Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Climate change/Archive 8

Archive 5

Archive 6

Archive 7

Archive 8

Archive 9

Thoughts on the importance of this work

Hello Wikipedians! It's five in the morning here and I've been lying awake for an hour or so with a lot of things running around inside my head. I decided I should get up and write some of them down as a way to purge them. This is a long one, sorry, but I hope it's worth the read.

First and foremost, here's a shout out to all of you great people for your continuing hard work on this project. Every day that goes by brings more and more evidence that this is a critical issue, probably the most important issue that mankind will face this century, so don't underestimate the importance of your work, and keep pushing. Unfortunately I'm not in a position to engage with Wikipedia more often, or I would be helping more.

Let's review the current climate situation.

We're coming to the end of the hottest northern hemisphere season in human history, with over 2,300 new temperature records set, with wildfires having devastated vast areas, and extreme weather events all over the globe. And yet it's not over. There are still heatwaves and wildfires burning the north, while at the same time there are high spring temperatures already causing deep concern in Australia.

Between June and September, these are just a few events which made news:

- Canada lost almost 18 million hectares to wildfires, seven times the yearly average. These fires turned the Canadian forests from a carbon sink into a net carbon super-emitter.

- Haiti lost 10,000 homes to flooding.

- 97% of Iran was subject to severe drought.

- A single supercell storm brought hailstones the size of cannonballs to Slovenia and Croatia, destroying crops and homes. In a separate event, a month's worth of rain fell in 24 hours in Slovenia.

- There was flash flooding in Serbia and Romania.

- Cyclone Biparjoy became the longest-lasting cyclone on record, destroying 18,000 homes in Pakistan, which during the same period also suffered at least 76 deaths from lashing monsoon rains.

- Beijing was forced to turn air raid shelters into heat refuges and suspend work after 9 straight days of 35C+ temperatures. The city also suffered its most intense downpour in history which resulted in nearly 50 deaths. China's all-time heat record was smashed by nearly 2 degrees when 52.2C was recorded in Sanbao, Xinjiang. Large areas of northern China received a year's rainfall in one week; economic damage is estimated at $2bn. A week later, two consecutive typhoons caused a mudslide in Xi'an and the resulting evacuation of 17,000 people. The most intense downpour in 140 years resulted as Typhoon Haikui swept across southern China.

- Death Valley recorded 48.9C - at midnight - a new global midnight temperature record.

- Temperatures of 42C in Mexico resulted in 167 deaths.

- 18,000 people were left homeless after severe flooding in Cape Town, and heavy rains followed by a tornado devastated KwaZulu, Natal, both in South Africa.

- Floods and landslides hit Kyushu, Japan.

- A road worker collapsed and died in Italy during 40C+ temperatures in Europe's Cerberus heatwave, just one of a number of deaths across Europe. Italy had to institute covid-style hospital protocols to deal with heat-related cases. Rome set a new record of 41.8C, and Sardinia reached 45C. An airliner was forced to make an emergency landing in Rome after hailstone damage from a supercell storm.

- Europe's heatwave cost the UK an estimated 0.6% of GDP.

- 45C+ temperatures in Spain scorched crops and created a crisis in the olive industry, while rice production across Asia and soy production in the Americas are threatened by extreme heat.

- Greece reached a record 46.4C in the longest and most intense heatwave recorded, and Athens had to close the Acropolis during the middle of the day. Wildfires devastated Rhodes and resulted in the biggest wildfire evacuation in history.

- The Andes set a new record temperature of 37C.

- In the US, the deadliest wildfire in US history destroyed much of Maui, Hawaii. Morgues in Maricopa Co, Arizona, ran out of space for bodies during a record heatwave, and Phoenix recorded temperatures over 43C for 31 straight days. Nevada's daily rainfall record was doubled during tropical storm Hilary, which also set records in Idaho, Montana and Oregon. New York City was hit last week by flash floods.

- Central Asia was hit by the worst rainfall on record in Tajikistan, and an unusually severe monsoon in Nepal, both resulting in floods, landslides and mudflows.

- Brazil was hit by an extratropical cyclone causing the worst ever death toll in the south, and the loss of 1,600 homes.

- The world's deadliest weather event this year hit Libya when Storm Daniel brought 200 times as much rain as usually falls in the entire month of September. The flooding rains caused dam collapses and over 11,300 deaths.

- Antarctica lost over 1 million sq km of sea ice, an area the size of Texas, and is a new record low for the second year running. This is especially worrying because the sea ice acts as a buffer between the abnormally warm seas surrounding the continent, and the ice on land. This threatens the stability of the entire ice sheet. If it collapses, it would cause a sea level rise measured in metres, potentially almost overnight. Every coastal city and coastal inhabited region on the planet would be under threat.

2023 is now almost certainly the hottest year on record, and there's a severe El Niño event building in the Pacific which is likely to result in even more severe weather and higher global temperatures in 2024. The average global temperature for this year is currently 1.4C. A study published this week has shown that we have until 2025 to bring global emissions under control if we are to meet the goal of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. The chances of us reaching that goal are currently almost zero unless there is a massive paradigm shift in society.

A study published recently has estimated that global emissions will result in the deaths of one billion people by the end of the century, largely poor people dying as the result of the actions (or inaction) of largely wealthy people. This is a conservative estimate; the 1000 ton rule (1000 tons of current emissions equals one future death) on which it is based could be too low by a factor of 10.

A UNICEF report published yesterday estimates that 43 million children have been displaced in the past six years due to the climate crisis. Current best estimates are between 60 and 100 million climate refugees set adrift around the world. Those numbers are going to increase drastically by mid century, when large, currently inhabited areas of Earth will become unsurvivable for human beings. Let's be absolutely clear about this: we as a species have evolved on Earth and we are well suited to its conditions. We're resilient, resourceful and adaptable. But we have now so severely compromised our environment that in the next 25 years large areas of it are going to become lethal to us.

These effects are all unstoppable in the current paradigm and will continue to worsen over the next century, even if we were to completely divest from hydrocarbons today. There are too many GHGs in the atmosphere, too many feedback mechanisms which have begun to accelerate the problem, and too many unknown carbon sinks which we have discovered just in time to watch helplessly as they begin to collapse. The only chance of getting this back under control is a massive program of divestment as well as the implementation of global carbon sequestering. We have no viable large-scale technologies available for the job, and no political will to use natural techniques such as forestation.

And yet global GHG emissions are continuing to rise, and worse, they're continuing to do so at an increasing rate.

COP 28 is scheduled for next month, but in a move that beggars belief, it's taking place in the UAE - one of the world's biggest oil producers - and is being hosted by a top oil executive. At best, that severely compromises any agreements reached during the conference; at worst, it means the world spends yet another year merely paying lip service to efforts to control the climate crisis.

I'd like to encourage all of you to sign up on phys.org for their customisable weekly newsletter, which always contains articles relating to the current best scientific understanding of the climate crisis. For current news on the topic, I can recommend The Guardian's Down to Earth newsletter. The Guardian was at the forefront of the media push to start calling global warming what it is: a climate crisis; and they deal openly, honestly and forthrightly with the situation. And for those of you who have been editing on Wikipedia long enough and often enough to have earned access to the Library resources, please take some time to look through them and apply for access to applicable collections. The more information which can be made available to the general reader, the better.

Other than that, keep up the great work. You guys are awesome!

Cadar (talk) 06:22, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

Thank you. This is all so depressing!!! Coming back to the topic of Wikipedia editing (mindful of WP:NOTFORUM), how could we recruit more people to help with this effort? We need more people! How can it be that the largest encyclopedia has only about a handful (or perhaps a dozen) people who have time, energy and enthousiasm to improve climate change related content on Wikipedia.

Personally, I think funded projects are a useful piece of the puzzle (this is my current one), so I am always on the look-out for potential philanthropic funding for this (always keeping any potential WP:COI issues in mind). Any suggestions for funders?

