Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Climate change/Archive 3

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Geothermal energy

Geothermal energy has been nominated for an individual good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Chidgk1 (talk) 18:23, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

BBC podcast on climate change denial

I mention this as anyone interviewed may be too modest to do so. The episode on Wikipedia is at

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct2yqn

Chidgk1 (talk) 06:34, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Hopefully the BBC will translate this short report into the various languages mentioned. Although many Wikipedia languages don't have a climate change project many do have an "environment project" where such news reports could be posted to encourage more editors. Chidgk1 (talk) 12:11, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

I've deleted the denial sections from Belarusian version and the Croatian version (not reverted after 12 days). Swahili and Kazakh to go. Femke (talk) 20:21, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Really great work @Sadads, Clayoquot, and Dtetta:! The podcast mentions Romanian and Bosnian as well as languages with problems. Femke (talk) 09:01, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

I wonder whether Google have already been listening to Yumiko Sato. Obviously her controversial suggestion at the end of the podcast to just have English Wikipedia is not going to be done. But occasionally when I google for a subject in Turkish the resulting top right box includes a google translation of the English Wikipedia article rather than showing the Turkish one. Chidgk1 (talk) 10:04, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

I agree with Femke. Great work Sadads and Clayoquot! And thanks to Femke for deleting the “Critique of the thesis on global warming and its causes” section from the Croatian page so quickly.

I would like to put notices on these pages, like the one on the Non-fungible token page (which at one point also included a flag about too many non-reliable sources, such as user generated articles). The notice could state something to the effect that these pages violate WP:NOV, WP:RS and WP:SCIRS guidelines. I think the reliable source argument is actually the stronger one, as that policy clearly states a preference for scientific publications to document statements made in scientific articles. The Croatian page, by contrast, seems to have only one peer reviewed article that it cites as a source (out of 15 current citations, after Femke’s edit).

Sadads, Clayoquot, Femke, or anyone else who has insights on this - could one of you describe what actions would need to be done to create notices for those pages? That would seem to be one way to address the concerns that Yumiko Sato raises in the podcast.

I believe these are the Croatian-Google translation, Swahili-Google translation, and Chinese-Google translation pages referenced in the podcast and the separate print story. Dtetta (talk) 16:03, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Different language versions have different requirements for reliable sourcing, so not sure how much these templates would translate. I'm also not sure if there are any people watching these articles that would see the templates. A lot of communities only have about 10 active editors.

I'm thinking of having a page somewhere to systematically go over these articles with a group of editors. (I don't have the energy to set it up currently) Goal is to remove climate denial and update figures that give rise to unwarranted doubt (like the figure that shows an 'medieval warm period'). Femke (talk) 08:59, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Femke’s efforts are an admirable start, but I am a bit concerned with how time consuming it will be to fully resolve the denial problems with these pages. In many cases it seems like the actions needed are more than just a deletion of offending paragraphs, but a rather more time intensive editing of text and revisions to citations. For instance, the Croatian page still has a fairly significant climate denial tone in the lead and portions of the main text.

So I’d like to address two issues that have been raised:

“Different language versions have different requirements for reliable sourcing, so not sure how much these templates would translate.”

This may be somewhat accurate, but I don’t think it’s a determining factor. Focusing on the reliable source policy, if I look at the google translation of the Chinese Wikipedia: reliable source, and Wikipedia:available for verification pages, as well as the Croatian Wikipedia: Rules and guidelines and Wikipedia: Credible sources pages, they appear to have essentially the same requirements for neutrality and reliable sources as the English page, although the guidance is often briefer. So from a stricly policy perspective, I think that maintenance pages noting a lack of reliable sources, and perhaps of neutral point of view, would be entirely appropriate given these country specific guidelines.

“not sure if there are any people watching these articles that would see the templates”

I guess if that is a real concern, then is any of this a problem worth putting effort into? If people won’t read the templates, then they’re probably not reading the denial text in these articles. Alex Stinson did express concern about CC denial on non WP-EN pages in the BBC podcast, as did Su-Laine. When I look at the page view analyses of a couple of those pages, I see about 300 views a day on the Chinese CC/GW page, and 50 day per on the Croatian page. Not a lot, but I suspect the effort to put a maintenance template on these pages would also be fairly minimal. For China at least, it seems to me that we want to ensure that the main CC/GW wikipedia page, in a country of 1 billion people, has reliable information, even if the page is getting only 300 hits per day.

