Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Climate change

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Climate change policy needs an article

I don't like writing these abstract articles myself but maybe you do. Energy policy has an article and I just provocatively cited that national Climate change policy of the United States does not exist (although the Biden administration does have goals). However glancing at the latest report from the UK Climate Change Committee I realize I don't understand the difference between government policy and government strategy. Probably a lot of people don't understand how a government could have goals but no policy. But maybe you do and can start an article? Chidgk1 (talk) 08:10, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

I'm confused. Climate change policy currently redirects to Politics of climate change. Would you say that is wrong? Or are you talking about "climate change policy by country" articles? (some of those currently redirect to "climate change by country" e.g. climate change policy of Canada). EMsmile (talk) 10:36, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

Now I am getting confused too. I thought policy was different enough from politics to deserve a separate article. Because policy is the sausage and politics is the sausage making machine. For example energy policy does not mention fuel price rise protests presumably because that is politics not policy. By the way now the IRA has been passed I accept that Climate change policy of the United States exists and I just noticed there is an article History of climate change policy and politics. Anyway I'll stop thinking about this now and get back to my more specific articles Chidgk1 (talk) 11:04, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

Centralized Eco-Tip/Climate Action site

Whenever I search for good information about eco-tips and climate action in my region, I get pitiful, outdated and confusing results. I believe that an open source site like a ‘Climate Wikipedia’ should exist so that people can go directly to a resource with accurate, timely, regional information. There are so many people who want to help but haven’t a clue what to do. Anything from streaming on smaller devices and deleting unnecessary files to most useful planting practices, to climate projects in the area. Has anyone tried to create something like this? It seems a necessity to me and I’m guessing would generate lots of input and funding. The info team suggested I ask here. 2604:3D09:137C:7F00:89DF:EBF7:EDBF:6EC5 (talk) 15:11, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

Hi, I hope that when people come to Wikipedia they find a lot of good information on climate change topics. The main climate change article sends them to a myriad of sub-articles on this topic. Do you think that anything in particular is missing? Note that Wikipedia is not a WP:How-to guide. I think there are plenty of such guides available via Google searches. In which sense do you find them "pitiful, outdated and confusing"? I mean if someone wants to take action about climate change as an individual, it's all about reducing their own and their society's greenhouse gas emissions, right? I feel that the "outdated" information is more in the area of effects of climate change. We have a lot of work on our hands to improve those articles. Even the one on climate change mitigation is pretty bad. What's your specific proposal here? Keeping in mind that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and not a "how to" guide. P.S. where did you ask the info team, was that on a Wikipedia talk page somewhere? EMsmile (talk) 08:01, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

Yes I am pretty sure that "streaming on smaller devices and deleting unnecessary files" is "pitiful, outdated and confusing" advice. See Climate movement and Individual_action_on_climate_change#External_links (although I have been trying for years to delete the "family size" section from that article) - if you find any better sites please link them there. Articles about particular places such as Climate_change_in_Canada sometimes mention mitigation, adaptation and activism. If you live in Canada it would be great if you could improve that article. Re "planting practices" greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture is a tough topic - if you need a challenge try improving that. Whatever you decide to do good luck with it. Chidgk1 (talk) 10:07, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

July–August 2022 United States floods has an RFC

July–August 2022 United States floods has an RFC for possible consensus. A discussion is taking place. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. --LordPeterII (talk) 12:15, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

Improving the article global surface temperature in relation to instrumental temperature record?

The term global surface temperature is important and might rise in pageviews in future (currently still low at 87 pageviews per day). However, I find the article very weak. It has a long section on the greenhouse effect, even though that is covered at greenhouse effect. I also see overlap (potential and future) with the article on instrumental temperature record. Unless we see the latter as talking mainly about the measurement techniques. It doesn't though, it talks about years with heatwaves, provides tables on hottest years and so forth. I suggest to either shorten global surface temperature so that it's just a short definition of the term but the actual measured values reside at instrumental temperature record. Or redirect it to a section within instrumental temperature record. Or rework instrumental temperature record so that it's only about the measurement techniques and then move the actual results to global surface temperature. Given our limited resources as editors I'd like to avoid that the same content is spread over two articles and that we have to maintain it in two places, not one. EMsmile (talk) 08:29, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

Note that up until recently, global average surface temperature redirected to instrumental temperature record, so at some point in the past someone seems to have had the same idea that I have now. As of yesterday global average surface temperature redirects to global surface temperature. EMsmile (talk) 08:29, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

The discussion so far about the two articles can be seen here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Instrumental_temperature_record#Overlap_with_global_average_surface_temperature_Global_surface_temperature EMsmile (talk) 08:29, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

Both articles use the same image in the lead which I find telling, meaning they are pretty similar. The lead image is meant to give a quick visual clue that one has arrived at the right article. Thus I think the lead images for global surface temperature and instrumental temperature record ought to be different. EMsmile (talk) 08:29, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

Draft talk:Climate Change (scientific)‎

There is a dispute at Draft talk:Climate Change (scientific), if anyone could participate and help that would be great! VickKiang 04:38, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

Conversation about how to cite the IPCC AR 6 report chapters

I've just added some new comments to an existing discussion about how to cite the IPCC AR 6 report chapters here. Please take a look and comment there about two aspects:

• what to do when the author list is so long that the Wikipedia reference form doesn't accept it anymore (I found I can add the long list of authors but then it doesn't let me add a URL anymore).
• check if you agree or disagree with my reasoning why the long citation style is better for most climate change sub-articles except for those with an extremely long list of publications (like the climate change article).

Thanks. EMsmile (talk) 11:32, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

Adding Information from IPCC report about the water cycle changes

I am currently working on adding information from the IPCC reports to water cycle and effects of climate change on the water cycle about the expected changes to the water cycle. I have the following problems, can anyone help?:

• I find the statements from the IPCC report chapters often so good and concise that I would really struggle to "use my own words" or to "summarise" them. When I take from the technical summary those statements already are summaries and they're carefully worded. How could I paraphrase them further. I am at a loss. Therefore then I use long quotes instead. This is what I've now done here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_climate_change_on_the_water_cycle#Observations_and_predictions . I know it's not ideal. What do you suggest to make it better?
• How much detail would you put about this at water cycle? Do you think an excerpt of the lead of effects of climate change on the water cycle would be the way to go? Note that water cycle gets about 2000 pageviews per day, whereas effects of climate change on the water cycle gets only 40 pageviews per day (it was a very poor article, perhaps pageviews will go up once I work on it, not sure). For that reason, it would be a missed opportunity to keep the climate change content at water cycle too short.
• It's also tricky to delineate how much content about the water cycle should be at effects of climate change (that article gets about 500 pageviews per day) versus moving the content to the sub-sub article effects of climate change on the water cycle, with the danger of "hiding it from view". EMsmile (talk) 11:42, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

Hi EMsmile. Regarding your first question, I agree it's a shame that IPCC documents don't have Wikipedia-compatible liicensing that would allow us to liberally copy-paste.