Just relying on conventional volunteers for this won't be sufficient. Typically, they rather edit on trivia, movies, movie stars and so forth. And I don't think students editing as part of their course work is "the solution" either. In 8 times out of 10 their edits are not overly useful, is my experience (and their university professors don't curate or "mop up" their edits either). And they never seem to stick around after their courses are finished. EMsmile (talk) 08:07, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

Recruitment is an interesting question, and thanks for the gentle butt-kick to remind me of the rules ;)

I must be honest, I don't have any real answers off-hand. I think a big part of the problem is finding the unique subset of the sets (and subsets) of:

- people who use, value and care about Wikipedia regularly - people who don't care won't get involved, simple as that, neither will anyone who never uses the site;

- people who can write and edit reasonably well - unfortunately, enthusiasm for the job doesn't make up for inability to use the language at a competent level, and I write as someone with professional experience of that;

- people who notice and care enough to engage where there's work to be done, be they minor polishing edits or jumping in at the deep end with writing new articles and so forth;

- people who are prepared to get on board and stay committed, despite whatever problems doing so may entail.

Unfortunately, I'm a member of all but the last subset, which is why my role here has been cheering from the sidelines rather than getting my hands dirty. It occurs to me that there may be some answers around the web, and even - and I realise this is a wild thought, but bear with me here ;) - on Wikipedia. I'll spend some time looking around, and let you know if I can come up with anything. But off the top of my head, what's the feasibility of diverting a small part of the funds Wikipedia receives into a targetted campaign to recruit new editors? And what possibilities would there be for incentivisation? ("incentivisation"? Is there such a word? My browser spelling add-on doesn't seem to think so. Duly coined.)

Rationalisations for the above would be that targetted recruitment drives - tertiary education would be an obvious target, and with the involvement of the institutions, likely to yield dividends - are far better uses of advertising budgets than random ads. Especially if credits (spitballing here) could be offered for students in return, provided they can be induced to engage in a way that actually helps over the long term. As a ferinstance, Facebook advertising, while costly, can be targetted to the level of individual suburbs, and by interest, etc, and the budget is tailored to suit your available funds. The results have a better cost per impression return than you might expect. I'm not suggesting an FB campaign, but it shows what can be done.

And as an aside, is there an official Wikipedia presence on any social media? It never occurred to me to look when I was still on Facebook, and I closed my account some years back. I find it hard to believe there isn't, since that would be a great way to connect with users, recruit editors and as an informal (non work-place!) point of contact between editors. Cadar (talk) 07:37, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

In response to your question about potential funders, I might have a potential answer. At least it's well worth the attempt, because I know it would reach sympathetic ears: Leonardo DiCaprio. Yes, that Leonardo DiCaprio. He is passionate about the environment, knowledgeable and deeply concerned about the climate crisis, and has sunk a great deal of his own money into various initiatives in the past. He's also started at least one foundation which I recently heard joined forces with another. I can't remember details, but there was an article in yesterday's Guardian ...

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/oct/06/leonardo-dicaprio-activism-climate-change-indigenous-people-martin-scorsese Cadar (talk) 07:52, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

And it occurs to me that if you want to create a campaign for recruiting people, who better to publicise it than an A-list film star? If he can be persuaded to help, of course.

Hope that helps ;) Cadar (talk) 07:54, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

An alternative to get more people personally involved:

Let many people describe local, effects of climate change.

• Will a rising sea level submerge my home, my street, my town?
• Will my area suffer heatwaves, droughts, floods, huricanes?
• Will my country be able to grow enough food?
• Which parts of my continent will become uninhabitable?

Extend the list of climate changes per country.

Describe effects of climate change for the largest cities. Uwappa (talk) 07:54, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

That's a great idea and an interesting approach to making climate change more relevant to ordinary people. My only hesitation is that it doesn't address the fundamental issue of finding the people who are personally impacted by climate change, which would itself need some kind of recruitment or publicity campaign. Finding those people and getting their input would be a necessary first step towards creating a pool of them from whom we might be able to find and recruit new, committed editors.

Does that make sense? Cadar (talk) 18:14, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

Yes, you get the idea: Make it personal, close to home. See the idea working in the history of 2023_heat_waves: many new IP editors have contributed already. Setting up more structures that allow easy addition of local, recent events is a working recruitment campaign. Hey, why is this recent event in my area missing? Let me add it! Uwappa (talk) 09:15, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

I get that, and absolutely agree with you in principle. However, I keep running up against the same fundamental problem that this part of the discussion is addressing: how are we supposed to find the people who have been affected by climate change so that we can recruit them? Without some kind of campaign, as far as I can see, we can't. So we're basically back where we started. Cadar (talk) 17:16, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

This conversation reminds me of my attempts to add year 2050 climatic projections for individual cities start of the year: an effort I had to pause after opposition over verifiability concerns. You can see the archived discussion on FTN.

Effectively, since 2019, we have had this invaluable tool which lists hundreds of cities around the world and tells us how much hotter they will get in 30 years, based on this paper. The really neat thing is that it doesn't just list the change purely in terms of degrees (sometimes +6 or so degrees for the warmest/coldest month) but it also compares the city's future climate with another city's current climate, which is what makes it really useful. Things like Milan becoming more like Dallas, or Hyderabad more like Bamako (the capital of Mali). Unfortunately, the tool also appeared to have some code errors when giving data for certain cities. I suggested contacting the scientist behind the project, but then the whole thing lost traction.

Perhaps @EMsmile, who already has experience in contacting content experts, can now try it? (See the FTN discussion for details.) If we can get that issue addressed, and persuade the inevitable opposition to make a fairly widespread change, then the upside from listing this information across hundreds of highly-viewed articles would be enormous. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 15:08, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

And in general, we really do need to work on making sure the information we gather is no longer secluded away within the project's pages, but is instead as omnipresent as our subject matter unfortunately happens to be. For instance, I created a detailed article effects of climate change on livestock - first to reuse content from a poorly-scoped article, but then because I realized that a lot of people only seem to think about the matter as "crazy greens wanting to take away our cows", and so listing the already-documented and reliably-projected impacts on animal welfare and even economics is a way of breaking through to those otherwise uninterested in the subject. Since then, I went on to add the information from that article to all the important related pages - livestock itself, cattle, horse, chicken, pig, broiler, etc.

Ideally, we should add similar subsections to every crop. Every animal/plant species. Every disease/parasite/etc. whose prevalence is expected to change. Every country. Every geographic region. If a public figure is known to have said something remarkable on the subject (or done, if they are in a position of power), it should always be present on their pages. Etc. Hopefully, this is an easier task than reworking the project's core articles, and can be done by less-experienced participants as well. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 15:22, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

I enthusiastically jumped into editing in this arena and this project and soon got the sense that it was being handled remarkably well, and that most of the hard work was done. There seemed to be nothing left to do, at least on the highly visible articles. But of course, that can't be true, right? Is the problem that the group of editors are simply overworked and need people to "sub in"? Is it that the hundreds of less visible articles are being ignored? What can I do? Pyrrho the Skipper (talk) 14:29, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for asking Pyrrho! There's tons to do, even on the highly-visible articles, and we'd love your help. I have to-do lists in my head for Carbon dioxide removal, Net zero emissions, and Environmental impact of aviation, to integrate info from IPCC, IEA, and UN, Royal Society reports. Would you be interested in any of these? Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 19:13, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks @Clayoquot absolutely I would. I am not a scientist, though, just an editor. I can certainly learn and apply common sense.

As a complete aside, I'm wondering if any of the major environmental orgs ever promote calls for Wikipedia volunteering, or offer training. Maybe they should could be contacted to drive recruits somehow.Pyrrho the Skipper (talk) 21:42, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

Lovely! Pyrrho the Skipper I'll start a section below to elaborate on suggestions for improving articles. It might take me a day or two to pull sources together. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 20:20, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

Actually on second thought I'll post on your user talk page, as this page is pretty busy right now. See ya there. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 21:27, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any, although that's hardly definitive. But I suspect an organised campaign of approaching any and all environmental stakeholder organisations and foundations might well yield dividends. It does at least have the virtue of finding enthusiastic people who have some understanding of the importance of the situation but might just need some guidance to find a niche they fit on Wikipedia.