I continue to think maintenance templates are a more efficient first step. These non-English WP sites seem to often have templates that would address reliable source and NPOV concerns. For example, the Chinese: Template:Verify credibility, or Template:Unreferenced. Would seem to be appropriate choices

IMO there’s a couple of possibilities for pursuing this. One is, as editors, we could put one of these templates up on one on that on those pages that have problems (as we can with a similar page in the EN version, I believe). Another would be to either post this as a suggestion on the talk page for that article, or contact one of the admins, or more active editors for these pages on their personal talk pages. One could then mention this issue to them, and see if they would be willing to post one of these templates.

Marco Silve has emailed me a list of the pages they considered to have significant denial portions. In addition to Chinese, they include articles written in Romanian, Swahili, Croatian, Mongolian, Japanese, Belarusian, Kazakh, and Bosnian. I did not personally verify translations for these urls, but if you go to Google Translate, and chose the appropriate translation, then put the url in the text box, the corresponding text box on the translation side has the same url, but now links fo a translated version of the page.

I’m supportive of Femke’s idea to create a page that identifies denial oriented WP articles like these. But once those pages are identified, I think it would be more efficient to post a maintenance template on them first, while we work to correct the information. And although we might be in a position to make those changes and post templates ourselves, it might be good to at least try and post template suggestions and edit suggestions to the article talk pages (or the user pages of key admins/editors) first, and see if there is a local editor willing to take this work on.

Any thoughts on/interest in this aspect? Dtetta (talk) 22:35, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

Just a quick comment that meta:Wikimedians for Sustainable Development might be a good group for a) connecting with editors of other wikis who might be interested in this topic, and b) providing feedback on the politics of cross-language collaboration. Cheers, Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 06:29, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

You're right Dtetta that removing the most clear denial doesn't solve the issues completely. Especially for the Japanese and Chinese articles, we should try to find native speakers. Apparently, there is already a group of editors translating climate change articles on Meta. I've put a message there. Happy to see what happens if we put those maintenance templates up. Femke (talk) 09:03, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

Because they have included a screenshot captioned "Wikipedia" a google search for "site:bbc.com Marco Silva Wikipedia -football -Premier -Everton -Hull -Watford" reveals his article in Chinese Chidgk1 (talk) 14:32, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

Also, in terms of page view impact, folks might want to improve the simple.wikipedia version of CC/GW at: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change. My brother seems to get directed to this version when he does a google search for climate change on his phone. Not sure why. Dtetta (talk) 16:29, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

The Hindi Wikipedia Global Warming page seems to have similar problems to the article in Chinese, and about the same level of page views. Dtetta (talk) 05:00, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

@Dtetta Hindi Wikipedia is similar to Croatian -- in that the far-right, nationalist community has an unusual amount of control over the wiki, Sadads (talk) 12:50, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

I think I may have halved the climate denial there, but the Google Translate translation was really bad. Let's see if my edits stay up. Femke (talk) 21:03, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Apparently the Japanese Wikipedia is controlled by people with the same far-right nationalist bent. Are there any language Wikipedias where the environmentalists have taken over? Serious question. 02:38, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

I’m starting to think that an important part of editing these pages is simply to let the local community know that there are people from EN.WP monitoring and willing to make/propose changes when needed. The fact that none of the Croatian editors has reverted Femke’s edits in the past month is perhaps an example of a point Su-Laine made in the BBC podcast, which is that the people posting this information are not willing to defend those statements in an editing community discussion (even though the Croatian talk page archives do have editors expressing denial views at times). I’m going to try a maintenance template approach on the Chinese GW article, and suggest a template on that talk page. Will work with a friend here to make sure I have the proposed text correct, rather than relying on Google translate. But if there are any other Chinese speakers/writers who would be interested in working on this, please let me know via email or on my talk page. Dtetta (talk) 14:38, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

I noticed that Femke is providing her edit comments in English on the Croatian WP. It seems like this makes some sense, as many of the guidance and policy articles in non-English WPs have English sprinkled throughout them. Is it safe to assume that most of the editors for non-English WP articles have a decent fluency with English? It would make this work easier if this is in fact the case.Dtetta (talk) 17:09, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

I think its a relatively safe assumption for most countries in Europe. WP editors skew more highly educated. I try to keep the language simple and the talk page message short. For Middle East, south-east asia and Africa it may not be true. Femke (talk) 17:42, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