When I'm struggling to paraphrase, I find it usually helps to read multiple sources that are covering the topic, as each will explain it in different ways. It especially helps to read sources that are aimed at a non-technical audience. I usually remove the IPCC's statements in parentheses about confidence levels, agreement levels, etc. as it is usually too much detail for an encyclopedia article.

There is also a free tool, https://quillbot.com/ , that can help to generate ideas, although I've never used it myself. Turning quotes into paraphrases takes a lot more time but I think it's worth it. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 16:47, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Regarding your second question, there is a lot of technical jargon in the bullets you linked to at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_climate_change_on_the_water_cycle#Observations_and_predictions. For the water cycle article, I suggest keeping the quote that it's in the paragraph before the bullets, but all the quotes in the bullets should be summarized in simpler language with fewer details. Sentences such as "Human influence has been detected in amplified surface salinity and precipitation minus evaporation (P–E) patterns over the ocean (high confidence)" are impenetrable even to me. Given the overall length of the water cycle article, you should probably be aiming for 2-3 paragraphs on how climate change affects the water cycle.

I generally avoid using excerpts to share entire sections between articles. Excerpts are more difficult for other editors, especially new editors, to figure out how to update, and they often have issues such as using terms that are previously defined in one article but not the other one. For instance, the first four sentences of Effects of climate change on the water cycle would work well in Water cycle, but the fifth sentence wouldn't belong. So I would suggest copying and pasting between articles. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 23:08, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, that's helpful advice, Clayoquot. I'll work on that. EMsmile (talk) 08:18, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

I've just started to use Quillbot after your suggestion and I think this will be a game changer for me! I am almost shocked at how good their AI-algorithm is. It would be perfect for students who want to copy stuff from the internet but not be caught for plagiarism through bots that just compare word for word... I think it will help me a lot to convert quotes into normal text but also to improve the readability of text, finding simpler words and so on. I am going to advertise this everywhere. (after a few examples it asked me to sign up for a free account; probably it'll ask me at some point to pay but I think I would happily do that if the tool is so good). EMsmile (talk) 12:26, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Tim Patterson

Hi folks. I think some people familiar with climatology should have a look at Tim Patterson. Being a layperson, a few of the claims made there seem to be questionable. The last paragraph of the "Research" section lacks a citation. Kind regards, Robby.is.on (talk) 10:44, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for posting here, Robby.is.on. I've asked for more evidence of WP:Notabiilty on the Talk page and if nothing comes up I will nominate this article for deletion. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 17:04, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

Controversy page

I've been doing some work on The Skeptical Environmentalist and also realised the page for global warming controversy is massively out of date. Definitely needs some improvement with more recent citations as much of the article reflects sources from the 2000s and early 2010s. More recent retrospectives would be a good addition. Arcahaeoindris (talk) 11:40, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Worked on top and high importance labels

I've done a bit of maintenance work by adjusting which of the WikiProject CC articles are tagged with top and high importance. You can access them here in that colourful table on the right. There are currently 60 articles in the top importance category and nearly 400 in the high importance category. I've reviewed the top importance category completely but the high importance category I only got to C so far. The adjustments are of course highly subjective but I try to base them on pageviews and focus on terms that are used a lot (or more and more) in e.g. IPCC reports. If someone wants to help with this effort please go ahead. If you want to see some of the changes I've done, just look at my user contributions for today and yesterday. If you have any concerns about this work, please let me know. EMsmile (talk) 08:12, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Definitely worth going through the top and high lists every so often. But as there is an article specifically for Fossil fuel subsidies I think that should be "top" rather than the more general Energy subsidy Chidgk1 (talk) 12:02, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

I agree, so please go ahead and make any changes as you see fit. Would be great to have an extra pair of eyes for this task (it's quite a tedious task for the 400 articles marked as "high" importance). So the more help there is the better. I took out country specific articles, like energy policy of China from the top importance group. EMsmile (talk) 14:00, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

How important is coal-fired power station to this project?

I see EMsmile just changed it from "top" to "mid". If coal power was a separate article I might agree but as the article does not seem big enough to split off coal power I think it should remain "top" as the technology which emits the most GHG. Your thoughts? Chidgk1 (talk) 11:50, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Oh OK, hmmm, I just felt that if we include any technology that emits CO2 then our list of "top importance" articles would get unwieldy long. But your argument that coal power is much worse than others is also a good point. What other top technologies that emit GHGs should we put in the top importance category? There's cement production, steel production, animal husbandry for example. Not sure if they should all become top or be high importance. EMsmile (talk) 14:02, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

As you say earlier it is a bit subjective. Often there are several articles on various aspects of the same subject some more specific than others. I guess we just have to use our skill and judgement for each case rather than having a general rule? Or can you think of one?

For example people don't do much with coal apart from burn it so I guess that should be top. But animal husbandry GHG varies a lot depending on the animal - which is why I put cattle top but I would argue that animal husbandry should not be top.

I suppose another way to do it would be to try and think what info would be useful to ordinary people. For example I guess many people are thinking of buying a heat pump but don't know much about them - so maybe improving that article should be a priority.

Digressing - it is a bit weird that coal got more views than heat pump last month. Chidgk1 (talk) 13:56, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

I would hesitate to put broad top articles that are not specific to climate change at the top importance level for this WikiProject. I think top importance articles for us should be climate change, climate systems, climate change mitigation, greenhouse effect and things like that. I wouldn't put articles that are more applicable to other Wikiprojects at the top importance level. Articles like car, coal, petrol, airplane and so forth. So it might be useful to agree on some broad guidance how we want to allocate those importance labels. I would also not put "people articles" at top priority, e.g. Al Gore, Greta Thunberg and alike. EMsmile (talk) 14:37, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

So you are thinking that more specific articles like Environmental effects of transport and Tropical cyclones and climate change should be "top" instead of general ones like car and Tropical cyclone? Chidgk1 (talk) 15:11, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Yes, slightly more specific to climate change would be good. I think car is too unspecific, although perhaps electric vehicle should be top or at least high? Is the top importance meant to denote articles that people who are members in this WikiPorject should tackle ASAP? If so, I am not sure how many of us would be highly motivated to tackle car. We'd rather tackle Environmental effects of transport or electric vehicle right? Similarly, I wouldn't put human population growth or contraception as top even though one could argue these should have top priority to take action on climate change... Am wondering / unsure and interested to discuss further. EMsmile (talk) 17:21, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

I know some people don't like excerpts but as an example I excerpted the lead of Environmental impact of bitcoin to Bitcoin - so I would be happy for Bitcoin itself not to be a priority for us now. Would like to hear others views on priorities Chidgk1 (talk) 13:35, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

I agree with you. EMsmile (talk) 15:54, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Global warming conspiracy theory#Requested move 2 October 2022

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Global warming conspiracy theory#Requested move 2 October 2022 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 22:04, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

New Wikimedian in Residence

Hello all!

