Talk:Climate change

Tipping points clouds

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

1. It's not a secondary source, so we should be critical to start with
2. 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.
3. 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)

Edit request: change section title "Physical Drivers" > "Natural & Anthropogenic Causes"

(This request follows my fulfilled request on computer modeling where NewsGuy suggested tweaking the Physical Drivers section)

In the section "Physical drivers of climate change" please replace this section title

Physical drivers of climate change

with this new title

Natural and anthropogenic causes of climate change

The current title does not signal to the interested reader that this section explains how and why scientists conclude that climate change can be caused by humans. Other tweaks might be necessary as suggested by NewsGuy, but let us start with the title. 86.161.228.30 (talk) 12:16, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks again IP... the entire prelude to this section was a combination of outdated text combined with what is (in my view) too much detail about how attribution is done. In my view that detail is premature. First we need to tell our high school audience what the forcings are in general. I have just floated a big overhaul of the intro to this section. Note that I also deleted the large section on ruling out solar forcing. We don't have sections ruling out any other things. I'm sure that crept in back in the days when the deniers were hammering away at "Its the sun!" If this "sticks", I'll copy that text from the version history over to talk page at Attribution of recent climate change. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 13:24, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Although I agree with you the section was overloaded, I am sorry to see the methodological aspects thrown out of the article. Suggestion: Can you retrieve some of the deleted material and put it together into a new Methodology section, which comes just before (or introduces) the Climate Modelling section?86.161.228.30 (talk) 13:51, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Great minds think alike.. at first I wanted to see a new heading "Attribution..." and put climate models under it. But now I would rather see the computer modeling section exported to Attribution of climate change, and that section replaced with a single paragraph in very broad WP:SUMMARY fashion introduce the basics of attributional studies and direct people over there. I'm a big beleiver in using article heirarchies to minimize redundancy and overlap. But so far, it's just us. Maybe others won't like the changes I've made so let's give it some time for others to catch up and review this thread and the edits I boldly floated. Meanwhile, please consider getting a log in not required, but makes it easier for me to remember who you are and joining the Climate change wikiproject! NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 14:52, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

I agree completely with your long-term strategy, but for the moment the article is worse than it was before. Regarding signing up: I am not a climatologist and therefore have nothing to contribute to the field. (If I were an expert, I would not be searching for the methodology of climatology on Wikipedia...) If I may, a general criticism of this article: there is always the danger of dumbing things down too much. People like me see a media report written in layman's terms, and then we are motivated to look up details on Wikipedia. If Wikipedia then offers no deeper insights than the media article did, one feels disappointed. Farewell, signing off for today.86.161.228.30 (talk) 15:12, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

When you return... for sure, I agree that details are needed! This is a top article. Details that would make a highschool kids head spin should be split off to sub articles, and but our text here should be so punchy that readers like you will understand what link to follow to get what you need.NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 15:45, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

A lot of things being discussed at the same time here. Let me reply to the various points. 1) I think it is vital attribution studies are part of the article. I've tried to dumb it down so that at least A-level students should understand, and for some part of the article, higher secondary school is definitely the public we want to serve 2) I think it is also vital to discuss solar aspects. In any attribution study on climate change (see for instance the new ones from yesterday), this is always still researched. I've made it less prominent by merging solar cycles and solar fluctuations into one section, and I wouldn't mind it being more succinct still, but removing it is premature. 3) I feel that climate models as a separate section might indeed by out of place. The reason it's still there, is that I wasn't sure where to put stuff. A section of Methods sounds too much like a scientific paper to me, and I wonder whether people know what to look for. Climate change science covers such a broad range of disciplines that this would be an impossible section to write. 4) Lovely bold move, but I think I'd rather you copy your new text to talk page, revert them and work on this more incremental? Our would you rather we start from your stuff and move a bit back in the old direction with new sources? Femke Nijsse (talk) 16:24, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Please revert what you like and we'll go from there. When folks are using AGF and the talk page BRD is a great way to proceed. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 16:44, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

I've made a mixture of our two versions for the intro of the text and put back two of the three paragraphs for the sun. The third one was indeed irrelevant and out of proportion compared to the rest of the section. It needs some polishing, but I do think that we need to explain the basics of attribution and also how we know it's not the sun. Femke Nijsse (talk) 19:37, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

 Not done: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit semi-protected}} template. - FlightTime (open channel) 18:57, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Propose we expand main body section 1 to include multiple lines of evidence

Since before I got here in 2011, the main body has started with a long complex discussion of temperature. That's all great, but I'd rather see an intro level description of the "multiple lines of evidence", of which temp is one (or maybe two), and for that section to direct readers to sub articles that go into more detail. As one RS and graphic for this section I would propose using this, and write a short SUMMARY of each of the ten indicators, linking to more detailed sub articles. I'm not sure where the temperature detail we now have would best be exported, updated, and merged, but that's part of this idea too. And so the outline would go from

A Intro

B Observed temperature changes

C Physical drivers of recent climate change

D .... and so on.....

to

1. Intro

2. Evidence of recent climate system warming

3. Physical drivers of recent climate change

D .... and so on.....

The main change is under B (or 2), where the current temp-only details would be exported/merged/updated to a subarticle and replaced by summary text of multiple lines of evidence, of which temp is just one.

As with most proposals, I suppose the devil's in the details, but what do you think so far? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 17:06, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Let me think about a bit more (quite tired) before yes. I'm at first glance not negative. The second paragraph of the current section is basically already detailing other changes. The subsections do have vital information, that might be condensable, but I do think I'd like to see most of it kept in the article. Arctic amplification f.i. is super important. I'm not entirely sure whether regional trends convey the content/importance of that subsection properly. Femke Nijsse (talk) 19:46, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Sounds good, not in a hurry. If memory serves the current section expanded at the same time as all the denialist hiatus messaging a few years ago. It's human nature that that sort of response creeps into our articles, I suppose, but its really time consuming to deal with. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 21:31, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Still haven't had time for proper examination of outlines in RSs, but one of the things we have to think about is the line between (physical) effects and observed temperature/evidence sections. I think some overlap, like there is currently, is inevitable. Femke Nijsse (talk) 11:20, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

I am afraid I am not convinced by your proposal of using the word "evidence" - it sounds like climatologists stand accused in court. The appropriate wording would I think be "direct temperature measurements/data" vs "indirect temperature measurements/estimates". Other scientific disciplines do not use "evidence". Medicine uses "symptoms", archaeology uses "traces", biological sciences use "findings", etc. Only the speculative discipline of astrobiology uses "evidence" (in the context of seeking evidence for life on Mars, on the moons of Jupiter, on extrasolar plants). I find the "evidential" and defensive mindset of the article slightly irritating, but it is not a priority for me to fix this. As stated before, my priority is the inclusion of a methodology section and of the palaeoclimate record as a prelude to the modern data. Presentational polishing (replacing "evidence" etc with more confident vocabulary) can follow. Just my tuppenceworth - this is not a topic I want to spend time on. Please ignore me if my view does not find support.86.134.18.24 (talk) 12:52, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

RS from both IPCC and NOAA use "evidence" so the IP's personal opinion doesn't mach the sources here. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 12:18, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 26 July 2019

Can someone please load a graph of global solar radiation, if possible, or energy received by the earth since as far back as possible, so that the increase in temperature graph can be compared to intercepted radiation levels on a similar time axis. This will shed some light on the debate on whether incoming energy from the sun is increasing, and if it is having an effect on temperature, or if increases in temperature are not being affected by radiation reaching the earth. If the amount of radiation emitted by the sun and intercepted by the earth has not changed, over the last 100 or 30 years, this will show that solar affects have nothing to do with climate change as some are debating. Can we get some evidence. 41.162.85.82 (talk) 10:10, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

Whether the sun causes climate change is a fringe debate. It's mostly discussed on blogs on the internet made by hobbyists, instead of expert scientists. Wikipedia has some guidelines how to deal with these: Wikipedia:Fringe theories. Currently, we discuss the mainstream methodology of how we know it's not the sun, with references to the data. I don't think expanding that by adding a graph is this top-level article is warranted. The appropriate article for expanding on this is Attribution of recent climate change, which does contain a graph detailing solar energy over the satellite era. It's a bit old (2009), so I've added it to the to-do list of Wikipedia:WikiProject Environment/Climate change/Figures and art. (other editors, please close if you agree with my assessment). Femke Nijsse (talk) 11:16, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

@41.162.85.82... please refrain from echoing denialosphere themes here, as you did when you framed the question to predetermine what it means if the graph you request shows wiggles (which they do, as any casual google search reveals). This page is for discussing article improvements based on WP:Reliable sources, anything else is collapsible as being a general WP:FORUM. Trolling and disruption are simply removable. See the WP:Talk page guidelines. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 11:45, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

If I understand it correctly, all Figures on NASA's website are in the public domain. I'm planning to upload https://climate.nasa.gov/internal_resources/1802/ and replace the current figure on Attribution of recent climate change. Femke Nijsse (talk) 12:24, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

 Note: Closing out old request as  Not done, per the above. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 14:14, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

Edit request: please insert AD1830 as start of global warming

In the Observed temperature changes section please add to the beginning:

Multiple independently produced datasets confirm that between 1880 and 2012, the global average (land and ocean) surface temperature increased 

this new sentence

Post-AD1500 palaeoclimate records show that sustained industrial-era warming commenced around AD1830.[1] Multiple independently produced datasets confirm that between 1880 and 2012, the global average (land and ocean) surface temperature increased

Thank you in advance, my courteous procrastinators...86.134.18.24 (talk)

Just thinking out loud here.... "warming" is somewhat non-specific. It might mean detectable changes in a particular instrument temp record at a particular sampling point... or averages of instrument temp record from multiple sampling points of a particular part of the climate system (e.g., the abstract mentions "tropical oceans" and doesn't mention if that means surface temps but from my own head it probably doesn't mean the entire water column). "Warming" of the climate system can be absorbed and manifested by changes in the system's components and interactions that are below the detectable range of temperature instrumentation. So that's an interesting looking WP:PRIMARY source and I'm not opposed to mentioning some of its results in some appropriate way. For a big-picture statement such as when post-industrial warming started I'd rather see us use a mega literature review or other high caliber WP:SECONDARY or WP:TERTIARY source. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 12:59, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Your wish is my command. Here is my new edit request including a secondary reference citing the first.

In the Observed temperature changes section please add to the beginning:

Multiple independently produced datasets confirm that between 1880 and 2012, the global average (land and ocean) surface temperature increased 

this new sentence

Post-AD1500 palaeoclimate records show that sustained industrial-era warming commenced around AD1830.[2] Nevertheless, due to volcanic forcing from 1883, the 1850–1900 period was only about 0.05C warmer than 1720–1800, and thus the officially used 1850-1900 reference period is a reasonable surrogate for 18th-century global mean temperature.[3] Multiple independently produced datasets confirm that between 1880 and 2012, the global average (land and ocean) surface temperature increased

(The new addition is taken from the paper's Conclusion section, point 2). Your move.86.134.18.24 (talk) 13:39, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Interesting papers, if we can take them as typifying the big picture then the point they make isn't setting a precise starting date, but useful context:

 Palaeoclimate proxy records of global temperatures after 1500 show little initial change from pre-industrial global mean surface temperature (1720–1800 reference period).(Hawkins et al.) Sustained industrial-era warming commenced by the mid 19th century,(Abram et al.) but volcanic forcing from 1883 resulted in the 1850–1900 period (used for reference in AR5) being only about 0.05C warmer than pre-industrial temperatures.(Hawkins et al.) Multiple independently produced datasets of the instrumental temperature record confirm that between 1880 and 2012, the global average (land and ocean) surface temperature increased

Note that the 1830 date doesn't appear in the abstract of Abram et al. (Pages 2k) which merely states that "that sustained industrial-era warming of the tropical oceans first developed during the mid-nineteenth century" – too much natural variability to tie it down to a year or even a decade. . . dave souza, talk 15:21, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

I am willing to compromise on "mid-19th century" for AD1830 because that is the phrase used in the secondary reference. But I find your syntactical reshuffle now makes the text unintelligible: "Little initial change" means nothing. "By" the mid-19th century is an uninformative phrase, and we should systematically avoid the term "pre-industrial" because it is inconsistently defined (the Neolithic Age in 5000BC was pre-industrial too, as was the Jurassic, as was Shakespeare's time) and in fact the term "pre-industrial" was intentionally dropped by the IPCC in 2014. So how about this:

Post-AD1500 palaeoclimate records show that sustained industrial-era warming commenced in the mid-19th century.[4][5] Nevertheless, due to volcanic activity from 1883, the 1850–1900 period was only about 0.05C warmer than 1720–1800, and thus the officially used 1850-1900 reference period is a reasonable surrogate for 18th-century global mean temperature.[6] Multiple independently produced datasets confirm that between 1880 and 2012, the global average (land and ocean) surface temperature increased

All right like this?86.162.84.228 (talk) 16:11, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

Too technical for an overview, and doesn't take account of a newer secondary source. {{Harvnb|IPCC SR15|2018|p=24}} Box SPM.1: Core Concepts Central to this Special Report gives concise definitions, including Pre-industrial: The multi-century period prior to the onset of large-scale industrial activity around 1750. The reference period 1850–1900 is used to approximate pre-industrial GMST. {1.2.1.2}. This summarises {{Harvnb|IPCC SR15|2018|pp=56–59}} which cites both of the sources you've proposed; Abram et al., 2016, and Hawkins et al., 2017. While simply outlining the SPM definition of pre-industrial would give useful context to the information, a little more explanation will be helpful, avoiding going into excessive detail. . . dave souza, talk 09:44, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

I agree that our previous drafts are too technical as an introductory sentence for the Observed Temperatures section, so let us simply discard the "pre-inudstrial" terminology discussion and just add this:

Post-AD1500 palaeoclimate records show that sustained industrial-era warming commenced in the mid-19th century.[7][8] Multiple independently produced datasets confirm that between 1880 and 2012, the global average (land and ocean) surface temperature increased

Later we/you can decide where and how best to deal with the confused "pre-industrial" terminology.86.167.181.36 (talk) 10:37, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

Since its hard to prove a negative, I have trouble with wikivoice declaration of when it ..... by god....... commenced. Instead, what if we said Post-AD1500 palaeoclimate records show that sustained industrial-era warming commenced inwas underway by the mid-19th century? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 11:41, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

Since we're citing a PAGES 2k paper, here's {{harvnb|PAGES 2k Consortium|2013}} overlaid on Mann, Bradley & Hughes 1999, with a red red curve of measured global mean temperature based on HadCRUT4 data from 1850 to 2013. dave souza, talk 12:18, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

"Post-AD1500" is rather specific for no evident reason, and since this is a more detailed section than the lead it can be more informative. subject to checking against sources, suggest:
Long term palaeoclimate records show a gradual decline which levelled out in the 18th century. Sustained industrial-era warming was underway by mid-19th century, but temperatures were set back by natural events (volcanic eruptions) so the reference period 1850–1900 provides a close approximation to the pre-industrial temperatures conventionally used as a baseline. Multiple independently produced instrumental datasets confirm that between 1880 and 2012, the global average (land and ocean) surface temperature increased by...
Think that's all in the above sources. . . dave souza, talk 12:07, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

"Post-AD1500" is precisely what the authors say. That is the time period covered by their analysis. Your alternative suggestion of substituting "Post-1500" with "Long term palaeoclmate rcords" is misleading to the general reader as "palaeo" normally refers to prehistory in other disciplines. Similarly, NewsGuy's suggestion "was underway by" is also uninformative, as it is open-ended towards the past (all the way back to the Jurassic and beyond).

NPA removed by NAEG NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 13:06, 31 July 2019 (UTC)...(the) mindset where the world was created in about 1800, and anything before that is .... thrown into some multi-purpose "palaeo" or "pre-industrial" bin.... is counterintuitive to the general population, and will impede people from understanding the article. .... I am signing off now. Good luck.86.167.181.36 (talk) 13:10, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

'Bye IP NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 13:24, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

 Note: Closing this since the discussion seems to have fizzled out. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 14:28, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

Harv system multi editor longterm maintenance

Using the former system of citation... which I will characterize as a Wild West undisciplined use of full-citation templates right in the text.... the text got hard to read and often full citations to major RSs were duplicated. Well, that's bad and annoying. However, when correctly deployed with a WP:REFNAME we had the benefit of little clickable supra-script letters in the reference section, showing each inline citation to any given reference. I'll call this "auto-RAUMS" for "Automatic Reference Actually Used Monitoring System".

