Talk:List of climate change controversies/Archive 12

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I see a lot of wikipedia topics on climate change denial, global warming controversy. I would like to see one that is about the evidence of human-caused climate change, where the evidence is clearly stated, and backed up. Do I have a point? After all, the onus of proving a claim is on the claimant. Skeptics should not be the ones with the onus of disproving a claim. Magonz (talk) 23:39, 3 February 2021 (UTC)Magonz

What is wrong with Climate change? It lists the evidence.

Let me guess: you do not accept that evidence because excuses, and you want the excuses refuted? --Hob Gadling (talk)

Magonz, see Scientific consensus on climate change. —RCraig09 (talk) 07:30, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

I do see general discussion about drivers/attributions to climate change, and greenhouse gases are supposed to be the human cause of climate change (CO2). What I think is missing is the smoking gun, the evidence, that demonstrates undeniably that climate change is human caused. Sort of like the way you can find Newton's theories, or Einstein's theories, or Archimedes theories, or the discovery of penicilin, the discovery of the elliptical orbits of the planets. In every case, there was a place, time, person, and circumstances where the discovery took place. I think there is a lot of discussion about "models", "consensus", "metastudies", and so on, which are ok, but the question remains. Where is the evidence? Can the public access it? Is it too much to ask? Magonz (talk) 14:33, 4 February 2021 (UTC)magonz

If you demand a single place, time, person, and circumstances for that, then yes, that is too much to ask. The discovery consists of lots of studies analyzing large amounts of data. The times when one person could find an important fact that changed everything are long gone. --Hob Gadling (talk) 15:16, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

I know teamwork is needed on complex research. However, the evidence still needs to be produced. The research teams are not enjoying privileges where they can waive the need for published evidence. IN this case, this is a matter of public concern, so the evidence needs to be public. After all, the reasearch has been funded with public funds. Amongst the public there are doctors, engineers, mathematicians that can surely attempt to read the large amounts of data, how it was measured, the concept definition, the demonstration of causality, and its interpretation. "Forgotten were the elementary rules of logic, that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and that what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence." Christopher Hitchens "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." --Carl Sagan Magonz (talk) 15:41, 4 February 2021 (UTC)magonz

John Tyndall proved the effect of greenhouse gases on global warming in 1859. Since some of these gases were added to the atmosphere through burning fossil fuels and other human activities, the human contribution to global warming has been known since then. Knowing the extent of the human contribution is a matter of empirical study, so it is cumulative. The more information we have about how much greenhouse gas is caused by humans, the more we will know what percentage of the gases are caused by humans. TFD (talk) 16:24, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

The data you are seeking is publicly available. It's in the articles you have been directed to, as well as their linked sources. It isn't simple to go through, due to complexity, but it is all there. Similarly, understanding the details of SARS-CoV-2, or even just its vaccine testing, is not a simple matter. Knowing how your computer works is not a simple matter. Hell, presenting the data that demonstrates the efficacy of the field-effect transistors in your computer is no simple matter. The data is not being hidden from you. It is in the articles you have been told to look at, or links to them exist in those article. All of the data is publicly available as it was gathered using public funds. Here is some of that, for example, from NIST. That's the IR spectrum of CO2, caused by molecular vibrations that create a transient dipole moment with respect to nuclear motion. If you would like, we can discuss the symmetry point group elements and analysis that lead to determining which of these normal modes are infrared active, which are Raman active, and which (if any) are both IR and Raman active or inactive in both. Then, we can discuss the equipartition theorem and how molecular motion, including nuclear vibrations, is itself kinetic energy, and that temperature is related to kinetic energy through the kinetic theory of gases. We can then get into the publicly available data on CO2 concentrations, and also other greenhouse gases. We can discuss feedback mechanisms, forcing, and a dozen other things. This is all basically already done in our articles. Is that what you are seeking? --OuroborosCobra (talk) 16:48, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

I did not ask for the IR spectrum of CO2. Or particular physical chemistry discussions. Unless this discussions are claimed to be the evidence. Climate involves, as you know, oceans, solar energy, plate tectonics, volcanic activity, atmosphere, land surface, aerosols, particule pollution, carbon cycle, vegetation, atmosphere chemistry, heat transfer, optics, and who knows what else is to be added to the list as we learn more about climate science. I am asking for a very specific topic. And the topic, again, is: Evidence of Human-caused Climate Change.

Here is a reminder of the scientific method: Define a question, Gather information and resources (observe), Form an explanatory hypothesis, Test the hypothesis by performing an experiment and collecting data in a reproducible manner, Analyze the data, Interpret the data and draw conclusions that serve as a starting point for new hypothesis, Publish results, Retest (frequently done by other scientists).

Where are these published results? Can you point to the best of them (if there are multiple). Pick your best one. Should we start a topic Evidence of Human-caused Climate Change and link the evidence to said publication? Is it too hard to ask for this from Wikipedia? Are the results so scattered (or not holistic, or not combinable, or not aggregated) that you cannot point to a specific publication? Magonz (talk) 17:08, 4 February 2021 (UTC)magonz

The page you're looking for is Attribution of recent climate change. It is easy to find: the CC article has a large heading "Drivers of recent temperature rise" for which the see-main is that attribution article William M. Connolley (talk) 18:15, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

It may be that @Magonz has a point. Readers may come to Wikipedia with that question in mind, viz: how do we know climate change is caused by people? The Wikipedia article for this purpose is Attribution of recent climate change, which is linked-to from Climate change#Drivers of recent temperature rise. These don't offer a ready one-or-two paragraph lay person explanation.