I think it would be a good idea to consult with an experienced sympathetic editor from the local wiki before using any language other than English on that wiki. In some parts of the world, people do see the ubiquitousness of English as a threat to the survival of their native language and their cultural integrity. In Quebec this sentiment is found even among people who speak and write English perfectly. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 01:39, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks Clayoquot. The Chinese article has two sections (3.2 and 3.2.1) that are similar to the Croatian text that Femke deleted. I was planning on deleting those sections, and spent a little time today working with a friend to create an edit summary in Chinese to explain the deletion. But I noticed that the page is locked. I also noticed that there is a maintenance template on the Chinese article regarding its contents, so that’s a bit of a plus. I’m going to continue this effort on the meta project page that Femke has created. But I appreciate the advice.Dtetta (talk) 03:10, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

I'm really glad to see more engagement with local speakers and co-ordination on Meta. The direction this is going in is much more sustainable than trying to do it ourselves. Ultimately we want the smaller communities to each take pride in their own project and to feel invested in it. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 16:56, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Possible support WMF

So I’ve been working with Femke, Chidgk1 and EMsmile to track and correct climate denial information as part of the climate denial review project that Femke started. But I’ve come to the realization that pretty much all all of these non-English sites we are working on have pretty clear requirements for Neutral Point of View and Reliable Sources that are very close to the policies in the English Wikipedia.

So I’m started starting to feel a little frustrated. Sadads - I’m wondering, if this is a widespread issue, and perhaps not confined to just the climate denial question, why isn’t the Wikimedia foundation sending stronger guidance on these policies to local administrators? Couldn’t there be some sort of message requesting that pages dealing with controversial topics, scientific or otherwise, be regularly monitored to make sure that that the local NPOV and Reliable Source standards/policies are being adhered to? Doesn’t the Wikimedia Foundation want to promote confidence in WP articles, regardless of the language they are in? Given the often small number of local volunteers, this seems like a relatively straightforward and time efficient action to take.

It seems odd that there are several editors spending a fair amount of time correcting text problems that could be prevented, at least in part, by some simple guidance. I’m finding harder to justify my time working on this, knowing that there’s that discrepancy. It makes more sense to me, in cases where there are these major reliable source or NPOV problems, to just ask local administrators to take down pages that deviate so dramatically from both Wikimedia principles and local policies, and to a brief page referring readers to the EN page, and providing a link to google translate if they need help with a translation into their local language. I don’t see this as an overly WP-EN centric view…it’s the Wikimedia foundation that powers this, after all. Seems like, in the long run, this could do much more to preserve confidence in Wikipedia than our current efforts to correct bad text. Something just doesn’t seem right with this current picture. Dtetta (talk) 02:15, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

I share your frustrations regarding the different language versions, Dtetta. It seems a bit pointless spending hours and hours on improving the climate change article in non-English language versions when we (not me, but others) have put so much effort into getting the English version right and up to date (and will continue to update it in future). Perhaps users of non-English Wikipedias should be presented with two options: click here to view a Google translate version into language X of the English version. Or click here to see a different article, usually smaller, less accurate and less up to date in language X. We might be ahead of our time but we can assume that machine translations will get better and better. Eventually they'll be just as good as human translations. So we should plan for this. EMsmile (talk) 09:41, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

@Dtetta @EMsmile at first glance what you describe as potential investments or solutions might make sense -- but under the surface you are describing a bit of a wicked problem that doesn't get solved in that way: each local wiki has its own editorial community, standards and practices. This is in part an important function of the legal-protection for the website as user generated content, but its also way more complex.

In reality, only about 100 communities are large enough and have enough of a culture to enforce high editorial standards. Most of the languages outside of those 100 or so don't have reliable machine translation by any provider on the internet -- so you can't automate that work with a link to Google translate for instance (think for example the smaller Indonesian, Philippines or Sub Saharan African languages). There has been a fair amount of evidence that non-English users of the internet that have a desire for deeper research do do a "machine translate English or another big language" workflow without us facilitating it if they have a language that is reliable in machine translation. In those situations, the main users of the local language wiki is more used for learners to get basic information on topics OR folks looking for cultural-context specific content.