On the other hand, as mentioned in other parts of the discussion, finding new people can create a blitz or edit-a-thon, and then the people who get involved in that largely fall away. So in essence, some work would be achieved, but the die-hards plus a few newbies would be left tidying up the mess after the party and then it would be back to business as usual. Cadar (talk) 17:32, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

Those are good points, and it's tricky when we're talking about one nonprofit (Wikipedia) recruiting from another nonprofit who may want to prioritize their resources elsewhere. There are some orgs that deal specifically with public perception of climate change, though. It just seems to me that there are a lot of people out there who would love being a part of this and may just need a nudge. Many people are understandably timid when it comes to editing Wikipedia. Pyrrho the Skipper (talk) 17:58, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

You're welcome to also take a look at our project and participate there. We have set up a list of climate change articles that we think need attention (currently 135 articles), see here. We have also set up a quality scoring system where we score the quality using 6 parameters, see here. This includes things like reading ease / readability (very important), comprehensiveness, images and so forth. See here our current scoring system. In a nutshell, for the main text we use these six quality parameters (M is machine assessment, E is expert assessment):

• M1 - Reading ease score (determined with Web-FX)
• E1 – Comprehensiveness and factual accuracy and due weight for topics (no copyright infrinfements)
• E2 – References & Verifiability: quality of references and being up to date and formatted consistently
• E3 – Images and other media (quality and quantity)
• E4 - Formatting and adherences to style guide and logical structure (not too many quotes, not written like a literature review)
• E5 – Appropriate level of focus compared to sub-articles, correct length, interlinking with sub-articles

We also analyse the lead separately and use these four parameters:

• L-M1 - Reading ease score (determined with Web-FX)
• L-M2 - Length
• L-E1 - Quality of summary
• L-E2 - Images

My experience overall is that there are only very few articles that are rather good and can be left alone for now (one of them being climate change; sustainable energy is another one; NB they are both featured articles). But there are loads and loads of climate change sub-articles needing attention. One thing is of course to add new content, e.g. from the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report but that's not so easy (e.g. the paraphrasing is not easy). An easier, lower hanging fruit, for people who are more editors than experts is to improve the readability of the articles and to improve the leads (make them into a good summary of the article, about 500 words long).

So the "to-dos" are rather clear in my mind and quite well documented, I would say. We just need the enthousiastic people who can do it and can spare a bit of their time! Existing Wikipedia editors would be great. In comparison, training up new ones (like students or activists) is also good but from my experience it is very time consuming and only very few stick around after the event, e.g. after an edit-a-thon. - And yes to reaching out to any organisations who you think could help in any shape or form. (feel free to reach out to me separately via the Wikipedia e-mail function if you want me to share with you some of the standard e-mails that we have tried so far with organisations and content experts). EMsmile (talk) 07:19, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

@EMsmile I appreciate the guidance here. Looks like there is plenty of work to do, indeed. I'll take a look at what you shared. Pyrrho the Skipper (talk) 15:07, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

• I would support a group in seeking money to develop climate change content in Wikimedia projects. I have been a Wikimedian in Residence for years on sponsored projects. Others doing this are at meta:Wikimedian in Residence Exchange Network. There are precedents to accessing money. Money has a place in Wikimedia content development. Although the Wikimedia development of climate change content to date is commendable, it is not nearly fast or broad enough to meet the need and demand. In my view, incorporating sponsored interventions is the best and easiest way forward. My recommendation for advancement is 1) apply for Wikimedia Foundation grants and use that money to establish minimal viability to apply for non-Wikimedia Foundation grants then 2) apply for non-Wikimedia Foundation grants. Just in general, external organizations will pay for content development but not "Wikimedia stuff", so WMF grants are ideal for filling in the administrative gaps for what off-wiki sponsors will not do. The easiest pathway to accessing both Wikimedia Foundation and non-Wikimedia Foundation funding is through organizations, and meta:Wikimedia movement affiliates are the model for this. If anyone wants to talk about this by voice or video then I am available. Bluerasberry (talk) 15:28, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

It appears that the tables used for the project haven't been updated in over year? (That is, since June/August 2022?) When is the update scheduled? (One is scheduled, right?) Lots of editing had occurred since then, and I would be really interested in a more current version of that table. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 14:12, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

I'm wary of inviting "outsiders"—especially those "who have been affected by climate change", and especially for pay. Such recruiting risks being seen as recruiting for a cause, similar to WP:CANVASSing, and fomenting violations of WP:NEUTRAL and WP:BALANCE. These concerns are in addition to the non-trivial learning curve for policies and guidelines on how to edit on this website. —RCraig09 (talk) 17:59, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

@RCraig09: You should be wary of paid outsiders. Nevertheless, if we continue doing what we have been doing without big changes, I see no hope whatsoever of organizing enough labor to sufficiently provide access to essential climate change information. From what I observe, Wikipedia is the world's most requested, published, accessed, and consulted source of information on climate change. Wikipedia is particularly influential to journalists, policy makers, legal professionals, and government officials, based on how often we see Wikipedia content reused in their published works.

I do not want to compromise Wikipedia's integrity either. Normally we say Wikipedia:There is no deadline. However in the case of climate change, there seems to be some urgency. The good news is that I am confident that with the pace of technological development and access to artificial intelligence, even if we take no additional action, then all Wikipedia climate change articles will be in great shape in all languages after the temperature rises globally about 2.5 degrees. Bluerasberry (talk) 20:59, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

Delete the Climate change in Ethiopia article?

I am pondering if I should nominate the article Climate change in Ethiopia for deletion through WP:AFD. I have never done this before so I wanted to check in with you first. The article was created a year ago by a user who has since been blocked: User:The Supermind. I see loads of flaws in the article and feel I can't really trust any of the content there. However, an article on Climate change in Ethiopia would in principle be WP:notable of course but I suspect we would have to apply WP:TNT here. So we might be better off having no article on Ethiopia rather than such a bad one? Or we shrink it down to the bare minimum for now until someone has time to work on it? We do have a range of "climate change in country X" articles and they are useful (albeit have low pageviews generally): . We also have a nice standard layout for them so if someone has time, they could easily build this up. Great job for students, for example. The standard layout is here. - NB, the main country article Ethiopia does link to the Climate change in Ethiopia article, so it would be nice to get it right. EMsmile (talk) 11:31, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

The chance of that article getting deleted in AfD is low, TNT is a hard case to make. If there is a TNT issue, you're much better off boldly redirecting it to an appropriate place. If you have more time, shrinking it by removing the problematic content would likely be preferable. CMD (talk) 11:55, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for your reaction. I think I'll then go down the route of removing problematic content (which is a lot of it, e.g. making it sound like every drought that's ever happened in Ethiopia is due to climate change...). If anyone has time to help with this effort, please jump right in. EMsmile (talk) 07:29, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Update Scientific consensus on climate change with IPCC AR6.

The Scientific consensus on climate change article is stuck in 2014 with IPCC AR5. AR6 was finished in March, with the synthesis report. IPCC synthesis report is prominently featured in this article. It could use a section summarizing AR6, then it could lose the two very similar summaries for AR5 and AR4. -- M.boli (talk) 11:53, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

Hi User:M.boli thanks for bringing this to our attention. That article has surprisingly high pageviews (see here), around 500 per day. I would find it hard to get motivated to work on it (the topic seems extremely broad) but given the high pageviews it probably should be tackled. I wouldn't really know where to start though. I mean the entire IPCC Sixth Assessment Report is describing the scientific consensus. The short description of the Wikipedia article says "Evaluation of climate change by the scientific community". The article was mainly worked on in 2007 and 2008 (see here). Do we actually still need it now? Do we need to change its scope? Updating it would be a mammoth task. But given the high pageviews something should be done with it. EMsmile (talk) 07:27, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps it should be reworked to become an article on history of scientific consensus on climate change; more for archiving purposes. Or maybe merged with History of climate change science (that one gets about 360 pageviews per day). That one is 35 kB large. The one on scientific consensus is 23 kB. So a merger, with some culling & condensing, might work? EMsmile (talk) 08:09, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

The utility of the article is it documents what are the main points of scientific consensus and that there is a consensus. The utility isn't primarily history.

• The most important task is to update the bullet point list of consensus items and quotes right after the lede -- titled consensus points -- so that the consensus items and quotes come from AR6 instead of AR5.
• Next add AR6 to the synthesis reports section (immediately following above), replacing the outdated AR4 and AR5. I'm guessing that the new AR6 writeup can be similar to the current AR5, at this high level of description not much has changed in 10 years. But the editor has to find the right quotes and cites within AR6.