However the lede section of the attribution article has a lovely bullet-point list of four lines of evidence that scientists find convincing.

Of course there isn't an aha! moment such as Galileo-dropped-the-balls or the Iridium anomaly. But there are some fairly straightforward explanations, depending on where you look.

• For Richard Mueller, a physicist and former climate skeptic, the proof is that anthropogenic CO₂ is the only explanation which matches the temperature data. His Berkeley Earth team tried all the alternatives which skeptics have suggested. He wrote a famous op-ed explaining this.
• Skeptical Science has an article where the aha! moment (such as it is) is a plot of re-radiation from the atmosphere back down to the ground, showing that CO₂ is the dominant factor. And there are isotopic studies proving that the increase in CO₂ indeed comes from humans.
• Web-search for global warming causes, or human signature of global warming, etc., and you will find multiple web sites explaining for the lay person. They use differing lines of evidence. As noted above, the attribution article calls out four different ones.

So I think it may be possible to improve the Climate change and attribution articles by adding short lay person explanations of one line of evidence near their tops. Possibly some of the many sources available on the web would provide a model.

As for @Magonz, I suggest you google the question yourself. You might find the three bullet points above and associated references useful. -- M.boli (talk) 18:17, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

References

Thank you, but 1. An opinion article in a news site by a single person (Mueller). 2. An article by an unelected, uncredentialed group of unidentified volunteers (skeptical science), and 3. a suggestion to do a "web search". I am a chemical engineer so I can understand much more about the topic than most people. But no single specific published evidence offered yet.

The Climate change#Drivers of recent temperature rise article, and the Attribution of recent climate change articles are for both human and not human causes of climate change. They mix and confuse what are natural causes for climate change, and what are the alleged human causes for climate change. Still waiting for the published Evidence of Human-caused Climate Change, and if it warrants a mention in a Wikipedia section or article. Magonz (talk) 23:48, 4 February 2021 (UTC)magonz

The expertise of Skeptical Science regarding the subject at hand is highly regarded. Richard A. Muller is known for falling for the denialist reasoning at first, then changing his mind because of the data and accepting the science. Since you brought this up: Those two sources still easily beat any chemical engineer.

I think this section is a waste of time. Whatever people give you, you will not accept it, sometimes for this reason, sometimes for that reason.

I may be wrong, but I don't think you are actually looking for evidence. The phrase "the alleged human causes" gave you away. You are impersonating someone who is "looking for evidence and does not get it because it does not exist". I met Creationists who did the same thing, asking for the evidence for evolution and then rejecting all of it for some flimsy reason. They also demanded one smoking gun. But that is not how science works.

Regardless, this is not what Wikipedia Talk pages are for. It cannot improve the article "Global warming controversy" because it is not even about the controversy. Even if it were, this is not a forum, where you discuss the subject of the article, but only about improving the article. This does not belong here. --Hob Gadling (talk) 11:50, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

@Gadling A lot of strawman arguments and red herrings. I think an article about global warming controversy would benefit a lot with a section that addresses the controversy surrounding the claims for published Evidence of Human-caused Climate Change.

"Forgotten were the elementary rules of logic, that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and that what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."

-- Christopher Hitchens

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." --Carl Sagan

This is just empty talk. The scientific consensus is not an extraordinary claim; enough evidence for human-made global warming exists to convince all the climatologists except a precious few who are paid by people who do not want them to accept it; that some random layman on the internet does not want to accept the evidence does not matter; this article does not need a section about which there are already enough other articles; and you could not name either a strawman or a red herring.

If you really want to improve the article, make a suggestion for doing that, instead of rejecting the evidence for climate change. --Hob Gadling (talk) 16:46, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Red herring: my identity is irrelevant. What I say is what matters. Strawman: I am not rejecting the evidence. I am calling for the possibility of wikipedia content of controversy surrounding published Evidence of Human-caused Climate Change, (I am amongst many people that will require evidence every time a scientific claim is made). So again who I am and what I say (as an individual) is irrelevant. But we all know that it has been said by many, including many scientists. Science is self-correcting and the day the controversy/discussion ends, is a bad day for science and any enciclopedia. The evidence offered here has been addressed one by one by myself, as any researcher would do, and I have offered reasonable arguments to describe their weaknesses. Try to get a PHD and base your source of evidence on a webpage like "Skeptical Science" and you will not go anywhere. This is elementary. Opinion pieces do not count either. Magonz (talk) 17:14, 6 February 2021 (UTC)magonz

Are you saying that burning fossil fuels does not cause CO2 or that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas? TFD (talk) 20:12, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Another strawman argument. I never said anything like that or remotely similar. Magonz (talk) 23:37, 6 February 2021 (UTC)magonz

You said you do not understand how human activity causes climate change. Well that's how. Humans burn stuff which releases carbon that combines with oxygen which is released into the air as CO2 and contributes to global warming. TFD (talk) 00:51, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Never said that. I know that is the hypothesis.Magonz (talk) 13:23, 7 February 2021 (UTC)magonz

If you know that your education is not relevant, you should not have brought it up in the first place.

You asked for evidence, people gave it, you rejected it. You said "alleged human causes", which tells us where you are coming from. And you are not a "researcher", you are some random guy on the internet, like everyone here.