Let me introduce Tatjana Baleta, who started as a Wikimedian in Residence at the Global System Insitute in Exeter. With a background in conservation and science communication, she'll be engaging students and academics in Exeter (and beyond), to contribute to Wikipedia. The project was set up together with Clayoquot and Sadads, and has been a few years in the making. Misinformation on this topic can be really damaging, so I'm really excited to get more expert eyes involved!

We're in the initial stage of training and scoping. If you have ideas about important gaps, biases or opportunities to make articles less technical, feel free to drop her a note.

This residency occurs simultaneous with Wikipedia:Meetup/SDGs/Communication of environment SDGs, which engages senior academics around the world. We'll try our best to train people well before they edit, so that the volunteer community won't be overwhelmed. If anything goes wrong, feel free to contact me or Tatjana.

Femke (talk) 17:39, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Welcome! Feel free to stay in touch with me and others at meta:Wikimedians in Residence Exchange Network. Bluerasberry (talk) 17:44, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Fantastic. Welcome aboard, Tatjana! Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 20:07, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Thanks Femke and hello everyone! Looking forward to working with you all! TatjanaBaleta (talk) 14:02, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

Welcome also from my side, I look forward to collaborating with you. I think we are both going to train new editors from time to time so I'd be keen to compare notes on that. For example, I have created some simple editing tutorial videos which are available on my YouTube channel. They are nothing fancy. They might even have to be redone eventually with the new Vector 2022 (I've just yesterday switched over to the new look myself). I am curious: are you using existing videos for training or planning to create your own? Should these be shared on Wikimedia Commons, or somewhere else, or would they just clog up storage space? I've also got a large-ish powerpoint presentation for training purposes which can go hand in hand with such training videos. Happy to share and learn from others how they do their trainings. And the best training at the end of the day is "learning by doing". EMsmile (talk) 16:00, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing these, EMsmile ! Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 01:41, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for raising those questions re: training videos - we're still in the process of working these details out, but will be sure to keep you in the loop! TatjanaBaleta (talk) 09:42, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

useful article on carbon bombs

Hi - I wanted to draw your attention to this new publication which has a list of 400+ existing & new oil and gas projects identified as carbon bombs - over 1 gigaton of C02 emissions if extracted and burnt. This could be useful info to add and also useful for identifying major oil&gas fields that need articles. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 14:41, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

Disambiguation page for Sea ice decline

I've just set up a disambiguation page for Sea ice decline, please check if you agree. My motivation was that I was frustrated that we had no information about "sea ice decline" together for the Arctic and Antarctica. I could only find arctic sea ice decline but nothing specific for Antarctic sea ice decline (the information is spread over several articles, I think), or a page that groups both polar regions together. EMsmile (talk) 10:45, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

P.S. the situation is a bit complex as in Antarctica the sea ice is not necessarily declining yet. So I've clarified it now in the disambiguation article that it's about sea ice decline and changes. That's probably the reason why we didn't have an overarching "see ice decline" article yet. EMsmile (talk) 11:20, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Code for Africa Climate Change Project

Hi everyone, especially @Cmwaura, Jwale2, and Astinson (WMF):. Can we talk about how the m:Code for Africa Climate Change Project is going? This was discussed today at the Administrators Noticeboard (permalink). I can see from the Programme tab that there are still two countries' worth of events to go.

From the Outreach Dashboard, it appears that nearly all edits from this project are to the English Wikipedia. Several editors have raised concerns about the quality of edits, many of which have been reverted. I'm sure all of us at WikiProject Climate Change would like to see this outreach initiative succeed, so how can we help the organizers with that?

The stated goal of the project is to fight climate denialism and misinformation on Wikipedia, and the focus seems to be the English Wikipedia. How are participants being trained to find and correct misinformation, and how is progress towards this goal being measured?

Best, Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 20:44, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Also pinging Sadads in case you log in with your staff account less often. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 04:56, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

I agree with Clayoquot. What I've seen so far from the editors in this project has been disappointing and all/most had to be reverted (see e.g. at climate change adaptation). I've also written about it here. It's a bit of a mystery. EMsmile (talk) 20:22, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

Proposal to have a stand-alone article on "ocean temperature"

I am proposing to have a (short) stand-alone article on "ocean temperature". At the moment, it is a disambiguation page. Until a few days ago it was a redirect to sea surface temperature. I envision something short, just a stub at first, potentially a bit similar to marine resources. I think this would be better than a disambiguation page because a) I think it's a notable topic, which will grow in importance due to climate change, that is currently touched upon in various other articles and b) a stand-alone article can be wikilinked from sentences in other articles whereas a disambiguation page cannot. For example, if I want to wikilink "ocean temperature" in this sentence: At depths of around 500 m, depletion of oxygen is becoming more common to due rising ocean temperatures and stratification. Where do I wikilink "ocean temperature" to? I am not meant to wikilink to a disambiguation page. So I'd probably wikilink to Effects of climate change on oceans#Ocean temperature. - I am curious to hear your thoughts. You can find the previous discussion in two places (not ideal, I know). It's been on the talk page of ocean temperature and on the talk page of sea surface temperature. My proposal is to bundle it in just this location now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Sea_surface_temperature#Ocean_temperature_no_longer_redirects_to_here EMsmile (talk) 09:24, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

I don't think it would need to be particularly short, especially once you start getting into local differences, temperature profiles, circulation, and the interplay with other factors like salinity. I don't think Marine resources is a good article to use as an example. Temperature distribution in the oceans has potential to make for a fairly expansive article. I would suggest using "temperature distribution in the oceans" as a better title, with "ocean temperature" as a redirect to that instead. Reason being that it's a lot more descriptive. Licks-rocks (talk) 12:06, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

A standalone OT article may indeed develop. Alternatively, it may be more efficient to (1) move/rename the present "SST" article as "Ocean Temperature", and then (2) add specific section(s) including content re deeper regions. Both alternatives avoid the redirect/disambiguation problem altogether. As a preliminary step before moving/renaming, perhaps new content could be introduced into the SST article in a section /* Distinguished from deeper zones */ (or similar). I'm not advocating one approach (new article vs move/rename) over the other. —RCraig09 (talk) 16:05, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

Good idea Chidgk1 (talk) 18:22, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

Hi Licks-rocks, I haven't seen you before in the WikiProject Climate Change talk page, so welcome! Always good to see new people join the climate change information improvement effort. My example of marine resources was perhaps not the best. But I suggested that the new ocean temperature article should be small-ish because from what I can see we already have a lot of content about temperature at depths (or temperature profiles/distributions) in the ocean spread around other Wikipedia articles. So this new ocean temperature article could just give a very high level overview, easy to understand for laypersons but not duplicated detailed content that is in other sub-articles. I can see content about temperature at depth e.g. in these articles: ocean, ocean heat content, effects of climate change on ocean, Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, ocean current, thermohaline circulation. Temperature is everywhere! So the challenge would be to just pull out some key concepts into the new ocean temperature article but keep it short and refer to sub-articles. Do you think this would be workable? EMsmile (talk) 21:52, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

