit warring when multiple people try to write WP:OTHERSOPINION at the same time. That exercise is about a single editor trying to understand and restate others opinions. By definition, it is a solo (single-editor) exercise. But the idea is great. Would you consider moving it to your user space and leaving a pointer diff here, kind of like I did during the climate change RM? (Userspace table and pointer diff). There may be other ways to organize this, but just multi editing a summary table seems like a recipe for problems. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 22:45, 7 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Greetings @NewsAndEventsGuy: The "Concise^(snicker) opinions on specific article names" section, below, is already ~~~8500~~ 10,100 words long and ~~over twelve~~ about fourteen screenfuls on a desktop! Newly arriving editors will simply not read that Wall of Words—it's Yuge and getting Yuger!!!. This table will "work" since it distills essential arguments, pro and con, reducing unnecessary verbiage below from new people who might not find an existing thread buried in the 8500+ words. Purposely, there is no place for signed arguments: that's what the first table is for! It's definitely not a solo-editor exercise, as any editor can, and hopefully will, modify it. As an aside, I think that the "Neutral" column in the first chart does not aid decision-makers' cogitations, and I suggest it be removed as it may worsen wraparound on smaller screens. —RCraig09 (talk) 06:41, 8 November 2019 (UTC) updated RCraig09 (talk) 18:56, 9 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Subsection: When to proceed

~~(A) I don't understand the structure above, if you meant to make subsections they aren't subsections and if you meant to just use bold I don't understand the purpose of the bold text.~~ (struck after some reformatting of OP) (B) Please consider withdrawing for a little bit. In these difficult waters, I think we'll have the best community and strongest consensus if we use the walking path instead of the railroad. A lot of people probably haven't yet realized the change took place, much less had a chance to consider formal undo efforts. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 23:20, 30 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

~~(A) I didn't plan a particular "structure".~~ (B) Some opposed the CC-->CC(GenCon) move out of concern for what would happen to "GW"! These changes—including any (hypothetical) "undo efforts"—are interrelated and should be thoughtfully and comprehensively coordinated. This Preliminary Discussion is the opposite of railroading, and helps concerned editors "realize the change took place". Notably, if we had all "withdrawn a bit" on the necessary issue of how to redirect "CC" after the move, then the CC Move Closer would not have made the CC-->GW redirect and we would not have come this far. —RCraig09 (talk) 00:08, 31 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I have some ideas to add to the list. The previous discussion has left me exhausted however and I would like to postpone this discussion at least until we have fixed all the internal links that now incorrectly point here. I think that is a matter of some urgency at least, which might need a small army of volunteers not elsewhere distracted. Would that work for you? Femke Nijsse (talk) 07:49, 31 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- I don't see harm in opening a discussion on this now. If you're worried about backlash, I think this discussion would be a productive place to direct any backlash, instead of having it go into the already completed move. All the "climate change" links now point here and "climate change" is the modern term for "global warming", so the need for a rename that includes "climate change" in the title is obvious. Efbrazil (talk) 19:04, 31 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Subsection: How to proceed

Any comments on how to conduct any prospective Move Request

I've started this section because several possible article names have already been suggested, and we should at least narrow the choice(s) down before any formal Move Request. —RCraig09 (talk) 18:47, 31 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

To launch the formal RM proposal we should close this "preliminary" thread and all of its subsections using {{Archive top}} and {{Archive bottom}} NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 11:03, 8 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Before we launch a formal RM proposal, we have to find a way to decide whether it's going to be GW+CC or CC or decide to put both options on the table. I think it's quite clear that those are the only two options with wide support now. Femke Nijsse (talk) 11:57, 8 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Subsection: Concise opinions on specific article names

Suggested format: ● Your preferred article name: concise reasoning.

Climate change (global warming)

The term global warming was renamed to climate change back in the George W Bush administration in US government communications, and the change has stuck. It's the IPCC after all, not the IPGWCC or whatever. The parenthesis in the proposed title will make it clear what the scope is and will clearly differentiate the article from Climate change (general concept). The rename from "global warming" to "climate change" was partly made to clarify that "global warming" had more effects than just temperature increase, but the terms are used to refer to the same phenomena and we should not introduce confusion by implying they are different concepts (using "and") when somebody is looking up information on wikipedia. Efbrazil (talk) 19:04, 31 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

GW Bush admin. shift is discussed at Frank Luntz#Global warming . . dave souza, talk 11:40, 1 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Just getting the facts straight: climate change was already the preferred term before this one adviser to Bush tried to push it. See https://skepticalscience.com/climate-change-global-warming.htm. It was always the most popular term in scientific writing. US English btw lags behind on other variants in uptake CC vs GW (see Google trends). Femke Nijsse (talk) 19:21, 31 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

As the source says; re 'global warming' vs. 'climate change', "In reality, the two terms mean different things ...... Both of the terms in question are used frequently in the scientific literature, because they refer to two different physical phenomena." . . . dave souza, talk 11:40, 1 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, that's a good source. A key point that the article skips though is that from 1988 NASA testimony about global warming to congress to the defeat of Al Gore in 2000, there was a preference for using the term global warming in US public debate. Even in the 2006 Al Gore film an inconvenient truth, the term "global warming" is used 24 times and "climate change" is not used once. Since that time, there's been a steady trend towards climate change as the term, partly because of its use in the scientific community. The graph in your article captures some of that transition. I think this article has the most depth on the issue that I've seen: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2018/01/29/debunking-the-claim-they-changed-global-warming-to-climate-change-because-its-cooling/ Efbrazil (talk) 20:31, 31 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Efbrazil, I disagree with your (apparent) premise that GW and CC are the same concept. Properly defined, they are different. Per the newly-organized second paragraph (this diff), the concepts are are different concepts, even though readers arrive at this article from two directions (readers 'using both "GW" and "CC"). The "and" in "GW and CC" contrasts these two different concepts. —RCraig09 (talk) 03:47, 1 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@RCraig09, I'm really fine with that point of view. I think the key thing is having the first two words of the article title be "climate change" since that's what I think the article title will inevitably be- the tack on terms will get stripped in time. Climate change is both the more popular term now and, in proper terms, the scope of the article is climate change since it includes desertification and ocean acidification and so on. The reason I slightly prefer "climate change (global warming)" is it disambiguates nicely from "climate change (general concept)" and it makes it clear that climate change is the scope of the article, demoting global warming to a scoping clarifier. Efbrazil (talk) 17:37, 1 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Efbrazil: I agree, and "CC" may eventually supplant "GW" in the literature but^{as noted below a few minutes ago} I favor "GW & CC" because^{to oversimplify} GW is the cause and CC is the effect, and the concepts are inextricably linked. —RCraig09 (talk) 19:55, 1 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Cause and effect — exactly. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:38, 4 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Efbrazil: Your initial comment that GW has "more effects than just temperature increase" is incorrect. Global warming is the temperature increase (of the earth's climate system), of which all the other aspects of current climate change are the effects. The current GW is a specific, measurable phenomena, and the effect of (primarily) anthropomorphic emissions (mainly CO2 and methane). These are NOT "the same phenomena", regardless of how much these terms are muddled in the mass media. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:16, 1 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

JJ, I didn't look up the DIFF but we just had this same back and forth a few days ago. The technical "global warming" is about Global surface temperature and does not include the whole climate system, for example, Ocean heat content (i.e., warming below the surface) is not included. See Dave's excellent collection of sources here for more. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 22:26, 1 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see where "we just had this same back and forth a few days ago" (it is difficult to keep up with all this stuff), so perhaps you could provide a timestamp, so I could we what you are referring to. You seem to think that GW is equivalent to Global surface temperature, and your statement that GW "does not include the whole climate system ..." is a bit of a head-scratcher. Are you thinking that GW is properly restricted to Global surface temperature, and therefore should exclude ocean heat content? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:42, 4 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I asserted this on your own talk page oct 26 here. We never dove into sources though. Have you reviewed the sources in the Archive 75 link I provided? For one, see NASA, "Global warming is the unusually rapid increase in Earth’s average surface temperature...." (bold added) [6] NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 00:31, 5 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

NAEG: Our "back and forth a few days ago" on this was your two sentence assertion on my Talk page that "the technical narrow definition of GW does not include, for example, Ocean heat content", and that, "defined narrowly, GW is about rising mean Global surface temperature." An assertion of a technical narrow definition, which in no way amounts to a discussion on THIS page of the suitability of this term for this topic.

I grant that "global warming" has been "defined" – technically and narrowly – in terms of "Global Mean Surface Temperature" (GMST) (see the IPCC reports). That definition of what is being measured is primarily surface temperatures because historically that was the only measurement instrumentrally accessible. As it turns out, the oceans store a lot of the heat in the climate system, and measurement of the Earth's temperature is incomplete (and even erratic) without accounting for "ocean heat content".

Yes, I have reviewed most of Dave's sources. And if you would review a little deeper into the NOAA Climate.gov page you cite you will see where Kennedy and Lindsey say that regardless of whether you use "global warming" in a technically narrow or popularly broad sense, "you’re essentially talking about the same basic phenomenon: the build up of excess heat energy in the Earth system." Note: excess heat energy in the Earth system. I also grant that NOAA (and even the IPCC) haven't really explained that in any public statements. (Perhaps due to the difficulty of explaining the difference between "heat" and "temperature"? I presume everyone here understands the difference between a form of energy, and its measurement, yes?) The IPCC (AR5 WG1 Ch1, p129) does refer to surface temperature as an indicator of climate change.

This distinction between "heat" and "temperature" is a crucial point in two respects: (1) greenhouse gases do not capture (retain) temperature, they capture heat. and (2) temperature – particularly mean surface temperature – is not always a complete measure of warming. A case in point: the "hiatus" a few years back, where the deniers claimed (correctly) that measurements of temperatures were not increasing as predicted. As it turns out, warming, in the sense of heat, did continue to increase, but was being diverted into (!) the deep ocean.