This page is not about getting a PhD. (Red herring, anyone?) This page is about improving the article. "Skeptical Science" is a good source for Wikipedia, and it is used in several Wikipedia articles. Can we stop this now? It still does not belong here. --Hob Gadling (talk) 08:13, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

When two parties are in a discussion and one makes a claim that the other disputes, the one who makes the claim typically has a burden of proof to justify or substantiate that claim. That is why I say "alleged". The allegations could be true or not. That is what claims are until scientific proof is obtained and published. Still waiting for the published Evidence of Human-caused Climate Change. This published evidence should be at a level of research of a PHD at a bare floor minimum. Sorry but the website Skeptical Science does not qualify as a proof for a theory that is reordering our technology, economy, taxes and more. Magonz (talk) 13:23, 7 February 2021 (UTC)magonz

When two parties are in a discussion and one makes a claim that the other disputes Yes, I know what "alleged" means. The greenhouse effect is not a "claim". You confirm what I am saying. There are two parties, the science party and the denialist party. The science party finds out things, and the denialist party calls their findings "alleged" and "claims". You are part of the denialist party.

Skeptical Science does not qualify as a proof It does not need to be because proof is not what this page is about. You confirm what I am saying. You are not here for improving the article, you are here to misuse this Talk page as a forum for denialist propaganda. --Hob Gadling (talk) 14:45, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

@Gadling and others. Let me spell it out once again for you. This encyclopedia does not include a published scientific peer reviewed Evidence of Human-caused Climate Change source with publicly available raw data. There are many scientists that think that the global warming theory is controversial. Without that published evidence, how can the controversy begin to be covered? The content of this article is to address the points made by "denialists". I think we should increase content that addresses the evidence proposed by the claimants. This is elementary science. HOpe you understand this now. Magonz (talk) 15:23, 7 February 2021 (UTC)magonz

There are many scientists that think that the global warming theory is controversial Correction: Climate change deniers claim that there are many such scientists. Even if there were, it would not matter, since

• science in a specific field, such as climatology, is done by publishing research about that field, by scientists working within that field, and not by scientists from all other fields saying what they think,
• that is a classic pseudoscience talking point. Creationists claim that "there are many scientists that think that the theory of evolution is controversial".

Actually, this article should not exist. Its content is already covered by Scientific consensus on climate change and climate change denial.

I think we should increase content that addresses the evidence proposed by the claimants. No, we will not expand this by adding denialist bullshit. --Hob Gadling (talk) 17:03, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Actually you sound a lot like you wish that science is settled and final, and no longer up to discussion (even though this article is about controversy), in your response to a simple request to discuss the controversy surrounding the evidence of human caused climate change. If it is so easy to settle the matter, why don't you wnat to have a section/topic about it? Climatology is interdisciplinary because it is complex. So many types of expertise are required. Many types of scientists. There is no polymath that can master all the tens of disciplines required to study the climate. Which is one more reason why publishing the evidence of human caused climate change is only the beginning of the controversy.Magonz (talk) 18:00, 7 February 2021 (UTC)magonz

Look at the article. It starts with "The global warming controversy concerns the public debate..." Not the scientific debate. The scientific debate has been over for a while. It is history. This article is not about it. (History of climate change science is about it.) This article is about laymen, about non-climatologists (politicians, lawyers, engineers, economists and so on) who don't get it and don't want to get it.

you wish that science is settled and final No, but the questions this article is about are as settled as they can be. The denialists have lost, and we will not change the article to make it sound as if the questions were still open. If you try to, you will fail because of WP:FRINGE.

I have been rebuffing very similar wishes by pro-fringe editors for a while now, and I am not the only one. We know your rhetoric about openness and "science is not settled" and so on, we hear it all the time from New Age proponents, creationists, homeopaths, astrologers, biorhythmicists, Scientologists, anti-vaccine activists, anti-GMO activists, people who believe Shakespeare did not write his plays, people who believe Stalin did not commit any crimes, people who believe that Charlemagne did not exist, and so on. Those pro-fringe people also say that "there are more things between heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy", they compare themselves to Galileo, they accuse their opponents of being in the pay of Big Pharma, and so on. We know all the tricks, and platitudes like "science is never final" will get you nowhere. If you cannot give us reliable, scientific sources which say that the questions of the existence and cause of global warming are still open in 2021, the article will not say it. --Hob Gadling (talk) 18:51, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

@Gadling Who is to say who is a scientist and who is not a scientist? How is this decided? Who gets to decide? There is no internationally recognized accreditation body with formal procedures to draw the line and there are no people walking around with scientist credentials or titles. So the whole premise of your argument above has no foundation. The history of climate change science has no section on the controversy. And it has no section on the evidence either. Magonz (talk) 19:01, 7 February 2021 (UTC)magonz

Who is to say who is a scientist Ah, delegitimization by relativism. Heard it before, though I can't tell you from whom. Probably proponents of Traditional Chinese Medicine, or maybe Ayurveda. I think creationists use it too. As I said, we already know all your tricks, and they will get you nowhere.

Wikipedia has rules on which sources are reliable, and, believe it or not, the people who wrote the rules have considered those flimsy sophisms as well as tons of other flimsy sophisms, and found them lacking. We can tell reliable sources from unreliable ones, we can tell scientific publications from publications which only pretend to be.