There are 1800 wiki-links to this article. Many come from institutions and personalities who aren't on board with the consensus. For examples see Fox News or former astronaut Harrison Schmitt. When the the subject of a Wikipedia article has a position related to climate change, either in agreement or at odds, we can insert a link go here to find out what the scientific community thinks. -- M.boli (talk) 15:24, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

Well when I see "scientific consensus" then I think "on what part exactly"? The fact that the Earth is warming? OK, that's easy. But what about all the other aspects of climate change, e.g. how fast the pH is dropping, how fast the sea level is rising, what's happening with cloud feedback, aerosols, how is bioenergy beneficial or not, what happens to trees when they grow and when they no longer grow, climate change mitigation routes etec. etc. So a title of Scientific consensus on climate change is extremely vague in my view. Maybe it should rather be Scientific consensus on the effect of human actions on GHGs in the atmosphere.

Also, is an article that is simply a collection of quotes from the AR6 report really all that useful? If it's not quotes then the sentences would have to be paraphrased which is also cumbersome.

As far as I can see there is no other Wikipedia article with a title of Scientific consensus on XXX. You could have Scientific consensus that smoking is bad for you, Scientific consensus that vaccines work etc. Rather pointless. EMsmile (talk) 15:49, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

Instead we have these articles which probably all overlap to some extent:

• Climate change denial
• Climate change conspiracy theory
• Global warming controversy
• Surveys of scientists' views on climate change
• Attribution of recent climate change
• History of climate change science
• History of climate change policy and politics
• Psychology of climate change denial.

Perhaps there is scope for merging some of them and therefore making it easier to keep all content up to date. EMsmile (talk) 15:49, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

At a glance, that seems like a lot of overlap. And even more things which we have to try sorting out, of course. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 14:14, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

As was noted, scientific consensus on climate change gets 500 views per day. Google-search that exact noun-phrase with quotes around it produces >300k results. It's a thing. It's a thing that people look up in Wikipedia. And there are 1800 internal wiki-links that point to it.

It is a matter of public interest. Also it is a thing which the climate deniers like to claim doesn't exist.

To serve the interested public, the lede and first sections of this article describe the main points of consensus, the evidence that it is a consensus, and where these main consensus points are gathered and published in several different synthesis reports.

My suggestion is that we update the article from IPCC AR5 to AR6. It isn't any more complicated than that. Of course the consensus points will overlap with the content of other articles of climate change science and history. Of course there are gobs of areas where consensus is less clear or does not exist. And yes, the article has accumulated historical cruft.

None of that changes the relevancy of this article or the desirability of keeping it up to date. AR5 was a decade ago. M.boli (talk) 14:52, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Totally agree. I've added it to the project task list here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Climate_change#Current_tasks_suggested_by_the_community . Could you please remove it after it gets done? Maybe TatjanaClimate would know someone interested in tackling this one. It's a good type of task for a new editor who knows the science.

As an aside, I wish we had much better tools for managing task suggestions in this Wikiproject to make it easier for people to find tasks that suit their areas of knowledge, Wikipedia skills, and interests. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 15:50, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

My concerns about the unclear scope of this article have still not been addressed. Main points of consensus on what exactly? That humans are responsible for this mess? Isn't that already the topic of Attribution of recent climate change? Couldn't we just place a redirect to there and merge, and be done with it? - Or alternatively we should change the article's title and scope to make it into something that is actually useful. If it's more about the process you could make it Processes for finding scientific consensus in climate change science. Is this what it's meant to be about? I really don't see how a collection of statements from the IPCC AR 6 report would be sensible for an encyclopedic article. EMsmile (talk) 18:33, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

I think that here, the issue is that "Attribution of" inherently sounds more vague and less certain than "consensus on". Worse, it is a much more "postgraduate" kind of word. I recall @Femke often making the point that once we manage to make our articles remotely reliable, there's the issue where their writing style becomes much less approachable. In that sense, merging "consensus" into "attribution" is likely to be a significant step backwards.

Moreover, attribution of recent climate change simply isn't particularly good, especially for a supposed B-class article. There are far too many paragraph-sized quotes from both the 15-year old AR4 and even from some 20-25 year old papers. The parts which aren't quotes seem to be primarily based on a paper from 2009. And after that, a seemingly disproportionate fraction of the article at the end is devoted to fringe denialism from 2000s with limited context.

Here, I think I would much rather prefer to begin by merging Surveys of scientists' views on climate change into Scientific consensus on climate change. They really make the same point, and the combined article would be just the right size at ~5800 words. Once that is done, and we have included the baseline AR6 quotes (and presumably minimized AR5 and AR4 proportionately to compensate: perhaps even including a little bit about the first three reports as well?), we would still have enough space to consider adding more interesting things about the current consensus than just the basic "it's happening".

It also seems like we would then have to work on updating attribution of recent climate change in a similar manner: while less visible than the consensus article, it is still positioned halfway through our top 1000 list, at ~100 daily pageviews. Updating that article would likely involve reorienting it to talk a lot more about the extreme event attribution. That is currently a separate article, but at mere 261 words, merging it is a no-brainer.

Then, there is Psychology of climate change denial: a fairly weird article, not least because a large bulk of it (i.e. virtually everything in "psychological barriers") doesn't actually talk about denial at all, but inaction from people who accept the reality but feel unable to do anything about it. Those things seem like they would be better off moved to Psychological impact of climate change or effects of climate change on mental health or something: considering that neither of those two articles ranks in the top 1000, it may not matter much until we figure out how to integrate them into the other articles better. The rest of the article would probably then end up small enough to be merged into Climate change conspiracy theory or something.

Then, this just leaves global warming controversy as what currently seems to be a bloated, poorly defined mess with far too many paragraphs on topics that are now of largely historical interest (i.e. its walls of text on the Kyoto Protocol.) Some of that may then even belong in History of climate change policy and politics: currently a rather small and Western-centered article.

All in all, this is even more work for us to do, but I guess we have to rise to the challenge. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 14:08, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

P.S. This is off-topic for this project, but considering some highly alarming post-pandemic trends, I am getting more and more convinced that something like scientific consensus on vaccines may actually not be such a bad idea? I wonder if splitting that off from vaccine hesitancy would work. Right now, that is perhaps the largest Wikipedia article I have ever seen, at nearly 15k words, many of which are reasonably written, but just do not seem to belong in the same article. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 14:15, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for your thorough, excellent analysis if this range of closely related Wikipedia articles! I think I agree with pretty much everything you said. I hadn't thought of it before but it's true that "attribution of" is difficult for laypersons to understand but I have no idea how to say it differently. In general, I think merging of articles is often a good idea in the climate change sphere as it'll be easier to keep fewer articles to the point and updated, than a large sprawling mess of articles that are fast becoming outdated...

Regarding the vaccine aspect, I feel sorry for any brave Wikipedian venturing into that topic. It must have been an absolute mine field during the peak of the Covid vaccination debates! Maybe suggest your idea at WP:WikiProject Medicine or at the vaccine hesitancy article. By the way, I usually express article size in kB. There is a plug in you can install to easily get the size in kB displayed at the top. For that article it's "Prose size (text only): 94 kB (14475 words) "readable prose size"". Just saying in case you (or others who read this) don't have that installed yet. EMsmile (talk) 21:02, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

To address EMsmile's question on what the scope of Scientific consensus on climate change should be, all the other aspects of climate change you mention should be left out of it. If you do a Google or Google Scholar search for "the scientific consensus on" you'll see that the term "the scientific consensus on climate change" is used in many contexts with narrow meanings. The term is not used to encompass everything climate-related that scientists have consensus on. E.g. there is consensus among basically everyone that the price of solar energy has gone down in the past 10 years, but the price of solar has is not part of the scientific consensus on climate change. Another interesting finding from Google searches is that "the scientific consensus on" is a phrase used primarily for climate.

I like the suggestion above to merge Surveys of scientists' views on climate change into Scientific consensus on climate change. Attribution of recent climate change does not feel like a coherent topic to me. I would suggest finding other homes for anything good and unique in this article and then redirecting it to Extreme event attribution. @InformationToKnowledge, I haven't had time to look into your other suggestions, but thank you for this very thorough analysis. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 01:11, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Well, attribution of recent climate change is currently linked to from the top-level climate change article itself, so this is something to be considered. Ironically, though, it seems like some parts of it have been made obsolete by the top-level article itself (i.e. "Key attributions" doesn't seem to say anything which "Attribution of recent temperature rise" doesn't already say, and the latter is far better maintained) and others seem to overlap with either the scientific consensus article, or the Instrumental temperature record and Temperature record of the last 2,000 years articles? (i.e. everything in "Attribution of 20th-century climate change" outside of extreme weather events seems to belong in one of those two.)