The concept that "global warming" is more than just surface temperature is a powerful explicator in many CC issues. Even if we don't want to say as much as that, it is a valuable aid in understanding some of these issues. I think we should at least avoid any formulation that perpetuates misunderstandings. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:56, 7 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Climate change as this is BY FAR the most universally used term, conforms to WP:CONCISE, and is consistent with many, many other WP articles/categories that already have "climate change" (not "global warming") in their titles (such as Climate change denial). The content here can be distinguished with the separate broader topic covered at climate change (general concept) by hatnotes in both articles. UnitedStatesian (talk) 19:41, 31 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'd be happy with this as well, I just didn't want to overreach. Efbrazil (talk) 19:57, 31 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Though you are correct that "CC" is definitely gaining favor (even in popular use), as Femke notes above^{(19:21, 31 Oct)} the U.S. is slow to adopt; more importantly, since "GW" and "CC" are not properly interchangeable,^{(see my above 03:47 1 Nov post)} to eliminate "GW" altogether would obscure this still-important distinction from readers. Maybe when use of "GW" effectively disappears, the article name can change. —RCraig09 (talk) 04:07, 1 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yes to "still-important distinction", but I strongly disagree about "when use of "GW" effectively disappears...." As I have stated before, global warming identifies a specific phenomena which is not "going away", and the "effective disappearance" of the term in favor of the blander, less "alarmistic", and broader "climate change" is politically contrived.

Back in the "Climate change" move discussion I suggested (21:30, 28 Oct.) that the ulterior purpose of the move was to "have "climate change" entirely supplant "global warming"." RCraig09 stated he couldn't conceive how that result could possibly come about, but here we are: a suggestion that this article be renamed "Climate change". ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:40, 5 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

JJ, when you accuse folks of this alleged '"ulterior motive" you're talking about an RM in which I was the original proposer. Please provide a diff showing where I have ever - even just once - suggested renaming this article as you accuse me of trying to do. If you can't find one, please explain why you accuse me of this? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 01:56, 5 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@JJ In my Oct 28 post that you cite, I was referring to the concepts of GW and CC, not to the title of this GW article. In the above Table I mildly oppose re-titling to "CC" but if, ~ten years from now, "GW" is ~never used by sources or searched for by readers, then a rename excluding "GW" will be appropriate; the content will still be here to explain the critical concept of "GW-->CC" causation. Note that, substantively, GW is merely an intermediate step: GHGs --> GW --> CC; I'm not seeing why you're "defending" GW since its substantive content is not at risk. —RCraig09 (talk) 04:47, 5 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@J. Johnson, your arguments here seem to contradict the position you take in the voting table. If your position is that global warming as a term should be limited to temperature only, then the content of this article is clearly out of step with that since only a small section of the article is dealing with temperature change specifically, and most of the article deals with other impacts and issues that clearly fit the scope of the term "climate change". Do you want to see two different articles, where the current article content becomes "climate change" but there is also a second, newer article covering "global warming"? Do you want to see no changes at all, meaning there should be no article on "climate change" at all? Your position here is confusing and an outlier in comparison with other views, so I think it would be good if clarified what you want to see happen. Efbrazil (talk) 19:06, 5 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

My apologies to all for lagging behind the pack (I'm having some acesss issues), and I will try to catch up real soon. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk)

NAEG: Diff. ("... we could improve the stub Global surface temperature with the addition of sections #Global warming and #Global cooling.") ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 01:36, 9 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

RCraig09: It's not the substantive content of this article that I am concerned about, but its reframing as merely "climate change". As to whether that would be appropriate in ten years is immaterial, as (please note which section we are in) this is being proposed here and NOW.

I also object to basing the choice of terminology on Google searches, but I will address that elsewhere. I most certainly agree that GW is an effect of GHG, but I would not describe it as "merely an intermediate step". It is the connection from GHG to CC. Of course, what we really mean is anthropogenic greenhouse gases (and do we have any data on how often people google for that?), which is the original cause of all these current and coming CC problems. Warming – more precisely, the increased heating of the Earth's climate system – is what pulls the pollyanish "climate change happens and nobody's really responsible for it" back to "why is this happening?" ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 01:41, 9 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

EfBrazil: No, it is not my position that GW refers only to "temperature change". (Presumably and more precisely, "Global Mean Surface Temperature".) That is NAEG's position (based on the NOAA www.climate.gov site, but also the definition used by the IPCC). My position is that GW is (1) the increase in heat added to the Earth's climate system, and (2) not an effect or some kind of variety of "climate change" but the main cause of most of these CC effects. It is (as I just replied to RCraig09) the connection between anthropogenic GWG and CC.

There could be separate articles for GW and CC (which might be more correct scientifically), but with the popular media's confounding of these terms it may be best that both terms end up at the same location. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 01:46, 9 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Not really, JJ, at least not the part in your first paragraph. First, it isn't "my position". It is my understanding of the position presented by RSs. You have declared how you construct these things within your own mind, but that's not really that helpful. Instead, please share citations to whatever you read and tell us what you think their position is. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 11:35, 9 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Well, excuse me, of course by "yours" I meant "the position which you endorse as backing the end you want", and I had thought you would understand that. And please note that you have gone off the rails here: I was clarifying who has which position, without arguing the positions themselves. As to what I read: that's a LOT, much of it not particularly useful, and I haven't yet organized a bibliography. As to the underlying issue please note I have already cited (just above, at 00:56, 7 Nov.) where the IPCC refers to surface temperature as an indicator of climate change. And I referred you the statement further in the source you cited (at www.climate.gov) where it mentions "build up of excess heat energy in the Earth system." I will of course provide more sources, when I have evaluated them.

As to what I think your position is: I have provided a diff. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:24, 10 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Global warming (climate change)

the linked article covers global warming and its climatic effects, hence the influence of GW on CC, and GW as the dominant factor in CC since around 1900. Since both terms redirect to the article, both should appear in the title and in bold in the lead paragraph: the opening sentence should cover their relationship, and the relationship to natural CC. . . dave souza, talk 11:46, 1 November 2019 (UTC) (modified 11:56, 1 November 2019 (UTC)}[reply]

Given the guidelines distaste for parentheses (i.e. adding a disambiguating term in parentheses after the ambiguous name: Wikipedia's standard disambiguation technique when none of the other solutions lead to an optimal article title), how to you value this title compared to GW and CC? You are using CC in the technical IPCC definition here, instead of the primary (per closer's notes) UNFCCC definition, right? Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:47, 6 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Global warming and climate change

I prefer this variant over Global warming (climate change) because parenthetical disambig further confuses matters by adding weight to synonymous lay aspect of these terms. I believe we do better if our one article gives equal weight to both the technical distinction and the lay treatment as synonyms. That way can explain how the technical meaning of the terms interrelate, and that the public treats them as synonyms, and then with the obfuscating confusion about terms out of the way we can present the substance of the issue. So I agree with Dave that both should be in the name, but I also think they should be on equal footing joined by the conjunction "and". No doubt someone who is not a regular climate editor will object because it isn't "CONCISE". Speaking as a topic veteran, this change would solve a lot of problems. These four things are all true

(A) Sources exist to support a narrow technical distinction between "climate change" and "global warming"

(B) In the vernacular they have the same PRIMARYTOPIC-(by use) and are often treated as synonyms

(C) Some sources even state both (A) and (B). For example, in one of the past times we debated all this, I cited the 2018 AP Style book

The terms global warming and climate change can be used interchangeably. Climate change is more accurate scientifically to describe the various effects of greenhouse gases on the world because it includes extreme weather, storms and changes in rainfall patterns, ocean acidification and sea level. But global warming as a term is more common and understandable to the public." (Source. (bold added)

(D) We've spent way too much time engaged in either/or debate. (Partial list)

* Talk:Climate_change/Archive_1#Merge_with_global_warming_article (2004)

Continued in Talk:Global_warming/Archive_74#Requested_move_3_June_2018 (2018)

Plus more recent ones, and some debates at other articles' archives if memory serves

..... ok, I admit it. When I said "these four things are all true, this last one is subjective. But go ahead and read them all, then ask yourself, Is NAEG blowing smoke?

SOLUTION

(1) Stop having an either/or argument
(2) Instead use both in the title
(3) Modify the lead so there is a simple explanation of (A) and (B) (i.e., at the same time there is a technical distinction and frequent use as synonyms by non-scientists)

FERVENT PRAYER

If we implement that change, the perennial terminology arguments will finally be put to rest.

NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 12:42, 1 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Can go along with that, whichever works best for the eventual first sentence of the lead, while keeping the sequence GW + CC. . . dave souza, talk 13:18, 1 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Why lead with "Global warming"? Why not "Climate change and global warming" instead of the other way around? Climate change is the term that both appropriately describes the article (since a lot of it is about the effects of global warming) and is the term that is most used in popular discourse, education, and the scientific community. I mean, my preference would be simply having "Climate change" on it's own, but I think it's OK if "global warming" is tacked on if that helps with consensus. Efbrazil (talk) 17:18, 1 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Which of these sounds more natural to you?