A lot of wikis have adopted some version of the English/German/French/Russian originated standards for quality. But these standards were built for large language communities -- so are hard to maintain when you have a few dozen regular contributors. And in some cases the editorial communities have been captured by editorial communities with particular, sometimes very nationalistic or state-compliant editing culture, such as Croatia and Kyrgyz Wikipedia's . The only way to bring these communities along to a more globally neutral approach is to set cultural standards that allow diversity of perspectives to flourish in a way that folks work towards global practices of improving quality of content. This is in part the theory of change behind the Universal Code of Conduct

With all this in mind, for hard science topics like Medicine and Climate change, using centralized major languages as a "source of truth" for translation is very common and the Foundation spends a lot of energy helping communities identify and translate content that can be added to their wikis (see for example the world-class Wikipedia:Content_translation_tool -- which recently added a "translate a section" feature that should make it easier to update articles that already exist and we can start working on the problem @Femkemilene identified of outdated translated content). However, this gets increasingly complex when you get into more cultural-context specific content, which is where most of the small wiki communities focus their efforts on new locally researched content (for a good definition see meta:Wikipedia_Diversity_Observatory/Cultural_Context_Content). Additionally, where machine translation would probably work, like Spanish and Arabic, the "core" articles also tend to need regionalized inflections -- much like how many of the "core" articles on English have US, UK, Australia, Anglo-phone Africa and India specific content.

AND so where most of the cultural of new verification is focused in many of the smaller wikis is on cultural-context content that is unique to the readers and culture served by that wiki. For example, I interviewed some contributors in smaller indonesian languages -- for science, Bahasa indonesia or English serves them in most cases, but what they create editorial community around is cultural expressions, politics, history and geography content unique to that community. If we set a global standard for quality or verifiability, many of those topics would be excluded from the local wiki -- and in turn, that language would not include editors, and in some of these languages there would be no content in that language on the internet -- because Wikipedia is frequently one of the first "generic" websites to support languages. Rather the local communities need to figure out how they want to deal with quality, while also creating the conditions for that language to thrive on the internet (it's not just thriving local Wikipedia that is at stake, but actual content creation in the language on the internet that is stake). This is why its so important to invest money and resources in supporting those communities (i.e. the Movement Strategy focus on Knowledge Equity) -- because without consistent, regular community building and concensus making you can't get to that culture of content improvement while balancing quality with thriving language community.

There have been several language communities that have really begun to thrive in the last 5-10 years, including in Eastern Europe, marginalized content on languages like Northern Sami Wikipedia, and languages in India, Indonesia and the Phillipines, while many other languages have not (i.e. the Scots Wikipedia situation, which actually catalyzed the language activism community to rally around building a culture of high-quality scots Wikipedia). All this is to say -- the best thing we can do on big Wikis is maintain the brand/reputation of Wikipedia on our wikis so that there is money and brand goodwill to transfer to these small communities, create easily translatable content that local Wikis can benefit from, support the code-of-conduct related enforcement actions that help diversity function in smaller communities, and creating training and skill building spaces (like meta:WikiForHumanRights) that helps local communities wrap their head around the communication problems related to different topics -- and help them figure out how to recruit the next generation of participants. This is very complicated -- and why the 500 person foundation, and the current resources in the rest of the movement feel largely inadequate for achieving the full vision set forward in the 2030 strategy. Hope that is helpful! Sadads (talk) 12:43, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Also I want to remind you that our project/mission is really only achievable in 10,20, 100 year time scales, so what might seem like an unachievable pile of complexity, can be incrementally addressed over time-- your diagnosing of the misinformation on climate for the denial project, is actually a really good building block for me to make the case for deeper investment in small-language communities focused on sustainability topics. Sustainability and climate change as communication issues in small languages will be a probably for the rest of our lifetimes -- its just the era we are living in -- so as urgent is the crises is now, we also have an opportunity in this moment to recruit more interested people, who can be part of changing the culture and practices on the smaller Wikipedias around these topics -- but also all of the interconnected science and society topics that are being neglected in these wikis, Sadads (talk) 12:52, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Sadads - Thanks for that thoughtful and thorough response!

I totally understand that each local community rightfully has its own standards, I was trying to acknowledge that in my comments. And as a former board member for Earthcorps, I really do appreciate the challenges of supporting the development of local programs. What I am saying though, is that the communities I’ve been looking at don’t seem to be following their own standards, at least in terms of Reliable sources and NPOV policies, which as I’ve said are pretty close to those of EN Wikipedia.