Stop it. We have already been there without you. As I said: Give us reliable sources. It does not matter that you can't tell whether your sources are reliable. We can. --Hob Gadling (talk) 19:40, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Yes Wikipedia has rules on which sources are reliable. In general. For the evidence of an extraordinary claim like this, you will need to produce something beyond what is required to write about in Wikipedia. In wikipedia you can say, this theory is backed up by the following "scientific evidence published in a scientific journal". That is what scientists do when they develop a new theory. That is how they communicate results that are to be scrutinized by peers. So far, you have produced nothing that resembles that. No, an IPCC report for policymakers does not constitute the evidence. Think PHD, think data, think correlations, think causality, think time series, think measurement, think concept definition. I know you know what I am talking about. But here everyone can see how you dance around the point I have been making. Magonz (talk) 00:48, 8 February 2021 (UTC)magonz

Man-made global warming is not an "extraordinary claim", except for those who reject it because if it is true that means that the energy market needs to be regulated.

Stop it. The sources Wikipedia uses have to be secondary sources. See WP:PRIMARY. As I said: we know all your tricks. You are still trying to delegitimize actual science, and you are also trying to shift the burden of proof away from the anti-science tinfoil hat brigade toward the scientists. The science is there for you to find, and you have no business to demand that it must be written in detail into an article that is about something else.

And you are still using this page as a forum. you will need to produce something beyond what is required to write about in Wikipedia shows clearly that you are in the wrong place. This is where we are writing Wikipedia, and we use the stuff we are allowed to use. If you want something else, go somewhere else. Go to some forum. This is not one. --Hob Gadling (talk) 06:44, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

Wrong. This is Wikipedia: "Unless restricted by another policy, primary sources that have been reputably published may be used in Wikipedia, but only with care, because it is easy to misuse them." Still waiting for the Evidence of Human Caused Climate Change so we can write about the controversy. No one here has been able to produce a published peer reviewed scientific source for this claim. Yet we have here someone who self proclaims "stop it" "troll" "go somewhere else". Well noted. Magonz (talk) 08:45, 8 February 2021 (UTC)magonz

I move that we close this conversation. It is not being brought in good faith. This is especially evidence since @Magonz has asked for, but then rejected any evidence for climate change, without establishing any criteria for what they think would be acceptable. Whether they like it or not, the IR absorption band of CO2 is evidence for climate change. There is not single datapoint that can be pointed to as evidence for climate change anymore than there is a single datapoint that can be pointed to as evidence for epigenetics or how vaccines work. @Magonz rejected evidence presented to them on the basis that they "did not ask for a physical chemistry discussion." Well, what do they want, then? The evidence for climate change is going to be found in established scientific disciplines, including chemistry, physics, and many more. That's because climate change is real because the gases in our atmosphere obey the same physical laws as everything else in our universe. That CO2 is a greenhouse gas, for example, is because of the same physical chemistry that leads to a microwave oven being able to heat up a Hot Pocket. So, if you are going to reject evidence because it is physical chemistry instead of, what, some brand new field entirely separate from every other scientific field is setting the goal post to an impossible position. This is not a good faith discussion, @Magonz isn't interested in actually being given evidence (if they were, they would have read the Wikipedia articles they were sent to and seen said evidence presented). We should close this. It's trolling, and a waste of our time. --OuroborosCobra (talk) 20:38, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Climate change is a function of: ocean mass, ocean currents, ocean chemistry, ocean heat transfer, solar energy, plate tectonics, volcanic activity, atmospheric behaviour, land surface characteristics and chemistry, aerosols, particule pollution, carbon cycle, vegetation, atmosphere chemistry, heat transfer between land and atmosphere, light energy, water cycle, and many other factors. But you claim that the evidence is is just about the IR absorption band of CO2 without producing any published source that goes beyond this narrow characteristic of CO2. Magonz (talk) 00:48, 8 February 2021 (UTC)magonz

@Magonz your list demonstrates that you already understand that evidence of human-caused climate change necessarily entails the accumulation of evidence and tested understanding from a range of fields, together with its assessment and synthesis. The assessment and synthesis is just as important as it is the only way to weigh up the evidence for/against competing explanations, a process that has led to the scientific consensus that human causes resulted in the global warming that has been observed. Yet despite seeming to understand this, you ask for individual pieces of evidence or a smoking gun. Yet when directed to sources where lines of evidence are provided (including already within Wikipedia Attribution of recent climate change) you dismiss them for spurious reasons (if you erroneously think an IPCC report is only "for policymakers" and "does not constitute the evidence" then you really should read e.g. chapter 10 on the detection and attribution of climate change in the most recent IPCC assessment report [1]). Given that you don't seem to be using this Talk page for the correct purposes (i.e. you have not made any specific proposals to improve the page, you appear to be using it to promote fringe views, and the current page is not even about the scientific evidence it is about the public debate so you are off topic here) I will collapse this section of the talk page as per WP :REFACTORING. TimOsborn (talk) 14:18, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

|}

Propose new section or article on human causes of climate change

The following discussion 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.

---

As I noted earlier, I think recent comments have pointed to a lacuna in Wikipedia.

• When I type "how do we know humans" in Google, "... are causing global warming" is the first suggestion. (The second is "... evolved from apes.")
• If I type "human caused," then "... climate change" is the first suggestion.

Wikipedia does not appear in the first page of search results. The first Wikipedia appearance is the attribution article, result number 35, on page 4.