Engine repair and carburator rebuild versus Carburator rebuild and engine repair

Meal prep and cooking versus Cooking and meal prep

Education and arithmetic versus Arithmetic and education

The usual convention is to start with the part and follow with the whole. As for adding parenthetical disambig, we just agreed there is strong PRIMARYTOPIC-(by use). Disambig isn't necessary. But making sense of the paradox of two true mutually exclusive definitions very much is needed. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 18:02, 1 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I favor "GW & CC" because^{to oversimplify} GW is the cause and CC is the effect. —RCraig09 (talk) 19:50, 1 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

(supplemental) Another point is the rest of the world seems to do it that way more ofte too. I was unhappy with the precision of my google searches, so I'm not posting links here, but I poked around in Google, and Google Books, and even the Library of Congress. Looking only at the main title, there seems to be more with the phrase GW & CC than the other way around. I never did figure out how to limit the searches to the exact phrases and main title only, so if someone else is better at that, maybe share some search urls? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 19:55, 1 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Do you see the problem with leading with "global warming" in the renamed title? It makes it sound like that's the primary topic of the article, which causes lots of problems- 1. global warming is associated with alarmist messaging like "an inconvenient truth" (which used the term exclusively). 2. it's dated and not used in the public debate anymore 3. it's verbose and not needed for qualifying what "climate change" means in the first place, like you said. 4. having both terms with "and" will tend to make the focus of the article the terminology distinction instead of the topic itself. It would be as if we had the wikipedia article on "Evolution" called something like "Darwinism and evolution". Darwinism is a loaded term, antiquated, verbose, confusing, and unnecessary. You would expect that article to talk all about how darwinism came about and led to theories of evolution, instead of just being about the phenomena itself. If we agree that disambig isn't necessary, would you be in support of a straight rename to "Climate change"? I think that's inevitably where this article ends up, so maybe we should bite the bullet and do it now. Efbrazil (talk) 19:51, 1 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Opposed to "climate change". Read the MOS about the WP:FIRSTSENTENCE (especially the sub paragraph WP:BOLDSYN). If it were "climate change", the first sentence would likely start off Climate change, also known as global warming is...blah blah blah... That would be a misrepresentation because it would invalidate the scientific definition of the terms as though that did not exist, and it would exclusively use the lay popular meaning of the terms. We aren't in the business of picking sides or leading terminology trends. The sources abundantly make clear that (A) one way they are used they are different and (B) the other way they are used they're the same. We can easily use both, and give a simple explanation of both ways they are used, and then get on with the (Beyond) Meat of the story. BTW, people in my town use "global warming" all the time. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 20:04, 1 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

If the title of the article were simply "Climate change" then the topic would not start off with Climate change, also known as global warming. It would instead start off talking about climate change and how it is driven by greenhouse gas emissions. At some point global temperature would be discussed and the term global warming would be introduced. The point here is to be concise and accurate. Efbrazil (talk) 20:29, 1 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Efbrazil, since this is only a friendly preliminary thread, I'll just observe that sources don't agree with you. They say the two are frequently used interchangeably, and on that basis I'd press to keep both in the title and the first sentence. But this is only the preliminary thread so I'm not going to keep repeating and repeating the same argument now. Hopefully not then either. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 20:47, 1 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Efbrazil: I think cause-and-effect (GW-->CC), and continued^{though evolving} use of both terms, trump formal considerations such as non-verbosity. To respond to your 19:51 comment: 1. "GW" isn't in fact alarmist; 2. "GW" is declining but far from absent; 3. GW should qualify CC, because recent CC is being mainly caused by GW; 4. the "and" links the two cause-and-effect terms that, collectively, are indeed the topic itself (substantive article content). —RCraig09 (talk) 20:58, 1 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@NewsAndEventsGuy @RCraig09 I completely agree that "global warming" is both a synonym and a subset of climate change, depending on context. What I don't agree with is not having an article on "climate change". We must not lose the forest for the trees- we will be successful only when people can look up "climate change" and see an article entitled "climate change" on Wikipedia. I hope you also see that as a necessary goal. By the numbers on Google "climate change" is already used more than twice as often as "global warming", and the trend is continuing. See here: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%203-m&q=climate%20change,global%20warming . See below for another proposal that attempts to address these concerns. Efbrazil (talk) 21:33, 1 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Efbrazil: I disagree with your premise that readers look for "an article entitled climate change". When people search a term, what they seek is the substantive content of the term; how Wikipedia names articles is not readers' concern. The substantive content is here, regardless of the article's name. People arrive here after seeking the substance of "GW" and after seeking the substance of "CC" as they understand it. Don't confuse naming (which is formal) with content (which is substance). I can tell you're arguing in good faith, but I think you don't appreciate that in this article naming inquiry we're talking about formal labeling; it's article content that deals with the substance readers seek. —RCraig09 (talk) 01:14, 2 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I have three (related) objections to this title. I still think I consider it to be a slight improvement over the current title, but I'm not entirely sure. The first objection is the length: WP:TITLECRITERIA's conciseness criterion is quite clear that IF it is possible to denote the article name in a concise manner, that should be done. I think we have more concise titles at our disposal that are entirely clear. The second objection is specific to the word AND, about which the Article title guideline says: Sometimes two or more closely related or complementary concepts are most sensibly covered by a single article. Where possible, use a title covering all cases. My final objection is that since global warming is the main aspect of climate change, including it is unnessesary
The major reason I consider this a (possible) improvement over the previous title is that it's a step towards modernization with climate change being (in the) name of a very large majority of major RSs about this subject. Femke Nijsse (talk) 17:44, 5 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The simplest, most straightforward option. It's a single subject known to the lay reader by two short names - so use both. François Robere (talk) 13:24, 6 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
If we use this title Global warming and climate change here is some draft first lead paragraph text

Modern-day global warming is causing climate change throughout the world. Because the Earth now has a positive energy balance, Earth's overall climate system is warming up, causing long-term changes in a wide variety of meteorological variables. Collectively, scientists call this climate change. Of all the meteorological variables, one of the most familiar is probably global surface temperature (GST), which is rising. Scientists call the rising GST global warming. Despite these distinct technical meanings, to the lay public the terms global warming and climate change are often used as synonyms to describe the warming of earth's climate system and its many diverse effects.

Technically we do not have to have any WP:LEADCITE and I left them out for the time being, for simplicity.

NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 01:48, 7 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'm strongly against saying that global warming is causing climate change, as it's mostly wrong. Global warming is (the most substantative) part of climate change. As RCraig09 showed, there are very few sources, most of them non-scientific/non-popsci, that refer to climate change as being caused by global warming. Which comes to the basic question again: As GW is part of CC, why mention it in the title? I'm not aware of any other title on Wikipedia that does this. Further comments on lede that don't bear on article titling: I would like to do something like this: https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/learn-about/climate-and-climate-change/climate-change/index, which omits technical and difficult terms like the Earth's energy budget, meteorological, variable, scientist, the (uncommon?) abbreviation for global surface temperature (normally we use GMST) and lay (yes, lay is a difficult term, especially for nonnative speakers that often don't have a direct translation for that word into their language). Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:53, 7 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Why is it mostly wrong? In Earth's energy budget we see incoming solar energy first being converted to long wave radiation at earth's surface, which (I assume) warms that surface first. The build up of Ocean heat content does not begin at depth. It is a surface warming thing first. Only then do the extra BTUs make their way through the water column. Increased atmospheric vapor content does not happen from the stratosphere. It starts with surface warming driving increased evaporation. I've always understood that the conversion of insolation to infrared radiation at earth's survace was the first domino in the chain of dominoes. Without human activities messingup the energy budget, the chain of dominoes (the climate for most of history) remained stable. THe push of the human finger is knocking down the whole chain. But the first dominoe to fall is surface warming, i.e, increase GST, i.e. "global warming". It then knocks over all the others "causing" them to fall as well. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 11:14, 7 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It's mostly wrong because global warming is the main aspect of climate change. An (awkward) sentence like: "global warming causes many of the other changes in climate", would be correct. While you're right that many other changes are a result of surface warming, there are a few aspects of climate change that are not caused by global warming: (a) decreasing stratospheric temperatures, (b) increasing acidification (if you consider that part of the climate), (c) changes to do with regional differences in warming, such as possible changes in the jet stream. But most importantly you can't say A causes B, when A is a part of B. Even if we were to think it's true, let's follow the sources, which do not typically explain it like this. Femke Nijsse (talk) 11:25, 7 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Ah yes, I see your point. My text did accidentally imply GW was not in itself part of CC. Good catch. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 11:28, 7 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@NewsAndEventsGuy: By the voting, the preferred choice (narrowly) among everyone is a simple rename to "climate change". I think that's pretty clearly what the article is covering, is clearly the most succinct choice, and is also where things will ultimately end up. I was surprised to see you oppose it without reason NAEG. Could you explain? Efbrazil (talk) 17:26, 7 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Replying to Efbrazil's question above the outdent...

A. We'll leave behind a substantial slice of the US audience over 30 years old. If we were reporting on Poodle breeds I wouldn't care. On this issue its really important to keep everyone on the same page
B. As JJ has pointed out, the word choice matters 2011 study, 2017 study so the best way to overcome that bias (either our own or our readers) is to use both terms
C. To help neutralize the "they changed the name" myth. [7]
D. Staring into my crystal ball, I predict that a real RFC on a RM will be unwieldy and using both terms will be attractive to some, and will be grudgingly acceptable to enough others to be a happy middle place
E. To avoid too much change at once. We only just moved the former climate change and there is already another RM at Climate change (general concept). I believe "change shock minimization" is desirable, and we should let at least a year of stable editing happen while these top level changes perk down through sub articles. A further refinement of the name here won't upset any of that.
F. (reserved for whatever I forgot or haven't thought of yet!)