If I understand the new harv based system, we lose the benefit of auto-RAUMS. So now if eds want to find all instances where reference A is cited in the text, they'll need to do some sensible manual searching.

On a related note, if an ed deletes text with short cites (like I did the other day), we now expect that ed to audit the remainder of the text to see if any of the references in the deleted section are still cited in the remaining text, and if not, the ed should also do a manual deletion of the full citation from the reference section. (Which I failed to do, but Femke took care of.... Thank you, Femke).

If all of the above is true, the only way to maintain synchronicity between the text and the reference section will be our collective paying attention and manually monitoring all future changes with this in mind.... a problem we don't have with the old chaotic messy system based on the citation templates, which despite its horrors at least provided the auto-RAUMS function.

Is that about right, more or less? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 15:42, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Yes, I think so. I think the short-cite system is necessary for books and reports (avoid repetition and make sure people insert page numbers), but getting more and more doubts about the long-term sustainability of the rest of the system. It would be lovely if a bot were available for keeping the synchronicity between text and references, but alas. Now that we don't plan on going through FAR, I'm not going to focus much time on other people's citation style anymore: as long as the citation is full and clear I'm happy (says the inner voice in me fighting the perfectionist). Femke Nijsse (talk) 15:59, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

I hear you on the page numbers... it would be nice if people were forced to input something. Knowledgeable editors can use multiple pinpoint cites for the same reference using Template:rp, which renders, for example like this...

Ebeneezer was visited by Marley's ghost, but by the end of the story he was safe and sound in his own bed with a new view on life and the climate change WikiProject..

References

As an aside, if FAR comes back to life and the job is ready except for polishing citation templates (the kind I know) I will help go through them and brush them up. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 16:37, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Apologies, @Femkemilene: I just noticed all the uses of template:rp at sea level rise, so obviously you already knew about it. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 01:11, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

My apologies for being MIA. I am having some major computer difficulties (and shortages of sleep), but will try to limp along as fast as I can. I do like "Wild West system" (may have to steal that), but want to give the rest more contemplation before responding. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:57, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

Continuing: Please don't use {rp}!!! It is an abomination, and (as has been said before) a blight on the world. It is an obscure usage that is quite baffling on first sight, and does not improve with famiarity. Note that quite a few knowldgeable editors choose to not use {rp}.

The underlying flaw with {rp} is that it applies to the note ("<ref>"), not to the full citation most editors put into the note. One advantage of using harv templates is that they refer directly to the full citation, whether it is in another section, or in another note. Nor is {rp} even needed: it is not notes that need pagination, but citations, for which Harv is definitely the superior solution. E.g., the second "ref" above could be a second note with a short-cite: grey. Named-refs and {rp} not needed.

Similarly with back links (the "^ ^{a b}" thingies): they also apply to the notes. Getting a similar system for full citations would be a fair bit of programming, which we are not likely to see any time soon. But the inconvenience of not having back links for full citations is far out weighed by the advantages of not using named-refs.

As to maintenance: when removing a short cite, it is easy enough to search the rest of the article for the lead author's last name to see if there other instances. As to checking for any unused full citations: a script could be written to do that, but that is not a high priority. Nor much of a problem. In fact, I slipped in some extra but as yet unused IPCC citations partly in anticipation of short-cites replacing some full citations. And if that does not happen right away, there's no harm if they are there. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:11, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

rp is immediately intuitive to me, and I find it really easy to explain. So we have a difference of preference there. If I were writing a legal brief or academic paper, I'd do something different, but I don't do those in wikicode. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 21:21, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

It is "immediately intuitive" once you understand what it means (which contradicts the essence of "perceiving directly"), not when you first come across it. But even with that understanding it is still a limited and inferior fix for the intrinsic problem of providing in-source specifiers when using named-refs. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:37, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

That's one view. I love it, find it simple and perfect. You disagree of course. It will serve little purpose to pound the table for our respective opinions and preferences, let's just accept that we see the matter differently. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 00:02, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

While you're thinking about it, I have fallen love in with List-defined references, which has never really been discussed in prior threads.

I think the major prior threads are

• Aug 2011
• Dec 2015
• April 2019

not yet archived

• April 2019
• June 2019a
• June 2019b
• July 2019

If I missed any, please just insert them into the list here, with my grateful prior permission

The work that's been done here is wonderful... THANKS!! I am not suggesting we revert any of that. (eee gads, no!!) But before we replicate this approach on other pages I would like to compare pros/cons with the list-defined references approach. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 14:56, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

The key thing about LDR – and the one thing I like about it – is pulling the full citations together in their own section. But other than that it is just named-refs, with all of the disadvantages of named-refs. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:15, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

Ah, this is useful. Please list the top three disadvantages of named-refs. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 00:06, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

[Not ignoring you, just focusing on getting past a really bad day. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:32, 5 August 2019 (UTC)]

Sorry to hear that, and hope both you and your computer troubles are feeling better soon! Meanwhile... wow you weren't kidding when, in some earlier exchange, you criticised some of the help files. I have since done a LOT of reading and experimenting in my sandbox, and the result was that I did a lot of tweaking at Help:Shortened footnotes (my changes) and the documentation page for the harv template family (my changes). I also noticed you changed the basic pattern from cites for AR4 and simplified them for AR5. Put all that together and I finally understand what's going on with harvnb now. Then we have the error finding script. The next piece is that we need an easier way to add a new one, something that will compete with the dummy visual editor drop down templates (liked by dummies like me). The ProveIt gadget creators have just received a grant to do a massive upgrade, so hopefully harv support will be included. Anyway.... when you're doing better, please look at those two support docs I linked and make any changes, or add anything (comparing REFNAME/LDR to HARVNB that I overlooked). Or just discuss it here, either way. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 00:21, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. The situation is getting less bad, and I'm making some progress. Thanks also for any help re the Help pages. I haven't seen what you have done, but it you would have to try hard to not improve them. :-)

And yes, the existing AR4 (and FAR, SAR, and TAR) recommended citations use harvnb in a different way. But it wasn't that workable; don't use them!

Reasons for not using named-refs are of two kinds: technical, and mind-set. Which are "top" rather depends on how one wants to look at them.

At the technical level a primary problem is the dependency of the slave ref on a main ref. If the master named-ref does not exist one gets a big, red error message. But that also occurs if the master is simply in a different section; an editor cannot tell if the problem will go away when the edit is saved. Inversely, there is no warning if an editor removes a master named-ref (or a section containing it) that a slave named-ref is dependent on, but there will be big, red error messages elsewhere (and possibly unnoticed) when the article is re-compiled.

Redundant full citations (as we have seen at Global warming) arise because editors don't realize that two similar full citations (especially for complex citations such as the IPCC reports, with which editors have been differently creative) are for the same source. (This is slightly mitigated by using LDR, but see below.)

Probably the worst technical disadvantage is the inability to customize a named-ref, such as with page, paragraph, or section numbers, explanatory comments, or to reference multiple sources at one time. (The {rp} template is an ugly kludge that, at best, handles only page numbers, and in an unsatisfacory manner.)

Under mind-set is the reinforcement of several mistaken concepts, such as named-refs being the only way to do citations on WP, and that full citations must be in the main text, which straitjacket understanding and practice of citation. While, technically, LDR means named-refs don't have to be in-text, yet that practice is so deeply imbued in the use of named-refs they are, in practical terms, inseperable. Having full citations in-text is effectively a consequence of using named-refs.

But there is a deeper, more pernicious, problem. Use of named-refs arises solely from the problem of "re-using" a source – that is, referring to a source from more than one location – when universal citation practice is that each source should have exactly one full citation. The clever replication of a note seems to solve that, and massive usage has blinded most editors to the standard practice everywhere else (outside of WP) of using some form of short-cite (shortened citation, etc). It reinforces the mistaken notion of many editors that full citations must be done using named-refs, despite its serious disadvantages.

Hopefully all that is satisfactorily clear and cogent. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:48, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, sorry about the long delay in replying. Here I will only address your three technical points, which appear in your comment in paragraph 2, 3, and 4 respectively.

First, the master-slave name issue. This is the most persuasive of the three but for me it still isn't even close to a black and white determining factor. Using named inline citations, if what you call "master" doesn't exist, there will always be a big red error message, unlike in harv where there is no message at all (unless one has installed a script to provide an error message). If an editor deletes a needed master inline citation, a bot will "rescue" it after the change is published. The harv system lacks this proection, i.e., one can remove needed "anchor" citations from the bibliography and never be told a harv error was introduced. When one is editing just a section (instead of the whole article) the error-message capability is, as you point out, partially impeded. I say partially because the editor who uses "preview" gets messages say Cite warning: <ref> tag with name FOO cannot be previewed because it is defined outside the current section or not defined in this article at all. This is hardly fatal to the use of inline named refs, since the harv system doesn't even provide that much of a message when previewing changes to a single section.

Second, you complain that using named references, its possible for editors to redundantly provide full citations to the same thing. Its also possible for less-than-careful editors to enter slightly different parameters on a harv template and bibliographic reference, so redundancy isn't unique to one approach vs the other. Moreover, redundancy irks the perfectionists but impedes neither the five pillars nor WP:ARBCC#Purpose of Wikipedia.

Third, you say Probably the worst technical disadvantage is the inability to customize a named-ref, such as with page, paragraph, or section numbers, explanatory comments, or to reference multiple sources at one time. (The {rp} template is an ugly kludge that, at best, handles only page numbers, and in an unsatisfacory manner.) I don't wish to belabor the ILIKE/IDONTLIKE dispute about template rp so I'll just note that we have extensively stated our differing opinions elsewhere, and there are workarounds to each of these challenges. Contrary to one thing I said about template:rp, on reflection it isn't intuitive but then again nothing about any kind of citation is intuitive. It's all learned. For me learning the meaning of rp|pg in a superscript was a short step (because of my prior background and way of doing pinpoint citations). As soon as that template was explained it was easy to automatically apply that knowledge. But if we're honest all the way around, we also had to learn what footnotes are, what bibliographies are, what any form of notation means. On the one hand I agree with you it would be nice if the programmers could invent some smoother ways to handle those advanced features you mention, when using named refs. But there are workarounds, that many eds including you don't like, but there are workarounds. So this isn't a silver bullet to determine consensus. And in the great scheme of things, I put enormous emphasis on making editing inviting to the widest possible range of people. Newbies already find citation intimidating. In my view, if we all forget our prior learning, true noobs can overcome the challenge using inline citation faster and easier than using harv (especially with the non-existent error reporting for harv). For me, getting new eds involved should override efforts to make our articles look like the professional literature. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 13:48, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

New radiative forcing figure

Housekeeping note for the archives - At the time of this thread, the "current" image appeared in this section of this version of the article and was the Dec 2018 version of this image NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 20:56, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

Radiative forcing of a different contributors to climate change.

The current radiative forcing figure contained data from 2005 and estimates of uncertainty from 2005. I've made an updated version of that figure. Simplifying it in some locations, making it more detailed in others. Any feedback before I put it online? (This figure cost me an embarrassingly long time to make, so please be kind :P).

Code is still very ugly, but I plan to make it quite flexible, so that it can easily be translated & updated when AR6 is out. Femke Nijsse (talk) 16:04, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

The total forcing should perhaps also be added in. Count Iblis (talk) 20:47, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

Very cool, thanks! NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 20:56, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

@Count Ibis: Wasn't sure whether to total forcing would be missed and wanted to go minimalist. But since this is the first thing you noticed, I've got my answer and will add it in the next version. Femke Nijsse (talk) 06:52, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Is this better and sufficiently good to be included on the page? Femke Nijsse (talk) 16:16, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

In the caption "a different" ----> "different", but otherwise it looks good to me! Count Iblis (talk) 18:26, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

Uncited sources

I started using a user script that sniffs out likely harv errors. It's pretty cool... (thanks @Ucucha:!!) It looks like the following full citations are fluff, but rather than just delete them I thought I'd park them here for future reference.

Peer reviewed but not IPCC AR4/AR5
* {{Cite book |year= 2009 |title= World Energy Outlook 2009 |publisher= International Energy Agency (IEA) |location= Paris |author= IEA |isbn= 978-92-64-06130-9 |url= http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/media/weowebsite/2009/WEO2009.pdf |ref= harv |access-date= 21 November 2012 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20120717115100/http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/media/weowebsite/2009/WEO2009.pdf |archive-date= 17 July 2012 |dead-url= no |df= dmy-all }}
* {{Cite book | year = 1996 | author = IPCC SAR WG3 | title = Climate Change 1995: Economic and Social Dimensions of Climate Change | series = Contribution of Working Group III to the [[IPCC Second Assessment Report|Second Assessment Report]] of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change | editor = Bruce|editor1-first= J. P. |editor2= Lee|editor2-first= H. |editor3= Haites|editor3-first= E. F. | publisher = Cambridge University Press | url = | isbn = 0-521-56051-9 | ref = harv }} (pb: {{ISBNT|0-521-56854-4}}) [https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/ipcc_sar_wg_III_full_report.pdf pdf] {{Webarchive|url= https://web.archive.org/web/20181223030149/https://archive.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/sar/wg_III/ipcc_sar_wg_III_full_report.pdf |date= 23 December 2018 }}.
* {{Cite book |author = National Research Council |publisher= The National Academies Press |isbn= 978-0-309-14588-6 |title= Advancing the Science of Climate Change |location= Washington, DC |year= 2010 |url= http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12782 |ref= harv |deadurl= yes |archiveurl= https://web.archive.org/web/20140529161102/http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12782 |archivedate= 29 May 2014 |df= |doi= 10.17226/12782 }}
* {{citation | mode=cs1 |last1 = Zeebe |first1= R. E. |ref = {{harvid|Zeebe|2012}} |date = May 2012 |title = History of Seawater Carbonate Chemistry, Atmospheric CO₂, and Ocean Acidification |url = http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/oceanography/faculty/zeebe_files/Publications/ZeebeAR12.pdf |journal = Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences |volume = 40 |issue = 1 |doi = 10.1146/annurev-earth-042711-105521 |bibcode = 2012AREPS..40..141Z |pages = 141–165 |access-date = 15 September 2013 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20121023044322/http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/oceanography/faculty/zeebe_files/Publications/ZeebeAR12.pdf |archive-date = 23 October 2012 |dead-url = no |df = dmy-all }}

Non-technical
{{cite news |ref= harv |first= Alex |last= Kirby |publisher= BBC News |date= 17 May 2001 |title= Science academies back Kyoto |accessdate= 27 July 2011 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20070217165141/http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1335872.stm |url= http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1335872.stm |archive-date= 17 February 2007 |dead-url= no |df= dmy-all }}
*{{cite news |ref={{harvid|The Guardian, 26 April|2018}} |last1=Barkham |first1=Patrick |title='We're doomed': Mayer Hillman on the climate reality no one else will dare mention |date=26 April 2018 |accessdate=24 May 2019 |work=The Guardian |url=https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/26/were-doomed-mayer-hillman-on-the-climate-reality-no-one-else-will-dare-mention?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other }}
NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 19:34, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

THANK YOU. So many IPCC sources that are uncited... We'll be able to clean the page quite a bit :). I've added a link to the script in the citation standards page, so that future editors will be able to find it as well. (My first script that I installed. Feel so proud now). Femke Nijsse (talk) 21:03, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Better than importing the single command line to always import it fresh, consider grabbing a copy of the current code and pasting that instead. You'll be stuck with the static version unless you think to update it manually, but you'll also be immune to any future corruption/hacking at the source. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 22:13, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

But let's not pull out any unlinked ("unused") full citations until we have checked that there is nothing in the text that should link to them. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:28, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Personally, I think that's backwards. We don't scatter RS's inside <ref> tags on the off chance we'll find a place to put them where they belong. Just move the full cites here, and then...... assuming someone takes the time to do the labor you suggest... that person can easily move them back. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 00:10, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

This shouldn't affect the excellent list under Sources at #IPCC reports, that provides harv cites which will ideally be substituted for more direct citations to IPCC in the body text. One point; the SR15 sections / chapters all have the same link – it's a bit fiddly getting the pdf links, but necessary to see the page numbers. . . dave souza, talk 07:59, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

I confess I haven't studied this. Are you saying there are AR4 or AR5 cites that are still not in harvnb format? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 10:58, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

Just that there were two instances in the lead, which I've now put in harvnb format: [9] [10] – don't see any others in the lead. . dave souza, talk 18:08, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

I've just read through the notes, and all AR4 and AR5 cites are in harvnb format as far as I can see. I'm going to move TAR and AR4 unlinked citations here now, as that should be uncontroversial. We don't want to link those in the future either, as they are possibly outdated. I agree with NEAG that also for AR5, unlinked citations should not remain in the article space. JJ has made a lovely page to put those chapters back if needed. Femke Nijsse (talk) 14:35, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

Fair enough, there are cases when discussing history of CC science where citations to older reports are required, but as far as I can see that doesn't apply to this article. . . dave souza, talk 18:08, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

Don't know what these templated citations are doing here, but don't think they need screen space. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:07, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

[Gone!]