I think the initial goal of the attribution article was to explain the mechanics of climate change and the evidence behind them in greater depth than what the top-level article could allow, but it now seems like this is done far more effectively over at greenhouse effect? Further, I have just discovered that we have an article named illustrative model of greenhouse effect on climate change. As you might have expected, it receives almost no views, and is rather badly written in general, with a lot of formulas, but few references or content that is both unique and useful. Seems like another article which should be removed in one way or another ASAP. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 12:21, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

Oh wow, never seen that article before (even though I did some work on greenhouse effect). Pinging User:Dan Gluck who wrote most of illustrative model of greenhouse effect on climate change. EMsmile (talk) 12:46, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

My original point remains: the Consensus article should be updated to reflect AR6. And some of the historical cruft can be cleaned out. I think the organization of the article is pretty good. -- M.boli (talk) 13:43, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

IEA's World Energy Outlook 2023 published today. A lot of important information included.

It can be found here: https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-outlook-2023

We can probably use it to update a lot of articles in the scope of the project. {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 14:23, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Picture of the day - 3 November 2023

FYI: Wikipedia's front-page Picture of the day shows the warming stripes developed by Professor Ed Hawkins (climatologist). —RCraig09 (talk) 16:17, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

That's really good! How did it get there? I couldn't find the talk page or nomination page that probably exists in the background somewhere, and where the picture of the day gets proposed and then confirmed. Who pushed for it, was it you? If so, well done! EMsmile (talk) 22:15, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

I learned about the feature from User:Amakuru's 27 October post at Talk:Warming stripes. The history is at Template:POTD/2023-11-03. —RCraig09 (talk) 06:09, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Do we really need the "climate change and society" sidebar everywhere?

Hi User:CommonKnowledgeCreator, I noticed that you have been adding the "climate change and society" sidebar to a large number of climate change articles. I am not really sure if this is useful. My questions to you (and inviting comments by all):

1. What's your plan with this? Are you adding the sidebar to each and every article that is mentioned in the sidebar itself? Shouldn't it be more selective, i.e. only add them to articles that really deal with "society" issues?
2. And does the sidebar always have to be in the lead? Personally, I would prefer it below the lead, not in the lead. When there is more than one sidebar, those sidebar boxes crowd out the available space and mean that any images are located further down below.
3. I see here that you've recently made that sidebar much more comprehensive than it was before. I am confused what the purpose of such a big sidebar is in the end. Isn't it the same as the nav box at the bottom of the article? The only difference is that it appears on the side towards the top and not at the bottom of the article? Please note a previous discussion about this here and here. In one of the discussions User:Arcahaeoindris said "I was intending for this to be a truncated navbox for only the core topics. Kind of like how there are dual navboxes and sidebars for a lot of major topics". As a truncated version it might work but as a "full" sidebar, it becomes like the nav box, just in a different location? EMsmile (talk) 07:56, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Yeah I'm really not a fan of this either. It really makes the articles a lot harder on the eyes and the position you're putting it in really doesn't work, graphic design-wise --Licks-rocks (talk) 08:03, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Hello EMsmile.

1. What's your plan with this? I don't have a plan for this, and I am not currently planning on adding any more links to the template. Initially, I was just adding links to articles whose subjects appear to be topics related to the subject of the template. Are you adding the sidebar to each and every article that is mentioned in the sidebar itself? Per WP:NAV, WP:NAVBOX, and WP:SIDEBAR, navigation templates are intended to aid readers navigating the articles in the template so it is unclear to me why any navigation template would not be added to every article to which it is linked. Shouldn't it be more selective, i.e. only add them to articles that really deal with "society" issues? How climate change interacts with society is distinct from the atmospheric physics and chemistry of the mechanics of climate change and the life and earth science of its impacts on natural ecosystems and other species. However, climate change mitigation and adaptation, as well as the attribution of recent climate change for that matter, are all inherently related to how climate change interacts with society because mitigation and adaptation efforts are about how societies are attempting to address climate change and its impacts, and the main driver of recent climate change are the greenhouse gas emissions of human societies. Per WP:NAVBOX and WP:SIDEBAR Criteria 1 for good navigation templates, I'd argue that the Climate change and society sidebar does have a coherent and distinct subject that sets it apart from other topics related to climate change, but perhaps "Climate change and society" is too broad of a scope for a sidebar since there are so many articles related to it. Per WP:NAVBOX and WP:SIDEBAR Criteria 4 for good navigation templates, I'd note that there is no Wikipedia article on "Climate change and society".
2. ... does the sidebar always have to be in the lead? The sidebar does not always need to be in the lede. I only put sidebars there so they are in a prominent position to facilitate navigation, but I do try to avoid placing them before photos to not screw up navigation pop-ups. @Licks-rocks: Apologies. I'm not familiar with the principles of a graphic design. I'm a reader and writer rather than a "visual person". :)
3. I am confused what the purpose of such a big sidebar is in the end. Isn't it the same as the nav box at the bottom of the article? The only difference is that it appears on the side towards the top and not at the bottom of the article? ... As a truncated version it might work but as a "full" sidebar, it becomes like the nav box, just in a different location? Reviewed the previous discussions; WP:NAV, WP:NAVBOX, and WP:SIDEBAR guidelines don't appear to suggest that there is a difference between the scope of navboxes and sidebars (although I only skimmed the policies so if there is a distinction stated, please reiterate it here), but I don't disagree with the argument that sidebars in general should have a more limited scope than navboxes because otherwise there'd be no MoS distinction for when each should be used, and since sidebars take up space that is supposed to be reserved for the text and images in the article.

-- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 16:31, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

For now, I have only seen it on a couple of articles I'm actively working on, such as effects of climate change on agriculture, and there, I do appreciate its placement, where it complements the image collage really well. I am not sure if its placement is as suitable on every article as it has been there, but if it is, I would have no issue with its presence.

If I do have an issue, it's that the sidebar might be a little too unselective. There are some articles which appear to have been excluded from the navbox, yet were added to this sidebar. In some cases, those exclusions appear to have been deliberate decisions to avoid giving undue exposure to content the project is not sure about. That was no substitute to actually resolving the issue one way or the other, of course, but with this project understaffed as always, prioritization had to happen. I have already pinged you about one notable example, that of the "climate apocalypse" article, and I can already see others in a similar position. (i.e. Waterborne disease and climate change.) On the bright side, this navbox does force us to reckon with just how many sub-articles there are by now, and how many might need to be merged or otherwise made more manageable with our limited efforts. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 16:55, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

I also wanted to point out with regards to mitigation and adaptation topics, I disagree with "ballooning out" this sidebar to include all climate change topics. It's called "climate change and society" for a reason. We already have a separate sidebar called "climate change mitigation". Can we please be more selective with these sidebars? This is the existing template for mitigation, see on the right:

Also, as far as I can see, neither the sidebars nor the navboxes are visible on mobile devices. So I wonder if over time they will become less and less important, and become a waste of time, if we assume that more and more people will use mobile devices to read Wikipedia articles? We have already so many ways for readers to find related articles, mainly through the wikilinks and also "see also". Personally, I don't think a sidebar is needed in addition to that (but I get that different editors will have different preferences on that). In any case, I think they should be used sparingly and not usually at the top of the article, i.e. not in a prominent position. (has there been any research to show how much these sidebars actually get clicked on by our readers? Are they worth our time to discuss and refine them?)

With "to be used sparingly" I mean the following: as an example I think that the article desertification should not have a sidebar on climate change as climate change is not the main cause of desertification, just one of several. EMsmile (talk) 21:06, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

I also wanted to point out with regards to mitigation and adaptation topics, I disagree with "ballooning out" this sidebar to include all climate change topics. It's called "climate change and society" for a reason. We already have a separate sidebar called "climate change mitigation". I noted in my previous comment the issues with the Climate change and society template. Its scope is so broad that it effectively encompasses most Wikipedia articles about climate change (which would effectively make the Climate change mitigation template duplicative), and there is no "Climate change and society" Wikipedia article. These aspects of the template do not conform to WP:NAVBOX and WP:SIDEBAR Criteria 1 and 4 for good navigation templates. If by "selective" you mean the scope of the templates should be narrowed, then I agree for the Climate change and society template but disagree for the Climate change mitigation template. I would only really be willing to retain the Climate change mitigation template if it was moved and its scope was broadened to Climate change adaptation and mitigation, while the Climate change and society template was moved and its scope narrowed to Socioeconomic impacts and politics of climate change. I would also argue for moving and narrowing the scope of the Climate change sidebar to Climate change causes and environmental impacts.