Readers who come to this encyclopedia seeking an answer to the question "how do we know that climate change is caused by humans?" are not well-served. The answers are here, but there isn't a single easily-findable set of paragraphs written at a level for the general public. The closest I found is the four-bullet-point list in the lede of attribution article, which was copied out of an EPA finding one-page summary. But those bullet points are not expanded upon.

Thus I'm coming to a belief that Wikipedia might benefit from an article titled something like Anthropogenic Causes of Climate Change or Human-Caused Climate Change. This article needn't be very long. It could contain a couple of paragraphs explaining the reasoning for each line of evidence, with links to the appropriate wiki-page sections and external articles. Conceivably it would be better to put this proposed article as a section of the Attributions article.

As a section or a separate article, an appropriate title that is indexed by Wikipedia and Google for search purposes would be important.

I'd be willing to help work on such an article, if there are others also interested in working on it also.

Of course the deniers will whine that each of those explanations is not rock-solid proof. But that's missing the point. The point would be to serve the public with an understanding of the multiple reasons why scientists believe this to be true, each with links so the reader could dig further.

Posting this suggestion on the talk page for this article seems misplaced. What would be the approporiate forum? I never joined Wikiproject Climate Change, but I'm guessing that might be the place. -- M.boli (talk)

Wow so the concern arises because google does not put wikipedia as a top 10 hit for that search?

Regardless, to start an article in Wikipedia, there are several avenues, more than one. But you are talking to the right people, perhaps in the wrong place. I would like to see the evolution and contribute to that evidence page. The construction of the evidence page requires skills of a PHD as a minimum. Don't know how Wikipedia gets to process editorial capacity. Magonz (talk) 17:41, 6 February 2021 (UTC) MAGONZ

Creating another article would be silly. We already have the attribution article: improve it, if you think it needs improving William M. Connolley (talk) 19:07, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Though causation of a global climate phenomenon can't readily be "proven" in the sense of a mathematical theorem, there is value in concisely expressing the evidence and reasoning supporting the scientific consensus conclusion. Actually, in my opinion, the scientific community hasn't done a great job on that task, largely because there are massive amounts of data and multiple parallel lines of analysis. That said, I agree with William M. Connolley that Attribution of climate change might be the best place to attempt to achieve that goal on Wikipedia, while remembering the prohibition against WP:SYNTHESIS. Some sources with a broad-brush approach:

* https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/ (broad-brush approach)

* https://www.quora.com/How-do-scientists-tell-the-difference-between-human-caused-and-natural-climate-change/answer/ (portion: "Session with Katharine Hayhoe")

—RCraig09 (talk) 20:40, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

The problem is that the article Attribution of climate change is in reality Attribution of "recent" climate change only. The causes of climate change should be explored in their totality, not just in recent centuries, which represent less than 0.00001 percent or less of the history of climate. Climate has been changing since the earth was formed. And climate has changed since the earth has formed. And there were causes for climate change. And today there are natural causes for climate change. And some claim that humans are causing climate change to a certaini extent. Furthemore, that article does not do a great job in separating natural causes from human causes, although qualitatively, but not much quantitavely. Climate is much more than temperature. When you see that there are fish fossils high up in a mountain in North America or the Himalayas, you get an idea about how much climate has changed without human intervention. Climbers who have been to the top of Mount Everest brought back rocks in which the fossils of sea lilies were discovered. Magonz (talk) 21:26, 6 February 2021 (UTC) magonz

The hatnotes at the top of Climate change explain how that article is concerned with recent change, which is what almost all readers are concerned with when they search for 'climate change' or 'global warming'. The place to look for historical climate change is at Climate variability and change. There have been massive discussions relating to this topic in the last year or two, which resulted in a moving/renaming of articles to organize them as they are now. As Walter Cronkite would say, "That's the way it is." —RCraig09 (talk) 21:35, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

I do not see anywhere mentioned how the natural causes of climate change took a secondary position to human causes in recent times, and stopped being the major contributors as they always had been. Again stressing the need for a discussion of Evidence of Human Caused Climate Change. Magonz (talk) 21:51, 6 February 2021 (UTC)magonz

There is no reason to explain why a fringe theory is false. For example in the Moon landing conspiracy theories article, there is no section explaining how we really know that man landed on the moon. That's because there is no dialogue in reliable sources that questions the mainstream view. TFD (talk) 00:55, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

To ask for evidence of a scientific claim is not a "fringe theory". It is just as simple as that: to ask for evidence of a scientific claim. It is not even a theory. Not even a hypothesis. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Magonz (talk • contribs) 15:50, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Apparently we have to believe that somewhere, someone has a primary source of evidence for Human Caused Climate Change, and the public (as compared to scientific Wikipedia contributors) must not question this. All the controversy discussion centers on the "counterpoint arguments of fringe theorists" without offering any peer reviewed published evidence.Magonz (talk) 14:42, 8 February 2021 (UTC)magonz

You've been provided with answers, and rejected them for "reasons" that are nonsensical. Sure, you can question it, but the problem is that you are not willing to examine the answers you have been given and that you have been directed to. That's why your position is fringe. It is a willful refusal to examine evidence you have been provided, peer-reviewed included. --OuroborosCobra (talk) 00:42, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Wrong. This is Wikipedia: "Unless restricted by another policy, primary sources that have been reputably published may be used in Wikipedia, but only with care, because it is easy to misuse them." How can we even begin to discuss the controversy in a new light, when no one here has been able to point to a single published peer reviewed scientific base source for the claim. Magonz (talk) 01:01, 28 February 2021 (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.