And I just deleted these citations that have been purged from the article as not needed here.

Femke: I just happened to notice the question you put in your edit summary, about whether to collect (save) the citations you're pulling out of the article. No, nothing of that sort needs to be done, as we can always recover such material from the old versions of the article. And any future need of these citations should be fulfilled from WP:IPCC citation. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:23, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Caution: malformed harv citations on this page kill the clickable "show" buttons for some people

Be kind to harv citations and try to get them right, but the problem seems to be a user script that was borked. Issue resolved for this article anyway. dave souza, talk 09:33, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Notice at the top of our page there are a bunch of banners that use Template:Show button. WikiProjects, News, the FAQ... they all use a clicable "show". CAUTION! I just learned that including a malformed harv citation on a talk page will kill the show button function. Its a bug in the code, apparently. Alas, the default behavior does not pop up a flag Help:Cite error when we screw up harv citations like it does for standard inline cites using "ref" tags. So please be careful when using harv cites on this page! (In other threads we discuss a user script that page regulars may want to install.... this script does put up big red text for harv cite errors. Its very useful!) NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 12:28, 7 August 2019 (UTC) Oops, sorry about that – thanks for fixing them! . . dave souza, talk 19:03, 7 August 2019 (UTC) well, who knew? Besides, apparently it only affects people with certain scripts in their user configuration (like me). Thanks for helping discover a bug. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 19:56, 7 August 2019 (UTC) What kind of "malformed HARV citations" are you talking about? The history shows you put some "nowiki" tags around some harv templates, but I don't see how they are malformed. What "certain scripts" are you referring to? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:29, 8 August 2019 (UTC) In this thread, a malformed use of harv is one that triggers a harv error using user script User:Ucucha/HarvErrors, which I have loaded in my user configuration. With that script running, and malformed use of harv triggering errors, somehow-or-other Template:Show button on this page was disabled. Other eds who do not have the script running had no problems. You can read the debug discussion, as far as it has gone, here, along with diffs you can experiment with, assuming you are willing to play with the user script also. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 23:26, 8 August 2019 (UTC) PS I just messaged the creator of the Harv Error script, in case you want to chime in or watch. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 23:37, 8 August 2019 (UTC) NAEG: This is nonsense! You're blaming this button problem on "malformed" harv templates, but it appears this is a problem only when you run the HarvErrors script. So--don't run HarvErrors! Also: you have not explained just what constitutes "malformed". I suspect it is something HarvErrors objects to, where upon it blows up something else. That's NOT a problem with Harv. I did read your "debug discussion", and I note Izno's comment: "100% on your end ....". Also the discussion at User_talk:Ucucha/HarvErrors#Show_button_bug, where Redrose64 says he has no problems, and noted that you had not followed the directions for use, but had added other code. So quite possibly this is not even a HarvErrors problem. The bottom line here is that I am little peeved with your blasting out "CAUTION malformed HARV citations on this page will kill ...", when it appears that is not at all the case. It is an out right libel, and I think you should correct the record. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 01:52, 10 August 2019 (UTC) If you're peeved, then email or my talk page is vastly superior. For now the message is "don't screw up harv citations" and regardless of reason, that's a reasonable message. I'm still working on the root cause and will say something substantive when I have something substantve to say. But I will say this... without an error checking script I'm opposed to any use of harv because its way too easy to screw up and then leave the article without knowing you screwed up. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 02:57, 10 August 2019 (UTC) UPDATE... JJ's approach yesterday made me overlook the important part. Malformed harv citations are indeed one ingredient in killing the show button, but they are not the only one. At the time of this thread yesterday that was the only ingredient I had identified. Further testing, after posting this thread, uncovered the second ingredient. One must use Harv Errors user script. But wait there's more. If you engage in unprotected software sex and set things up to just import the script (per instructions) it all works fine (until the script gets hacked). I prefer the PC condom approach of copying the source code to my configuration. Only then does the combination of malformed harv citations plus copy-pasting the Harv Errors source code produce this problem. Yesterday I already posted to the script author to see if they are willing to debug that and when its really all nailed down nice and neat I will eventually say more. I think I said all that yesterday. And all this rather misses the point. Malformed citations of all kinds are an evil curse. What makes malformed harv citations an insidious evil curse is the lack of a default error flag when you screw up. So people blithely change articles and go their way, unaware that can of trash fell off the back of their truck and someone else has to clean up the roadsides. We really need the programmers to give us a default fix for thatNewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 12:34, 10 August 2019 (UTC) What peeves me is not so much that you think there is a problem with use of Harv, but that you BLASTED out that opinion with your "CAUTION malformed HARV citations ..." section header. (And having done that here, this is the place to correct that.) At WP:TPG this comes under the heading of Keep headings neutral (emphasis in the original). What also peeves me is your quickness to fault "malformed" Harv citations, without any explanation of what constitutes "malformed". (Like we used to say on the Help Desk: I'm not a mind-reader, you have to give me some clues. Like, perhaps, error messages seen?) At this point there is yet no evidence that the problem you encountered is anything but (as Izno said) "100% on your end". BTW: if your real concern is (e.g.) typos in the template parameters causing the link to break, the way to check it is to click on the link when you're done. Which I do as a matter of course. That does not require a script. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:27, 10 August 2019 (UTC) As I said above, In this thread, a malformed use of harv is one that triggers a harv error using user script User:Ucucha/HarvErrors, which I have loaded in my user configuration. Seems to me there's little point in bickering. So I'm going back to the constructive endeavor, which I've spent half of today doing already, by learning javascript and testing bits of code to try to help everyone have a real fix. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 22:46, 10 August 2019 (UTC) That might suffice as a definition, but as it is entirely specific to your use of a script in your user configuration, and entirely out of sight to anyone else, it is entirely uninformative. Please SHOW us examples that we all can look at. What is this "harv error" your script is presumably displaying? What is entirely unconstructive is your making wild accusations which you cannot support. If you would be more forthcoming with the basis of your statement perhaps we could sort out the real problem. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:56, 10 August 2019 (UTC) Only on Wikipedia do we have silly billies that let this escalate . Can this discussion be hatted now? I've updated the title with the new information you two have discovered about the source of this bug. Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:48, 11 August 2019 (UTC) UPDATE Acknwoledging that not everyone thinks I have been talking about a real issue, in case some future third party stops by here, I'd like to sum up the bottom line after a heap of debugging in hopes it helps you. The original issue only exists if one copies the userscript to their common.js file instead of using the import command. It doesn't matter if you import from the author or from yourself, if you import the script it is (presently) working as intended. If you want to know why importing matters, it was suggested at v:pump(technical) that mediawiki might execute code in common.js at one time in the sequence, except for import commands that it might execute at a different time, and this could possibly explain the different behavior. That's as far as I cared to dive into this. The bottom line is, if like me you dislike importing code from other users, just copy the userscript to your own userspace (giving credit to the author) and import it from yourself. Then all works as it should. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 14:02, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

Montreal protocol

Just spouting from my own head (no RSs in front of me), the protocol is both an example of climate change mitigation in its own right, but its also an example of successful international politics and cooperation to wrestle with complex environmental problems... which in turn has made it a model and a messaging tool for shaping public opinion and lobbying. So.... aspects of the protocol could go in many places, assuming what I just said is backed up by RSs, of course. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 14:25, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

It could go in many places indeed. Reason I put in in physical drivers is so that I can talk about tropospheric and stratospheric ozone in one place, but don't mind it much. We cannot put it in multiple places, as it's mainly a protocol against ozone depletion. I think it was only later discovered that these chemicals are also powerful greenhouse gases. Femke Nijsse (talk) 16:14, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

To avoid redundancy we should only tell what it is in one place, but we can refer to it in many..... can't we? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 16:47, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

Maybe, but I don't think it's sufficiently prominent for that. Let's see whether it's mentioned in ipcc SPMs, NCA, State of the climate report, NASA and Met office websites.. (not me, I'm off to Scotland on a holiday :)). Femke Nijsse (talk) 17:35, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

Enjoy! You've missed an exceptionally hot sultry spell, lots of events today cancelled due to threat of thunderstorms and heavy rain (could it be global warming?) but the Met Office and BBC forecasts this morning look much more benign. Still plenty of showers about, so hope you get lots of sunny spells. . . . dave souza, talk 08:06, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

SR15 Global Warming of 1.5°C references

• As a supplement to the cited AR5 definition of global warming (referring to WGIII) I've added a citation and quote of the GW definition from p. 51 of the SR15 report Chapter 1: Framing and Context; Executive Summary. There are variations on the wording in the SPM p. 24 Box SPM.1 and Annex I: Glossary p. 550, but these are a bit more complicated and the p. 51 definition looks best to me, expanding on the AR5 definition. . . dave souza, talk 21:43, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

• The new IPCC website SR15 page uses advanced web design to make it harder to find information! The section and chapter headings listed here at Global warming#IPCC reports have all been given the same url – https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/ – which merely leads to the SR15 page, giving slightly convoluted access to most of the content but not the page numbers which only show on the pdf downloads. In these edits I've therefore added that link to the main reference as linking to the online version of the book, and made a start on adding the pdf urls to individual sections or chapters, with page numbers. Any comments? . . . dave souza, talk 21:43, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

Yes. I think there's been some confusion of "glossy" for "advanced".

The current SR15 citations are an initial Q&D hack to have something in place, more detailed revisions are in the works. I'm working on the AR4 WG1 citations now, but I can expedite the SR15 citations if the current ones are more annoying than you can stand. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:50, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, not a rush from my viewpoint. Just that I'd had to look at some of the pdfs for the page numbers, and thought it worth making them available for anyone looking up the inline citations. Will let the detailed revisions take their course. . dave souza, talk 01:00, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

Indeed. Okay, probably on the order of "soon", but not quite that soon. I'm thinking within a week. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:38, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

See WP:IPCC citation/SR. Check 'em out, let me know if you see any problems. They've got a really crummy way of handling updates (changing the URL), so 1) it took a while to sort out what URLs are the latest versions, and 2) those URLs will be the latest and greatest ... until they're not. I haven't copied them into this article (yet); may wait until you (or ?) has looked them over. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:55, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, will do that as soon as time permits, have other things to sort just now. Minor tweak to your comment as the title is singular! . . dave souza, talk 10:33, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

• Comments: signed to allow responses next to each point. . dave souza, talk 14:01, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

• The formatting of the full report highlights as a pdf link both the title Global Warming of 1.5°C., and the extended subtitle – "An IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty" – can we avoid highlighting the subtitle as part of the link, possibly even make it a quotation? dave souza, talk 14:01, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

The highlighting is pretty much all or nothing, as the templates don't have a subtitle option; the link uses the entirety of what is assigned to |title=. And that is the whole title, if for no better reason than to be pedantically complete. We could shorten the title (strictly speaking, there is no "sub" title there), but I don't know if that would be a good idea. Of course, someone copying this somewhere else could shorten it (it would not be exactly kosher, but I wouldn't object). And I think that is better than providing only an incomplete title, which would take some work to extend. Well, perhaps the extended part could be provided but commented out. Which could be uncommented at an editor's discretion. Though I'm not fond of that. -JJ

• The bare url is to the SR15 main website, suggest explanatory heading to link, such as IPCC SR15 (2018) website. . . dave souza, talk 14:01, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Yes, good point. I was thinking of "Website: https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/", but it seems to me most people would understand a plain url. My copy of CMS is so old they don't address urls, so I ought to check for more modern practice. -JJ

• Not sure why we'd want to cite IPCC SR15 Summary for Policymakers WMO 2018 when there's a standard IPCC version, but it could happen – can we enclose this in a separate box or in brackets? . . dave souza, talk 14:01, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Citations are given to both versions of the SPM because there is a difference (mainly the pagination is offset), and it is to be expected that both will be found and cited. I think we should not box the WMO version. Note that the citations are not identical: the WMO version, being "stand-alone", has an italicized instead of a quoted title, includes a publisher and ISBN, and does not link to the AR. Yet, aside from two pages and the pagination, it appears to be entirely identical to what is in the AR, and patently IPCC work, which is why it should be included under the IPCC, not the WMO. -JJ

• IPCC SR15 Technical Summary – this has its own url, – which has a link to the pdf with an explanatory heading "This is a compilation of the Executive Summaries from the chapters." Since the executive summaries look clearer in the chapters, where they're shown in context, maybe add a note to that effect to our formatted reference, and use that url rather than the url for the pdf. . . . dave souza, talk 14:01, 22 August 2019 (UTC) No further comments for now! . . dave souza, talk 14:44, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

At one level this is the old question of whether to link directly to a specific pdf, so the reader can get it in one click, or link to a covering page, which gives more options, but also requires more work. and could lead to ambiguity as to the specific file. I have been somewhat variable on this before. But given the URL for the whole report, I think the components ought to be specific. (Note that each of the chapters has its "own" url, with multiple option, differing from TS mainly in being on a different branch.)

On a different level: I don't know what you mean by the executive summaries looking "clearer" in their own chapters. (Different resolutions?) But as to collecting the several executive summaries with out any added value, I could see recommending that they be cited directly in their original chapter. Is that what you have in mind? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:44, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

Warming stripes: prominence, mobile compatibility and citations

@RCraig09: recently added two high-quality warming stripes data visualisations into the article. I myself think it's not a problem, maybe even good, if we include popular data visualisation methods. The German wiki does the same: they show the warming spiral. Since there was no consensus to add warming stripes to the see also section, I'd like to assess whether there is consensus to add it as a figure. I see a couple of small problems with the current implementation

1. Prominence: by adding two figures, the figure gets quite a bit of prominence. I think I'd remove the local one, as the interpretation of differences is not that easy for a lay public. The comparison North and South is easier to interpret
2. Mobile compatibility: the wording above/right doesn't work on a small screen
3. References: they don't comply with the agreed citation style, but let's not worry about that till we have solved the other two objections.

Femke Nijsse (talk) 15:50, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

It's a paradox that warming stripes are "popular visualization methods" yet you think they are "not that easy for a lay public" to interpret. I think both are easily interpreted by the public—that's their design and purpose! Given the choice between the two graphics, however, I would keep the "stacked" graphic since it conveys both regional distinctions (vertically) and global similarities (horizontally) with a thoroughness and immediacy I've never seen illustrated, anywhere, by any graphic. Secondarily, the North-vs.-South graphic was chosen because it corresponds to pre-existing text in the second paragraph of the section, and epitomizes (is the broadest example of) the section's title, "Regional trends", like no other graphic I've seen, on Wikipedia at least.

1. Re prominence: they're merely part of the "Regional trends" section, which happens to be early in the article. The graphics aren't a good fit for the "See also Regional effects..." linked page since that sub-article is ultra-specific; so one or both warming stripes should remain here, methinks.

2. Re mobile compatibility & 3. Referencing: I concur with Femkemilene to fix later.

—RCraig09 (talk) 18:54, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

I think the standard warming stripes are easy to understand, I like them. Derivative work (for instance my design here: https://www.nature.com/nclimate/volumes/9/issues/8) can be more confusing. We had a discussion in the office when the local striping 'tapestry' came out about why Europe is so more variable, compared to the Americas. In 'your' (excellent!) warming stripes page, a possible reason is lead bare: Europe has small countries, so that you'd statistically expect more variation. But maybe I'm reading too much into this and non-scientific contributors might indicate better whether it's clear. I do think that you can put in in the background section of regional effects.

NEAG proposed we make the 'observed temperature' section a bit more broad, dealing with other observed heating (deep ocean, ice melt). Adding the figures is the opposite direction. I'm good with either way, but I though I might make you two aware of these different possible directions of improvement of the article. Femke Nijsse (talk) 19:22, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

Hardly a paradox. Given the the campaign to promote warming stripes it is a reasonable question whether they are actually, genuinely popular, or merely promoted. And difficulty of interpretation is likely a retarding factor. Note that I am not saying they can't be useful, and perhaps they are useful scientifically, but a graphic that requires some training to understand is not suitable for a general, non-expert readership. (Same reason why we don't use seismic reflection diagrams.) On the otherhand, if there is some simple explanation that makes them accessible, fine, we can always use good graphics.