Thanks for asking, and that's why I want to use both terms in the form Global warming and climate change and do not want to use just Climate change. As a side note, these are all part of my reasons for not just using "global warming" either, though in that case I have additional reasons which I have been talking about off and on since at least my 2014 rename proposal. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 22:28, 7 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Don't have that much time, so I hope you can forgive the bluntness. A) Let's fight the WP:Systemic bias in favour of the US public on Wikipedia. I can accept that these people still use GW, but how do we know that they're unfamiliar with CC? And how many young people in Europe laugh when they see it's still called GW? For some, it might be as archaic as 'inadvertent climate modification' B & C) WP:TITLECHANGES states: remember that the choice of title is not dependent on whether a name is "right" in a moral or political sense.. I also think that myth was tied to the GMST slowdown and has lost its relevance within the denial machine. D & E: tactical voting? With E, I agree that it's desirable to wait a bit before dust has settled before starting a RM. But I do think we should go for the optimum title directly and not some in between compromise if at all possible. Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:23, 8 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@RCraig09: I've made CC&GW and GW&CC redirects to GW. Can we remove this 'pro' from GW&CC now? All the (natural?) proposed titles will lead to this article, so adding that to the table will make is unnecessary full. Femke Nijsse (talk) 19:02, 8 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

That only solves in-wiki searching. For Google and other offwiki search engines my guess is that having both in the title is more likely to reach more readers searching for this article. In addition, once in awhile offline versions of Wikipedia are distributed, and I don't trust the redirects will work correctly under those conditions NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 20:12, 8 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I see where you're coming from, but I don't think we're here to compete with other sources on Google. I do wonder with our renaming effort whether Google will adjust its search results soon (one other reason for me to postpone a discussion untill we fixed all the internal links, which I suspect are used by Google to determine the importance of the article). If you're worried about redirects not working, surely you'd want to choose either of the two common names for this topic: global warming or climate change?

@Femke: I'm not sure we're communicating on this issue. I've just clarified my language: "GW" searches and "CC" searches lead here. Your new redirects are good to have, but those other terms aren't as likely to be searched as "GW", or as likely to be searched as "CC". I see this search destination as important, especially since it's only one line. Thanks for all your work. —RCraig09 (talk) 22:39, 8 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I think I now understand what NEAG means by it (I assume you two are on the same wavelength on this?) and have specified that further in the table. Being findable by a search engine for both terms, while not one of our WP:CRITERIA, is indeed one of the unique advantages of this title. I've removed the link for naturalness. Upon closer reading, that criterion really about the entire title: The title is one that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles. Such a title usually conveys what the subject is actually called in English.. Readers are not looking for the compound typically for for either GW or CC. Femke Nijsse (talk) 07:43, 9 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Femke: GW isn't an "aspect" of CC, it is the primary driver of CC effects. (I grant ocean acidification is an exception.) Your rejection that "A" can be causative of "B" arises from semantic confusion of just what "part of" means. You could as validly extend the definition of "climate change" to include greenhouse gases, and then by the same "part of" logic claim that GHG are not causative, which is patently false.

GW "is part of CC" only if CC is defined broadly. Even if the definition is broad enough to fully subsume GW it is still differentiated as being a cause rather than an effect. Blurring this distinction obscures matters of causation (and responsibility), and tends to reduce the "climate crisis" issue to "shit happens, get over it". ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 01:53, 9 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for chiming in. All sources about climate change (without further specification) I find on Google's top 10 are clear: CC (referring to current climate change) is caused by us emitting GHG. That GW is a part/aspect instead of cause of (current) climate change is supported by a majority of these RSs as well^[1]^[2]^[3]^[4]^[5]^[6] As RCraig09 showed, it's only a small minority of sources, and I've not found one that meets our RSs standards, that say that CC is caused by GW.^[7] Of the three examples I gave of GHG impacting climate directly, the two others were stronger (cooling stratosphere, regional changes), as ocean acidification is only seen to be part of CC by some sources. The Met Office's view (among more sources) that ocean acidification is climate change's evil twin is more correct. You say that GW is part of CC only if CC is defined broadly. I've never never found any definition of climate or climate change that disregards temperature as one of the main variables. In the technical/general/broad definition of climate change (general concept), I would say that GW is a part of an (the current) instance of climate change (general concept), with that instance being caused by us. I recognize that there is a small group in the world still clamming on unto the specific climate change myth that what we see is natural, but for me the point has come to put the interests of the majority above this small group, and go for the name that scientists regard as most accurate ánd people use most. Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:44, 9 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The "causation"/"causality" issue seems to be between:

(#1) Humans --> GHGs --> GW --> CC --> SLR/OA/GR/ASID/EW/etc . . . . (CC may include some of SLR/OA/GR/ASID/EW.)

versus:

(#2) Humans --> GHGs --> (GW ∈ CC) --> SLR/OA/GR/ASID/EW/etc . . . . (CC may include some of SLR/OA/GR/ASID/EW.)

where --> is "causes", and "∈" means "is a subset of" and " SLR/OA/GR/ASID/EW" are effects of CC.

@Femkemilene:, as I understand it, your are saying RSs favor #2, even though #1 emphasizes that GW is the cause of the rest of CC. Is my understanding correct? —RCraig09 (talk) 19:48, 9 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Separately: "Climate change (human-caused)" (or similar) avoids the "GW ∈ CC" altogether! —RCraig09 (talk) 20:01, 9 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, #2 is how almost all sources describe it (from the subset that makes it explicit). With the caveat that some sources also note some climatic changes that don't go via surface temparture increase alone: lapse rate, acidification (which I don't consider part of CC) and decreasing stratospheric temperatures. Femke Nijsse (talk) 20:19, 9 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@RCraig09 and NewsAndEventsGuy: you seem to be interested in how easy people can find the article via a search engine. I've been noticing that a 'global warming' search for me mostly gives pages named 'climate change', but that might be because Google knows more about me than me and prefers European searches. Just did one of these 'unbiased' Google searches for a random loc in the US and UK. It seems that Google is using CC as a synonym for GW (twoway), so that the Wikipedia page is actually showing up already for both searches for a 'typical' user. Femke Nijsse (talk) 19:27, 9 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, my thinking is that lay readers who search (internally or through Google) for "GW", and lay readers who search for "CC", should both be immediately reassured they have reached the intended destination; this reassurance is more easily accomplished in the title than in the lead. Scientifically, I know "GW" is waning, and "CC" is dominant and scientifically more correct, but on the other hand, substantively, GW is the cause of the effects of CC even though RSs consider GW a subset of CC. —RCraig09 (talk) 19:57, 9 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Femke, good but not enough though. Incidentally DuckDuckGo behaves similarly.

Alas, we can't assume a real noob, particularly in the US, will necessarily click on the search engine hit for our article after searching for the other term. If BOTH terms are in the title, this particular problem is completely vaporized

A new thought... think about longterm article maintenance. A large (total?) percentage of participants in this thread seem to agree we should explain both the narrow technical meaning and the lay speech synonymity of these terms. If we ever decide to stop doing that, we can have a discussion and decide to stop doing that. But over the longterm, the next crop of editors (or some like me with rapidly aging braincells) may lose track of this current objective. By having both terms in the title we won't need to remember it! If we later decide we have outgrown this approach we always have an intentional discussion about leaving that article text and compound title behind. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 20:41, 9 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion moved here from immediately after "Reasoning chart"

@RCraig09:: I've deleted and modified the statement about -Internal searches "GW" and "CC" lead here a few times. I really don't understand why this would be unique for that specific title. Could you elaborate? Nobody is suggesting that we would do it differently for any other title, right? Femke Nijsse (talk) 20:31, 9 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Assuming the most likely >>>wp:commonname<<< searches to find this subject matter are "GW" and "CC": the title "GW & CC" is the only destination title that captures what each searcher is searching for, instantly assuring both searchers they have arrived at their intended destination. The "Policy Against" column notes that the title as a whole does not fulfill WP:COMMONNAME; both sides are presented. —RCraig09 (talk) 21:23, 9 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

{{citation needed}} External and internal searches will land on whichever title we settle on. We can create numerous redirects that will steer traffic to the chosen name. No title has an advantage in this sense. The search engines will figure it all out, that's what they do. (The discussion about which search phrase is historically or more recently popular is an entirely different question.) I agree with Femke Nijsse on the point above. I find the arguments by RCraig09 to be unpersuasive. That's just not how search works. --mikeu ^talk 21:44, 9 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

My point, more an observation than an argument, was not about searching per se. I understand we can steer people here. My point is about the human factor: whether most humans who do arrive here, immediately see what they expect. You are correct: it is "an entirely different question". —RCraig09 (talk) 22:12, 9 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

In short: the entry relates to avoiding WP:SURPRISE. —RCraig09 (talk) 23:46, 9 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

First, why are we turning the table section into a discussion section? Second, @Mu301 we all agree (I think) that a search engine will produce our article whether the user searches Bing or DuckDuckGo or Google and whether they input "climate change" or instead input "global warming". So then our article (whatever its called) appears. Hooray! But wait.... we are assuming the searcher will realize the (whatever our article is called title) is the one they want even though they input the other term. No search engine can connect the dots in the users mind. I'll admit that most searchers will probably figure it out. But can you admit that some noobs who look up "global warming" might not know enough to click on a Wikipedia article called "climate change"? Yet another thought.... For 17.5 years we have taught readers that our article "climate change" was about the general concept. So take someone who learned that, is not a regular, does not know about this overhaul, and they want to refer back to our article. So they go to their search engine and input "global warming". If we simply rename this to "climate change", that reader is going to see the right article but it will be called "climate change". And they may say to their self, "Dammit I know Wikipedia's climate change article is about the generic climate change, where's the damn global warming article?" In short, yes we all agree (I think) the search engines will return our article, whether its "climate change" or "global warming and climate change". But we can't be certain users will click the "climate change" only hit if they input "global warming". NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 22:39, 9 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ "What is the difference between global warming and climate change?". www.usgs.gov. Retrieved 2019-11-09.
^ "What's the difference between global warming and climate change? | NOAA Climate.gov". www.climate.gov. Retrieved 2019-11-09.
^ "Is there a difference between global warming and climate change?". The Years Project. Retrieved 2019-11-09.
^ "What's the Difference between Global Warming and Climate Change?". Climate Reality. 2016-10-26. Retrieved 2019-11-09.
^ Benjamin, Daniel; Por, Han-Hui; Budescu, David (2017-08-01). "Climate Change Versus Global Warming: Who Is Susceptible to the Framing of Climate Change?". Environment and Behavior. 49 (7): 745–770. doi:10.1177/0013916516664382. ISSN 0013-9165.
^ Romm, Joseph (2016). Climate Change: What everybody needs to know. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 20. ISBN 978–0–19–025017–1. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help)
^ For instance, we cannot cite other encyclopedias: Rafferty, John. "What's the Difference Between Global Warming and Climate Change?". Encyclopedia Brittannica.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)