Regarding the suggestion of renaming the SST article and reworking it a bit, I am not sure that this would work; maybe. It does seem to me that we probably do need an article on "sea surface temperature" that is distinct from "ocean temperature in general". Maybe the solution would be to have three articles: Ocean temperature (as the overarching one, possibly as a disambiguation page), then sea surface temperature and deeper ocean temperature. The distinction would be: less than 50 m is sea surface temp and more than 50 m is deeper ocean temp. I think all the historical stuff, things about bathing, corals at shallow depth etc is about sea surface temp. Whereas the deeper ocean temp is more relevant in relationship to the ocean currents and now of course with climate change, as we are heating up the ocean to deeper and deeper levels... Also the other problem with renaming the SST article would be the hundreds of wikilinks that are linking to it. They would all have to be checked to see if they refer to the temp at the surface or to the temp at higher depths? - If we were to rename the existing sea surface temperature article would we still create a sub-article for sea surface temperature alone, or would there be no such article title anymore then? EMsmile (talk) 21:52, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

Hi User:Chidgk1 which of the proposals did your "good idea" refer to? My original one or the one from RCraig09 at 16:05?EMsmile (talk) 21:52, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

Not sure what I did to indent like that as I originally meant to reply to you. But RCraig09 idea is also good. Chidgk1 (talk) 15:57, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

Based on the redirects it seems like there's not another page covering ocean temp at depth, just the short section at Ocean#Temperature. I am very much not an expert on oceans at all, so I leave it to people smarter than me to say whether there's enough non-overlapping content here to merit an independent article, but it certainly sounds like a significant and independent thing. I think it's a good idea to take a pass at it. To @RCraig09's idea maybe it makes sense to expand Ocean#Temperature first, since that currently seems like the closest thing we have to something purely about "ocean temperature."

Regarding the disambig currently there, I noted at one of the other talk pages that it seems reasonable that in the basic context of a reader searching for "ocean temperature," it's likely there's not a clear WP:PRIMARYTOPIC (this changes, obviously, if we have an article specifically about ocean temp). As for linking within articles, I think context is reasonable; if something is talking about rising ocean temperature, I see no problem linking to Effects of climate change on oceans#Rising ocean temperature (and in fact, it's probably reasonable to have Rising ocean temperature as a redirect there). Dylnuge ^{(Talk • Edits)} 16:12, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for those comments, User:Dylnuge. I've tackled one of your easier suggestions first and that's to create a redirect from Rising ocean temperature to Effects of climate change on oceans#Rising ocean temperature. I think that's useful. And I think setting up a new, short stand-alone article on Ocean temperature would be good. Someone just has to have the courage (or time) to have a go at it. I've also looked again at Ocean#Temperature. It uses an excerpt from Effects of climate change on oceans#Rising ocean temperature when talking about the rising temperatures. I wonder if we ought to add more content about the "non rising" aspects, e.g. how these temperatures are measured at depth. - Compare also with Ocean#Color and Ocean color as the corresponding sub-article. In this case, only an excerpt is used, nothing else. EMsmile (talk) 10:59, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

Moved to Talk:Ocean temperature

EMsmile (talk) 20:13, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

One of your project's articles has been selected for improvement!

Hello, Please note that Tropics, which is within this project's scope, has been selected as one of the Articles for improvement. The article is scheduled to appear on Wikipedia's Community portal in the "Articles for improvement" section for one week, beginning today. Everyone is encouraged to collaborate to improve the article. Thanks, and happy editing! Delivered by — MusikBot talk 00:05, 24 October 2022 (UTC) on behalf of the AFI team

Good article review of Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef

Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef has been nominated for an individual good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Chidgk1 (talk) 14:36, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

Articles on predicted outcomes for 1.5, 2, 3 degrees etc of warming

Hi all

Reading Effects of climate change I think what would be really useful for the reader would be either sections or separate articles to help them understand what 2 degrees of warming would actually mean, since this is how the media talks about climate change and how COP and other international efforts guage their work. My concern is we are burying the lead in the details of the text and not providing people with the simple facts of what a 2 or 3 degrees of warming world would be like. Obviously there is a lot info available from IPCC etc. If there were separate articles on 1.5, 2, 3 degrees etc:

1. What would be a good way of titling the articles? E.g 'Predicted impact of 2 degrees of global warming', it would need to be accurate but also understandable for people looking for this info, so avoiding technical language where possible.
2. What would a be a good way to divide this up? Articles for 1.5, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 degrees? Or something else?
3. What would be the best sources to use? I know IPCC would be an excellent source, are there others which summarise their reports well for laypersons?

Thanks

John Cummings (talk) 20:13, 9 November 2022 (UTC)

I seem to recall someone proposed this in the last few years, though I can't find it in the archives here. I think that there were several difficulties involved. Mainly, the content would be changing continuously as forecasts change, and it's not likely that the content would be dutifully updated on Wikipedia if the content were extensive. P.S. I think that a lot is efficiently conveyed by graphics, including this and this. I'm not trying to be a Negative Nancy, but I don't think this concept warrants a separate article, much less a family of articles. —RCraig09 (talk) 21:16, 9 November 2022 (UTC)

• Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet is a 2007 layman book where the chapters are titled 1°, 2°, and so on to 6, with climate apocalypse starting at 2. 1.5 used to be a thing but after COP27 I guess the plan is to not count degrees anymore. "The Uninhabitable Earth" talks about 2 degrees and is a layman source for an article for that degree. I think there could be articles for each degree and that if anyone looked for sources they could find them for each whole degree. Bluerasberry (talk) 22:10, 9 November 2022 (UTC)

I found the previous discussion on this which RCraig09 mentioned here in the archive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Climate_change/Archive_2#Climate_change_degree_by_degree . The consensus then was not to proceed with this. I think that was the right decision. We have so many existing CC sub-articles that we have a hard time keeping updated that I shudder at the thought of creating new ones from scratch. I suggest this kind of content could perhaps be included in effects of climate change, an article which also needs further work and updates. There is also Climate change scenario which could be reworked to include information on effects by temperature increase. Or Representative Concentration Pathway. So it could be good to have it somewhere but please not in new stand-alone articles, would be my opinion. EMsmile (talk) 22:59, 9 November 2022 (UTC)

I agree with @EMsmile and @RCraig09 in that it would be unmaintainable and not necessarily a good way of redirecting energy -- because the concensus science at each of those degree points is much harder to interpret. I think the better route would be including graphics and media describing the impacts of those levels of warming in different sections. However, there is room (I think) to discuss the political goals of 1.5 and 2 degrees -- having a article that explicitely documents the history (and failure to meet) the goal could be a useful synthesis of the socio-economic stuff. In that kind of article, you could have a brief summary of the impacts at 1.5 and 2 degrees pointing at that main article about impacts. Sadads (talk) 13:04, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

Interesting idea but as most people nowadays seem to think warming will be 2ish degrees I think it should remain as one article Chidgk1 (talk) 13:46, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

New source for country articles

Climate Trace has just added a lot more GHG sources to their website, so I have been naming some steelworks and cement plants here in Turkey. You may be surprised which are the biggest emitters in your country. Chidgk1 (talk) 17:25, 12 November 2022 (UTC)

https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata_talk:WikiProject_Climate_Change#Anyone_like_to_make_an_import_from_Climate_Trace? Chidgk1 (talk) 16:15, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

Mitigation and economics - where should the bulk of this reside?