It might be warranted to strengthen the "Observed temperature" section (given the widespread disbelief in global warming), but how would adding "figures" be "in the opposite direction"? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:21, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

No training needed for the default graph I'd say, that's not a worry I have. In the opposite direction by making the text more focused on surface temperatures, instead of making it broad. Femke Nijsse (talk) 21:26, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

Well, you're a scientist, and probably a quick learner. So did you really understand these warming stripes figures right off the bat, the very first time? Or could there have been a little bit of learning? I have in mind that way, way back computer users had to be taught that "entering" something meant typing it it and then pressing the key marked "Enter". Or the instructions in old telephone books on how to "dial" a telephone. So simple that the instance of learning is soon forgotten, and the knowledge seems "intuitive". ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:39, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

- First, the word popular was clearly meant in the sense of "layman-oriented"—and not in the sense of "everybody-loves-them"; and that "everybody-loves-them-popularity" (what you call "genuinely popular") is as irrelevant as the social media campaign that promoted awareness of global warming and, obviously, not of the (free) graphics themselves. What is relevant here is that it is a paradox to claim that a layman-oriented graphic has "difficulty of interpretation".

- Second, the graphics were broadcast by >100 meteorologists to the general public. Again: the graphics were designed for non-scientists to intuitively understand!!! The laymen I've shown one to, understood it immediately with none of the "training" you mention. The larger (stacked) graphic—again, the broadest yet most detailed GW diagram I've ever seen—itself has explanatory legends, but could, if necessary, be readily explained in a single sentence—in case the existing legends and the simple North-South example aren't deemed enough.

- Third, the "Regional effects..." See-also-article deals with the effects of GW, and not global temperature change itself. I chose these two graphics as being specifically applicable to this article's section title, "Observed temperature changes"/"Regional trends". —RCraig09 (talk) 02:54, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

About the learning: the same goes for knowing how to read a line graph, which we've added prominently in this article. More technical knowledge is needed for those and it's a well-known fact that these graphs are often misinterpreted by a lay public. Less training is needed to see blue is cold, red is warm in those warming stripes. I'm now convinced they can stay in if we can address points 2 and 3, but would like to hear from other frequent editors. Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:50, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Indeed. I have never found it entirely credible that some people don't (allegedly!) understand line graphs, but they likely didn't have engineers for parents.

The "red" and "blue" conventions are learned, though so commonly understood they can (generally) be presumed. The smaller warming stripes diagram at Global warming#Regional tends is readily seen as a comparison of two strip charts (more precisely, "one and a half dimension" bar charts). But while it is reasonable enough to us nerdy types that those are likely time series (and presumably "recent" on the right?), it is not all the case that it's obvious to others. On a basic principle of communication of information that chart is faulty in not labeling the axis. (At the very least, I would expect the beginning and ending years at each end of the chart.) While the larger chart has labels, it is scrunched down so much that they are not legible, and many readers (most?) will miss enlightenment simply because they're not curious enough about those little squiggles to enlarge the figure. If that graphic is to be used it needs to be large enough to be legible. And the smaller one needs to be labelled.

But even with those fixes I am still not convinced that these are better than standard line graphs. Keep them if you insist, but I would want to see them paired with the corresponding line graphs. At the very least that would be a kind of Rosetta Stone for two different graphical techniques, which could work in both directions. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:42, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

- North-South graphic: The just-modified legend (diff) explains the North-South graphic completely, essentially "labeling the axis".

- Stacked graphic: Given the textual legends, the main thrust of the 'stacked' graphic is also apparent even for those you call "not curious enough" to (gasp!) click on it. For "the curious", the 'stacked' graphic's inherent image legend details what is possibly the broadest yet most detailed GW graphic ever produced—for which a ~200-line (what you call) "standard" line graph would be a confused mountainous jumble of jagged line segments.

- "Better?"For immediate perception of general concepts—appropriate for an overview article such as this—warming stripes are tailor-made. —RCraig09 (talk) 23:23, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

I'm an old guy. A few years ago I took a bunch of undergrad classes thinking of starting a medical related career but that petered out. But the experience provides me with recent anecdotal observation that is relevant here. My classmates (mostly 18-24) tended to stiffen up when they had to read a simple graph with an x-y axis. So I'd just like to say that when someone says it's obvious or it's intuitive the sentiment might be predicated on education that is now so internalized the fact that it was learned is forgotten and the application of the training is entirely subconscious. But anyone who has mastered the conventional X-y type of graph, and knows to study the labels on the x y axis to figure out what is being conveyed.... that person is able to apply the same skill set to any other form of visual presentation. So in my view the is/is-not intuitive discussion sort of misses the point. All of these presentations require a baseline of knowledge to comprehend. If our target audience is college and per WP:ONEDOWN we try to write for highschool level, let's presume A-level high-school students. Such students can read graphs, no matter how they are constructed. As for how these are used in this article, at most I think we should have one and hope the curious go to the article(s) where we go into more depth with more examples. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 13:07, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

Perceptive observations about the psychology of learning, NaEG! Concerning your last sentence, though, I think the inclusion/exclusion of graphics should be based on their substantive content (and accessibility, also) more than on their data visualization style per se, as not to exalt form over substance: who would arbitrarily limit the number of line charts or heat maps in an article? For "A-grade" high schoolers, warming stripes—which are essentially a one-dimensional heat map—are probably more accessible. —RCraig09 (talk) 15:23, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

thanks for the compliment, and I guess maybe I would "arbitrarily limit heat maps or line charts" in this top level and summary article. The topic is broad enough that arguably significantly different things might want to be conveyed, and one could make the case for using a graphic for each. But I'd like to save the nuances and breakdowns and sub-thisses and sub-thatsses for our sub-articles. I don't have an example of excessive use in mind, just mouthing off about a general point about generalized summations at our top article. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 15:52, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

For the record (not to revert or argue): The most recent expressed opinions seem to be:

• Femke wrote "they can stay ... but would like to hear from other frequent editors."
• J. Johnson was concerned about legibility and readability and what's the "best" graph, but wrote "Keep them if you insist".
• Tdslk—visiting from WP:GOCE—wrote that the stacked graphic "is very difficult to figure out".
• NewsAndEventsGuy preferred a single instance of a graph, but wrote that "A" high school "students can read graphs, no matter how they are constructed"
• I say: The "simpler" (North-South) graphic plus the textual image descriptions for both, made the stacked graphic trivially easy to understand—not "better" for all purposes, but actually more appropriate for general readers precisely because the graphics are visual and intuitive. In essence, the stacked graphic is both the most comprehensive (~195 countries) and most detailed (x ~118 annual readings, each) global warming graphic I have ever seen, and is readily understandable in less than a minute—to those who try. There is resistance to anything "new", but we should not surrender to that resistance when it takes mere seconds to read the legends and understand the graphics. —RCraig09 (talk) 16:44, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

It's generally best to not include argumentation in summations, but other than that this seems a fair summation of views. I would note that my objections – and possibly Tdslk's as well – are potentially addressable. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:48, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

(The original version, removed from the article on 27 August 2019)

A comprehensive color graphic showing global warming trends since 1901 in each of almost 200 countries, grouped by continent to show both regional contrasts and global similarities over time. The graphic demonstrates that warming occurs differently in different regions, but the globe is in a consistent warming trend over time (BBC article) (text amended by RCraig09, 2019-09-09)

Newly created and uploaded, 2019-09-09. Contains both "stacked" country-level graphics and global average.

Same description applies.

To J. Johnson (JJ) (and others): Are you implying that increasing the size and readability of the in-image text legends (axis labels) on the "stacked" graphic, would take care of your concerns and you'd support its re-introduction into this article? (i.e., Is it worth my generating such a graphic? I would enlarge the continent names along the vertical axis, and the years along the horizontal axis — but the country names would have to remain tiny). Link to existing Commons image. —RCraig09 (talk) 20:28, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

My objection is that they are not clear in what they communicate (i.e., it is not clear how to read them), and in my initial comment I said: "if there is some simple explanation that makes them accessible, fine". And subsequently I provided specific criticism, which, if fixed, would likely make the figures more readable. I can't say whether such work would completely address my concerns without seeing the result. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:23, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Alrighty then! I'm requesting consensus from J. Johnson (JJ), Femke Nijsse and NewsAndEventsGuy etc. re whether the new graphic, with enlarged legends and added explanation, sufficiently overcomes objections. I continue to think it encapsulates global warming in both breadth and depth, and is painfully simple—ideal for an encyclopedia. —RCraig09 (talk) 03:34, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for this! I think that my issue with complexity was to explain the regional differences and the patterns in the figure, which is a whole new topic. I think I disagreed with JJ about warm/cold not being clear. blue is cold, red is warm is quite obvious to me. Furthermore, NEAG indicated that he would like to focus this section more on a broader set of observations than only surface temperature, which I agree with (maybe not to the same extent, I only want a slight refocus). A fourth figure about basically the same thing does not add much, imo. Maybe try and find a different page? Femke Nijsse (talk) 09:54, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

My earlier point was not that the red-blue convention is not clear, but that it is learned. In this new graph it is probably not necessary to state "Blues = cooler", simply put a blue "Cooler" on the left and red "Warmer" on the right. (That much I think most readers can figure out.) Likewise, "Time" is not necessary, now that the labels are big enough to see without having to dive into the figure. Nor is it necessary to explain that in the caption, which is a step removed from the graphic. What might be added is the reference point to which these colors are relative, or even the range. (The bar in the original version showed the range, but not the reference point, nor even the scale.)

Does the caption really need to explain this is a "comprehensive color graphic"? Is that not obvious? And instead of "in each of almost 200 countries" etc., could it not say something like "Measurements from 188 countries [or whatever the number is] (grouped by continent) show a global trend of approximately 2°[?] C warming in the past century"? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:00, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

@RCraig09, thanks for those tweaks, that's really cool, this version is very nice. I agree with JJ's apple-polishing suggestions. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 22:54, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, Femke Nijsse, J. Johnson (JJ), and NewsAndEventsGuy. Your discussions have made me "step back" and have a broader perspective, and I note:

1. The top chart, the line chart File:Global_Temperature_Anomaly.svg, is detailed in time (1880-2018), but lacks detail in space (geography)

2. Conversely, the second chart, the heat map File:Change_in_Average_Temperature.png, is detailed in space (global map), but lacks much detail in time (comparing temperature change between only two time periods). Actually, it belongs in the "Regional trends" subsection rather than at the top of the article.

3. Significantly, the new "stacked" graphic is comprehensive in both time (1901-2018) and space (detailed down to country level).

3a. Accordingly, the new "stacked" graphic best summarizes the subject of the article—global warming! It singlehandedly captures the crucial observation that warming occurs differently in different regions, but the globe is in a consistent warming trend over time.

3b. Femke, the new "stacked" graphic does not repeat what other figures do. It has more information, condensed in single graphic. With larger legends and new captions, it's easy for readers to understand.

3c. Yes, it is bold of me to suggest that the "stacked" graphic belongs at or near the top, and not merely in a subsection.

4. JJohnson, I'm feeling whipsawed by your indications of what was once hard to understand, and what is now obvious. In any event, since warming stripes are "new", I favor including more explanation in legends and captions, but of course that's routine editing, balancing understandability with technical completeness.

5. NaEG, I understand your desire to discuss trends other than surface-level temperatures, but that is a separate sub-topic that can be dealt with separately, perhaps by supplementing the "Regional trends" sub-section.

6. Afterthought: I could add a global-level warming stripe (extracted from this Hawkins-color-scheme example) to the bottom of the "stacked" graphic—to ensure that localities and the global average are explicitly juxtaposed.

Regrets for the verbiage, but the more I think about this graphic, the more important I think it is. —RCraig09 (talk) 05:09, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

7. Supplemental: Femke's new graph, File:Temperature_reconstruction_last_two_millennia.svg (with a 2,000-year perspective), could be at the top, to supplement the stacked graphic's 118-year detailed representation. —RCraig09 (talk) 17:32, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

That which I have said needs some explanation, or at least an explanatory, readable label, and that which does not need explanation, apply to different elements.

As my explanations and suggestions seem to discomfort you I will henceforth not bother with them. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:06, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Discussion continued below, in the section, "Re-arranging & adding figures near top; ..." —RCraig09 (talk) 20:06, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

Peer review?

If I'm correct, I've now dealt with all tags (citation needed/better citation needed) in the text except one (arctic sea ice, will wait for September IPCC report). I've checked external links with that checklink tool (didn't understand all of their warmings though). Copy-edit has been done as well, so that the text reads well. Is it time for peer review? I've been so bold so 'reserve' a date to be considered as TFA for December 2, the start date of the 25th Conference of Parties. While I'd like to improve the current page further, I'm happy with what we've got now. Femke Nijsse (talk) 13:13, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

The history section needs rewritten. This is one of a series of articles where worthy efforts to bring to attention the research of a forgotten lady scientist have resulted in the misunderstanding that "The greenhouse effect was proposed by Joseph Fourier in 1824, discovered in 1856 by Eunice Newton Foote," – oh no she didn't, see History of climate change science#Paleoclimate change and theories of its causes, 19th century which is being updated, and note that Foote provided experimental proof that visible light warms CO₂ etc, while Fourier and Tyndall were interested in IR getting blocked by greenhouse gases.
Also to be checked, paleoclimatology has been mis-defined on WP as though it only refers to prehistoric climate, the AR5 glossary correctly states "Paleoclimate Climate during periods prior to the development of measuring instruments, including historic and geologic time, for which only proxy climate records are available." . . dave souza, talk 15:02, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

You seem to know a lot about it, so please go ahead and rewrite it. (On a side note, are you aware the term lady scientist is sometimes used as a derogatory term for women in science?). I've written quite a few articles about women in science and it's always difficult to distill the truth when much of the information is written by feminists and some of the debunking done by anti-feminists. Even before Eunice Foote was inserted in that sentence, the sentence was quite disengaging. Do people want to have a list of names? Years seem more interesting to me...

The first sentence of Paleoclimatology seems to encompass too much, rather than too little in comparison with the IPCC definition: the entire history of the Earth up till now. The article is in a dire condition anyway. I know WP values verifiability over truth, but the IPCC definition is a bit weird: we developed thermometers way before we deployed them on a large scale, and that period is definitely part of palaeoclimatology. Would be good if we could find another RS with a more sensible definition. Femke Nijsse (talk) 17:52, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, I know very little about it so am researching away to find enough to properly summarise reliable sources on the topic, and overcome the dross such as the Smithsonian excitedly telling us that "This Lady Scientist Defined the Greenhouse Effect But Didn’t Get the Credit, Because Sexism" or a symposium held to to credit "physicist Eunice Foote for her role in discovering the principal cause of global warming". Have just now read what I think is the best overview; Jackson, Roland (13 February 2019). "Eunice Foote, John Tyndall and a question of priority". Notes and Records: the Royal Society Journal of the History of Science. The Royal Society: 20180066. doi:10.1098/rsnr.2018.0066. ISSN 0035-9149. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help) Footnotes 7 & 8 cite the excellent woman scientist Katharine Hayhoe whose Facebook post notes among other things that the credit "truly liss with John, rather than Eunice", and a well known lagomorph who goes into the problems with Eunice's apparatus for measuring IR.
Didn't know "lady scientist" was derogatory, Leila McNeill at the Smithsonian doesn't seem to have got the memo – or was maybe being sarcastic.
Think the IPCC's "the development of measuring instruments" would indeed make more sense as "the deployment of measuring instruments", but at least it's clear that it covers recentish times before instrumental records (rainfall, humidity etc. as well as temperatures) were global. The paleoclimatology article is also on my todo list, haven't found many references so help with that will be much appreciated. Thanks, . . dave souza, talk 21:25, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

Tags, yes, but there's a lot of work needed that has not been tagged. Just in the matter of full citations in the text (Notes) there's about 40 instances. (I'll append a punch list of some of the work I see.) There's another matter of whether IPCC chapters need to be archived or have access dates, but I'll start another thread for that. Also, I think we really need to resolve (to the extent we can) any qualms regarding key definitions or concepts prior to any outside review. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:15, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

Notes (as numbered today; go by the key words) that appear to be full citations, or otherwise need work.