Climate change

with Global warming as a section in that article: Don't you think wikipedia needs an article on "Climate change"? We have one, but we're calling it Global warming. Global warming technically means surface temperature changes only, so we can create a section named Global warming underneath the "Observed temperature changes" section of this article. The redirect for the search term Global warming would go to that new section. The content of the section would be about global surface temperatures, and a subsection of that section could be about the historical use of the term (for instance in "an inconvenient truth"). Since the redirect target for Global warming would exist in the context of all of Climate change, the redirect will also work for people that are interested in the larger issues of Climate change and not the limited issue of just surface temperature. Win-win idea, right? Efbrazil (talk) 21:19, 1 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Efbrazil, those are specific details for an idea based on reasoning you've already put forward.... namely, you want to really hammer on the technical usage of these terms to create this argument while just ignoring the equally valid "They mean the same thing" useage by a lot of lay public. However you package that reasoning into a details about execution I'm probably going to oppose the idea, and I oppose this one for reasons previously stated. Moving on to a new aspect, just a few minutes ago (21:33 1 November 2019) you said "We will be successful only when people can look up "climate change" and see an article entitled "climate change" on Wikipedia" QUESTION - How are you measuring "success"? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 23:05, 1 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@NewsAndEventsGuy: @Efbrazil: @Dave souza: @UnitedStatesian: I urge all of you to enter your username into the Table above, to solidly clarify our basic positions. You can change later, of course. —RCraig09 (talk) 01:21, 2 November 2019 (UTC) [reply]

Pinging and red seems redundant (and hard to read). I'm not in any big rush, personally, and would like to wait to hear what latecomers ideas might be. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 02:30, 2 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@RCraig09 I added this to the chart in the hopes of winning you over to the idea of a "Climate change" article. @NewsAndEventsGuy I am not wanting to "hammer on the technical usage of these terms". I originally proposed "Climate change (global warming)" and still like that, but people complained that that was not technically correct because the terms mean different things. I'm trying to satisfy those that want to see the terms meaning the same thing and those that want a clear technical definition separated out. That differs from the proposal by UnitedStatesian. Regarding what is "success". Success means that people looking up "Climate change" will find an article entitled "Climate change" because it's concise, it's technically what the article is covering, and it's the preferred terminology by more than 2:1 among the public (and entirely in the scientific / educational community). I added this proposal to the end of the chart and put my name in the chart. Efbrazil (talk) 17:12, 2 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

A "CC" article would a tolerable result, but it subverts^{by your own "2:1" estimate} expectations of one-third of the public which is WP's main audience, and obscures the critical cause-and-effect GW-->CC relationship. You may not have seen my 01:14, 2 Nov post, above (please read); readers seek substantive content, not article titles per se. P.S. With respect, I will "comment out" your nearly-duplicative entry in the Table, because the Table's purpose is to concisely simplify editors' positions on article naming. —RCraig09 (talk) 18:16, 2 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Climate change with Global warming as a redirect to it. ~~Global warming is a superset that includes climate change~~ Climate change is a superset that includes global warming, sea level rise, ocean acidification, etc. The article includes both topics but the more generic phrase should be the title. Climate change is now the accepted term for what was once more commonly called global warming. This is seen in authoritative sources that journalists rely on[8], the style guides of news organizations[9], scientific societies[10], and the United Nations~~[11]~~[12]. The public might use the terms interchangeable but that is not how subject experts use the term. The article clarifies this point early on. --mikeu ^talk 23:10, 4 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

mikeu: Excellent refs! (though the United Nations link is a repeat of the CarbonBrief/BBC link). I think you may have mis-written your second sentence: did you in fact mean CC is the superset containing GW? (Actually, I think GW causes CC is most correct, so that both terms should be in the title ("GW and CC") for as long as numerous readers, and some sources, still search for both terms GW and for CC.) —RCraig09 (talk) 05:10, 5 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed excellent refs. @RCraig09, thanks for driving this, but.. I think you're view that global warming causes climate change is, in essense, incorrect. The most important (reported on) aspect of climate is temperature. Strictly speaking, climate change is only about the state of the atmosphere, so climate change = (temperature rise (global warming) + precipitation change + wind pattern change}. More loosely speaking it also includes other changes in the climate system, such as sea level rise. Ocean acidification is not part of climate change, but is an environmental issue with the same cause. To see whether it's a common misconception, I Googled global warming causes climate change. Even explicitly looking for sources that might say that global warming causes climate change, I came up with no results. Mu301's description is correct: global warming is (the most important) subset of climate change. Femke Nijsse (talk) 07:41, 5 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, @Femki, for your (as always) thoughtful response. I think there is some vagueness in trying to distinguish GW from CC, and distinguishing each from their effects. Yes, temperature is part of climate, but GW's 1°C temperature increase per se is barely noticeable compared to its effects. Symbolically:

GHGs --> GW --> CC --> SLR/OA/GR/ASID/EW/etc . . . . (CC may include some of SLR/OA/GR/ASID/EW.)

Even if (as you seem to say) CC includes GW, then modern GW is still the necessary precursor to the rest of CC and SLR/OA/GR/ASID/EW effects. My own scholar.google.com search for "global warming causes climate change" (with quotes) turned up only 56 results (google.com search ~4200 results), so some have a similar interpretation, leading me to favor a "GW & CC" title for now (2019). —RCraig09 (talk) 16:24, 5 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

To elaborate on my reasoning: all of those references use the standalone phrase "climate change" in the title or header as the subject of the page. Additional terms like anthropogenic or mention of global warming are relagated to mentions or clarifications lower down after declaring the title of the topic at top. My opinion is that we should follow this practice. Yes, there is confusion amongst the public about the difference between global warming and climate change that experts endeavor to correct[13] but they don't include top level topic pages about global warming[14] even if they do discuss study of the phenomenon[15]. I've seen no refs similar to the ones that I've given that use clunky combination titles like CC&GW or other varients listed above, which I strongly object to. It is simply "climate change" and the rest of the words and phrases are concepts to be elaborated further along in the body of the work. (work meaning the refs above or this WP article which should be like a mirror of the RSs we include in our footnotes) Thanks for pointing out the typos. I ~~struck~~ and corrected above. --mikeu ^talk 17:10, 5 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Well said, mikeu. I agree with your reasoning. EMsmile (talk) 02:00, 6 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Climate change is a superset that includes global warming, ice ages, holocene decline in temperatures, and regional climate changes such as the little ice age and the medieval warm period as well as more local climate changes. Global warming or heating is a subset, and generally refers to an aspect of climate change since the industrial revolution. . . dave souza, talk 09:54, 6 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Slight correction - whereas climate change (the general concept) is the superset, among ordinary people "climate change" = "global warming" = "climate change" = "global warming". And we all know ordinary people are talking about the present. I think, Dave, you compared the technical definition of climate change to the lay persons definition of global warming. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 12:02, 6 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

As said in another place, Metro is for lay persons, the lay person on the Clapham omnibus or any other form of public transport in the UK, and when they publish Hamill, Jasper (29 October 2019). "Climate change caused mass extinction apocalypse and killed 75% of life on Earth". Metro. Retrieved 29 October 2019. they expect their lay readers to have heard of climate changes before the industrial revolution. . . dave souza, talk 20:13, 6 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It's not a "superset", it's the same thing. Sea level rise, ocean acidification etc. are all caused by global warming. François Robere (talk) 13:36, 6 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@François Robere: please show the sources in which you say ocean acidification is "caused" by "global warming". I've seen them described as "evil twins" (example [16]) but never as one causing the other. Rather, in sources I've read the two have the same cause (increasing atmospheric CO2). If you burn your dinner, you're hunger is left unsatisfied and your house is full of smoke. They share a common causation, but does the smokey house make you hungry? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 14:33, 6 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'll clarify: All of these effects are part of the same cluster of phenomena and follow the same trends, which means "global warming" (or "global heating"), "climate change" and "rise in greenhouse gasses levels in the atmosphere" are practically synonymous. Article titles aren't granular enough to address these differences - that should be done in article bodies. François Robere (talk) 15:16, 6 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Many of the numerous comments throughout this discussion page are important considerations for the substance of this article. This thread, however, is not about the content of the article it is about the title. The suggestions of including all of these nuanced ideas and concepts in the name of the page are misguided and a distraction from the task that we are considering. The phrase "climate change" has overtaken "global warming" as the de facto[17][18][19] catch all term for the subject of this article. A meta-analysis of RS coverage of the ideas described here tracks both CC and GW mentions in the news but the title of the project is Media and Climate Change Observatory[20] (emphasis added) indicating a clear preference for CC as the definitive descriptive term for the idea. If you disagree with this common sense interpretation of the title suggestion I am more than willing to provide copious references that support[21][22][23][24][25][26] this assertion despite my feeling that continuing the debate is futile. I honestly don't understand why there is reluctance to accept the obvious observation that "climate change" is the canonical term for the concept described in the article. --mikeu ^talk 17:09, 6 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