I am currently working on the climate change mitigation article and wanted to tackle the section on economics (currently called "Investment and finance"). I then realised that similar content on mitigation + economics (and on policies) is also spread over these two articles as well:

• Economics of climate change#Mitigation
• Economics of climate change mitigation

In which article should the bulk, i.e. the details about mitigation + economics reside? And do you think there is scope for merging of any of these articles? Both of those articles about economics seem quite outdated and messy to me. It would take a lot of work to bring them all up to scratch. - Noting a short previous discussion about CC economics here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Climate_change/Archive_3#Can_anyone_help_with_economics%3F EMsmile (talk) 23:24, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

World Weather Attribution article

In the spirit of Stone Soup and Wikipedia as a collaborative project, thought I'd mention there is a Draft:World Weather Attribution article. In case anybody wants to contribute. -- M.boli (talk) 14:21, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

World Weather Attribution is the project which attempts to rapidly do attribution studies on extreme weather events, while the events are still in the news. When you see a news article that climate change likely caused the floods in West Africa that was a report by WWA.

I've written a bit describing the organization. I think it would be good to have a section describing some of their studies which have been impactful. Maybe also some paragraph more fully describing their methods. Does anybody feel up to contributing? -- M.boli (talk) 03:17, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

I have approved the draft but am not likely to do any more. Thanks for starting the article on this very useful collaboration Chidgk1 (talk) 10:15, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

References

Copyright issues re IPCC graphics

File:IPCC AR6 WG3 SPM-50 Mitigation Options.png

IPCC AR6 WG3 SPM-50 Mitigation Options

I've just posted at Commons:Village_pump/Copyright#Graphics_published_by_the_IPCC. Please add your thoughts to the discussion. —RCraig09 (talk) 00:43, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for that. The discussion at Commons:Village_pump/Copyright#Graphics_published_by_the_IPCC is very active and interesting! I encourage everyone to take a look there. I am hoping for an easy to understand summary in the end. :-) EMsmile (talk) 11:34, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

There is no easy to understand summary yet. But as no one has yet deleted https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MitigationOptions_costs_potentials_IPCCAR6WGIII_rotated-de.svg I might use https://svgtranslate.toolforge.org/ to translate it and see whether that prompts either deletion or translation to other languages Chidgk1 (talk) 18:54, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

But the English option exists already, see here on the right. It's bound to be deleted at some point though, sadly. See also discussion on the mitigation talk page here, regarding recreating a version that would not violate copyright (it's not easy). EMsmile (talk) 21:10, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

I've worked on the climate change template

Today and yesterday I've done some work on the climate change template (see the template's talk page here). For those who don't know this: thhe template is a box that can be added to the bottom of an article and which is meant to show an overview of all climate change articles. I felt that a lot of our articles were missing though. If you look at the revision history you can easily see what I added and changed. Some of my changes might require further discussion, let's do that here or better on the template's talk page. I found these "missing articles" by comparing this list of articles (a project that I am working on) with the existing template. I noticed incoming Wikilinks varied widely but when an article is included in the template then its incoming Wikilinks jumps up by about 400 additional incoming wikilinks (due to the template).

Question to the team: I would like to add a group called "climate change adaptation" which would be after "climate change mitigation". It would not be as big and would not have any sub-groups but I think it would be worth having. If not, where should the climate change adaptation topics be included? I am thinking of: adaptive capacity, disaster risk reduction, ecosystem-based adaptation, flood control, nature-based solutions (this one is currently in the mitigation group), maybe The Adaptation Fund and probably a few more. EMsmile (talk) 11:47, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

This is how the template looks (you can edit it just like any other article):

EMsmile (talk) 11:47, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

And a follow-up question: do we also need a "navigation side bar"? I've never understood when the side bar is preferred over the template at the bottom of the page. I find those sidebars a bit distracting but others love them. I am not sure which of the two templates work better on mobile devices. For comparison, this is how the "pollution side bar" looks:

EMsmile (talk) 11:49, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

To make it easier to follow, these are the terms I added to the climate change template yesterday:

• Nationally Determined Contributions
• Ocean deoxygenation
• Cooperative Mechanisms under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement
• Gold Standard (carbon offset standard)
• Cloud feedback
• Co-benefits of climate change mitigation
• Climate-smart agriculture
• Coupled Model Intercomparison Project
• Global surface temperature
• Carbon farming
• Carbon budget
• Effects of climate change on island nations
• Wetland methane emissions
• World energy supply and consumption
• Representative Concentration Pathway
• Sustainable Development Goal 13
• Marine heatwave
• Green Climate Fund
• Atlantic meridional overturning circulation
• Climate change and infectious diseases
• Climate change scenario
• Ocean heat content
• Carbon emission trading
• Oceanic carbon cycle
• Carbon accounting
• Climate resilience
• Arctic sea ice decline
• Biological pump
• Urban flooding
• Climate system
• Climate change vulnerability
• IPCC Sixth Assessment Report
• Instrumental temperature record
• Water security
• Carbon sequestration
• Water scarcity

EMsmile (talk) 12:43, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

The best place to discuss this template further is here.EMsmile (talk) 13:34, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

Request for Updating on a Climate Fact Checking Org

Hey all, I am observing a fact checking group that made a request for update of their organizational article here . Because I know some of them professionally, it's not really appropriate for me to do the updates, but would appreciate someone taking a look. Sadads (talk) 20:07, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

Done. EMsmile (talk) 21:06, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

World Soil Day - deserving of independent article?

Hello WikiProject Climate change! I believe World Soil Day is deserving of its own article. It has significant coverage and the year deemed International Year of Soil is getting further and further away from us.

• https://www.vaticannews.va/en/world/news/2022-12/world-soil-day-united-nations-environmental-awareness-earth.html
• https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/new-updates/world-soil-day-2022-history-significance-and-theme-of-the-day/articleshow/95995492.cms

Any thoughts on this? Either way, happy World Soil Day. - Wil540 art (talk) 00:37, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Hi Wil540 art: Yes, sure, go ahead. Some years ago, I helped with similar articles, i.e. World Water Day, World Toilet Day, Global Handwashing Day. You could take a look at their structure for inspiration. EMsmile (talk) 12:59, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Working on carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere, inputs welcome

I am currently making changes to carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere (this one gets around 500 pageviews per day), and will later also make some changes to the carbon dioxide article (this one gets 2500 pageviews per day). If you have an interest or knowledge in this topic, please take part in the discussions on the talk pages. For the article carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere, I am focusing it more on the present and future situation, and have moved the information about the geologic past to the end of the article (similar to the ordering in ocean acidification). I think in general people get confused otherwise if we first talk about the different CO2 concentrations millions of years ago, and then about the current situation. The other way around makes more sense to me: so first current and future, then the geologic past at the end of the article. (for comparison: the article atmospheric methane also focuses the article on the present time, not the geologic past). EMsmile (talk) 12:01, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Draft:List of imprisoned climate activists

I've started this draft. Any help is appreciated. CT55555(talk) 17:43, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Most IEA content is now CC-BY-4.0

Hi everyone. Fantastic news: The International Energy Agency has released most of its content under a Wikipedia-compatible license! License terms and exceptions are here: https://www.iea.org/terms . This means we are legally allowed to copy most IEA text and charts into Wikipedia if we provide attribution using the instructions at Help:Adding open license text to Wikipedia. Cheers, Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 03:12, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

Proposed collaboration to add science-based content, resources, quotes and more on climate mitigation.