Title

There is rough consensus that the article title should change. Taking into account the desire to be consistent with the title of global warming (which really should change per WP:COMMONNAME), what would be the more appropriate title, using $GWA as a placeholder for the current title of that article:

1. $GWA controversy
2. Political debate over $GWA
3. Public debate over $GWA
4. ...

Thoughts? Guy (help!) 19:42, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

I think the previous attempt to rename failed because there's no better name, and this one should fail too. So oppose change; the current title is fine. Stop fiddling William M. Connolley (talk) 22:25, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

What is going on is that the skeptics are losing more and more public support. Quite lot of the arguments of the skeptics that used to be quite prominently held position in the public debate have gradually become fringe positions that the vast majority of the public rejects. You can clearly see this if you visit some random forum where people talk about climate change. Ten to 15 years ago you would see quite vigorous debates with many people arguing the skeptic's position, but today you typically see one or two persons arguing that way while everyone else is dismissing what they are saying as pseudoscientific nonsense.

The political debate has also been settled with the exception of the US. But after Biden takes office next year it will be game over for the skeptics there too. So, I think we need to find a title that describes this topic in a similar way as we describe the position taken by anti-vaxxers, flat Earthers, Holocaust deniers, Young Earth creationists etc. etc. Count Iblis (talk) 22:36, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure why that would necessitate a title change. Wikipedia covers long-decided historical controversies too, say The Great Devonian Controversy. Regards, HaeB (talk) 08:16, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

HaeB, the difference is that the "controversy" over climate change was manufactured by the industry that causes it. Like the "tobacco / lung cancer controversy". Guy (help! - typo?) 23:09, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

I don't see a "rough consensus that the article title should change" above. William M. Connolley has a point - this looks like fiddling, futzing and churning with no clear benefit. Regards, HaeB (talk) 08:16, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

"But after Biden takes office next year it will be game over for the skeptics there too." We should not make predictions about the political climate following a future election. Dimadick (talk) 09:16, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

We're currently in/coming out of an ice age. The Earth is SUPPOSED to warm up as per the longterm cycle the core samples show. Do something about the REAL POLLUTION! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.112.55.242 (talk) 12:59, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Not supposed to warm up as quickly as it is happening at the moment. --Hob Gadling (talk) 06:52, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

Looks like this thread has devolved into arguments about the page topic rather than the title, but I oppose changes to it as well.

The future of this article

This article is quite difficult to update. A lot of the controversy took place 10-20 years ago, and most of the sources in this article are from that period. This gives the impression that these controversies are still alive, rather than long settled. When we were discussion improvements fro the Chinese Wikipedia as part of the cross-wiki climate denial review, a counterargument was made pointing to this article. This article implies there are still climate scientists pointing towards the sun, whereas the IPCC has now said that there is no doubt left as to the human cause.

I'm placing an update needed tag, realising that it may stay there for a while.. Femke (talk) 14:06, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Discussions are useful even if they don't lead to changes

The following discussion 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.

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Talk pages are for discussing improvements to the article. Personally, I give much leeway and benefit of the doubt, when it isn't so obvious how discussion might help the article. Some editors give up much earlier. I won't suggest deleting the above, and in fact believe we should keep it. But so far, I don't see much to actually help. WP:CALC allows routine calculations that are not WP:OR. On the other hand, it specifically warns against some types of statistical comparisons. Gah4 (talk) 22:28, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Fair point, my suggestion is to hat the section, allowing a fresh start without deleting it. Comparisons may be calculated, but we still need a published source explicitly describing something as a controversy. Even Woy doesn't seem to get much controversy going these days. . . dave souza, talk 22:45, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

I am comforted to find scientists exactly understanding my point, and in accordance to the method also suggested in the French paper cited in my last contribution. To come to a positive proposal, having looked at the present text of Wikipedia "Global warming controversy", I suggest to add there a new subject item just below the subject line "analysis of temperature records", entitled "Data uncertainty budget" (so not concerning model uncertainty, which could deserve a separate item): I have now collected more that a dozen of specific very competent worldwide papers to indicate as references.

If you agree I can draft for this talk, and for your comments and suggestions, an initial 10-lines text of that paragraph. Thank you for your help in using Wikipedia.Frpavese (talk) 17:14, 24 February 2022 (UTC)Franco Pavese

Due to my little experience on Wikipedia editing, I put my last editing, of March 26, at the end of the PREVIOUS talk (see just above in Climate Change Controversy talk). It is the draft I prepared in the past days for my proposal for an amendment (an addition) to the Wikipedia term "Climate Change Controversy".