• 22. "Status of Ratification of the Convention"
• 23. "First steps to a safer future:"
• 24. "Conference of the Parties"
• 30. Hawkins, et al, BAMS
• 46. Hawkins "ShowYourStripes"
• 67. Russell
• 91. "Is the Sun..."
• 97. "Thermodynamics: Albedo"
• 99. Lindsey
• 113. "Patterns of greenhouse warming"
• 114. "NOAA GFDL Climate Research Highlights..."
• 118. ✓ Belcher (Carbon Briefs)
• 119. Séférian
• 124. "Arctic permafrost"
• 136. Pistone
• 141. Stott, Peter (2017) ...
• 150. "Global Warming and Polar Bears"
• 172. "This article incorporates public domain mateiral..."
• 180. American Society for Microbiology
• 189. Carrington
• 199. "The CAT Thermometer"
• 203. "The Montreal Protocol"
• 206. United Nations Development Program. "Reducing emissions..."
• 213. NASA's Global Climate Change
• 216. "New Report Provides..."
• 219. "UN expert"
• 220. Lane
• 221. "Stop emitting CO2"
• 225. "Paris Agreement"
• 226. "Ratification Tracker"
• ✓ 240. "The Paris Agreement: Summary"
• ✓ 245. Academia Brasileira [list from "G8+5 Academies"]
• ✓ 254. Montlake
• ✓ 260. "Oil Comapany Postions"
• ✓ 267. Weart, Spencer (2008)
• ✓ 268. Weart, Spencer R. (February 2014).
• ✓ 269. Weart, Spencer R. (February 2014).
• ✓ 276. Conway
• ✓ 277. U.S. Senate
• 281. "Minutes"
• 282. "Darebin"

Checking items that have been fixed. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:39, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

@Dave: For general articles such as climate system and palaeoclimatology, I find Google books to be a good resource. Many introductory chapters of books, and sometimes more, are digitalized and it's these introductions that contain the information we're interested in. The book I added yesterday for the definition is for instance available, with a couple of pages of text that we could integrate into the article. Femke Nijsse (talk) 07:27, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

@JJ: Would you be willing to tackle this problem? I've noticed my motivation isn't really suited for wikignome work. About archiving: not a requirement for FA, so I'll leave that up others. Not a priority, as links still work and I expect them to work for at least another 10 years. Femke Nijsse (talk) 07:27, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

The problem with "gnomish" work is that there is so much of it. I'm sure you all won't have it all cleared out by the time I get to it. Just don't roll the carpet up while I'm still crawling around on it!

I'm about to open a discussion about the need for archiving. Gotta' check if there are any WP-level issues. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:20, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

I must admit I'm not great with indirect speech. JJ, could you clarify whether you would want to wait with peer review until all citations have been sufficiently cleaned, or do the cleaning in small chunks while peer review of content is ongoing as well? My preference is not wait too long with peer review. I'm currently making an updated figure for temperature last 2000 year and if that's done I'd like to move forward. Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:32, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

I think we should do as good a job as we can, including cleaning up all these little citation messes, prior to peer review, so they don't get in the way. (Which — unless someone else jumps in there Real Soon! — I anticipate starting on next week.) Also, we should review the citation standards so that we have a solid, reasonably stable basis for resolving any citation issues. Another thing (not citation!): I think we should review the lead section, to see if we can summarize the article in about half the space. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:49, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Looking forward to your help with citations! About the lede: I've already reduced it with 20% before, and I think it might be desirable to cut it with another 20% and/or write it in simpler English, but a 50% reduction will probably remove essential information. I will opt not to work on the first paragraph until after the discussion of whether we want to clean up article naming between climate change and global warming. I'm well underway with writing a proposal for that, but not entirely sure about timing. Femke Nijsse (talk) 09:39, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

P.S. We should also get the in-source specifiers (page numbers, etc.) for all the cited bits. I presume peer review is more than just copy-editing, and if we are going to verify content against a source we really will need specification. Which I think is also a requirement for FA. That's a lot of work to catch up on, and perhaps will spur us to be more strict about such details in the future. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:18, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

My goal for peer review is three-fold: I'd like further comment on the figures used, I'd like content verification and feedback on structure. One of the reasons I asked the GOCE to do their magic before the peer review is that is will not focus on ce.

In terms of page specification: I think it's perfectly in line with FA requirements what we do now. We specify it for reports (typically more than ten pages) and don't specify it for scientific papers (typically less than 10 pages). We sometimes specify both a section and a page number for reports, which is distracting to me and seems unnecessary. I can't see anything in the FA requirements that specify we have to use page numbers for short documents (it says to provide page numbers where applicable in WP:citing sources) and see that in recent month articles have been accepted as FA did not always specify page numbers for scientific papers. I really think we'd be wasting our time if we pursue this. (of course if an occasional page number misses for larger document, that should be resolved.

Furthermore, many scientific articles are now primarily read online, which means that the whole concept of page number doesn't help verification. Faster to cntl F the info than find a PDF version of the document. Femke Nijsse (talk) 14:00, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

In medical articles, the only scientific area I know well, giving page numbers for papers is positively frowned upon. This I think reflects the general practice in medical literature; essentially what is being referenced is the paper as a whole, normally as summarized in the abstract. This may change a bit if a very specific figure is being referenced. Johnbod (talk) 14:59, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Same for climate science and physics. Not a thing people do. Femke Nijsse (talk) 17:49, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

The practice of scientific and medical journals is hardly applicable here. For one thing, those are in a realm where a high-level of professionalism is the norm, and writers are largely trusted to get their facts right. Also: journals tend to be very parsimonious of space, to the point of omitting article titles, brutally abbreviating journal names, and rarely providing author's personal names. And: their model of referencing is much like our "one-instance fits all" named-ref system, where providing specific page numbers might (horrors!) require multiple "references".

From our core content policy of WP:Verifiability we have the instruction (at WP:PROVEIT) that sources should be cited "clearly and precisely (specifying page, section, or such divisions as may be appropriate)."

While it can argued that we don't really enforce that, that is due to the difficulty of doing so with named-refs (and the general distaste for {{rp}}), not for any good reason to not do so. And with the use of short-cites (e.g., harv templates) there simply is no good reason to not require in-source specification (such as page numbers, etc.). The argument that "cntrl F" eliminates the need for specification is plainly faulty: not all sources (not even pdfs) are searchable; searches with exact text can fail for reasons of typography or hyphenation; searches with keywords (where exact text was not quoted) can be troublesome in not finding the target, or finding the wrong one. So why not just grab the page number along with the rest of the citation details?

In general, making the contributing editor's task easier by not requiring an in-source specification only makes the subsequent task of verification harder. (Which can rebound back to the original editor when a point is challenged, and you have to dig through your notes to find just where that point comes from.) It also suggests a certain slackness, and some degree of hand-waving.

For all that the bulk of Wikipedia articles (and editors) are quite sloppy about much of this, my understanding is that we are trying to create a Featured article worthy of inclusion among "the best articles Wikipedia has to offer". I think we should do the best we can, not what merely passes. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk)`

I respect your dedication to having everything as good as possible, but I won't be helping with this project. I think my motivation primarily and expertise secondarily is better employed elsewhere. I think this project will costs about 20 work-hours (bit less than 10 mins per article?), which I think is not worth it. Feel free to start this project, but let's first make sure everything is in the short-cite/full citation model. Femke Nijsse (talk) 14:02, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Comments from GOCE editor

Hi all. I recently finished a copy edit of the article per a request to the Guild of Copy Editors. I hope that it improved the article overall and I apologize for any mistakes or oversights on my part. Below are a few observations and potential substantive changes that occurred to me while copy editing that I thought I should bring here for broader discussion.

1. Charts and figures. I think the "temperature change in the last 50 years" map would be the best first graphic for the article, as it instantly expresses in an intuitive way the points "global" and "warming." The graph that is currently there is a bit more technical; I suspect most readers will not know what "Lowess smoothing" means, and even "Global Land-ocean Temperature Index" and "Temperature Anomaly" may not be clear to all readers. While "warming stripes" are supposed to provide an easy to understand depiction of global warming, the graphic on the right with warming stripes for every country in the world is very difficult to figure out. I wonder if it could be removed. In the "Physical drivers climate change" graph, I'm not sure what "Reflectivity used land" is supposed to mean. The "ship tracks" satellite image is intended to help illustrate a concept related to global warming, but is not directly an example of global warming, and so it might be removed for clarity. I think the 6-m seal level rise map should be deleted; it depicts an extreme scenario not discussed elsewhere in the article, and even then it is difficult for me to see any red color on my screen without clicking through to see it full size. There have been no doubt a great many magazine cover stories about global warming. I wonder if a different cover could be used instead of the Ms. magazine cover, possibly something from a more widely read and/or more international magazine, or even a cover from the late 1980s, when the issue first rose to prominence, which would better tie in with the accompanying text.

2. Opening sentence. My attempt to revise this got quickly reverted. That's okay, I wasn't aware of the previous discussion around it, although I can easily imagine. Still, I think it could be polished. It seems that there are three points being made in the sentence: 1) the basic definition of "global warming"; 2) its context within the broader concept of "climate change"; and 3) both direct and indirect evidence support its existence. Trying to fit all of these into one sentence is just a bit clunky, which is why I rewrote it as two sentences:

Global warming is the long-term rise in the average temperature of the Earth's climate system. It is the most prominent component of current climate change and has been demonstrated by direct temperature measurements and by measurements of various effects of the warming.

The break also helped remove the slight initial ambiguity over whether "global warming" or "the Earth's climate system" is "an aspect."

3. The rest of the first paragraph. I'm sure every reader of this talk page is aware of the issue of how the terms "global warming" and "climate change" are used sometimes interchangeably, sometimes not, in both formal and informal writing. I think the opening paragraph is correct to note that these terms are sometimes used interchangeably. However, I think if we try to draw the distinction that climate change is "both global warming and its effects" then this article would have to be called climate change, since it is indeed about both global warming and its effects. Also, the hatnote seems to have a different idea of what climate change is: "climate trends at any point in Earth's history." (This definition does seem to align better with the article at climate change.) I would suggest something like:

In this context, the terms global warming and climate change are often used interchangeably, but some authorities use global warming to refer solely to temperature increases, and climate change to refer to both global warming and its effects, such as changes in precipitation and impacts that differ by region, while others use global warming to refer to modern changes in climate and climate change to refer to variations in climate throughout the Earth's geologic history.

These are just my two cents; I'm sure that there have been previous conversations about these points on this talk page, so feel free to ignore this if I'm not adding anything new to the discussion. Cheers, Tdslk (talk) 01:24, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks! Since it was probably my reversion, have adopted your point 2 with addition of a comma. Not sure if "aspect" would be better than "component", or maybe "part"? The earlier debate was in the context of defining GW as the current climate change, "current" moved to the second sentence leaves more room for it also referring to paleo GW. . dave souza, talk 05:20, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

Have been puzzling a bit over 3, here's some brainstorming:

In this context, the terms global warming and climate change are often used interchangeably. More formally, global warming refers specifically to a trend of increasing surface temperature around the world, commonly related to a pre-industrial baseline. Climate change is any measurable long term change in the climate, global or regional, which includes global warming and other aspects such as changes in precipitation and impacts that differ by region. Climate change has occurred throughout the Earth's geologic history, including prehistoric periods of global warming, but observed changes since the mid-20th century have been much greater than those seen in previous records covering decades to thousands of years.

This draft ties climate change into the last sentence, though of linking "previous records" but the source also compares recent changes to earlier instrumental records. . . dave souza, talk 07:03, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments! You've been a great help. I'm quite impressed you never really changed the meaning of sentences, but did make them more readable!

1. Charts and figures.

• I'm not overly enthusiastic about the second figure now. It portrays a 5-year average, and with our definition of climate being a 30-year average it's a bit confusing. It also doesn't go as far back in time as I would want. I seem to remember that you can play around with what is displayed on NASA's website, so I could maybe make a graph comparing to an earlier period. Alternatively/in addition, we could simplify the wording in the first graph, leaving out the word Lowess and only specifying that in the comments. Most people are not interested in these details. We can drop the word Index and change the word Anomaly to Change. The only disadvantage is that we'd have to do this yearly. I can make a script that plots the entire graph for us, possibly loading in some updated temperature series from NASA from their website automatically.

I've checked The GISS GW figure creator. If I try to plot temperature compared to pre-industrial, I basically don't have Africa, South-America, Middle-East, China, nor Antarctica. Not really an option therefore for me. Femke Nijsse (talk) 15:44, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

•  Done About the warming stripes: we just had a discussion about this a couple of days ago and I expressed concern that it might not be clear for non-experts. Your confusion confirms my suspicion and I'll seek consensus to remove it (or will do it boldly..)
• I made the graph with reflectivity used land. What this means is that when land is converted from forest to agriculture, the albedo or reflectivity changes. It becomes less dark, which contributes to cooling of the planet. If you can come up with a better description, I can change it in a minute. I wanted to avoid the word albedo, but maybe reflectivity is not much better.
•  Not done I do think the ship tracks are directly related to global warming: aerosols like that added together have a huge cooling effect, that has potentially masked fifty percent of the GHG warming
•  Done Two SLR figures are too much indeed. The 6-meter SLR is not as far-fetched as a long-term consequence as one might think though. I might try add a better specification to the long-term effects section. Maybe we could add in the text the biggest cities that are at risk as well.
• About the Ms. cover. I'd never heard of it before, and now that I've actually clicked the linked, I concur it's niche. A quick search for alternatives on Commons did not lead to any other magazine covers, but that might be because I didn't find the right search combination yet. I've been considering to replace it with a protest placard as an accompanying figure in the climate movement section below. The school strikes for climate are a worldwide protest with good material available on Commons. As always, I find it quite difficult to assess neutrality in the use of figures. What do you all think about that? (updated Femke Nijsse (talk) 14:43, 27 August 2019 (UTC))

3. The rest of the first paragraph. I've not bothered too much with the first paragraph so far, as I'm planning to start the discussion of having climate change and global warming both pointing to this page. As it's been suggested twice recently again that the current situation is confusing, I might bring forward this discussion. It's proven to be quite sensitive, so I'm making sure to prepare well. Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:06, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

Re the current first graph and other similar graphs, it will be great to have these updated: if possible, rather than "relative to the 1951–1980 mean" it would be helpful to show temperatures related to the 1850–1900 baseline (adopted by AR5 WGIII and SR15 as an approximation of pre-industrial global mean surface temperature).
Awaits ideas for merging the articles with trepidation, my own feeling is that treating this as a sub-article to Climate change would work, with a bit more attention to using WP:SUMMARY style to produce a condensed version where appropriate. . . dave souza, talk 09:31, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

The consequence of getting the 1850-1900 baseline for the spatial figure is probably that Antarctica, the western side of south america and some parts of africa will have to be greyed out, as insufficient information is available. As far as I'm aware, the Berkeley Earth data set has the best spatial coverage, and from playing around with that data some months ago, I found those gaps. Femke Nijsse (talk) 07:56, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

Yes, that emphasises why different baselines are used – I was thinking of the line graphs, where the temperature anomaly axis has a 1951–1980 baseline. It would relate better to overall warming if that was the standard pre-industrial 1850-1900 baseline, but I accept that may not be feasible. . . dave souza, talk 09:09, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

comment by NAEG Thank you very much, Tdslk| That was a mighty effort that has borne much fruit.

Re (1) no comment now.

Re (2) First the 2nd and 3rd points are related. In 2014 we spent several months working out a first paragraph (culminating thread and agreed text here). Last fall there were passionate attempts to rename this article to "climate change". To quell that debate, Dave crafted the new first paragraph text and went live with it in about Nov 2018. The 2014 consensus text had changed a bit, but not that dramatically. In response to the name-change demands, that paragraph was overhauled in Nov 2018 and its also been tweaked a bit. It is my view that the overhaul failed to resolve the name-change problem and introduced a new problem that didn't exist before.

Continuing on just point 2...... The new problem I refer to has to do with "most prominent". What RS establishes the "prominence scale" by which we measure the various aspects and effects of climate change? What RS even defines "prominence" in this context? If you are watching the flames creep over the ridge you probably think more about increased wildfire risk. If the rains didn't come (or the floods did) and your village has disbursed as climate refugees you probably think most about climate migration. If you are an Inuit on a permafrost coastline watching the land slump into the ocean day after day you might think most about climate grief. So what the devil is "most prominent" and where is the RS? We could partly overcome this problem by changing "most prominent" to "most reported" or maybe "most familiar", but nitpicky editors might challenge this if we don't provide an RS and as I float the suggest I'm doing WP:OR based on my own daily climate news reading. In my view, the whole thing is a convoluted way to implicitly explain why this article is called "global warming" instead of something else, which leads into point 3....