Also, as far as I can see, neither the sidebars nor the navboxes are visible on mobile devices. So I wonder if over time they will become less and less important, and become a waste of time, if we assume that more and more people will use mobile devices to read Wikipedia articles? We have already so many ways for readers to find related articles, mainly through the wikilinks and also "see also". Personally, I don't think a sidebar is needed in addition to that (but I get that different editors will have different preferences on that). WP:NAVBOX and WP:SIDEBAR note that such navigation templates are not visible on the mobile view, but do list six other advantages over categories and lists including:

• 2. Faster to navigate than a category.
• 5. They provide an organized resource for readers who went through an article in some broad topic to find other articles on the same broad topic, rather than making those readers "go fish" for articles wiki-linked in the text or in the 'See also' section.
• 6. Mitigates large "See also" sections, potentially duplicated and out-of-sync among related articles.

I don't know that more readers read Wikipedia articles on the mobile app than on desktops, but by linking Wikipedia articles to each other through navigation templates it probably helps elevate them in the Google Search PageRank algorithm for relevance (which I wouldn't be surprised is probably how most people access the site rather than through the app or by bookmarking the home page). However, I can tell you that the mobile app is not particularly useful for editing, and as InformationToKnowledge commented before: On the bright side, this navbox does force us to reckon with just how many sub-articles there are by now, and how many might need to be merged or otherwise made more manageable with our limited efforts. In my experience, articles with maintenance or content issues do not typically get the attention from editors who have the knowledge to fix them unless they are included in navigation templates. When articles are only located on categories and lists, they tend to get forgotten about.

@InformationToKnowledge: Apologies for any stress I may have caused with the Climate apocalypse article inclusion in the template that led you to create the Climate change and civilizational collapse article. As I've said, articles with problematic content don't get attention otherwise. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 23:11, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks EMsmile for bringing this up. This gigantic template is currently displayed in 156 articles including non-climate articles like Child and Act of God. I am kind of speechless. As I've said previously, any attempt to create a navigation template for a topic as broad as climate change is almost destined to result in something that isn't helpful. Wikipedia is not a course in climate change; it is a collection of articles of varying quality and depth that have huge amounts of overlap with each other. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 23:17, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

The template does not include a link to the Child article. It includes a link to Climate change and children article. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 23:36, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

See the proper use of the feature you used: [1]. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 23:38, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

I didn't say it includes a link to the Child article. I said it is displayed in the Child article. Here it is: Child#Climate change| Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 23:39, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

By a transcluded section. And now, poof! It's gone. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 00:14, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

I just don't understand why you User:CommonKnowledgeCreator pushed ahead so quickly and expanded the "climate change and society" template and added it to so many articles without trying to look for consensus first. You did not discuss this on any of the relevant talk pages before jumping in (we had previously discussed it here on the talk page but also on the talk page of the template itself as well as on the talk page of the template called "climate change sidebar" (here). You must have surely noticed those previous discussions somewhere along the line and realised that consensus building is required.

I re-iterate the point the Clayoquot made above and in previous discussions "As I've said previously, any attempt to create a navigation template for a topic as broad as climate change is almost destined to result in something that isn't helpful."

If you want to continue this work on sidebars then more specific sidebars would be the way to go (like you had proposed above). I thought that the "climate change and society" sidebar was reasonably good. I also think the "climate change and mitigation" sidebar is OK. I don't see why there should be a need to merge a mitigation sidebar with an adaptation sidebar. Those two terms are often mentioned together in one sentence but really they are very distinct from each other, so could warrant separate sidebars (but if you really want to merge them I won't stand in the way).

Overall, I just don't know how much energy and brainpower should be sunk into these sidebars. I am not terribly motivated myself (but if you are motivated, fine by me). In the meantime, I will proceed to remove any of the sidebars that you have added for those articles where I don't think they fit (like I did at desertification). Also, please don't put them into any of the leads: if they are not in the leads then this would overcome the problem that they could be transcluded into other articles. Or you can use this syntax: <noinclude>{{climate change and society}}</noinclude> . EMsmile (talk) 10:08, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

I just don't understand why you User:CommonKnowledgeCreator pushed ahead so quickly and expanded the "climate change and society" template and added it to so many articles without trying to look for consensus first. See WP:5P5. To be sure, WP:5P4 directs us to seek consensus but WP:CON is a conduct policy for resolving disputes between editors rather than a content policy of how content should be produced. Instead, WP:BOLD notes that you should "Fix it yourself instead of just talking about it. In the time it takes to write about the problem, you could instead improve the encyclopedia." You must have surely noticed those previous discussions somewhere along the line and realised that consensus building is required. Apologies, but I'm afraid not. I am not a member of WikiProject Climate change so I have not been involved with any discussions related to it and have not reviewed any of them except the ones you directed me to before.

If you want to continue this work on sidebars then more specific sidebars would be the way to go (like you had proposed above). So just to clarify, if I were to place move requests on the templates changing the scope of the templates citing this discussion, at least yourself would vote in favor of the moves? Do you believe that other editors, and specifically those from WikiProject Climate change, would support the moves? I don't see why there should be a need to merge a mitigation sidebar with an adaptation sidebar. Those two terms are often mentioned together in one sentence but really they are very distinct from each other, so could warrant separate sidebars (but if you really want to merge them I won't stand in the way). The only reason why I suggest expanding the scope of the "Climate change mitigation" template is because I haven't come across too many Wikipedia articles that are specifically related to climate change adaptation alone, and if there aren't that many, it would create an unnecessary navigation template.

Also, please don't put them into any of the leads: if they are not in the leads then this would overcome the problem that they could be transcluded into other articles. Or you can use this syntax... I'll start with the syntax since I was unaware what that syntax even did despite having seen it on numerous articles. Some articles don't have any images and are kind of barren, but I will avoid it for articles that are well-developed.

-- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 04:27, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

Hi again, I don't quite follow you when you say if I were to place move requests on the templates changing the scope of the templates - what do you mean exactly? I think the template called climate change sidebar ought to be outright deleted. I would only keep these two templates for now: climate change and society as well as climate change mitigation. It's true that the adaptation group of articles is so far quite small. You can see in the climate change nav box which items we have included so far:

• Adaptation strategies on the German coast
• Adaptive capacity
• Vulnerability
• Resilience
• Climate risk
• Ecosystem-based adaptation
• Disaster risk reduction
• Flood control
• Loss and damage
• Managed retreat
• Nature-based solutions
• The Adaptation Fund
• National Adaptation Programme of Action.

In that Nav Box, we chose to place the adaptation group within the society group. So from that perspective, the adaptation topics might fit within the "climate change and society" sidebar but still I would probably rather put them in a separate template to keep it more focused if I were you. This group of topics is bound to grow quite a lot in future as more and more people turn their attention to adaptation. EMsmile (talk) 08:31, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for being open to discussion. I am surprised you didn't think to take a look at WikiProject Climate Change before adding a new sidebar to dozens of climate change articles but so be it. Yes, WP:BEBOLD is a nice policy. Glad you found your way to this WikiProject now. :-) EMsmile (talk) 08:31, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

To address some of the points raised above, I think it's procedurally fine to boldly create or expand a navigation template and add it to articles. People cannot be expected to look in every relevant wikiproject talk page to see what has been said before. However, I think both Template:Climate change and Template:Climate change and society are in need of serious refocusing and pruning. WP:NAV says, "The goal is not to cram as many related articles as possible into one space. Ask yourself, does this help the reader in reading up on related topics? Take any two articles in the template. Would a reader really want to go from A to B?. It goes on to say "They should be kept small in size as a large template has limited navigation value."