I do not replicate it here because I do not know how to cancel the previous editing. However, I take instead here the opportunity for adding the References of that draft, avoided there not to make the previous message too long. Please advise me if I have to correct something in that application, and how can I propose that amendment to that term. Many thanks. WIKIPEDIA term: Climate change controversy Proposed addition of a NEW 2.6.0 "Data uncertainty budget" within 2.6 Analysis of temperature records and before 2.6.1 Instrumental record of surface temperature SEE ABOVE the draft: here are the "References [1] Jérôme Duvernoy, Guidance on the computation of calibration uncertainties, Instruments and Observing Methods, Report No. 119, 2015 World Meteorological Organization (WMO) pp. 34 [2] Koichi Nakashima, Metrological traceability and Uncertainty of measurement, 2013 Meteorological Instrument Center, Japan Meteorological Agency, presentation pp. 81 [3] GUM, Guide to the expression of uncertainty in measurement, JCGM-WG1, JCGM_100_2008, BIPM, Sèvres, France [4] Barry N. Taylor and Chris E. Kuyatt, Technical Note 1297, Guidelines for Evaluating and Expressing the Uncertainty of NIST Measurement Results, 1994 Edition pp.25 [5] EMUE, Good practice in evaluating measurement uncertainty, Compendium of examples (Adriaan M.H. van der Veen and Maurice G. Cox, editors) 27 July 2021, UE EMPIR Project, pp.640 [6] EURACHEM / CITAC Guide, Measurement uncertainty arising from sampling, Produced jointly with Eurolab, Nordtest, and RSC Analytical Methods Committee pp.119 [7] Franco Pavese, Mathematical and statistical tools in metrological measurement, 2013, Chapter in Physical Methods, Instruments and Measurements, [Ed. UNESCO-EOLSS Joint Committee], in Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems(EOLSS), Developed under the Auspices of the UNESCO, Eolss Publishers, Oxford, UK, pp. 41. http://www.eolss.net. [8] Franco Pavese, Measurement in science: between Evaluation and Prediction, AMCTM XII (Pavese F., Forbes A.B., Zhang N.F., Chunovkina A.G., Eds.), Series on Advances in Mathematics for Applied Sciences, 2022, Singapore, World Scientific Publishing Co., pp.346–363. [9] David Ducroq, Traceability Outcome & Uncertainty Relative to ISO15189, Weqas, presentation pp.57 [10] G. Heal, A. Millnery, Reflections: Uncertainty and Decision Making in Climate Change Economics, Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, volume 8, issue 1, 2014, pp. 120–137. doi:10.1093/reep/ret023. [11] VIM, Vocabulaire international de métrologie – Concepts fondamentaux et généraux et termes associés, 3e edition, 2012, BIPM, Sèvres, France [12] https://www.bipm.org/kcdb/comparison/quick-search?keywords=thermometry&displayResults=true [] Julie Jebeile, Michel Crucifix, Value management and model pluralism in climate science, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 88 (2021) pp. 120–127 [13] Hogan R., Sources of Uncertainty in Measurement Uncertainty for every Uncertainty Budget, © 2015 ISOBudgets LLC. P.O. Box 2455 Yorktown, VA 23692, USA. http://www.isobudgets.com http://reep.oxfordjournals.org/ at Columbia University Libraries on July 9, pp. 20 [14] IPCC, Climate Change 2021, The Physical Science Basis, Final Report AR6 WG1 [15] C. P. Morice, J. J. Kennedy, N. A. Rayner, J. P. Winn1 , E. Hogan1, R. E. Killick, R. J. H. Dunn, T. J. Osborn, P. D. Jones, I. R. Simpson, An Updated Assessment of Near-Surface Temperature Change From 1850: The HadCRUT5 Data Set (2021) Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 126, https://doi.org/10.1029/2019JD032361.

[16] NOAA. National Centers for Environmental Information, Global Climate Report – Annual Report 2020, https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/202013." Frpavese (talk) 15:24, 19 March 2022 (UTC)Franco Pavese

I don't see any of these sources talking about a controversy really. It seems like normal scientific discourse. I also get the feeling you're putting your own analysis of the sources into the text (WP:original research))

You can enclose references in <ref>citation</ref> statements, so that the software automatically puts it in a list. Femke (talk) 15:35, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

I agree with @Femke that the proposed additions by @Frpavese are not suitable for this article because the additions are not really about any claims of controversy about global warming. Rather, it seems to be a discussion of some issues related to uncertainty budgets. If you want to add text suggesting that there is some controversy about how the published uncertainties on the instrumental surface temperature record have been calculated then you need to use sources (ideally secondary sources, and certainly ones that are considered to be reliable on scientific/climatic issues) where these claims of controversy are discussed. Currently I see no sources that explicitly discuss things that are claimed in the proposed text such as "Actually, these uncertainties are apparently not included in the computation of the final standard deviation" or "What looks lacking at present is the so-called “Uncertainty Budget”". You can't just add these things based on your own opinion.

Furthermore, your comments suggest that you are not actually very familiar with the global instrumental records that you are critiquing. For example, you did not appear to know that these records give information about the spatial patterns of temperature change in addition to the global-mean value. Yet this is widely known and widely reported on. When your were pointed to the HadCRUT trend maps you accepted that this is a good thing but claimed that the IPCC does not do this ("IPCC is ... only supplying information about the global mean temperature increase"). This can easily be seen as incorrect by looking at the IPCC reports -- have you done this? The latest IPCC report (AR6, 2021) shows the observed pattern of warming in the Summary for Policymakers (Fig. SPM.5(a)) as well as in more detail elsewhere in the report (Cross-Section Box TS.1 Figure 1 as well as Fig. 2.11 for two time periods). Previous IPCC reports showed these maps of warming trends too. Similarly your implication that future predictions are based on extrapolating the observed trend (they are not) suggests that you are not familiar with how future climate projections are developed.