Re (3) I agree that the article is misnamed. The perennial argument is whether it should be named "global warming" vs "climate change" and that argument goes on and on and in many directions rather like a frack gas drill bit. I think it misses the point. The two open compound words "global warming" vs "climate change" are so entwined the best way to resolve the merry-go-round and reduce the frequent surprise and comments by new readers and editors is to rename this to something like Human-caused global warming and climate change (a redir pointing here) or, in event Wikipedia decides to follow suit with many media outlets, Climate crisis (a poorly developed new article which is currently about the phrase 'climate crisis' itself). At this time I'm personally not interested in advocating for either one, because we already know how the discussion is going to go. William will say "don't mess around with it", and others will correctly point out problems that would be hard to overcome due to our past history, abundantly mis-directed links to the two articles, and some general disorder in the climate pages. And so whether we rename it or not, I believe we need to clean house by going through the climate pages to clean up their organization and presentation at least on many of the higher level articles. This is already underway and what I hope the new WP:WikiProject Climate change will continue to focus on, at least at first. New editors are welcome to join us there! Just add your name to the participants list and jump in. As I see it, it is easy create categories and banners but its a lot harder to decide on an administrative goal (some possibilities are listed here) and then craft the best categories and banners to serve that goal. I'm watching and trying to learn from others how cats work, but I do think we need to start by designing our tasks and goals and then ask whether the cat and banners we have serve that purpose. After a lot of this sort of work happens, we'll be better prepared to tackle the extensive tangle of wikilinks in preparation for a name change debate that might resolve more problems than it would create.

Thank you again, @Tdslk:

NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 11:33, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks everyone for your kind comments about my edits. A few scattered responses to the above.

1. While I like the idea of a map of changes in temperature at the top of the page, I'm not beholden to the specific map at the top of the article; I think Dave's suggestion is good.

2. Thanks for the explanation on "reflectivity used land." I wish I had some magic phrase that would fit there, but it's not easy. "Land use changes to reflectivity" might almost fit.

3. I'm not the least bit surprised to hear there is a long history about what to call this article and whether to have a separate article about a different, if related, topic at climate change. My general preference is to provide what the reader is looking for. I think this page provides the information most readers would be looking for when they look up "global warming." I'm afraid that most readers who look up "climate change" might also be searching for the information that is found on this page. I think that the vast majority of uses of the term "climate change," whether by scientists, politicians, journalists, or the general public refer to global warming and related modern climate phenomena. If most people understood the article "climate change" to be about general climate fluctuations throughout geologic history, with little or no mention of modern anthropogenic changes, the article would not have 133,000 pageviews in the past month (compared to, say, 35,000 for climate). Therefore, I do think that one or the other of the terms should be a redirect, but I do also understand why folks might not want to revisit that discussion.

4. I meant "most prominent" in the sense of most broadly discussed. I don't have a reliable source for that, I think I was basing that off of my sense of the state of the public conversation around the issue. I can't argue that in certain specific situations other aspects will be more pressing. Tdslk (talk) 06:12, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

Re 4: without looking at the context, "most prominent" might work better as "predominately" or "dominated by" – for sources it's worth looking through Talk:Global warming/Archive 75#Sources: global warming definitions, relation to climate change which tried to set out all relevant defining statements. It doesn't include the SR15, so worth checking that as well! . . . dave souza, talk 07:19, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

In context and considering the source, suggest changing the second sentence (about GW) from "It is the most prominent component of current climate change" to "It dominates current climate change", or "It is the dominant factor in current climate change", which is justified as the paleo evidence is of it overturning a long-term interglacial cooling trend. . .dave souza, talk 09:19, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

BOOOO HISSSS jargonly eye crossing technobabbling gobbledygook (sorry Dave). In the US, in places like Boulder and Ithaca hairdressers and cookiebakers and beat cops might have double PhDs and spend their Fridays talking Chaucer and particle physics at the coffee shop. But I live in a town with high poverty and low education and we should burn with desire for hairdressers and cookiebakers and beat cops to come to this article and want to read it, and then EXPLAIN IT to their peers. In my view, phrasing like justified as the paleo evidence is of it overturning a long-term interglacial cooling trend doesn't help. If we go with the lead proposal we'd have to explain it in the body, and its the latter that is problematic here. QUESTION, as you craft this language what level readership are you shooting for, and are you thinking of writing WP:ONEDOWN? Part B In addition, I submit that warming is not the "dominant factor" because warming is a symptom. The dominant factor is the buildup of greenhouse gases. No wait, that is also a symptom. The dominant factor is our business as usual approach to fossil fuels and land use. No wait, in some RSs that is also a symptom and those sources say real dominant factor is using economic models that they say depend on economic growth forever. There are RSs for each of these. In my view, we should go back to the 2006-2018 convention of using the COMMONNAME meaning of "global warming" and abandon the effort to assauge the name-change reform advocates by adopting a technical presentation. That's the real issue here, in my view. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 10:31, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

Oh lawdy, ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens! Shorthand meant for informal discussion, but good point about "dominant factor". Looking again at the sources linked above bring back "aspect" used by two sources, firstly: "Global warming is causing climate patterns to change. However, global warming itself represents only one aspect of climate change." – the EPA (pre trumpesization). So, suggest instead of "It is the most prominent component of current climate change" have "It is a major aspect of current climate change," or even "the main aspect". Could you run that past your local barbershop (in harmony) and see if it works? Goes back to reading 18th century science on the topic. . . dave souza, talk 09:32, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

"A major" is rather indisputable but "the main" is just "most prominent" in other clothing. But if we go with "a main", that will beg for a rather obvious cleanup tag - {{clarify}}, with reason asking, If global warming is a main component of climate change, what are the other "main components", and why is the global-warming-main-component getting special attention here?. I submit this somewhat silly result is yet another indication that this article's title and this article's scope are mismatched.NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 10:38, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Ha, comments reappeared – think I've got too many tabs open for this antique laptop. Have boldly gone for "a major aspect" as seemingly the least offensive to the good folks of Ithaca (even Homer nods?) . . . if other wording wanted, note that the Physical drivers section has "Scientists have determined that the major factors causing the current climate change are greenhouse gases, land use changes, and aerosols and soot.<ref IPCC AR5 WG1 Summary for Policymakers|2013|pp=13-14" . . dave souza, talk 20:58, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Re 3: Interesting is as well that peaks in climate change and global warming readership coincide, giving additional evidence that people are looking for the same (https://tools.wmflabs.org/pageviews/?project=en.wikipedia.org&platform=all-access&agent=user&range=last-year&pages=Global_warming%7CClimate_change). I've added this to my sandbox, in which I'm preparing the background information needed for this discussion. Femke Nijsse (talk) 07:56, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

Possible figure to replace Ms magazine

This thread refers to the image now in use in section Global_warming#Public_opinion_and_disputes NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 15:44, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

I've looked to the photos we have of climate denial and protest. The first one didn't lead to any useable figures. These are seven figures that are high quality and are taken, as much as possible, from around the world. I've tried to take pictures from global protests, except the one from Australia, which is a good example of the friction between trade and climate action. Femke Nijsse (talk) 15:40, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

Possible figures for the public opinion section

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Femke Nijsse (talk) 15:40, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

using "crisis" in wikivoice

Please consider adding to the conversation at Talk:Greta_Thunberg#Using_'Existential_crisis'_in_Wikivoice NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 11:57, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

Our WikiProject is now up and running. If people want to continue being asked for input on related important articles, can we agree they follow the talk page of that project? This talk page is already quite bloated. Femke Nijsse (talk) 14:40, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

We can agree that would be really nice, but there is no requirement that subject editors participate in the subject's project page, and this page has long played this role. Compare the number of page watchers at both. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 15:16, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

Thank you!

I haven't been to this page in many years. Back then it was troll-filled mess of misinformation and baseless opinion. I wanted to thank the community of folks who have brought the page to it's current state. This is awesome! You've really taken the "controversy" head on and taken a stand for reality. I love the talk page Q&A that lays it out in clear, uncertain terms.

I quit editing wiki because I couldn't handle the battle. So, again, kudos and many thanks to you of much persistence and commitment.

Warm regards, Wallace Mann --2601:647:5401:2DBF:843B:D5B5:6235:D8D3 (talk) 14:57, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for your kind words! Over the last five years I've been active on Wiki, I've noticed the discussion here becoming less of a battle, and more of a true collaborative project. We've learned not to engage with trolls too much and focus on the real deal. Femke Nijsse (talk) 17:15, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Best way to show thanks.... come back and join us! We're all volunteer and many hands make light the work... stop by WP:WikiProject Climate change if you like. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 19:31, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Replace figure with something like in this report

The following figure is now used in the article

2012

I think this figure is too full, maybe doesn't convey latest research (2012), and doesn't convey that well how much of a break in policy is needed to go to 2 degrees. I found the following UNEP report on Twitter today with better figures: https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/22070/EGR_2017.pdf. How about we try to get figures similar to the one on page xvii or page 59?

The copyright statement from the report states (correction from previous edit):

This publication may be reproduced in whole or in part and in any form for educational or non-profit services without special permission from the copyright holder, provided acknowledgement of the source is made. UNEP would appreciate receiving a copy of any publication that uses this publication as a source.

Femke Nijsse (talk) 20:31, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Sorry to bring bad tidings, but don't think "non-profit only" will do – see Commons FAQ, "The licenses must allow for commercial use and the creation of derivative works." If you can use the [non-copyright] data to make a figure and upload it under a free license, that will be great. . . dave souza, talk 21:25, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Noooooh. For future reference, does in any form imply that we can use it for derivative works? I did interpret it that way, but wasn't sure whether that is correct. I only have a vague idea where I can get the data, so it'll be a while before I've created this figure. Do you think it's worth pursuing? Femke Nijsse (talk) 06:27, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

I'm not an expert, but think that the data the UNEP report has published is not copyright, and it's fair use to list that data. The particular graphic design is copyright, but graphing the data is ok if using your own design of weight, colour and font. Had a related problem with the hockey stick graph where I wanted to show historic graphics and wrote to the IPCC asking for permission, but their copyright agreement with the authors forbade that. It's ok to plot a graph using the same data or one by someone else using the same data when they agree their own copyright version can be published under an open license (that page mentions the procedure), or even a fake graph which the Wegman Report put in the public domain as a US government publication. So, you don't really need to research the data, get it from the report and make your own figures as long as the graphics are clearly different. You can always try getting UNEP to agree to open licensing, but the IPCC wouldn't agree. . . dave souza, talk 16:22, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Dave is spot-on. Images ("graphics") are copyrightable, data (generally) is not. And when permissions are keyed to "educational" or "non-profit" it's really another way of saying "not for commercial use". And WP content must be okay for commercial use. The one exception is "fair use": in some cases, where there is no alternative – typically book covers – a reduced image can be used. But it's a pain in the neck to get permission. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:17, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

P.S. Re the question raise: I think that figure is.. well, perhaps not so much as too full as too scattered, not conveying a clearly evident message. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:34, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

I've sent a request for permission to the UN and to the original creator of the figure, using one of the example letters to do so. Wikipedia say 50% of requests are honoured. If it doesn't work, I'll ask the original creator for the data he used to recreate my own version. Femke Nijsse (talk) 10:21, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Update: the email address of UN seems to not exist or smth, got error back. Don't know whether the original creator can give permission for the figure to be used. Femke Nijsse (talk) 10:25, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

A reminder for all re terminal punctuation in notes.

A reminder re the need for terminal punctuation: Unlike the {{cite xxx}} family of templates that automatically adds a terminal period (fullstop) (whether you want it, or not), the {{harv}} templates do not presume to add punctuation. Notes should always have terminal punctuation (typically a period); appropriate punctuation must be added explicitly. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk)

Okay. Added them to the example page as well. Femke Nijsse (talk) 11:16, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

I fixed about 130 instances. One complication is where harv has been used with |ps=: "Quoted text.", where the period is before the closing braces, so one has to check whether the template involved is harv, cite, or citation. I think we should quash the use of |ps= with the harv templates. There is no reason for it, as {(tl|harvnb|...|ps= : "Quoted text."}} is actually more easily done as {(tl|harvnb|...}}: "Quoted text." And it confuses the essential function of harv (link to a full citation) with this function that has nothing to do with linkage. I may do something about that; I wonder if we ought take a position.

I was also a bit surprised at how many full citations remain in the text. Like I sort of knew that (in a vague intellectual way) just from examining the Notes. But having to wade through them made that knowledge more substantive. It might also be a sign of not spending enough time in the wikitext of late. :-] ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:00, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Use video or GIF instead of still-shot heat map?

You may already be aware of numerous animated heat maps (GIFs or videos), such as this in Commons, or this at NASA. Should one of those animations be substituted for the stationary (still-shot png) heat map that is now the second-highest image displayed? Or would a GIF/video be "too much motion" for the layman? Just a thought. —RCraig09 (talk) 18:29, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

I suspect it might get too crowded. Not for the layman per se, but for people that prefer not to get distracted.. I'd rather have a quiet screen I think. On the German wiki, they've got the warming spiral animation which is not distracting to me though. I'm not sure. Femke Nijsse (talk) 19:56, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Figure last two millennia

Version 1

Version 2

I spent a shamefully long time to produce the new figure for the temperatures of the last two millennia. Scientifically, the biggest difference is that there is no discernible global medieval warm period. The previous graph was a mixture between Northern Hemisphere and global reconstructions, with the NH reconstructions having a pronounced warming in that period.

The paper I got this data + methods from uses a 30 year low-pass filter. Fluctuations that go faster than that are not included. This makes the graph nice and smooth, but also means that it doesn't really show the last 15 years of warming. I think this might be confusing and we could opt for decide on either a 10-year smoothing, or to have a different smoothing for the instrumental record.

This is version one. In version 2 I'd like to make the tick labels bigger, maybe remove the red line at 0, maybe remove the Year CE. I'll probably also try to figure out how to save it in a different format. Are there any more requests for version 2? Femke Nijsse (talk) 09:32, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Made version two. Now with a 15-year lowpass filter, more colour, and better font sizes. Which one do people prefer? Femke Nijsse (talk) 14:56, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Very impressive graphics! My observations/suggestions:

• Including confidence intervals is brilliant, and definitely adds credibility. Maybe the specifics ("95%...", "68%...") should be in the graphic itself.
• The color contrast between red and gray (Version 1) makes Version 1 easier to see the line, for me at least.
• Since "red" usually signifies "hot", it's counter-intuitive for Version 2 for the lower temperatures to be red, and rising temperatures to be black. Maybe the lower temperatures should be blue, and rising temperatures red.
• Putting the label "Instrumental" on the left, and "Median proxies" on the right, is the opposite of the graph itself (early proxies on left, recent instrumental on right).
• From the Commons image page, I could find the cited articles referring to the actual data (good). However I could not find a link or listing of the actual data itself (good for verification).
• To answer your questions: I generally favor including legends ("Year CE" etc.) on scientific line graphs. (Not necessarily so for Warming stripes or Climate spirals since their target audience is a bit different.)
• I agree: Shorter-term filtering is better—unless the graph becomes too choppy/jagged.

Thank you for all your work. —RCraig09 (talk) 15:42, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Many thanks for the excellent work. Good points made by RCraig09, particularly the colour choice and positioning of labels.
Comments: https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata201788 is linked twice, in the second case the sentence ends with ", as." – so that appears unfinished. By the way, that page gives links to the dataset, presumable "the actual data itself".
Any reason for the label saying "temperature difference" instead of "temperature anomaly"?
Can you state the baseline period, preferably as a label but it could appear in the caption.
Don't think we need to say "Year CE" as "Year" should suffice and avoid arguments about AD – MOS:BCE says "In general, do not use CE or AD unless required to avoid ambiguity (e.g. The Norman Conquest took place in 1066 not 1066 CE nor AD 1066)..." Also, MOS:MILLENNIUM suggests the scale should start at 1 as there's no year zero. . . dave souza, talk 17:37, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for all the suggestions. I think the figure is much improved now and I inserted the new version into the article. @RCraig09: I've not reverted back to grey as I think it's good to give prominence to confidence interval and problem is less with red. @Dave: The reason I used the word difference is that anomaly is jargonny. As a non-native English speaker I'm basically only familiar with this word in science, not really outside of it... Femke Nijsse (talk) 19:01, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Many thanks, looks great! Agree anomaly in this context is jargon, "difference" raises the question 'what difference?' On the basis of TAR 2001 fig. 2.20 suggest it would be clearer to the uninitiated as "Temperature difference (°C) from 1961–1990 baseline"
Afraid I don't follow how the 68% confidence appears to be the darker blue, and the 95% the paler blue further from the median proxies. Either my poor eyesight or misunderstanding. . . dave souza, talk 21:21, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Totally excellent. FYI: I normally add some very thin horizontal grid lines. Also, I am assuming that non-serif fonts are most common in scientific charts, but I think that serif fonts are a bit friendlier for non-scientists. See my example for lines & colors. But these items are purely stylistic. I'm 100% supportive of your most recent Version 2. —RCraig09 (talk) 22:32, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

@Dave Souza. I think adding w.r.t. the 1951-1980 for the y-axis label would indeed improve understanding. I don't understand your confusion about the confidence intervals completely, so sorry in advance if my response doesn't address your concern. It's common to have the 1 standard deviation confidence interval be the darker colour, and the larger 95% confidence interval be the lighter colour. This latter is a bigger region, as we're 95% sure the 'true' value of the temperature lies within that region, whereas we're only 68% sure it lies in the dark region.