It makes sense that for topics with cultural specific content, articles on those sites would evolve in a more organic way. I’m glad to see there’s a lot of work going into tools like the content translation tool. And sounds like you also face staffing challenges, just like many of the pages face volunteer challenges. I’m glad to see you’re putting a lot of effort into understanding and supporting cultural specific development of articles in non-English languages. It seems, though, that looking for opportunities to increase the use of links to EN articles for topics that have an international scope, like climate change, would complement, not work against, the 2030 strategy, in terms of efficient use of limited resources. The idea being that effort could be more focused on cultural specific content, with international topics making use of EN links where appropriate. And it seems like the local administrators could play a role in figuring out which cases would merit that approach.

Looking at the pages that are getting the most views, the Hindi and Chinese articles have had only a few edits in all of 2021. The Japanese, Korean, and Italian articles have a little more activity, maybe a few edits a month, but still a relatively small amount compared to what’s needed for a controversial scientific article where there is regularly new, relevant information. These pages seem like good candidates for an alternative maintenance/revision approach.

I admit I have no knowledge of how local language sites are chartered, and what communications the foundation has with the volunteers that run those sites. And I don’t understand your reference to Section 230 being an issue here, it doesn’t seem like it’s really relevant to this particular discussion. I’m just suggesting that the Foundation think about some focused communications they could do with local editors to reinforce the importance of the NPOV and RS policies for maintaining the credibility of Wikipedia, and to look at these EN link approaches where it seems like articles are falling significantly short of those standards. I think these kinds of actions would help make the Universal Code of Conduct a more credible vision. And I think they could be an important tool for achieving your stated goal of recruiting more volunteers, in that having articles that are credible to local readers would seem to increase the appeal of Wikipedia as a project to work on. Dtetta (talk) 16:01, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Me and Sadads had a somewhat similar conversation of email a few days back. And there is another similar conversation happening at User talk:Iridescent#Managing scale, more focussed towards enwiki and medicine. I don't care too much for the really small Wikipedias, as they have low readership. I'm concerned about the lack of structure/incentives for medium-sized and large Wikipedias to keep their relevant content up-to-date, or in the case of lack of capacity, deleted or stubified.

The quality of climate change articles on most Wikipedia editions has decreased over the last 10 years. Most of them have one significant editor, and then lie dormant. Even on enwiki, a large fraction of science articles have this problem. We (WMF included) need to develop tools to automatically review these articles. It's impossible to do this manually. If you have a look at WP:URFA/2020, you see how many editor-hours it costs only to do this for featured articles, where we can barely keep up with the newly promoted. This 'check-outdatedness' tool may need a project similarly sized as ORES, or simply a median source age checked against a wikidata-defined maximum acceptable source age. (For those unaware, ORES is an AI tool that detects quality of Wikipedia articles. It does not know whether it's up to date if there aren't any tags.) Depending on what the local communities want, this can then be used for mass-deletion of mass-stubification of harmfully outdated content.

For large core articles, such as climate change, we should be able to preserve an article in most languages. This will require more than just having a section-translate tool. Just spitballing here. Say we choose 500 controversial core articles. The WMF develops a tool for medium-to-large Wikipedias to indicate when it was last checked by an independent editor. Make it red if an article hasn't had a review for 5 years or something. If you measure something, you can expect action. Femke (talk) 18:20, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

@Femkemilene -- for that kind of approach, I would definitely stay engaged with the WMF research team -- they are the ones that do the bulk of the focus on this kind of machine-based innovation: https://research.wikimedia.org/ -- also if you know a researcher that could help with developing a model for something like that, I am all for it. In my day job, I am currently focused on the identification of topic areas -- so that its easier for groups like WikiProject Climate change to see similar topical areas in other wikis, so we can ask this next question about quality gaps. Topic area identification, I think, would make it easier for multilingual collaborative communities in the Big and Medium size wikis to form, like is beginning to happen with Climate/Sustainabilty, Medicine and the Gender Gap. The amount of work, to say, have a community project on LGBTQ+ topics or Human Rights topics in a multilingual setting is quite high, and we really don't even know who is around and collaborating. I think developing a "outofdateness" tool that just scans the age of references, would be in scope of a volunteer dev like @Surlycyborg: -- if you want to put a pitch together, and share it with me before the next hackathon -- I bet we can get close (also cc @SuperHamster: who built User:SuperHamster/CiteUnseen, Sadads (talk) 15:43, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

@Sadads That sounds like a good idea and I can try writing down some requirements and a design sketch for all of us to review and contribute. We could start with a publicly accessible database of "out-of-dateness" metrics, which will allow us to build dashboards for human consumption and bots that tag articles if desired.