Although your wording was hard to follow, I think you are also claiming that the published uncertainties on the global temperature anomalies are somehow incomplete ("Then the final uncertainty of the Earth mean temperature value should computed by combination in quadrature of all these component values. [12] The one reported in [14–16], is instead the standard deviation for 95% confidence level of the final one resulting from the final statistical treatment only"). To include this in the article you need to base it on discussion of this in reliable (ideally secondary) sources. As far as I can see, your ref [12] does not claim this or even discuss it. And it isn't true anyway, since the HadCRUT uncertainties include multiple sources of error (combined in quadrature where that is appropriate) including components such as individual measurement errors, errors due to non-systematic inhomogeneities, errors due to systematic biases such as exposure changes and urbanisation, and errors due to incomplete spatial coverage. So, no, the reported errors are not based only on the final statistical treatment of the data.

For the above reasons, I oppose the inclusion of the your proposed additional text. TimOsborn (talk) 23:43, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

I submitted the draft just to understand if I had the right approach for a request of text integration, I am not an expert about Wikipedia. I especially thank TimOsborn for the supplementare help.

The material on the Climate Change is gigantic, so I certainly missed some information. Now I found and downloaded the surface temperature database from HadCRUTS. The total 97,5% confidence uncertainty band result to be: 1850-1900 mean (+0.7 +–0.17) °C; 1980-2020 mean (+0.3 +–0.036) °C, thus higher than the IPCC estimates. However, from the HadCRUTS graphs, it is clear that they are the uncertainties of the fitted set of the temperature values, NOT the uncertainties of the values provided by the meteorological stations, which are the uncertainties I am interested in, and referring to. The uncertainty of the latter are not taken into account. The above as an introduction to the issue of what can be indicated in Wikipedia. I understand that you want to get not my opinion, not any publication of mine, but the “status” of the situation as appearing in sound publications and a consolidated situation (not from a minority). This may prevent any possibility to introduce a sound contribution to the controversy. However, metrology is not a minority frame in the field of measurement science, but is the leading frame, also accepted by the WMO. An issue concerning measurement uncertainty is certainly fitting this frame. The level of confidence that can be attached to the provided numerical value for the MST strictly depends on the uncertainty attached to that value. I know from the IPCC Reports that they declare a “consensus value” so that no uncertainty is attached to it, but this would not be correct in the potential case when that value would not be non-significant with respect to the underlying uncertainty, because it would be deceiving the decision-making bodies. From a scientific viewpoint, no consensus value can be used, because the uncertainty cannot be omitted since it affects elaborations like the extrapolation of the trend ahead. Thus, the controversy should concern, first of all, an estimate of the confidence attached to the numerical estimate of what is going on, and about its trend (its derivative). It is not simple. What happens if the issue is not recognised as important ? I do not understand how, in this case, you can have a sound term about controversy. I am trying now to get help from some officers of the Organizations providing the final evaluations, and from the WMO to understand the kind of temperature information that is supplied to those Organization and used by them. No answers so far to my requests. I am afraid that they have no interest to tackle the point that I have submitted to them. (My language can look difficult to understand since I am using the specific metrological dialect)

Frpavese (talk) 09:00, 27 March 2022 (UTC) Franco Pavese

Just noting it is untrue the IPCC does not attach uncertainty to their estimates of global warming. The latest report estimated "Global surface temperature was 1.09 [0.95 to 1.20] °C", where the brackets represent the 90% confidence interval. It is further untrue that HadCRUT does not take into account measurement uncertainty : "The entire process produces an ensemble of 200 realisations which represent the uncertainty that arises from the underlying measurements and in the estimate of the spatial fields from the sample of measurements available." I invite you to continue to read up on the science. Femke (talk) 09:10, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

@Frpavese thanks for the further information. I can see that you are commenting in good faith, but it will nevertheless be difficult to incorporate your suggestions on this page because this page is about claims of controversy about global warming and any such claims included here need to be made in reliable sources rather than developed from your own original research (see WP:OR). [To highlight my potential conflict of interest, I add that I am an author of some of the global temperature datasets e.g. HadCRUT5.] Perhaps you could look at improving other wikipedia pages on temperature measurement or the instrumental temperature record?

Again, I see you claim that "the uncertainties of the values provided by the meteorological stations" are not included. This is not true -- we do include an estimate of those uncertainties as well as the other sources of uncertainty. Of course you might disagree with our estimates, but nevertheless we did include them and to claim otherwise is untrue. Our approach to estimating the uncertainties on the values provided by the meteorological stations was set out for HadCRUT3 in Brohan et al. (2006 https://doi.org/10.1029/2005JD006548), specifically see sections 2.3.1 and 2.3.3. Although some updates were made for HadCRUT4 and HadCRUT5, the basics remain the same. I'm providing this information out of courtesy as this type of discussion is not what talk pages are for -- they are for discussing specific improvements to the wikipedia page, whereas we have wandered off into discussions of what is or is not done in certain scientific studies. We should bring this discussion to a close here for that reason. TimOsborn (talk) 16:04, 29 March 2022 (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.

Skeptics vs deniers

The use of the word ‘skeptic’ in this article is inconsistent and confusing. It describes a letter by a group of skeptics saying that deniers are not skeptics. But then it describes Fred Singer, who was a denier, as “Skeptic”. Can these words be used in a consistent way to avoid confusion? 2600:1010:B006:E421:E087:5993:1CEC:687C (talk) 17:46, 6 May 2022 (UTC)

Improved it. --Hob Gadling (talk) 07:56, 7 May 2022 (UTC)