Hi all,

I'm a former environmental data/outreach scientist turned into a climate action scientist, who founded and leads the nonprofit org Climate Steps, which is all about answering the question "What can I do to fight climate change?" I also am on the Board and am content lead for Earth Hero, a growing-in-popularity climate action app. Climate Steps has been collecting science-based mitigation information and mentoring action for 6 years (focused equally on the relative impacts of different actions and how to take steps), and Earth Hero for three (focused on describing each specific action and providing how-to tips.) CSteps was approached by a couple Wikimedians from WMF and WikiCred about collaborating, and as we've talked, I totally agree. We each research similar content, but put it on different platforms in different styles. It would be great to combine the research, editing and some writing efforts!

So I am somewhat familiar with Wikipedia, in that about 17? years ago now, I advised on the Encyclopedia of Life and was curator for some of its info, which also entailed doing some wiki-thons, and being trained on Wikipedia at the Smithsonian. But I'm a little rusty! So forgive my mistakes as I relearn how to edit.

But I wanted to share with you two invited proposals that I've submitted to WikiCred and WMF, and I hope to turn in another one here in March. I didn't have a chance to share and ask for feedback before submittal, because I did them all in a rush after helping my father start to set up long term care. (And then I ran into problems with proxy servers.) But I would love your comments now, and what aspects of this appeal to those working in WikiProject Climate Change.

The stress of both proposals is on the research. The WMF Rapid Project one is to bring in core resources for climate mitigation, while the WikiCred one is larger and more involved in help rapidly build up 1) more quality knowledge on the impacts of individual climate action - which can be quite impactful (fighting some misinformation in the media about that); and 2) create a couple subpages to the individual climate action page and climate mitigation pages. Plus and link many other existing pages back to climate change and climate action. People have a lot of questions about climate action - and will more and more. It's very important to get the useful information out there. It's not so much on How-to tips (I read the talk section below), but on what steps are important. Earth Hero instead is a great place to put the specific how-to tips, so it's best to keep sending that info there. CSteps has more of a narrative, story-telling platform. But we need research, so this would be a great collaboration for us too.

Sorry for this being so long, but here are the two proposals. @Phoebe, I loved your talk, and thought you may like this. Ideas on how to move this collaboration forward, even if we don't get funded are welcome. @Clayoquot, @EmSmile I have come across your work as well, and would be interested in your suggestions and perhaps help in coordinating the work. Thanks! @AnnetteCSteps.

WMF, Rapid: https://docs.google.com/document/d/195f21lIcRP3BhA1wCWbGSdnfamfSL-iIizn_4657l30/edit?usp=sharing

WikiCred: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dNKXgh0uW7vCMiQEq57zgewFhtM_O4Md/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=107718282937044699967&rtpof=true&sd=true AnnetteCSteps (talk) 19:21, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Hi AnnetteCSteps, thanks for reaching out and good luck with your two proposals and your work in general! There is so much work to do on climate change info that it's a matter of "the more the merrier"! My climate change editing work is done as part of this project currently (and until mid 2024). A lot of my work involves editing the English Wikipedia climate change related articles, either by myself or with external content experts and of course together with the other Wikipedians. A lot of my project's work involves currently the IPCC AR 6 report and "translating" their academic language into something that users can easily understand. The IPCC reports are basically massive literature reviews, so personally I have no need for additional lists of resources (i.e. publications) at this point. I am also not that interested in quotes at this point but other people might find a compilation of quotes very useful. So at this stage, I am unsure about immediate areas of collaboration with you. My focus is on editing Wikipedia articles with regards to updating content and improving readability. I think this doesn't overlap with your efforts which is more on compiling resources and quote if I understood your proposals correctly? If you want to discuss more on specific details you can also reach out to me via the e-mailing function (see at the bottom of my user profile page). EMsmile (talk) 15:44, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

What does WikiCred stand for? EMsmile (talk) 15:46, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

Credibility of content. Here it is: [[1]]. First, I should add that I was just rewarded the Rapid Grant, so we're on board now! Basically I wanted to reach to let you know and coordinate, so in terms of bringing in resources, I don't overlap with what you do (as the IPCC is a big resource for me too); and perhaps a brief discussion of what type of literature you aim for from that (beyond what I see). Also, I want to create a 'main credible resources' page), like is done for WikiProject Vaccine Safety and some for PCC's Agriculture Task Force, with key background resources for main topics within individual mitigation that other Wikimedians can use for initial background references. The quotes are really a side efforts, and we're doing mostly just because CSteps has quotes in a database, Earth Hero does too, and WikiQuotes is gathering quotes, so we want to just pool them all into one database. (We use them on our own websites and apps.) But the main thrust is getting the key articles behind the science of grassroots mitigation in, such as behavior change and how neighbors influence neighbors, what science has found about the impact of commenting on public regulations, the pros and cons against civil disobedience in the climate sphere, can regular folks affect industry behavior? and is consumer choice actually impactful and in so which arenas? Things like that. The second proposal above, which I'll hear about early next year, is to focus on editing and writing for Food and Agricultural mitigation actions individuals can take, but I'll bring that up more later if funded. Thanks for the welcome, and I look forward to running into you now and then--AnnetteCSteps (talk) 20:29, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

I agree with EMsmile about the more the merrier :) Feel free to ask for feedback here on your plans about what articles you're planning to update. Sometimes the people in this WikiProject have suggestions about sources or know of other articles that already have relevant content. Good luck with the transition for your father. Best, Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 05:15, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

Thank you! on all counts.--AnnetteCSteps (talk) 20:29, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

Pinging @TatjanaBaleta. She's the Wikimedia Visiting Fellow at the Global Systems Institute. May be some overlap as well. Sounds great :). Social science is often a bit neglected on Wikipedia, so this may really bridge a gap. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 20:38, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping @Femke, and great to e-meet you @AnnetteCSteps. I'm working with students and researchers at the GSI to add and update climate change information on Wikipedia, and would be happy to explore synergies with you on mitigation and climate action topics. I also have an interest in developing updated source lists for editing on climate change. Perhaps we could arrange to chat further? TatjanaBaleta (talk) 11:35, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