But not exclusively for the particular concept: it is also th canonical term for all climate change, including earlier non-warming changes – usage is context dependent. Note the UN source also mentions global warming, relating to the recent SR on the topic . . . dave souza, talk 20:13, 6 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Of course it is not exclusively used in this sense but it is "often" and "in particular" "especially, in current use" referring to contemporary global warming. This is the most common interpretation unless someone is writing about an obscure topic like ~30,000 year old sea turtles - a subject that rarely makes the front page above the fold. A wide circulation news magazine that has devoted entire issues[27] to the title hardly needs to clarify that it is not about an ancient apocalypse. There are no significant efforts to survey public attitudes about the general concept.[28] Reliable sources overwhelming use the simple two word phrase specifically for recent. I don't understand your last statement, SR? --mikeu ^talk 00:23, 7 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you @Mu301 for your thoroughness in convincing me how far "CC" has overtaken "GW" in sources^{(330M hits for "CC" vs 78 for "GW" in today's Google search)}, especially (as @Femke notes) outside the U.S. and in proper technical sources. As another option: to distinguish the content of this article from Climate change (general concept), are you open to my proposal ("Anthropogenic CC") in the next sub-sub-section? —RCraig09 (talk) 17:39, 6 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

No. Lengthy explanatory article titles are contrary to WP:CONCISE, WP:COMMONNAME, WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, especially WP:NAMINGCRITERIA, and just plain WP:COMMONSENSE. It is an attempt to cram MOS:LEAD material into a page name. I've given a lengthy list of highly notable references that refrain from doing this. We should emulate these examples. Note: I'm currently a resident of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations but I used to reside in the Commonwealth of Massachusets. It would be absurd to use those phrases is any context except the title of a court case. --mikeu ^talk 18:02, 6 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Mikeu: reply given in following section: RCraig09 (talk) 23:40, 6 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

re "climate change" comment by NAEG reasons I do not want to use just "climate change" can be found in the section for Global warming and climate change. With thanks to Efbrazil who reminded me I hadn't addressed this point, my reasoning is in this specific diff. BTW there are 5 criteria to be used for deciding an article WP:TITLE. I have yet to study those five points and craft pro/con arguments accordingly, so there will probably be more to say later.NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 22:56, 7 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Anthropogenic climate change (or) Human-caused climate change (or) Climate change (human-caused) etc.

- This title best describes the content (subject matter) of this article (why did I not see it earlier?). A bare-bones "Climate change" title gives the incorrect impression that the content of this article is about as broad as Climate change (general concept)—which it is not.
- Separately: As a Yank I'm still seeing much use of the term "GW",^{(6 "CC" and 4 "GW" uses in this Nov 5 WashPost article)} but I acknowledge that "GW" is being supplanted by "CC" as many editors correctly describe above.
- By implication: If "GW"—the most direct cause of CC's effects and the cause of CC itself by some definitions—is eliminated from this article's title, then the essence of this subject matter—that humans, if not GW, have caused recent climate change—should be reflected in the title. —RCraig09 (talk) 17:26, 6 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The word anthropogenic is a more difficult synonym for human-caused and is a big no-go for me. I'm also opposed to human-caused. In the previous renaming discussion, the closer determined that there was overly clear consensus that climate change's WP:PRIMARYTOPIC is human-caused climate change. Therefore, the WP:CONCISE redirect or title will nót give the impression that it's about climatic changes in general. That's why so many of our RSs use climate change without any further specification in the title. I think I agree with mikeu that we'd be putting article content into the title if we insist on spelling out the human-causedness. If we want a further specification, I prefer modern as it is a bit more concise, and doesn't specify the article's content but only the topic. Femke Nijsse (talk) 19:29, 6 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The WP:PRIMARYTOPIC argument is an artefact of common usage: most articles about CC cover post-industrial revolution changes, and in that context most change is related to GW, but not all CC is GW and so equating the two is misleading. It's a way of causing confusion: readers are being led to expect that the medieval warm period changes were not climate change, for example, or ice age glaciation wasn't climate change. That's reasonably well clarified if we refer here to modern climate change, not sure how well that covers continuing expected warming. . . . dave souza, talk 20:28, 6 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Which is why I favor Global warming and climate change, with lead text that explains both the technical distinction and lay synonymity.NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 22:10, 6 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) The fact that most articles are about current GW & CC means that we should follow those sources, right? Past global warming (f.i. PETM) and other past climate change is always described in sources with some extra context (past tense in title, climatic change, explicitly stating past global warming). I don't think that using the common terminology is confusing. If lay people want to read about current climate change, we don't have to put front and center that within the scientific community, we sometimes (in my experience rarely) use climate change in the broader definition. We should put front and center the on-topic distinction between current climate change and current global warming. I'm not in favour of explaining four definitions in the first paragraphs of the lede (current global warming, difference with current climate change, different with past global warming, difference with past climate change), when instead we should be talking about all the different things about what is happening now (causes, physical effects, effects on life, what we can do, what we're doing). I think putting the scientific definitions of global warmings and climatic changes in the lede will lead high school students to stop reading, and fit better in the terminology section. Femke Nijsse (talk) 22:16, 6 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

First: Thanks to all for thoughtful consideration!

Two considerations conflict: ● Issue 1: Scientific source usage, and ● Issue 2: popular usage (including popular press and non-scientist WP readers searching). . . . . . . . Ours is a unique situation and simple policy/guideline rules don't lead to clean results. I see that, especially internationally and scientifically, "CC" is well on the way to supplanting "GW" (Issue 1, above). However, outside sources don't have to consider how the substantive subject matter of WP articles inter-relates ("Issue 2", above), especially to distinguish "CC" from "CC(GenCon)" which, misleadingly, seem equally broad (incoming readers won't appreciate wiki-concepts like WP:primarytopic-ness). Bottomline, I think we should distinguish this article's substantive subject matter in the title (not the lead) so readers instantly understand which subject matter they have reached. Conciseness is a formal consideration, not substantive, and I think 1-3 extra words are warranted in our unique situation: either "GW &..." or "Human-caused..." though I think "Modern..." is vague. —RCraig09 (talk) 23:40, 6 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree that scientific and popular usage conflict of the word climate change. Sure, many sources copy IPCC's technical/general definition into their glossaries (which in its latest report, is explicitly stated as a definition only used FOR that report), but they use climate change like anybody else. Furthermore, in choosing an article name, we should be considering the general public, not the expert audience. As such, our desire to want to distinguish from the general definition is, in my eyes, somewhat moot. As many outside sources (NASA) also study past climate change, they do have to consider how to distinguish CC from CC(GenCon), and they often go for the distinction in title 'CC' and 'past CC'. Femke Nijsse (talk) 07:53, 7 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed: focus on general public & popular press for article name. The public and popular press (U.S. more than other countries, as I understand it) still regularly use "GW".^{(6 "CC" and 4 "GW" uses in this Nov 5 WashPost article)} which is why also favor "GW&CC". Conciseness is a formal WP goal, but, here, "Human-caused CC" (or new suggestion "CC (human-caused)") best describes this substantive subject matter and, further, neatly disambiguates it from "CC(GenCon)". P.S. I'm ~"OK" with a bare "CC", but it sounds comparably broad to "CC(GenCon)". —RCraig09 (talk) 18:16, 7 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your creativity. Unfortunately, climate change (human-caused) suffers from many above objections of previous names PLUS one extra big one.

It's not concise
It used parentheses (if a good natural title exists, avoid: from WP:PARENDIS: {{tq: Wikipedia's standard disambiguation technique when none of the other solutions lead to an optimal article title.}} (emphasis mine)
It uses an adjective in these parentheses. Our WP:Disambiguation guidelines states: rarely, an adjective describing the topic can be used, as in Vector (spatial), but it is usually better to rephrase such a title to avoid parentheses (for instance, Vector (spatial) was renamed to Euclidean vector).. Femke Nijsse (talk) 18:32, 7 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Femke, I think this section's proposals are as precise as possible while still capturing the substantive scope of the subject matter... and also disambiguating. Your second and third observations are WP formal guidelines, which don't deal cleanly with the substance of this subject's unique situation. But please add to the "Reasoning" chart, above. You are uniquely qualified to appreciate both the substance and WP formal guidelines. —RCraig09 (talk) 06:58, 8 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Information with Google Tests to establish COMMONNAMES

The policy on wikipedia titles gives us some leeway to nót go for the most common title. It states: When there are multiple names for a subject, all of which are fairly common, and the most common has problems, it is perfectly reasonable to choose one of the others. Above, we have identified problems with all names below. In a few days time, I'd like to summarize very concisely all of the identified problems and connect all of them to one of the WP:CRITERIA for title names, if possible.

Proposed article name	Google Trend^[1]	Ngram (books)^[2]	Google results	News^[3]	News old^[4]	Scholar^[5]
Global warming	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%
Global warming and climate change plus reverse	3.3%	2.2%	2.48%	~0%		11 %
Climate change	175%	190%	243%	260%	35%	314%
Human-caused climate change	?	?	0.05%	?	?	1.15%
Anthropogenic climate change	?	?	?

Conclusion: more reliable sources (Google scholar, and Books) have a bigger preference for CC over GW than less reliable sources (News, Google searches). The combination global warming and climate change is mostly single-digit. Whether this is fairly common, is up for discussion.