@RCraigh08: In terms of grid: I like my graphs to be as empty as possible, but don't object strongly to grids. My reading of the serif page is that it doesn't really matter for readability which font is used.

I'll put code online for others to play with. Have to sort out the copyright thingies first, as I'm adapting code provided by the original authors. Femke Nijsse (talk) 07:57, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Thank you, Femke Nijsse, that's a very helpful response, I'd not understood the confidence intervals previously, apologies for putting you to the trouble of explaining .
It will be great if you can add the baseline years for the y-axis label, the years involved need confirmation as they don't seem to be obvious from the source info. As discussed previously under #Comments from GOCE editor, it would be ideal to shift 0 to the 1850–1900 baseline adopted as an approximation of pre-industrial global mean surface temperature, but I appreciate there may be good reasons for keeping the baseline where it's currently shown on the graph. Thanks again, . . dave souza, talk 18:35, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Current citation work (September, 2019)

The main work in August was working on the rest of the AR4 citations, which I have just finishing uploading at WP:IPCC citation/AR4. Not absolutely complete, but I think complete enough for nearly all CC article needs. And although very much reviewed and checked and tested I have no expectation of perfection, so I would not mind at all if fresher eyes would see what I might have missed.

At this point the older recommendations at Talk:IPCC Fourth Assessment Report/citation and Talk:IPCC Fifth Assessment Report/citation should be deprecated, decommissioned, and perhaps deleted. I'm not certain the best way of handling that.

I have commented at #Peer review? (above) on some of the remaining citation work I think needs to be done. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:35, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

You indicated you'd be tackling the remaining citation work next week right? Thanks again for that, really appreciate to have that burden taken off of me :). Femke Nijsse (talk) 22:01, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Yes, I think I'm on track for that. Might even start tomorrow. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:07, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Well, a bit of setback, as I am feeling rather daunted by what I have found. Extracting the full citations is hard enough when all the text run together. It's substantially harder when the template itself includes quoted text. This applies also to harv templates, where text is being incorporated using the |ps= parameter. Which is absolutely pointless when using any Harv template as such; I suspect 'ps=' exists only so sfn can misuse it in the same way as 'ps=' is misused in the {cite} templates. (I am more strongly convinced that it and 'quote=' ought to be deprecated and suppresed.) Anyway, the use of sfn templates would explain why, of the ~70 named-refs in the article, about 20 of them are singletons. Which can't be suppressed without checking the whole atticle for any dependent refs. All of this is firing me up for banning all named-refs (regardless of how they are used). Which might preclude the use of sfn templates. That wouldn't really be a loss, but some editors might complain.

I am also wondering if we could delete all (or most?) instances of 'quote=' and 'ps='. That comes from an older practice of including a whole passage from the source where to support a partial quote or paraphrase in the text. It might be a good idea to review each case to see if the quote is really necessary. (Anyone want that task?)

And I am contemplating how to proceed. It might be easier to remove all named-refs first, so changes in a section don't cut-off something in a different section. And tonight might a good time to make some applesauce. :-) ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:04, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

I may have left the more difficult ones still in the text, sorry for that. All okay with you taking the quotes out of the harv templates and/or throwing them away completely. I've deleted quite a few of them without giving it much space in edit summaries.

I'm okay with you removing named-refs if you feel strong about it. I'm not okay, absolutely not, with banning it. Since we've established this citation standard, I don't think a single new person correctly used it. Even when I posted on their talk page in a request to fix their citations, they did improve them, but none managed to actually comply with our standard. This only gets worse if we add another demand to the list. Plus: whenever people make a mistake with deleting named-refs, a bot comes really fast to clean it. Femke Nijsse (talk) 07:19, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

Initially I dove in at the lead, which appears to be the most challenging patch of issues. I'm going to try starting at the end and working back. If I resolve all of the non-singleton named-refs the singletons can be cleaned out pretty easily. Hopefully VE and sfn won't keep adding them.

The first quote I looked at closely (Montlake 2019) shows a variance with what is stated in the text. I spent ten minutes last night trying find a better formulation, then decided to ignore it. I have been a little concerned about losing some information, but if that should be an issue we could always recover them from the history. So I gather we're okay deleting them, and restore if and when necessary.

Passing editors don't know about the standards (yet); it may take a little while to get folks up to speed. One of my tasks is to arrange for a notice that pops up in the edit box. I didn't do it earlier as I reckoned it wouldn't sit well to tell editors there is a standard before the article is largely in complaince with that standard. (I think we're nearly there!) Also, we might want to give the standard another look. Polishing it up a bit might help "sell" the concept.

Another idea I've had is a template that could be added to non-conforming edits that puts a message on the editor's Talk page on the lines of "Thank you for your edit. However, it needs to be brought into conformance with this article's citation standards; please see ...." But I don't know if that is even possible. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:12, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

• Please don't remove quotations from references where they provide immediate clarification of what the inline citation is referring to, and allow searching of the source for the relevant text. The latter is important when trying to find a particular point in large documents. In highly contested topics, quotations are invaluable for explaining the basis of text, and in aiding scrutiny of its basis on sources. . . dave souza, talk 09:17, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

@Dave. I think you might be right for some quotations in the lede, but many of the quotations don't seem to add much. They've been used as well to creep in some POV content. I think they can be useful if they're from scientific articles that are usually not accesible, or from offline books that are not easily checked. Femke Nijsse (talk) 09:48, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

@ Femke, thanks; agree – it's a judgment call and quotes should be kept where they're useful, deleted where they're POV creep . . , dave souza, talk 10:50, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

Okay. The same argument also applies re page numbers, as many sources are not searchable. Part of the problem here is that often the quotes seem to have been grabbed haphazardly. E.g., the Montlake 2019 citation had a quote that did not support some text. But it was covered in the Abstract, so I reckoned that to be okay. This gets into what I suggested earlier, about verifying everything back to the sources. I'd rather not have to do that when I'm fixing citations.

"POV" can creep in anywhere. Is there any particular problem with quotes in notes? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:26, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

You're doing an immense amount already so not a priority when fixing citations, but before FA review, someone's going to have to verify all citations and quotes. The "quotation in citation" option works well and is easy to implement, as far as I can tell notes is just another way of achieving the same thing. . . dave souza, talk 06:35, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

I think the specific form of "quotation in a citation [template]" does not work well, and really is not easier than simply appending the quote after the citation. (Even better is to prepend the quote, as the general convention is that a citation follows the quote.) A case in point of not working well: when I searched for missing terminal punctuation in the notes a simple search for instances of "}}</ref>" was not sufficient; I had to also check whether the closing braces were for a template and parameter that would supply a termnating period, or some other template that does not. Which was made harder when there was a longish bit of text being quoted. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:30, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

That sounds ok, for example ref name="AR5 WG1 SPM p4">{{Harvnb|IPCC AR5 WG1 Summary for Policymakers|2013|p=4|ps =: Warming of the climate system is unequivocal..... [shortened for talk purposes! ..}} would become ref name="AR5 WG1 SPM p4"> Warming of the climate system is unequivocal...etc. .. [{{Harvnb|IPCC AR5 WG1 Summary for Policymakers|2013|p=4}} – that looks reasonably easy to change. Note the "ref name=" system is used so the same quote and reference can be used in two different contexts. Hope that works for you, haven't checked how it affects the terminating period. . . . dave souza, talk 15:25, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Sort of fine, except for the named-ref ("ref name=") business. Your example is better presented (switching to chapter 1 for brevity) as replacing

• <ref>{{Harvnb|IPCC AR5 WG1 Ch1|2013|p=95|ps= : Science may be stimulated ....}}</ref>

with

• <ref>"Science may be stimulated ...." {{Harvnb|IPCC AR5 WG1 Ch1|2013|p=95}}.</ref>

Which works just fine. (Though "Harv" might be better for the latter. And both could be augmented with |loc=§1.2.) In the latter the opening and closing braces are closer together, making it easier to identify the template and its parameters, and the terminal punctuation is explicit and right where it is expected. Any needed quotation is done right well outside of the citation, and doing it in the citation only makes matters more complicated.

If two contexts really need exactly identical citation – which suggests they could be redundant – then the citation should be duplicated, not the note. Though I would modify the notes so they are not exactly duplicate. This cute little trick of making something appear in more than one place is not needed, and is no end of trouble. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:34, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

A small problem with how we have structured the "Non-technical sources" section: essentially it is divided into sections by periodical (taken broadly), which leaves no way to add a single book or article for which is not a periodical. Strictly speaking each periodical should be a main entry, with the items under it sub-entries prefixed with the doubled "**". (See example.) I'm going to attempt a mass edit to implement that. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:35, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

Apropos of the question NAEG asked in the following section: okay, sometimes I will tackle content where it is not verified. Like the edit I am about to make, where content taken from AR4 WG2 Ch18 about heat-related mortality left off two important caveats. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:32, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

@JJ: For me it works best if you could put some tag in the text. Mortality is quite well researched, important, and some improved statement should remain in the text. I'm not not always paying sufficient attention to edit summaries. Femke Nijsse (talk) 23:10, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

I just noticed your comment. I took out that statement for several reasons, including being limited to Australia, and having only medium confidence. While mortality might now be "quite well researched", in the source provided (AR4) there was no indication of that. Also, for the purpose of showing significant effects from GW there were better examples. Of course, unless we are showing the situation at a particular time we should be using the latest and greatest sources, which is now AR5. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:40, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

The statement in AR5 about this is more encompassing, and iirc in SR15 even more. I'll dig up some more recent research, but this topic seems to be consistently mentioned in sources about CC, that I do think it has the prominence to appear in this article. I'll add some more updated thing back when I've got the time next week. Femke Nijsse (talk) 20:47, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

That will be good. Thanks. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:46, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

the 24hr major edit notice

@J. Johnson:, are you just tweaking citation content and formatting or are you tackling content also? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 23:49, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

In the end I didn't do anything, having found the task to be more daunting than I had anticipated. (More on that just above.) Basically I am only tweaking (though that is starting feel like an understatement) the citations, but the tweaks are complex enough that doing them bit-by-bit would be more excruciatingly pedestrian than I have patience for. The alternative is to download a whole section to work on, then replace it with the revised version. Which would over-write any intervening edits, therefore the notice. I'm contemplating how to improve the work flow. Part of the problem is (in numerous cases) inclusion of substantial quotations, which makes it harder to sort out the templates. Also tracking down all the named-refs. Meanwhile, stay alert for notices! ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:15, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Whoa nellie. Some of those quotations finally quelled denialist BS in the past. If you swing too big an axe on them you could be reopening some of those windows, which could have the unintended effect of re-opening lame past disputes. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 10:49, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Off-topic. The merits or demerits of moving/reformatting quotations was discussed in the previous section. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:28, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Recent edits to "Climate crisis" section

I have just reverted two edits (here and here) by Notagainst. In particular he added and changed some text (without citation) to what appeared to be a personal POV. (There were also citation problems, for which I have left him a note.) While checking against the existing source (Hodder & Martin 2009, available here) it seemed to me the previous content is a bit weak, and warrants checking. On the off-chance that anyone is looking for a little extra work to do. :-) ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:25, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Citations were provided as you note in your comment above. Notagainst (talk) 09:33, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Negative – citations were not provided in the form or place established for this article. And in your second edit the material you added and modified at "Climate crisis" was not supported with any new citation, and did not appear to be supported by the existing cited source. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:58, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Citation standards are nice, but God has not written them in stone with bolts of fire, much less provided the even higher authority of a broad Wikipedia-community consensus to make any particular format mandatory. Sure, there is a guidelines that nice folks who want to be polite should make an effort to learn and follow a local consensus. But their failure to do so can not be the sole reason for a revert. In this case, though, I agree the edits are problematic for POV wikivoice reasons. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 00:45, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Please pay closer attention. The basis of the reverts is because they were problematic (possibly POV, uncited and/or mis-cited content); 'not for any standards failure. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:23, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

NEAG. You have been editing WP a lot longer than I have. But it seems you have a tendency to revert many of my edits and often the only attempt at justification you provide is POV. My impression is that your POV prevents you from seeing the reality of climate change as documented by multiple RS. As far as I can see, it has nothing to do with wikivoice. Wikivoice is not claiming CC is happening. RS are claiming it. Am I missing something here? Can we try and come to an understanding on this please? Notagainst (talk) 03:43, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

I have just looked up wikivoice. There is no such thing on wikipedia - it redirects the reader to the page on NPOV. Please explain why a section on the global warming page about the potential for climate crisis, with links to RS, is not neutral. Notagainst (talk) 04:16, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

Notagainst: Quite aside from any substantive issues (such as wikivoice), there is process issue here, where you have repeatedly tried to raise the "Climate crisis" sub-section to a full section. Three of us (myself and now Mikenorton, as well as NAEG) have reverted this, which you should take as a strong hint that you do not have consensus for that. Please consider the concept we call WP:BRD: it's okay to Boldly edit, but when that is Reverted you should proceed to Discussion (such as here). It is not okay to persist in edits that other editors reject; that would be edit-warring. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:14, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

I asked a simple question. You have not answered it. Instead you engage in tendentious editing by "Ignoring or refusing to answer good faith questions from other editors"... "Editors should listen, respond, and cooperate to build a better article." You are not making any attempt to co-operate. Three against one does not mean there is a consensus. If you refuse to conduct yourselves with good faith, it just means you are able to dominate.

I have a Graduate degree in Criminology and this year, I am taking an Honours paper in Crimes against the Environment. I do know some thing about this topic. However, I can see I am wasting my time trying to improve the scope and quality of these articles.Notagainst (talk) 22:37, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

NotAgainst, you sound like me back in 2011 when I was new. In the lead of this article, I tried adding two bits from the professional lit to the lead. One was glaciologist Lonnie Thompson, lead author of a paper done under auspices of the Vatican Science Academy, writing that "climate change is a clear and present danger". I was reverted. Another was Rachel Warren, writing in a theme issue from the UK Royale Academy, that at 4C some parts of the world will be uninhabitable and in many others ecosystem services on which civilization depends will fail. I was reverted. Or my very first edit (this one, about the limits of human survival without artificial cooling. Reverted. They were all in Wikivoice. Helpful editors tried to teach me to actually read and then implement the bullet points found at WP:WIKIVOICE. Notably that we tell about contentious issues without engaging in them. We tell the various sides without putting excessive WP:WEIGHT on the sides that agree with our own personal Confirmation bias. These were hard lessons for me. The great thing is, the more I start to understand what they were trying to teach me, the easier it became to recognize bits of our community's collective writing that did a good job of this. And that writing strikes me as far more persuasive simply because its obviously trying to present views and the evidence for views in a way that lets the evidence speak for itself without sounding like a rhetorician giving a speech underwater. Yes, a lot of advocacy writing just bounces off the surface of the audience's mind because our audience is saturated with advertising and persuasive rhetoric. A lot of the audience crave unbiased info and the possibility of learnign and deciding for themselves. Yes, lots of RSs use the "crisis" linguistic framing. There are academic papers about the linguistic framing. We could tell that they are doing it, and we could tell why. Which is different than doing it ourselves. I'm troubled that you apparently only just looked up WIKIVOICE after we've been fighting this same argument at [{Talk:Climate crisis]] for many days already. But that's our mission. Note the bullet point about neutral language and reporting about debate not participating in it. If like me back in 2011 you can start to take this stuff to heart you can really make a difference here. Good luck! NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 11:26, 15 September 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)

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)

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

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

---

[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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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

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)

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)

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)

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)

---

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

Polling

We've got a paragraph full of polling that is a bit too big in my opinion. I've hacked at it quite often, but still not entirely satisfied. Today @C.J. Griffin: added an interesting poll about the US. Being US specific, I'd normally say we should not keep it, but it does shine some light on a new thing: do people feel we're in a climate crisis? If we decide to keep it, what other information from this paragraph should go to not give undue weight to polling. Femke Nijsse (talk) 19:49, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

If memory serves this section was really but back a few years ago and seems to have grown again. I'm ok with axing or merging to Public opinion on global warming NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 19:57, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

I think the only bit of information that is vital to this article is showing that even with lay public, there is a majority in every country (I thought now even including the US, but not entirely sure) that trusts science. I'm okay with axing the rest, but some other information should probs stay to keep it in context. Femke Nijsse (talk) 20:12, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

Re-arranging & adding figures near top; changing "Regional trends" to "Sub-global trends"

Per the discussion in the above section on "Warming stripes:..." involving Femke Nijsse, J. Johnson (JJ), and NewsAndEventsGuy, I propose some changes:

Click at right to show/hide proposed image arrangement

Click at right to show/hide proposed image arrangement

TOP: Add to TOP: Two millennia of mean surface temperatures according to different reconstructions from climate proxies, each smoothed on a 15 year time scale, with the instrumental temperature record starting in 1858 in black. Add to TOP: Most recent 118 years: Global warming trends since 1901, with almost 200 countries grouped by continent, demonstrate how warming occurs differently in different regions, but that the global average (bottom graphic) is in a warming trend. Add to SUB-GLOBAL TRENDS: Average global temperature changes exhibit geographic variation in temperature changes from a 1951—1980 average to 2014—2018. Keep in SUB-GLOBAL TRENDS: Land vs. sea: Annual temperature anomalies (thin lines) and smoothed data (thick lines) for average temperatures over land (red line) and ice-free sea (blue line). Keep in SUB-GLOBAL TRENDS: Warming stripe graphics (( blue=cool, red=warm) exhibit greater recent temperature anomalies for the Northern Hemisphere[] than for the Southern Hemisphere[] 1880 (left) — 2018 (right) ) Add to SUB-GLOBAL TRENDS: Warming stripe graphics show how temperature changes have differed for different layers of the earth's atmosphere.