I remember back in Outreachy 2019 we used this publicly-visible Google document to flesh out some ideas with the student, and I think it was pretty helpful. Do you suggest some particular format or wiki page for the pitch or should we just go with something like that? -- User:Surlycyborg (talk) 19:55, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Started a project on meta

I've started a project on meta to collect all the data there, via email, and to attract more language communities in solving this problem. Please help fill out the table!

Thanks for starting this Femke!Dtetta (talk) 14:38, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

Subsidies in Iran needs update to remain good

Subsidies in Iran has been nominated for an individual good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Chidgk1 (talk) 17:08, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Improving Japan#Environment

Hello,

Japan is currently going through a series to change to retain its FA status. If you can help make the "environment" section a better summary of the contemporary environmental issues and policy of Japan, that would be much appreciated! MSG17 (talk) 00:03, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

The new-ish article Effects of climate change on the water cycle

I just came across the article Effects of climate change on the water cycle which was created in May last year. I am just wondering if such an article is helpful or if it overlaps too much with other articles, such as effects of climate change and physical effects of climate change (which I have suggested to merge earlier on this talk page). Maybe it's a useful sub-sub-article or maybe it's yet another article which will become outdated if we don't have enough resources to update the data and figures on glaciers, salinity etc. Here again, the use of excerpts might reduce our workload. So far it has very low pageviews, just about 10 views per day. EMsmile (talk) 12:46, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Input requested at Climate change in the United States

Those knowledgeable re climate change and re Wikipedia policies, especially WP:NEUTRAL and WP:Minority viewpoints, are requested to weigh in to settle my ongoing WP:WALLOFTEXT disagreements with two fairly new essentially SPAs. Among other things, the ~SPAs respectively claim that (a) local/regional environmental damage inflicted on Indigenous peoples by colonialists even centuries ago falls under the term "impacts of climate change", and (b) bridging Indigenous epistemology (knowledge system) with western science is climate change adaptation.

I emphasize I am not arguing against the facts that Indigenous people unfairly bear the brunt of climate change impacts, and Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) can help in climate change studies and adaptation. However:

• The subsection presently in conflict is Climate change in the United States#Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), which I had pared with detailed explanations from this massive 5 Jan addition. My clean version was here until the ~SPA largely reverted it just hours ago with minimal explanation. (I added the last paragraph of that section myself—not in conflict).
• A summary of my reasoning is here.
• PS: The subsection that once caused conflict in Dec 2021 is Climate change in the United States#Impacts on indigenous peoples, which I think is now basically acceptable.

Climate change-knowledgeable editors who are brave and patient are invited to contribute there. —RCraig09 (talk) 04:39, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

• Thank you, RCraig09, for asking for input from other editors on this page. I would like to just state, though, that my account is hardly "Single-Purpose" in nature (see here edits to, among other pages, The Great Gatsby and The Last of the Mohicans), neither is my account "relatively new," as my first edit was in December of 2017 (although it could be seen as "new" in comparison to RCraig09). --Hobomok (talk) 21:44, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

• Everyone: don't be scared off by the WP:WALLOFTEXT on the Talk Page. Probably, the most concisely stated question at this point is which of the following two sections are preferable for Wikipedia:

1. The 9 Jan version (reflecting my edits), or
2. The current version, Climate change in the United States#Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) (mostly Larataguera's work)

Please edit (with helpful edit comments), or add to the Talk Page. Thanks. —RCraig09 (talk) 00:06, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

I took a quick look and overall I prefer your version, but I'm wary of being the only person wading into what seems like a hot dispute. Holy cow, that is a wall of text indeed. Can I suggest starting a Request for comment? Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 21:29, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

That's another possibility, thanks. I was focusing first on climate change-knowledgeable editors. —RCraig09 (talk) 22:26, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

• A concise Request for Comment has been submitted at Talk:Climate change in the United States#Jan2022rfc. —RCraig09 (talk) 19:53, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Disambiguation links to Climate action

Could you help to disambiguate the links at Disambig fix list for Climate action? I find these complex and sometimes overlapping so I would not want to direct readers to the wrong one.— Rod ^talk 15:58, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks - this list appears to have been tackled.— Rod ^talk 17:36, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Would a series primarily focused on climate change fall under the purview of this Wikiproject?