Sounds fantastic. we (Mark and I) dive in in January, and before we start the lists, we would like to chat first with folks to help set priorities and make sure we're covering the bases. I was even hoping perhaps for a group meeting, after I kindof compile some of the feedback I've gotten and what we see as priorities. So would love to chat further with you. AnnetteCSteps (talk) 21:00, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

An example of where student-added content was not overly successful

We had talked previously about the merits and challenges when students edit climate change articles as part of their course work (see here). Today I want to point out an example where it didn't work out well - in my opinion at least. It was on the article effects of climate change. I had to remove most of the content that the students had added (even though it was not spam or formally wrong, but the quality of the content was too low for this kind of article). I wrote about it here. Was I overly critical? I hope not. I do like the idea of students adding content (in principle). I think in this particular case the students did learn how to edit Wikipedia articles alright. But they did not improve the quality of this particular article but made it worse which is why I had to remove their content. EMsmile (talk) 10:48, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

I agree with you that students adding content is good in principle. On your point about us not noticing for some time I wonder if it would be possible/good to have some kind of automatic short notification to this talk page when a student chooses a climate change article? Such a bot would read "This user is a student editor ..." on their talk page, spot a match when they first wrote on the talk page of an article which has our project, and write a note here. Perhaps whatever software produces "Wiki Education assignment ...." could do it? @Ian (Wiki Ed): mentioned previously about talking to Sage about something similar to this. If they say no then could it be done with a Wikipedia bot? Chidgk1 (talk) 17:54, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

That could be useful. Another option would be for the instructor to announce here on the talk page their intention to work on CC articles and to be open for guidance / feedback during the early stages of their course. EMsmile (talk)

By the way, a highly successful university Wikipedia editing course was the one by User:Baylorfk (a Coordinating Lead Author of the IPCC AR6, WGI report) earlier this year in May. I was very impressed with the work of his students. Their task was to add recent info from the IPCC AR 6 WG I report into Wikipedia articles and they did so very skillfully, e.g. User:Kkimble08 and User:MarinersApartmentLandlord. That course was done outside of the WikiEdu system and is described here. EMsmile (talk) 20:53, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

Wow, what great news. I hope other instructors follow Baylorfk's example. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 03:28, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Climate reparations article needed

Right now, "Climate reparations" is a redirect to "Climate ethics." Here is a start on an actual article. The article could be a useful DYK next month, to provide background and context for COP 27. Oliveleaf4 (talk) 05:05, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Oliveleaf4 - thanks for raising this - would you be happy for me to add it to my list as a possible task for editathons? (I'm the Wikimedian in Residence for climate at the Global Systems Institute, so I might be able to pull in some extra hands, and possibly expert guidance for this article). TatjanaBaleta (talk) 06:16, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

Hi Oliveleaf4 your draft text looks good but do we really need a new article for this; wouldn't it be better to integrate it into either climate ethics or climate justice? I hadn't seen the climate ethics article before. The climate justice is fairly OK but also needs further work to make it more understandable. In general, I hesitate to start up new articles when we have so many existing ones about climate change topics that need further work & fleshing out. EMsmile (talk) 09:37, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

I see Oliveleaf4 moved the draft to Climate reparations in November. It's a useful new article - thanks for starting it! A summary of the topic would also be good within Climate justice. BTW I have boldly redirected Climate ethics to Climate justice. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 04:12, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Hi Clayoquot, I think your bold redirect from Climate ethics to Climate justice was a very good idea. Thanks. EMsmile (talk) 12:06, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

Should the term "climate change preparedness" redirect to somewhere?

I just came across the term climate change preparedness and wonder if we should place a redirect for it to somewhere? Is the term up and coming? Should it just be part of the climate change adaptation article? The article preparedness is rather weak at present. The term disaster preparedness redirects to emergency management#Preparedness. I came across this definition in a recent UN-GLAAS Report: "Mitigation, adaptation and resilience of WASH systems and services are important aspects of climate change preparedness." EMsmile (talk) 12:11, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

Merger discussion for Demand response

An article that you have been involved in editing—Demand response—has been proposed for merging with another article. If you are interested, please participate in the merger discussion. Thank you. Chidgk1 (talk) 13:09, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Move discussion for carbon accounting

A move discussion is currently taking place for carbon accounting to Greenhouse gas accounting. If you are interested, please participate in Talk:Carbon_accounting#Requested_move_3_January_2023. Thank you. EMsmile (talk) 13:16, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Move discussion for biomass

A move discussion is currently taking place for biomass to biomass (energy). If you are interested, please participate in Talk:Biomass#Requested_move_5_January_2023. Thank you. EMsmile (talk) 13:17, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Merger discussion for Predicting the timing of peak oil

An article that you have been involved in editing—Predicting the timing of peak oil—has been proposed for merging with another article. If you are interested, please participate in the merger discussion. Thank you. Chidgk1 (talk) 14:55, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

Question about superscript page numbers

I have a question about page numbers in the long ref style (see also a related discussion here where we talk about IPCC reports). My question is not about IPCC reports in particular but about how page numbers are displayed, so I am starting a discussion here. When I add page numbers I use the syntax {{rp|1079}} for page 1079 in a long report. Is it too confusing for readers to see that little superscript "1079"? EMsmile (talk) 21:02, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Someone suggested I do it like this instead: {{rp|p. 1079}}.

• My version looks like this for example (see the little superscript number at the very end of the sentence): The effects of CC on the water cycle are profound [...].

• The other version would be like this: The effects of CC on the water cycle are profound [...].
• Or even like this: The effects of CC on the water cycle are profound [...].

So my question: is it worth/necessary/better to add the little "p." or even "page" before the page number? Would it help our readers or clog up the page and waste pixels? I am tending against it for simplicity reasons. EMsmile (talk) 21:02, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

I'd also like to point out that very few readers click through to those citations. The most recent research on this topic I have found is this paper and presentation from 2020: "Quantifying Engagement with Citations on Wikipedia" see here. Full paper here. Based on that research one could argue that it's not worth adding the extra "p." or "page" or one could argue the opposite: if the extra "p." or "page" was there, more people would click? I do always add the page numbers, just wondering if the superscript number is sufficient or if it ought to have "p." or "page" in front of it? Maybe this has already been discussed elsewhere. EMsmile (talk) 21:02, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Template:Rp has some useful policy background. Dtetta (talk) 21:09, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Yes, the template states: "Do not add "Page", "pp.", etc.—just the numbers.". In the talk page archive of the template I found a previous discussion about p. or page and it seems that the consensus was to introduce a tool tip instead that appears when hovering over the little superscript number, see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Rp/Archive_1#Suggestion,_state_%22p%22_or_%22page%22 . I think that solution with the tool tip is pretty good. EMsmile (talk) 21:50, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Please see also a related discussion here on the talk page of carbon accounting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Carbon_accounting#Adding_page_numbers . I would prefer to use the rp syntax rather than having the page numbers in the ref list (for the long ref style). This would avoid repeating the same ref several times in the ref list which I think would be important. What is everyone's opinion about the {{rp|6}} for page 6, for example? — Preceding unsigned comment added by EMsmile (talk • contribs)

WP:BIKESHED. Let's just do what we always do with reference styles: determine it per page. See WP:CITEVAR. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:54, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

Hmmm, I might have not made my question sufficiently clear: My question is: if an article uses the long ref style, then it should also use the rp syntax for page numbers (rather than add the page numbers into the reference list), shouldn't it? Long ref style and rp syntax go hand in hand, right? EMsmile (talk) 18:21, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

More people would use the page parameter in the {{cite book/cite report}} template for that, but both options are fine. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 18:50, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

References

Would you like anything from Carbon Brief?