It doesn't define "small", but maybe it needs to if people are creating templates with 100+ links and thinking they're still compliant with WP:NAV. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 22:35, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

I've also noted numerous insertions of the "CC and society" navbox that stretch the concept of WP:relevance to the article into which the navbox has been inserted. It's not an unreasonable stretch to call such a navbox spam: a reader comes to an article in which an editor has boldly inserted a dominant, space-occupying box encouraging them to go somewhere else to read about a concept that's only tangentially related. Significantly, only a fraction of the space-occupying article links will be of interest. Further, the navbox occupies the space that could be used by one or two graphics that pertain to the article the reader chose to visit. However well intended, inserting this broadly and vaguely defined navbox into most articles is ~spam. —RCraig09 (talk) 20:06, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

• Delete this template. Viewing Pages that link to "Template:Climate change and society", it is clear that this sidebar takes a Blunderbuss approach in an ill-conceived attempt to organize concepts. Since practically all of the substantive topics—climate change itself, its causes, mitigation, adaptation, and their subtopics—arguably relate in some way to "society", the template is so broad as to be a useless distraction from the well-established Template:Climate change navbox. Template:Climate change and society is now (6 Nov 2023) transcluded into over 100 articles (remaining after those I and others have deleted). At least if the template were deleted, maybe a bot could remove them from the remaining articles. —RCraig09 (talk) 04:30, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

  Having a look at the pages that link to the template, there is also a bit of misuse. Sidebars should not appear within an article section, they explicitly refer to articles: "This article is part of a series on the...". Further, they should only be used on the key articles which are actually part of the series (ie. directly important enough to the topic be on the template) per WP:BIDIRECTIONAL. The point on the broadness of the topic is a good one, having a series template for a topic which does not have a main article seems unusual. CMD (talk) 05:12, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Merging Surveys of scientists' views on climate change into Scientific consensus on climate change?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Moved from above and split off into a new section by EMsmile (talk) 20:45, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

By User:InformationtoKnowledge: "Here, I think I would much rather prefer to begin by merging Surveys of scientists' views on climate change into Scientific consensus on climate change. They really make the same point, and the combined article would be just the right size at ~5800 words. Once that is done, and we have included the baseline AR6 quotes (and presumably minimized AR5 and AR4 proportionately to compensate: perhaps even including a little bit about the first three reports as well?), we would still have enough space to consider adding more interesting things about the current consensus than just the basic "it's happening"."

So, it seems like nobody is objecting to combining Surveys of scientists' views on climate change with Scientific consensus on climate change? Anybody wants to start an official merge proposal? InformationToKnowledge (talk) 12:13, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

By User:M.boli: I object.

• The utility of the Consensus article is it shows the average Wikipedia reader that a) there is a consensus, and b) the main points. There are 1865 links to the Consensus article. The article has so many links partly because there are powerful forces telling the public that climate change isn't real or scientists disagree or it doesn't matter. Links to the Consensus article come from the articles on public figures who have expressed views on the environment. From organizations that are involved in influencing public opinion. From scientists who dispute the consensus.
• There are 66 links to the Surveys article. The huge difference in linking is a good indicator that the articles serve very different purposes.

I don't see how the number of incoming links is a justification for merging or not merging any articles. Is there a policy somewhere that says so? Perhaps I have missed it. As to Surveys of scientists' views on climate change most of it was written in 2015 and I don't really understand its purpose nowadays. Would anyone still bother updating it? Is it just there for historical/archiving purposes? I support the merger suggestion. But I think the difficulty would be how to merge it, i.e. how much of the article Surveys of scientists' views on climate change might need rewriting/condensing so that it doesn't take up too much space in the merged article. EMsmile (talk) 20:37, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

I see -- the idea is to put some of the history of surveys into a section within the consensus article. This makes more sense to me than the other way around, which I thought was the proposal. The main point about the links is that the two articles serve quite different purposes. The links to the consensus article are far more common, and they are almost never about the history of how scientists were surveyed. I guess the links to the surveys article can be redirected to a section within a merged article. -- M.boli (talk) 11:28, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

OK, cool. I have added the merger tags then. Further discussion, if needed, can take place on the talk page of Surveys of scientists' views on climate change. It won't be an easy merge as some culling/condensing is probably needed to make it more encyclopedic. If InformationToKnowledge has time and energy to tackle this, I would fully support them from the sidelines. :-) EMsmile (talk) 11:46, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

I would certainly seek to complete this merge in a week or so; perhaps sooner if I can find the time.

Interestingly, talk pages reveal that the survey article actually was originally part of the scientific consensus article, before getting split off in 2011. However, I do not think that split had been successful. Right now, the surveys article is at 13 kB (2122 words) readable prose and the consensus article is 23 kB (3626 words) readable prose...yet, around 1k words are in the Surveys of scientists and scientific literature. I.e. the part which supposedly summarizes the split-off article is already at half its length. If that's not evidence that the split-off page is not used as intended, what is?

And as may be expected with such similar sizes, many of the surveys are already featured on both pages in seemingly equivalent detail. The main difference may be that some of the oldest surveys on the split-off page are very poorly referenced, and that the split-off page uses a lot more subheadings - which seems to be an improvement over the section on the consensus page, which currently just has 14 paragraphs of various size, only broken up by two blockquotes. Some subheadings would be sorely needed there. Maybe not the same ones as on the surveys page (those seem very reminiscent of how decline of insect populations was structured until very recently), but at least decadal ones.

And once the merge is done, then the process of updating to AR6, and all the rest, can begin. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 12:51, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Sounds good, thanks I2K. I very much dislike section headings that give author names and years, like how it is at the moment:

2010s
 Powell, 2019
 Verheggen et al., 2014
 Powell, 2013

And I agree with you, that's how it was at decline of insect populations a few weeks ago, and then I changed it to group it by countries/regions rather than by author and year. Might not be as easy to do in this case. - After this merger is done, or in parallel, we need to ponder some of the other issues that you've raised above about overlapping articles, and article titles, like the one on attribution etc. EMsmile (talk) 20:01, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Merged but I need to fix the duplicate cites unless you guys know an automated way to do that. Anyway you can do your sophisticated stuff now I have done the basic part. Chidgk1 (talk) 15:06, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Merger discussion for Scientific consensus on climate change

An article that you have been involved in editing—Scientific consensus on climate change—has been proposed for merging with another article. If you are interested, please participate in the merger discussion. Thank you. Chidgk1 (talk) 13:51, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Merger discussion for Illustrative model of greenhouse effect on climate change

An article that you have been involved in editing—Illustrative model of greenhouse effect on climate change—has been proposed for merging with another article. If you are interested, please participate in the merger discussion. Thank you. Chidgk1 (talk) 15:06, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Nomination for Wikimedia Commons featured picture

I would like to promote Warming Stripes as featured picture in Commons ! Could you come and vote for it ? Effco (talk) 15:31, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

 Done I don't know anything about the decision and implementation process, however. —RCraig09 (talk) 15:57, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Update: The image has passed the nomination process and will be included in Commons' Featured Picture Gallery. I don't know if or when it will be featured on the Commons front page. —RCraig09 (talk) 18:33, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

@Effco: This is some blatant canvassing. This would've passed either way, so nothing to be done at this time, but please review WP:CANVAS for the future. In other words, better to say "there's a featured picture candidate on commons which may be of interest to this group" rather than "come vote for it". I supported the image myself, but probably wouldn't have if I saw this message first. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 18:42, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

I think Effco's 4 Nov post was in good faith. Originally he posted that paragraph at the end of the earlier section, "Wikipedia:Picture of the day - 3 November 2023", probably directed to me as someone who has written most of the warming stripes article, and I, not he, broke out the Commons nomination into this separate section. Effco has less than 200 edits under his belt, almost half of which are more than a decade old. Early in my editing experience, I wasn't aware of the WP:CANVASing guideline either. —RCraig09 (talk) 19:20, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Merger discussion for Global warming controversy

An article that you have been involved in editing—Global warming controversy—has been proposed for merging with another article. If you are interested, please participate in the merger discussion. Thank you. Chidgk1 (talk) 18:05, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

The discussions is continuing in a new location, here: Talk:Climate_change_denial#Merge_global_warming_controversy_into_here?. It would benefit from more inputs from members of this project. So if you have a bit of time available, please weigh in on the discussion. EMsmile (talk) 20:50, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Fifth National Climate Assessment (2023) has been released

See https://nca2023.globalchange.gov/
Yes, it's US-centric, but still filled with information. —RCraig09 (talk) 21:20, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Split discussion for Scientific consensus on climate change

A split has been proposed (by me) for an article related to this WikiProject — Scientific consensus on climate change. If successful, some of the article's content would be repurposed to create List of statements by major scientific organizations about climate change. If you are interested, please participate in the discussion at Talk:Scientific_consensus_on_climate_change#Split_off_"Statements_by_scientific_organizations_of_national_or_international_standing"? InformationToKnowledge (talk) 12:06, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

2022 GHG estimates for “Climate change in country” articles

are now available at https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/report_2023#emissions_table

For example I have added to Greenhouse gas emissions by Turkey as

’The EU Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research has estimated 2022 GHG to be 688 million tonnes.’ Chidgk1 (talk) 07:32, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Anyone interested in updating Pacific Meridional Mode...