I'm talking about Sherwood (TV series), although gen:LOCK also has important environmental themes as well. I could easily leave it in the existing categories, but I wanted to know all your thoughts on this before, and if, I add this project to the talk page. But, I watch this project with interest because I'm currently indexing declassified climate change documents for my job! --Historyday01 (talk) 16:17, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

I personally don't see enough of a connection to warrant it being under the purview of the WikiProject. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 17:30, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Fair point there. I'll post on here once the work I'm doing for my job is done, as I think that would be even more of interest to you all than some animated series. Historyday01 (talk) 21:39, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Looking forward to it, Historyday01 :D A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 22:34, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. There's already been some documents (and posts) about environmental diplomacy so far, but the indexing will probably be done in February and March, although it may be some time before it is published and becomes a searchable database. --Historyday01 (talk) 23:15, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Expand section on adding photos of climate change?

Hi there,

I noticed that the section under 'Get started with easy edits' does not have steps for adding photos of climate change under 'Images and figures.' I would love to expand this with a few easy steps to add new photos of local effects of climate change to Wikimedia Commons to be added to Wikipedia pages. Is there a section for this already elsewhere/would anyone be opposed to me drafting this? Thanks! -- Breadyornot (talk) 19:35, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

I don't think there is any information elsewhere, please do add it :). As the page is targeted towards newer and intermediate editors, it may be nice to warn against WP:SANDWICHING. Femke (talk) 19:38, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for the advice! I'll get started on this soon. -- Breadyornot (talk) 19:47, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Cirrus cloud

I have nominated Cirrus cloud for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Chidgk1 (talk) 08:37, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

Climate workshop - action starts with community - February 24, 2022

Hello! Last week, the Wikimedia Foundation published a blog post - Climate workshop - action starts with community - to highlight an upcoming interactive, team-building workshop session on February 24, 2022 at 1500 UTC called Race to Net Zero that will contain educational content, active discussions and innovative approaches to problem-solving as we deal with the global climate crisis.

This workshop is open to all, please join us - more detailed information is on the Sustainability talk page with sign up instructions.

We're looking forward to seeing you there! DTankersley (WMF) (talk) 17:37, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

If anyone wants a quick summary of the workshop description, i don't think it has anything to do with improving Wikipedia content. It looks like a Climate Change 101 thing that would probably be stuff any member of this project already knows. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 05:38, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

An RfC about the use of excerpts

WP:excerpts have disadvantages and advantages. I would like to get consensus on best practices for effects of climate change which we can hopefully apply more broadly. See Talk:effects of climate change#RfC: when to use excerpts. Femke (talk) 17:10, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

Need brief comments on a merger discussion

Only 3 people have opinions so far so we are deadlocked. I think electricity is important as becoming political - some politicians are blaming carbon pricing for people's bills. One or 2 sentences for or against the merge should not take much of your time as the articles are fairly small

Hope you can comment at

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Cost_of_electricity_by_source#Merger_proposal

Chidgk1 (talk) 06:35, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

Women in Red - Climate

Hello friends, Our year-long initiative at Women in Red this year focuses on Women and Climate - scientists and activists, both past and present who are working to combat climate change. If you're working on a biography like that, it would be fantastic if you could add it to the project page, and add WIR-214 as a template on the article's talk page! It doesn't matter whether it's a new page, or editing climate work into an existing one. Lajmmoore (talk) 08:26, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

I added it yesterday already :). Hope to be able to participate at some point. Femke (talk) 17:02, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Can anyone help with economics?

I am perhaps taking advantage of A. C. Santacruz revealing their knowledge in the previous post, but as they may be busy this is for anyone with an interest or knowledge.

For some time I have been trying to get people (such as the Wikipedia Economics project or WikiEd students) interested in improving Economics of climate change and Economics of climate change mitigation but without much success. The problem is they are really hard to read and understand for a layperson like myself.

I think, now that the original climate change denial is down to the rump of the US Republicans and a few Wikipedians in Belarus, that the climate change debate is pretty much all about economics.

So if you have the time and would enjoy it I hope you might take a look at one or both of Economics of climate change and Economics of climate change mitigation.