1. Adding to TOP: a long-term (Femke's two-millenia) chart — a comprehensive overview of globe as a whole
2. Adding to TOP: an intermediate-term (comprehensive color array — benefits described in this diff).
3. Rename the "Regional trends" subsection to be "Sub-global trends" (or similar) to broaden the concept along lines suggested by NewsAndEventsGuy to not just look at surface temperatures.
4. Moving the existing heat map from the top down to "Sub-global trends" since it only compares two "snapshots" of the earth—much less time-wise information than the new color-array image
5. Keep the land-vs-sea graphic in "Sub-global trends"
6. Keep the north-vs-south Hemisphere in "Sub-global trends"
7. Add new atmospheric layers image to "Sub-global trends"

Reasoning:

R1. The proposed "Top" images summarize global warming both as completely and concisely as possible

R2. The "Sub-global trends" (or similar) images show various dimensions of global warming.

R3. I favor extra legends & captions for warming stripes; though they are simple, they are "new".

R4. My captions are preliminary; feel free to edit them above to avoid disruption to the article itself. —RCraig09 (talk) 04:49, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for your radical proposal! Some first thoughts (don't have time to properly address everything now, sorry). With all the work you've been doing, I'm wondering whether it's time for a sub-article. We have to make tough choices in what figures to use, and there is a wide range of information about sub-global warming. Maybe something like: global warming patterns, delving into all the things that your figures address.

• • Long term to TOP: I'm not that keen on this (yet), but don't know why.. Maybe because it's just not the image we typically use?
  • I'm not in favour of adding the comprehensive array, for reasons previously stating (too full, it took me quite some time to understand the differences in variability). (Sorry I changed my mind on this)
  • I'm okay with rename, but maybe an even better name can be found. (I've been staring at the regional trends name, and haven't come up with better one, so I'll go for your improved name).
  • I'm not married to that heat map. I'm trying to get a better figure for mitigation, and if it's good, we could put that one there. One figure showing climate change, the other one what we 'have to' do against it in the lede would be good.
  • I'm against adding more figures about temperatures at different location (height f.i.). I'm convinced this article is about as long as we want it to be and adding more stuff (be it figures or text) would deteriorate the article. Also, while warming at different heights is important to understand the greenhouse effect, it's not that important for most living creatures and is typically absent from short descriptions of climate change like our article. Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:00, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

• • Withdraw. I applaud everyone's interest here, but I'm swamped and have to let this issue go. I trust the outcome, whatever it is, will be great, carry on NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 12:41, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks; my further thoughts:

a. I agree about restricting length of the article, so I can concur with omitting the "atmospheric layers" graphic.

b. The most important concepts we can convey on the all-important "first impression" are short-term and long-term global warming, in proper perspective. Therefore I propose:

> Moving Femke's 2,000-year graphic to the top (is a good lead-in and perspective to the existing 1880-2018 graph). Maybe precede with a 7,000- or 16,000-year graphic?

> Moving the heat map down to "Regional trends" sub-section

> Simplifying captions to summarize what they imply rather than discuss technical details (regression, confidence level, proxies, etc.) Those technical explanations can be put in a new "Technical notes" section above the present "Notes" (reference) listing (example: Warming stripes#Technical notes).

> Femke, I'm not sure of what kind of graphic could show "mitigation" — keeping in mind WP:NOTCRYSTAL

c. Another important concept to convey is how global warming varies (geographically and otherwise). I continue to believe the colored array presents the best summary, yet the most detail, of any global warming diagram I've ever seen. Now that legends are larger and the caption is clearer , I think it's readily understandable in addition to being eye-catching for our general audience (the purpose of climate stripes in the first place). I think it's much easier to understand blue-and-red, than local regression -and- Lowess smoothing. But I sense opposition to whatever is "new" or "different" and I acquiesce in leaving it out of this generic article for so long as that is the apparent consensus. —RCraig09 (talk) 03:29, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

b. I'm not entirely certain that 2x warming is the most important thing for an article about climate change. It has many more aspects than only the observed warming. Maybe here again, the fact that this article is called global warming, but is actually about the broader term of climate change, might lead to our disagreement. This article mainly follows the scope of the IPCC reports + some 'non-science' content (history f.i.). You can see that they don't focus on paleoclimate in their synthesis report summary for policymakers, giving us a good indication that we shouldn't overly emphasize either.

> Currently, there are no graphs of the entire Holocene that are of good enough scientific standards to be added here. They are outdated, and were a bit iffy back then (there wasn't enough scientific understanding to make a non-iffy figure). I've done a quick search of scientific literature, and there might be some reconstructions done since then that we can use, but not entirely sure. Apart from that, I don't think two timeseries figures are suitable to be included in the lede. Our article is about the current climate change, which has more aspects than warming.

> I'm okay with moving the heat map down.

> See the section Talk:global warming#Replace figure with something like in this report which figure I'm talking about. This is about what NEEDS to be done to have decent chance of keeping warming under 2 degrees. There are ample RSs for graphs like this, so I'm not too worried about WP:NOTCRYSTAL.

> Good idea to put details of Lowess smoothing and other technical terms in the notes. I've asked (few weeks ago?) one of the contributors to the first figure whether they can remove that from the figure itself. Feel free to adjust the notes a bit. Maybe not introduce a third type of notes, but add it to the first type.

c. Thanks for acquiescing! I know it's difficult to do when you feel strongly about it. Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:05, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

- 🤔🤔🤔 I had not appreciated that Global warming was not about... global warming!!! 😂😂😂 :-D :-D :-D It's sad that the GW and CC articles don't clearly distinguish from each other. But unfortunately Wikipedia follows common usage of terms, and thus perpetuates confusion rather than clarify. 😒 :-\

- I think "Notes" (References) & "Sources" are very different from my proposed "Technical notes", because /*Technical notes*/ will be editors' generally UNsourced explanations. I will think about it more. —RCraig09 (talk) 16:39, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Well, there are some variances of thought on the proper focus and distinction of this article, not fully resolved.

I wasn't aware you were actually proposing a "Technical notes" section, but I very much doubt that we need an entirely new section (and sub-section) merely to explain the "technical" details of the warming stripes figure. For what I would consider truly "technical details" (I suspect we may differ on that term) of the graph, such as the data sources used, processing applied, etc., the appropriate place is with the graph itself. I.e., on its source page at WikiCommons. If there are any particular points ("technical" or not) that need to be mentioned in the article (such as how to interpret it?), but perhaps not suitable in the caption, then the appropriate place is in a note. That is what they are for. But I see no reason why your figure should require its own section to explain it. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:11, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

@ RCraig09: I think we're actually following the common usage of the terms from 1990 / early 2000, not the current one where global warming has fallen out of fashion. I'm preparing a big proposal to have climate change and global warming both point to this article and have this article possibly renamed into something like (global) climate change or global warming AND climate change. The draft proposal can be found at User:Femkemilene/sandbox. When I'm ready, I'll probably have some community input about the structure of the discussion before launching it for reals. @ JJ: I think the technical details would be about other graphs, such as the first one that describes some sort of lowess filter that even I haven't heard of before. I'm okay with putting that kind of info in the image description instead of notes. Femke Nijsse (talk) 20:58, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Technical details I would take as describing how the figure is constructed, such as what sources, how the data has been massaged, etc. In short, everything necessary to show the figure's validity, such as might be found in a journal's "Methods" section, but not generally of interest to the reader. In a scientific article this would, of course, be included to the article using it. But at WP figures can be used in multiple articles, so the supporting data should be in the figure's source page, not at some article that uses the figure. Anything that a reader needs to understand the figure, that is not covered in the figure itself, should be in the caption ("description"?). Notes in the caption are usually about where the figure came from, or perhaps some information like why it differs from some similar and well-known figure, or such. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:09, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

To restate/clarify:

a. Re "technical details": what I was referring to are things like Lowess smoothing & regresssion, that are now within the images and/or in textual captions already—things that for our lay audience should be either converted to common language or omitted. Distracting details that might be important are what I proposed for technical (foot)notes—to be less distracting/confusing to the layman reader. (Agreed: non-techy, credibility-related content such as dataset sources can be in tiny form in the images, or on the Wikimedia Commons pages.)

b. Such technical details are in some existing tech-laden images, and not in what you (J. Johnson) say is "my" figure. In fact, warming stripes inherently omit such techy details for laymen such as WP readers—again, that's warming stripes' strategy!!! No one implied a warming stripe image "should require its own section to explain it". The opposite is true.

Also:

c. Anyone: I'm not sure if there's a reason why the references are in a section called "Notes"—unlike any other WP article I've ever seen. Has anyone considered changing Notes --> References?

d. The fact that Notes (i.e., References) all seem to be cited, linked, reliable sources is the reason I suggested a separate, hopefully-tiny, "Technical notes" section that contains WP editors' common-language explanations (unsourced). Either location is fine with me.

e. Femke, I agree that the terms GW and CC have been used vaguely, inconsistently and confusingly; it's unfortunate that Wikipedia has followed the lead of the public—rather than sticking closely to the literal language, "global warming" and "climate change". I support your proposed efforts (in principle) to somehow clarify the terms for the reader (if only to thwart those who ridicule the "change" from GW to CC). Huge project. —RCraig09 (talk) 04:34, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

"Lowess smoothing & regression" is just the kind of technical detail that our non-technical lay audience is not interested in. It is of even less relevance than the details of exactly how satellite data analyzed, and filling the article with this kind of effectively imponderable detail only lowers the information content, and is more likely to intimidate all but the most determined reader. As I have said before, technical details about the construction of a figure should be documented in the figure's source page. If you really must include "important but distracting details" in the article, use a note. The regular kind of notes are quite fine for this. Just because they are mostly used for citation does not preclude their use for explanation.

The term "references" has many conflicting usages, which has been a major impediment in both the use of citations, and in discussions about citations. Part of the problem is due to the original HTML use of "ref" (short for "reference") for a specific kind of "reference" more precisely known as a note. This and other poorly conceived practices — hallowed by long usage and generally associated with the use of a "References" section — are what make citation at Wikipedia so notoriously difficult. "Notes" is used here to indicate a more precise meaning and use, distinguished from the common, piss-poor practices that editors might otherwise automatically assume. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:25, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

I can appreciate the IPCC family of references has special challenges, but in general my understanding & experience are consistent with MOS:NOTES, and in ten years I haven't found or seen citations to be notoriously difficult. Regardless, I'm boldly simplifying some captions now; maybe "Notes" won't even be needed. Consensus will decide content and form. —RCraig09 (talk) 05:53, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

Any use of the term "references" is inherently ambiguous (though the implication of only two meanings is quite an understatement) and tends to lead to confusion. That you cope with citation without great difficulty is probably because you (like myself and others) have come up with an interpretation – including selection of what to ignore – that works. The problem with this is that we don't all share mutually inter-operable interpretations, which does lead to conflict. Which is exacerbated by a lot of flat out incorrect documentation, so appeals to documentary authority often just increase the conflict. Avoiding the use of "references" (and using more specific terms) helps to reduce confusion and misunderstanding. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:53, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

"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)

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)

Semi-protected edit request on 19 September 2019

Please add to Section 6.2 Adaptation the following sentence

Important tools for adaptation to climate change are the so called "climate services" defined by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) as services "that provide climate information to help individuals and organizations in making climate smart decisions". (Source: Global Framework for Climate Services, https://gfcs.wmo.int/). In Europe a Copernicus Climate service was established in year 2017, funded by the European Commission and implemented by the Ecmwf (see https://climate.copernicus.eu/). Vic58 (talk) 14:40, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for your suggestion! Unfortunately, we cannot include this sentence as it is a) too technical b) it contains external links to pages outside Wikipedia and c) it gives undue weight to work done by EC and ECMWF. Femke Nijsse (talk) 14:49, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Could you please help in modifying my request? Indeed as a climate researcher yourself you agree that wp readers should be informed about climate services? They are not mentioned anywhere in wp..

I'm a physical climate scientist myself, so have little knowledge about climate services. A climate service is simply information about climate tailored towards people that have to make decisions, right? My impression is that this topic would be better covered in the climate change adaptation article. That article is in a horrible state, so not the best example if you want to learn edit Wikipedia. That page is not protected, so please add a line about it there (without the links, use them as a reference instead, using the cite button). I'll check and improve the sentence so that it better fits into Wikipedia. Femke Nijsse (talk) 16:15, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

In addition to the points Femke mentions, there is a constant tendency towards bloating that needs to be resisted. There is MUCH more that could be said in connection with this topic than can be handled in any reasonably sized article. Another tendency to resist is getting too detailed in some peripheral aspect. Not everything related to a topic, even if it is interesting and has reliable sources, should be included, and it takes some discipline to keep an article focused on its topic. As Femke says, what you wish to add might be better at an article more directly focused on adaptation. What we have here on adaptation is necessarily just a review of some key points. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:09, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

On specifying "In" for the containing work

Femeke: Regarding the prefatory "In" for the work that contains the cited source: this is supposed to be automatically supplied by the cite template. That this is not done in our usage is a deficiency of the software, which I am hoping will be corrected in the not too distant future. If we supply the omitted "In" now we will have to come back and remove it later. I think it would be better (less jarring?) to tolerate the lack of "In" now than have to fix doubled instances later. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:48, 20 September 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)

Captions

@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)

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)

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)

Removal of useful polling information

This information was obviously useful. User:Femkemilene, could you please add it back somewhere in the article, since it demonstrates the variation of concern of different parts of the world? --Comment by Selfie City (talk about my contributions) 11:44, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

It's already in the article :). There is an entire (bloated) paragraph on different polling questions. See Global warming#Society and culture#Public opinion and disputes. Femke Nijsse (talk) 12:15, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

OK. Thanks for pointing that out. The problem is that the information is somewhat overlapping between the information to which you link, and this part of the lede's content. Maybe the word "globally" can be removed from the sentence, "Globally, a majority of people consider global warming a serious or very serious issue," as it does not really serve much purpose and, if anything, actually confuses the information explained in the poll? --Comment by Selfie City (talk about my contributions) 12:24, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

I think it might actually be more confusing if that word is cut out. In every country a majority (of varying size) is concerned. If you leave out the world globally, people will be wondering about who we're talking here. Femke Nijsse (talk) 21:53, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

I'm about to take a small whack at that bloated paragraph. But the whole section ("Public opinion") is poorly done, and needs a complete re-do. Perhaps a consideration of what it contributes to the article.

Selfie City: please understand that the lead ("lede") paragraph is supposed to be a succinct summarization, or even a preview, of the article, and merely "useful" is not a sufficient criterion for inclusion. Of course, having said that, yes, we do need to do some serious trimming and summarizing. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:31, 21 September 2019 (UTC)