...with these sources? They are so many that it's scary. Is there a review or something in there. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 19:00, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Request for comments re best "attribution" graphic

Static SVG

Animated GIF separates human vs. natural

With publication of the Fifth National Climate Assessment, a new chart showing climate drivers over time is available and is uploaded to Commons. Your thoughtful comments are requested at Talk:Attribution_of_recent_climate_change#Best_"Attribution"_graphics. —RCraig09 (talk) 03:58, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

GIF animation has been uploaded today, distinguishing human vs. natural drivers. Discuss at Talk:Attribution_of_recent_climate_change#Possible_GIF. —RCraig09 (talk) 22:35, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

2022 very detailed and summary GHG

In case anyone has not noticed yet https://climatetrace.org/ now has millions of sources. Good for citing largest point sources for country articles Chidgk1 (talk) 07:36, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Genesis B. v. EPA climate lawsuit

Just created an article for Genesis B. v. EPA lawsuit filed today. Thriley (talk) 19:26, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Move discussion for Global warming controversy

An article that you have been involved in editing—Global warming controversy—has been proposed (by me) for a move to become climate change debates. If you are interested, please participate in the discussion at Talk:Global warming controversy#Requested move 22 November 2023. EMsmile (talk) 11:53, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

Uodate: there is a new move discussion about this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Global_warming_controversy#Requested_move_8_December_2023 This time the proposed new title is List of climate change controversies. It seems to have received some support. EMsmile (talk) 08:50, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Having the right articles and redirects about misinformation and disinformation

I just noticed we have Soft climate change denial but climate change misinformation and climate change disinformation do not have their own article but redirect to climate change denial. I suspect more people search for "climate change misinformation" or "climate change disinformation" than "soft climate change denial".

Once some of the ongoing discussions are completed I will likely make some formal proposal in a week or 2 - suggestions welcome and feel free to chase me if I forget.

Also Media coverage of climate change only has 2 paras on social media.

On the other hand perhaps information differs so much by country it should just be in Wikipedia:WikiProject_Climate_change/Style_guide#Outline_for_articles_about_specific_countries_or_geographies. For example very few people here in Turkey say that climate change is not human made whereas I understand that is a common view in the United States. Misinformation here is specifically about the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism which is perhaps hardly discussed in the United States. Chidgk1 (talk) 09:40, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

I had never heard of soft climate change denial before, thanks for the alert. Wondering if that is another candidate for merging. Seems to me that it is related to Psychology of climate change denial. Most of it was written by User:Blz 2049.

I also wonder if we need an article called climate change debates instead of global warming controversies? Perhaps not but see here on talk page page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Climate_change_denial#Merge_global_warming_controversy_into_here? EMsmile (talk) 13:48, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

I agree with you that climate change debates would be unworkable. I think it would be too hard to define the scope.

Probably not worth proposing anything formally until some brave uninvolved editor closes Wikipedia:Closure_requests#Talk:Climate_apocalypse#2nd_Merger_proposal_into_climate_change_and_civilizational_collapse which might not be for months I guess. Meanwhile hope others will brainstorm possibilities here too.

I am tempted to propose a new article called Climate change misinformation and disinformation like other projects already have articles on misinformation such as COVID-19 misinformation and 5G misinformation. But if I proposed a giant merge of several articles into that new title it would likely be rejected. So maybe I should first create it as a new article or propose renaming an existing article to that title. Then over time I could attempt to one by one merge in other articles starting with the most obscure ones such as soft climate change denial and ending with the most contentious ones. Chidgk1 (talk) 14:22, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

I think your suggestion is quite timely. A similar suggestion was made recently on the talk page of climate change denial, so perhaps we should continue the discussion there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Climate_change_denial#Climate_obstruction_and_delay EMsmile (talk) 08:53, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Merge the article carbon finance out of existence?

There is a discussion on the talk page of carbon finance if the article should be merged into climate finance, carbon price or Carbon offsets and credits. As far as I can tell, the term is no longer up and coming. Please participate here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Carbon_finance#Merge_into_climate_finance?. EMsmile (talk) 08:56, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Clean-up of articles assigned to project's scope?

Whenever I look at the list of project's 1000 most popular articles, I find it notable that some have either no real relevance to the subject, or extremely tangential relevance. A few examples:

• Waterworld - consistently in the top 100, or even top 50. It almost has practically no relation to the scientific reality of the subject - there's not enough frozen water on Earth for even a tenth of what it shows.

• Hemp - also a top 100 article. As best as I can tell, the only connection is a single, poorly cited sentence claiming it absorbs an unusual amount of CO₂? There might be a case for having hempcrete within the project's scope, but why the main article on the plant?

• Infection - I am on the fence on this one. Yes, there is a connection, but we also have climate change and infectious diseases to cover it, while that article, as currently written, does not even mention the words "climate change".

• Resource curse - that article is really messy, and as it is currently written, makes no mention of our subject at all.

• Cross-laminated timber - is every building material within the project's scope?

• Official development assistance - there are enough articles specifically about loss and damage, etc., that I do not see how this belongs?

• Kodaikanal mercury poisoning - yes, it is pollution, but seems to have absolutely no relation to climate.

I hope it's clear that when unrelated articles clog up lists like these, we can lose sight of some of the actually relevant articles within the scope of the project that may need our attention. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 19:59, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Agreed, thanks for pointing this out. I suggest you boldly remove the project tag on the talk pages of all those articles where you deem that the connection is too loose. EMsmile (talk) 21:52, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

+1 Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 01:39, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Big changes to the article global surface temperature

I've just made some drastic changes to the article on global surface temperature because I don't think it should repeat the same content on the effects of warming that are already covered better in other articles. Therefore, I have added excerpts instead. What other content (if any) should still be added to this article, keeping in mind that we don't want to create more overlap with other articles than necessary? - Another option might be to merge and redirect this into another article, to keep all the temperature topics together. - Please head over to the talk page of that article if you'd like to voice your opinion EMsmile (talk) 11:35, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Discussion about El Nino and ENSO articles

I've started a discussion about how to improve the El Nino and El Niño–Southern Oscillation articles. One option is to merge them together as they overlap a lot. If you'd like to help with the brainstorming, please joint the discussion here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:El_Ni%C3%B1o#Less_overlap_with_the_ENSO_article? EMsmile (talk) 11:37, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Think tanks again

We started a discussion a few months ago on what organizations, particularly think tanks, are reliable sources. We kind of left it at "think tanks are a grey area". To give ourselves more solid guidance, I'm wondering what people think of using WP:USEBYOTHERS as our guide. I.e. if a think tank's research is cited uncritically by top-quality sources, we could presume it's reliable for that kind of research. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 01:38, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

As I understand it, much of the issue can be dealt with by reciting the source in context when content is presented. Example: "RAND Corporation research concluded that ...". —RCraig09 (talk) 06:38, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Yes good ideas and we can also link to our articles about the thinktanks e.g. Ember (non-profit organisation) Chidgk1 (talk) 11:46, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Draft:Climate change in the Northern Mariana Islands

Greetings! Draft:Climate change in the Northern Mariana Islands is the last remaining populated U.S. jurisdiction with a draft in progress addressing local effects of climate change. If someone could pick this up and finish it, that would be most appreciated. Cheers! BD2412 T 19:22, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

Note: I have moved this to mainspace, but it is still a stub. BD2412 T 14:00, 15 December 2023 (UTC)