I was trying to find out the same values for "anthropogenic climate change", and found that at least Google Trends has a number of parameters (e.g. geographical scope, and time period). Can you clarify what you used? --Stephan Schulz (talk) 18:13, 7 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Specified further in notes. Femke Nijsse (talk) 18:19, 7 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Either I can't operate it, or ACC comes in below the rounding down bar on trends. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 10:38, 8 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Many of the question marks are indeed because Google Trends doesn't show results when it's below a certain threshold. The passive^[6] Google Tests (Scholar, Results), do capture smaller percentages. Femke Nijsse (talk) 07:47, 9 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Both the string "global warming" and "climate change" would direct a reader to an article titled "Global warming and climate change", so we might as well capture both leading terms. François Robere (talk) 18:53, 7 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Femkemilene: I plan to add a separate chart with "Pro" and "Con" columns, to summarize concise arguments for each proposal. Would that help? —RCraig09 (talk) 18:57, 7 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, if you want to do it, be my guest. I do think it's extremely important to link arguments to actual policy and to either leave out arguments that cannot be linked to any criterion, or make them small. Femke Nijsse (talk) 19:05, 7 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'll leave the "reasoning" column mostly blank, to start. —RCraig09 (talk) 19:07, 7 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@F, could you please add the search url to the notes? Maybe pipe the link to not clutter up the screen. The metric I'd most like to see is not in this table but is probably impossible to code into a url. I would most like to know the count limited only to sources which explain the technical distinction as well as the lay speech synonimity of these terms. It's a good bet the hit rate for the both-term searches would go up substantially. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 20:12, 7 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, don't have the motivation/time to redo all of the tests. Femke Nijsse (talk) 19:31, 9 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know the exact url used for the table above, but here are some links that I found useful if you'd like to try modifying the search terms or date range. I used an arbitrarily longer range of time than above based on the length of each dataset.

Google Books Ngram (1980 - 2008)
Google News Search Trends (2008 - now)
Google Web Search Trends (2004 - now)
ICE CaPs (2004 - now, showing total "CC" .OR. "GW" for comparison to above. More at [29])

--mikeu ^talk 19:59, 9 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ Global, Past 12 months
^ Goes only up to 2009, using that year
^ Global, Past 12 months
^ Global, Using 2009
^ since 2015
^ With passive I mean not what people themself search, but a count of how much it is used

[Powell2019-1] Powell, James (20 November 2019). "Scientists Reach 100% Consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming". Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society. 37 (4): 183–184. doi:10.1177/0270467619886266. S2CID 213454806. Retrieved 15 November 2020.

[WMO-FAQS-2] "Commission for Climatology Frequently Asked Questions". World Meteorological Organization. Archived from the original on 5 May 2020. Retrieved 14 July 2020.

[3] Harris, Tom. "Scientists who work in the fields liberal arts graduate Al Gore wanders through contradict his theories about man-induced climate change". National Post. Archived from the original on 30 August 2011. Retrieved 11 January 2009 – via Solid Waste & Recycling. {{cite web}}: |archive-date= / |archive-url= timestamp mismatch; 4 February 2012 suggested (help)

[4] Arriola, Benj. "5 Good Arguments Why GlobalWarming is NOT due to Man-made Carbon Dioxide". Global Warming Awareness Blog. Retrieved 11 January 2009.

[5] Ahlbeck, Jarl. "Increase of the Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration due to Ocean Warming". Retrieved 11 January 2009.

[6] Kirby, Simon (11 April 2007). "Top scientist debunks global warming". Herald Sun. Retrieved 11 January 2009.

[7] Brahic, Catherine (16 May 2007). "Climate myths: Human CO2 emissions are too tiny to matter". New Scientist. Retrieved 11 January 2009.

[8] "More Notes on Global Warming". Physics Today. May 2005. Retrieved 10 September 2007.

[9] Battle, M.; et al. (2000). "Global Carbon Sinks and Their Variability Inferred from Atmospheric O2 and d13C". Science. 287 (5462): 2467–2470. doi:10.1126/science.287.5462.2467.

[10] The Royal Society (2005). "Ocean acidification due to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide". Retrieved 9 May 2012.

[11] "Met Office: Climate averages". Met Office. Archived from the original on 24 February 2009. Retrieved 23 January 2009.

[12] Climate Central (18 January 2017). "2016 Was the Hottest Year on Record". Climate Central. Retrieved 1 February 2017.

[13] The Saga of Erik the Red, 1880, English translation by J. Sephton, from the original Eiríks saga rauða.

[14] "Cold Hard Facts". Tamino. 8 January 2009. Retrieved 21 January 2009.^{[dead link]}

[15] Peterson, T. C.; et al. (2008). "The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus". Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. 89 (9): 1325. Bibcode:2008BAMS...89.1325P. doi:10.1175/2008BAMS2370.1.

[16] Gwynne, Peter (28 April 1975). "The Cooling World". Newsweek. p. 64.

[17] Verger, Rob (23 May 2014). "Newsweek Rewind: Debunking Global Cooling". Newsweek.

[18] Gwynne, Peter (21 May 2014). "My 1975 'Cooling World' Story Doesn't Make Today's Climate Scientists Wrong". insidescience.org.

[19] Ravilious, Kate (28 February 2007). "Mars Melt Hints at Solar, Not Human, Cause for Warming, Scientist Says". National Geographic News. Archived from the original on 2 March 2007. Retrieved 6 March 2008.

[20] Ravilious, Kate (28 February 2007). "Mars Melt Hints at Solar, Not Human, Cause for Warming, Scientist Says (page 2)". National Geographic News. Archived from the original on 2 March 2007. Retrieved 6 March 2008.

[21] Marcus, Philip; Shetty, Sushil; Asay-Davis, Xylar (November 2006). Velocities and Temperatures of Jupiter's Great Red Spot and the New Red Oval and Implications for Global Climate Change. American Physical Society. Retrieved 9 May 2007.

[22] Goudarzi, Sara (4 May 2006). "New Storm on Jupiter Hints at Climate Change". Space.com. Retrieved 9 May 2007.

[23] Philip, Marcus S. (22 April 2004). "Prediction of a global climate change on Jupiter" (PDF). Nature. 428 (6985): 828–831. Retrieved 9 May 2007.

[24] Yang, Sarah (21 April 2004). "Researcher predicts global climate change on Jupiter as giant planet's spots disappear". University of California, Berkeley. Retrieved 9 May 2007.

[25] Elliot, J. L.; et al. (10 July 2003). "The recent expansion of Pluto's atmosphere". Nature (424): 165–168. doi:10.1038/nature01762.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

[26] Foerster, Jim. "What's The Difference Between Private Weather Companies And The National Weather Service?". Forbes.

[27] Eilts, Mike (27 November 2018). "The Role of Weather—and Weather Forecasting—in Agriculture". DTN.

[28] "What do the CERN experiments tell us about global warming?". Skeptical Science. 2 September 2011.

[29] Brumfiel, Geoff (23 August 2011). "Cloud Formation May Be Linked to Cosmic Rays". Scientific American.

[30] Harvey, Oliver Milman Fiona (2019-05-08). "US is hotbed of climate change denial, major global survey finds". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2019-10-05.

[31] "What is the difference between global warming and climate change?". www.usgs.gov. Retrieved 2019-11-09.

[32] "What's the difference between global warming and climate change? | NOAA Climate.gov". www.climate.gov. Retrieved 2019-11-09.

[33] "Is there a difference between global warming and climate change?". The Years Project. Retrieved 2019-11-09.

[34] "What's the Difference between Global Warming and Climate Change?". Climate Reality. 2016-10-26. Retrieved 2019-11-09.

[35] Benjamin, Daniel; Por, Han-Hui; Budescu, David (2017-08-01). "Climate Change Versus Global Warming: Who Is Susceptible to the Framing of Climate Change?". Environment and Behavior. 49 (7): 745–770. doi:10.1177/0013916516664382. ISSN 0013-9165.

[36] Romm, Joseph (2016). Climate Change: What everybody needs to know. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 20. ISBN 978–0–19–025017–1. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help)

[37] For instance, we cannot cite other encyclopedias: Rafferty, John. "What's the Difference Between Global Warming and Climate Change?". Encyclopedia Brittannica.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)

[38] Global, Past 12 months

[39] Goes only up to 2009, using that year

[40] Global, Past 12 months

[41] Global, Using 2009

[42] since 2015

[43] With passive I mean not what people themself search, but a count of how much it is used