As many of you know, Carbon Brief is an excellent source of climate change information. I recently asked the people at Carbon Brief if they would be willing to release their content under a Wikipedia-compatible license, which would allow us to use their charts and copy/paste their text into Wikipedia articles without violating copyright.

They asked for a shopping list of specific articles and charts Wikipedia editors are interested in re-using, and will consider putting a Wikipedia-compatible license on those items. The only images they can release are charts created by Carbon Brief - they cannot release material from third parties.

At some point I plan to set up a page for Wikipedia editors to request content from Carbon Brief. For now, please reply to this post with any thoughts about:

• URLs and titles of content you'd like Carbon Brief to release
• links to the Wikipedia article(s) you'd like to use them in

P.S. thanks to Femke and TatjanaBaleta for helping to move this idea forward. Cheers, Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 06:19, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

Excellent!

For now, I can think of these two things:

1. Charts of the year when 1.5 and 2 degree thresholds will be exceeded, according to the various models. See this article. I am sure that multiple articles could benefit from those.

2. Pretty much every chart from this article. For instance, the chart which shows sensitivities of every CMIP6 model in order would be a hugely beneficial addition to the (rather dated) climate sensitivity article. The other charts could also be very helpful: i.e. the chart with observed vs. projected warming rates might be useful in either the general climate change article or one of the evidence ones. The chart of warming spread by scenario & model may be helpful for climate change scenario and/or Shared Socioeconomic Pathways article. And perhaps the chart showing all CO₂ trajectories for every scenario in a single image could go into either one of those, the article on CO₂ emissions, or both.

I'll likely think of further requests later on. Thanks again for making this possible! InformationToKnowledge (talk) 16:37, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

Climate apocalypse and climate endgame articles

These two articles exist in a weird shadow state where they are present on Wikipedia, yet remain outside of Template:Climate change, and I am not sure how many regular members of this project even know of their existence. Either way, I believe they are both fundamentally flawed as they stand.

Climate apocalypse appears to be primarily the work of @Bluerasberry, and it effectively amounts to a sensationalized version of Effects of climate change with a dash of climate crisis (an article explicitly about the terminology used to communicate effects of climate change, and which is actually pretty good, and is already on the template.) Worse, since the article obviously has to live up to its title and convince its readers of the apocalypse, it is inherently skewed by design, uncritically adopting what are often fringe narratives, and attempting to balance them with scientific consensus would most likely destroy the whole point of the article.

I'll just go over the article section by section, quickly.

• First paragraph of the lead: "A climate apocalypse (also called a climate dystopia and a climate-induced collapse, among other names) generally denotes a predicted scenario involving the global collapse of human civilization and potential human extinction as either a direct or indirect result of anthropogenic climate change. Many academics and researchers posit that in actuality, unless a major course correction is imminently implemented, some or all of the Earth will be rendered uninhabitable as a result of extreme temperatures, severe weather events, an inability to grow crops, and an altered composition of the Earth's atmosphere." You can see already see that this section is very vague and full of weasel words. It technically has 4 references, but one is a YouTube video and the other three are basically the same, consisting of this paper and two news articles about it. Moreover, these sources are hardly even congruent with either each other or the text, since the video is about a 5 degree scenario, which is never even mentioned in the paper. In fact, the paper also makes no mention of any part of the Earth being rendered uninhabitable, and nor does it predict any "inability to grow crops". What's more, its "Ecological Overshoot: Population Size and Overconsumption" section ends with an acknowledgement that the authors do not actually expect the human population to decline due to climate change during this century. (Which is, of course, the mainstream scientific position, as represented by the IPCC reports, where the only reason why human population might be lower in 2100 than it is today is due to declining population-level fertility from widespread access to birth control.)

• Second paragraph of the lead is blatant editorializing ("Many scientists have repeatedly warned about severe risks up to the level of what may described as "climate apocalypse") and the third and fourth could be easily merged into climate crisis and Climate change in popular culture.

• "Etymology and usage" section - again, it could all go into climate crisis and Climate change in popular culture. Same goes for "Narratives of climate change" at the end of the article.

• Most of the "Apocalyptic impacts of climate change and ecological breakdown" is basically the same as Effects of climate change, only briefer, less up-to-date and more editorialized/sensationalized. (I.e. sea level rise section immediately switches from one prediction of 2100 sea level rise to ultimate sea level rise from very long term ice sheet melt with no mention of the timelines.) Some exceptions include "Atmosphere" section, which makes extremely strong claims on the basis of two references that are nearly 20 years old, and "Mass extinction", which contains no up-to-date predictions of extinction risk from climate change and is just blatantly wrong with its paleo analogies (as in, the claim that "95% of living species were wiped out" during the Permian–Triassic extinction event is immediately contradicted by that very article.)

Finally, most of the predictions at the end are presented largely uncritically in a manner uncharacteristic (and unbecoming) of a Wikipedia article. Examples:

• The way "What if we stopped pretending?" is described suggests that the only criticism of that opinion piece was due to its tone, and leaves open the idea that it was controversial simply for speaking hard truths. It ignores that Franzen was also found to have explicitly gotten the science wrong multiple times by the climate fact-checker Climate Feedback.

• "The 2050 scenario" is presented completely uncritically and is used as a reference multiple times throughout the text. There is no mention that it was never peer-reviewed, that it wasn't written by scientists, or that it was also found non-credible by Climate Feedback.

• "Famous figures" has little internal logic to it. Its inclusion criteria are so loose that an equivalent list of figures with a positive attitude towards dealing with climate change could very easily be made, though it's unclear what it would prove.

In all, the article just doesn't seem to provide anything which the other articles do not already write about, and usually far better. I propose moving whatever can be salvaged from it into the other relevant articles and deleting it.

Finally, climate endgame is just devoted to a single "perspective" paper (i.e. a peer-reviewed opinion piece) which provides no new evidence and does not even actually predict anything. It simply proposes a range of new terminology, and as such it can be easily merged into climate crisis (which happens to be a relatively small article as well, for that matter.).

Looking forward to seeing others' opinions on this matter. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 18:38, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

Looking briefly at the Apocalypse article (with a moderate ~150 views/day), I agree it has more than a whiff of sensationalism and could use some bold clean-up editing by anyone concerned. Especially since the Endgame article (~10 views/day) states "The concept had been previously named climate apocalypse", a fraction of the Endgame article could be incorporated into the Apocalypse article, and the Endgame article converted to a redirect. —RCraig09 (talk) 21:23, 15 January 2023 (UTC)