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@@ Line 813: / Line 813: @@
 |}
+==== Sub-sub-section: comments ''about'' "Reasoning table" ====
 I don't think this table is going to work, per the  [[WP:TPG]].  There isn't any way to sign, and it invites edit warring when multiple people try to write [[WP:OTHERSOPINION]] at the same time.  That exercise is about a ''single'' editor trying to understand and restate others opinions.  By definition, it is a solo (single-editor) exercise.  But the idea is great.  Would you consider moving it to your user space and leaving a pointer diff here, kind of like I did during the ''climate change'' RM?  ([[User:NewsAndEventsGuy/CCRM-Table|Userspace table]] and [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Climate_change_(general_concept)&diff=prev&oldid=922849375 pointer diff]). There may be other ways to organize this, but just multi editing a summary table seems like a recipe for problems. [[User:NewsAndEventsGuy|NewsAndEventsGuy]] ([[User talk:NewsAndEventsGuy|talk]]) 22:45, 7 November 2019 (UTC)
 : Greetings {{ping|NewsAndEventsGuy}} The "Concise<sup>(snicker)</sup> opinions on specific article names" section, below, is already <s>~8500</s> '''10,100''' words long and <s>over twelve</s> '''about fourteen''' screenfuls on a desktop! Newly arriving editors will simply not read that Wall of Words—it's Yuge and getting Yuger!!!. This table '''''will''''' "work" since it distills essential arguments, pro and con, reducing unnecessary verbiage below from new people who might not find an existing thread buried in the 8500+ words. Purposely, there is no place for signed arguments: that's what the <u>first</u> table is for! It's definitely not a solo-editor exercise, as any editor can, and hopefully will, modify it. <small>As an aside, I think that the "Neutral" column in the ''first'' chart does not aid decision-makers' cogitations, and I suggest it be removed as it may worsen wraparound on smaller screens.</small> —[[User:RCraig09|RCraig09]] ([[User talk:RCraig09|talk]]) 06:41, 8 November 2019 (UTC) updated [[User:RCraig09|RCraig09]] ([[User talk:RCraig09|talk]]) 18:56, 9 November 2019 (UTC)
-:: {{ping|RCraig09}}: I've deleted and modified the statement about -Internal searches "GW" <u>and</u> "CC" lead here a few times. I really don't understand why this would be unique for that specific title. Could you elaborate? Nobody is suggesting that we would do it differently for any other title, right? [[User:Femkemilene|Femke Nijsse]] ([[User talk:Femkemilene|talk]]) 20:31, 9 November 2019 (UTC)
-::: Assuming the most likely >>>[[wp:commonname]]<<< searches to find this subject matter are "GW" and "CC": the title "GW & CC" is the ''only'' destination title that  captures what ''each'' searcher is searching for, instantly assuring ''both'' searchers they have arrived at their intended destination. The "Policy Against" column notes that the title ''as a whole'' does not fulfill [[WP:COMMONNAME]]; both sides are presented. —[[User:RCraig09|RCraig09]] ([[User talk:RCraig09|talk]]) 21:23, 9 November 2019 (UTC)
-::::{{tl|citation needed}} External and internal searches will land on whichever title we settle on. We can create numerous redirects that will steer traffic to the chosen name. No title has an advantage in this sense. The search engines will figure it all out, that's what they do. (The discussion about which search phrase is historically or more recently popular is an entirely different question.) I agree with Femke Nijsse on the point above. I find the arguments by RCraig09 to be unpersuasive. That's just not how search works. --[[User:Mu301|mikeu]] <sup>[[User talk:Mu301|talk]]</sup> 21:44, 9 November 2019 (UTC)
-::::: My point, more an observation than an argument, was not about searching per se. I understand we can steer people here. My point is about the human factor: whether most humans who do arrive here, immediately see what they expect. You are correct: it is "an entirely different question". —[[User:RCraig09|RCraig09]] ([[User talk:RCraig09|talk]]) 22:12, 9 November 2019 (UTC)
-::::: In short: the entry relates to avoiding [[WP:SURPRISE]]. —[[User:RCraig09|RCraig09]] ([[User talk:RCraig09|talk]]) 23:46, 9 November 2019 (UTC)
-{{od}}
-First, why are we turning the table section into a discussion section?
-Second, @Mu301 we all agree (I think) that a search engine will produce our article whether the user searches Bing or DuckDuckGo or Google and whether they input "climate change" or instead input "global warming".  So then our article (whatever its called) appears.  Hooray!   But wait.... we are assuming the searcher will ''realize'' the ''(whatever our article is called title)'' is the one they want even though they input the ''other'' term.   No search engine can connect the dots in the users mind.  I'll admit that most searchers will probably figure it out.  But can you admit that some noobs who look up "global warming" might not know enough to click on a Wikipedia article called "climate change"?   Yet another thought.... For 17.5 years we have taught readers that our article "climate change" was about the general concept.  So take someone who learned that, is not a regular, does not know about this overhaul, and they want to refer back to our article.  So they go to their search engine and input "global warming".  If we simply rename this to "climate change", that reader is going to see the right article but it will be called "climate change".  And they may say to their self, "Dammit I <ins>know</ins> Wikipedia's climate change article is about the generic climate change, where's the damn global warming article?"  In short, yes we all agree (I think) the search engines will return our article, whether its "climate change" or "global warming and climate change".  But we can't be certain users will click the "climate change" only hit if they input "global warming". [[User:NewsAndEventsGuy|NewsAndEventsGuy]] ([[User talk:NewsAndEventsGuy|talk]]) 22:39, 9 November 2019 (UTC)
 === <small><small>Subsection:</small></small> <u>When</u> to proceed ===
@@ Line 979: / Line 970: @@
 Thanks for asking, and that's why I want to use ''both'' terms in the form [[Global warming and climate change]] and do not want to use just ''Climate change''.  As a side note, these are all part of my reasons for not just using "global warming" either, though in that case I have additional reasons which I have been talking about off and on since at least my 2014 rename proposal. [[User:NewsAndEventsGuy|NewsAndEventsGuy]] ([[User talk:NewsAndEventsGuy|talk]]) 22:28, 7 November 2019 (UTC)
 : Don't have that much time, so I hope you can forgive the bluntness. A) Let's fight the [[WP:Systemic bias]] in favour of the US public on Wikipedia. I can accept that these people still use GW, but how do we know that they're unfamiliar with CC? And how many young people in Europe laugh when they see it's still called GW? For some, it might be as archaic as 'inadvertent climate modification' B & C) [[WP:TITLECHANGES]] states: {{tq|remember that the choice of title is not dependent on whether a name is "right" in a moral or political sense.}}. I also think that myth was tied to the GMST slowdown and has lost its relevance within the denial machine. D & E: tactical voting? With E, I agree that it's desirable to wait a bit before dust has settled before starting a RM. But I do think we should go for the optimum title directly and not some in between compromise if at all possible. [[User:Femkemilene|Femke Nijsse]] ([[User talk:Femkemilene|talk]]) 08:23, 8 November 2019 (UTC)
 {{ping|RCraig09}} I've made CC&GW and GW&CC redirects to GW. Can we remove this 'pro' from GW&CC now? All the (natural?) proposed titles will lead to this article, so adding that to the table will make is unnecessary full. [[User:Femkemilene|Femke Nijsse]] ([[User talk:Femkemilene|talk]]) 19:02, 8 November 2019 (UTC)
@@ Line 1,009: / Line 998: @@
 :A new thought... think about longterm article maintenance.  A large (total?) percentage of participants in this thread seem to agree we should explain both the narrow technical meaning and the lay speech synonymity of these terms.  If we ever decide to ''stop'' doing that, we can have a discussion and ''decide'' to stop doing that.  But over the longterm, the next crop of editors (or some like me with rapidly aging braincells) may lose track of this current objective.  By having ''both'' terms in the title we won't need to remember it!  If we later decide we have outgrown this approach we always have an intentional discussion about leaving that article text and compound title behind. [[User:NewsAndEventsGuy|NewsAndEventsGuy]] ([[User talk:NewsAndEventsGuy|talk]]) 20:41, 9 November 2019 (UTC)
+'''''Discussion moved here from immediately after "Reasoning chart"'''''
+:: {{ping|RCraig09}}: I've deleted and modified the statement about -Internal searches "GW" <u>and</u> "CC" lead here a few times. I really don't understand why this would be unique for that specific title. Could you elaborate? Nobody is suggesting that we would do it differently for any other title, right? [[User:Femkemilene|Femke Nijsse]] ([[User talk:Femkemilene|talk]]) 20:31, 9 November 2019 (UTC)
+::: Assuming the most likely >>>[[wp:commonname]]<<< searches to find this subject matter are "GW" and "CC": the title "GW & CC" is the ''only'' destination title that  captures what ''each'' searcher is searching for, instantly assuring ''both'' searchers they have arrived at their intended destination. The "Policy Against" column notes that the title ''as a whole'' does not fulfill [[WP:COMMONNAME]]; both sides are presented. —[[User:RCraig09|RCraig09]] ([[User talk:RCraig09|talk]]) 21:23, 9 November 2019 (UTC)
+::::{{tl|citation needed}} External and internal searches will land on whichever title we settle on. We can create numerous redirects that will steer traffic to the chosen name. No title has an advantage in this sense. The search engines will figure it all out, that's what they do. (The discussion about which search phrase is historically or more recently popular is an entirely different question.) I agree with Femke Nijsse on the point above. I find the arguments by RCraig09 to be unpersuasive. That's just not how search works. --[[User:Mu301|mikeu]] <sup>[[User talk:Mu301|talk]]</sup> 21:44, 9 November 2019 (UTC)
+::::: My point, more an observation than an argument, was not about searching per se. I understand we can steer people here. My point is about the human factor: whether most humans who do arrive here, immediately see what they expect. You are correct: it is "an entirely different question". —[[User:RCraig09|RCraig09]] ([[User talk:RCraig09|talk]]) 22:12, 9 November 2019 (UTC)
+::::: In short: the entry relates to avoiding [[WP:SURPRISE]]. —[[User:RCraig09|RCraig09]] ([[User talk:RCraig09|talk]]) 23:46, 9 November 2019 (UTC)
+{{od}}
+First, why are we turning the table section into a discussion section?
+Second, @Mu301 we all agree (I think) that a search engine will produce our article whether the user searches Bing or DuckDuckGo or Google and whether they input "climate change" or instead input "global warming".  So then our article (whatever its called) appears.  Hooray!   But wait.... we are assuming the searcher will ''realize'' the ''(whatever our article is called title)'' is the one they want even though they input the ''other'' term.   No search engine can connect the dots in the users mind.  I'll admit that most searchers will probably figure it out.  But can you admit that some noobs who look up "global warming" might not know enough to click on a Wikipedia article called "climate change"?   Yet another thought.... For 17.5 years we have taught readers that our article "climate change" was about the general concept.  So take someone who learned that, is not a regular, does not know about this overhaul, and they want to refer back to our article.  So they go to their search engine and input "global warming".  If we simply rename this to "climate change", that reader is going to see the right article but it will be called "climate change".  And they may say to their self, "Dammit I <ins>know</ins> Wikipedia's climate change article is about the generic climate change, where's the damn global warming article?"  In short, yes we all agree (I think) the search engines will return our article, whether its "climate change" or "global warming and climate change".  But we can't be certain users will click the "climate change" only hit if they input "global warming". [[User:NewsAndEventsGuy|NewsAndEventsGuy]] ([[User talk:NewsAndEventsGuy|talk]]) 22:39, 9 November 2019 (UTC)
 {{reflist-talk}}