Chidgk1 (talk) 17:28, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Chidgk1 you might be pleased to know one of my main articles of focus is Carbon bubble, which is related to both of those articles. Once I'm done there I'll see what I can do there. Watch-listing for now! A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 17:30, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

We also have Low-carbon economy which overlaps with the above and is a mess. Thanks both of you for stepping up! Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 17:36, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

I was not thinking of working on the economics articles. When I said "help" I meant help the project not me personally :-) Chidgk1 (talk) 08:38, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

WikiProject Sustainable development

Hi! Just wanted to let you know that there's a new proposal for a WikiProject about sustainable development. Since there's some overlap with the scope of this project, I thought you'd like to know. Any support, comments, objections? Please leave them at the project proposal. Cheers! Sophivorus (talk) 19:27, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

Done. EMsmile (talk) 11:58, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Can we improve our coverage of Ukraine?

Especially given the links between the EU's addiction to Russian gas, this may be the moment to improve out coverage of climate change in Ukraine. A few possible articles:

• Energy in Ukraine
• Geography of Ukraine
• International sanctions during the Russo-Ukrainian War
• Russia in the European energy sector
• Russia–European_Union_relations#Energy.

Anybody in? I've added a small paragraph about climate change into geography of ukraine. Femke (talk) 15:38, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

If there's any part that deals with finances or economics, I'm down to do my part, Femke :) I'll see if I can find something for the energy sector's financing. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 15:43, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Two good sources: Carbon Brief and Scientific American. Femke (talk) 15:43, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Also note there is a meta:Ukraine's Cultural Diplomacy Month 2022 broader campaign to improve coverage of Ukraine. Femke (talk) 17:29, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Not just the EU burning a lot of Russian gas. I doubt this country will close the Turkish Straits, but if we do I wonder if Vlad will decide he is not Tayip's friend any more and cut off our supply Chidgk1 (talk) 17:35, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

It might be useful to also set up an article on climate change in Ukraine using the same template that we've used for the other climate change in Country X articles (see here). Currently, climate change in Ukraine redirects to here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Ukraine#Climate. EMsmile (talk) 12:02, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Russia in the European energy sector nominated for "in the news" - needs update

I had no idea this article existed until it was pointed out by an observant Exonian. It could do with some update if you have time and your name is not Femke:

Wikipedia:In_the_news/Candidates#March_8

Chidgk1 (talk) 06:16, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

Where should "ocean temperature" redirect to?

Currently "ocean temperature" redirects to sea surface temperature (since 2011). Is this redirect correct or should it rather go to ocean heat content? Is someone who is searching for "ocean temperature" (perhaps in the context of ocean warming) more likely to find what they're looking for at sea surface temperature or at ocean heat content?EMsmile (talk) 15:53, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

I think the redirect is at a good target as is. Ocean heat content is really more about energy than temperature (of course they are related concepts). Potentially a hatnote could be added at sea surface temperature that says something along the lines of "ocean temperature redirects here. For other uses see ocean heat content". Trainsandotherthings (talk) 23:38, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

I boldly added the hatnote @Trainsandotherthings @EMsmile just to have a patch in the meantime. Sadads (talk) 20:43, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Merge climate resilience and climate change vulnerability?

A discussion is underway about merging climate resilience and climate change vulnerability as they are "complementary expressions of essentially the same concept, like heat and cold ("cold" merely being "less heat")". Please see discussion here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Climate_resilience#Merging_climate_resilience_and_climate_change_vulnerability? . If you agree, then what should be the title of the merged article and which one should be merged into which? The article climate resilience is the older one. Page views are low for both of them (less than 100 pageviews per day). Please discuss it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Climate_resilience#Merging_climate_resilience_and_climate_change_vulnerability? EMsmile (talk) 11:40, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

Who can help with instrumental temperature record?

Can someone help with this article: instrumental temperature record? It gets about 300 pageviews per day and is linked from the main climate change article. I received reviewer's comments here but I feel way out of my depth. I have also proposed on the talk page of the article that we should perhaps change the title so that it's clearer what the article is about. Please see here. EMsmile (talk) 13:07, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

Discussion at Thomas Sowell

This is a request for editors to chip in to a discussion on Thomas Sowell wikipedia page.

I added a section on climate change to the page for popular right-wing intellectual and columnist Thomas Sowell. The quotes come from his syndicated newspaper column and the climate change section of an interview on the phenomenon of public intellectuals.

Here is the section I added, before revert: Thomas Sowell#Climate change, oldid=1077842489. (I didn't know how to wikilink an oldid).

Some IP editor keeps replacing Sowell's denialism with some quotes where he is merely echoing scientists like Lindzen and Michaels.

We are past the 3rr stage, so I opened a discussion: Talk:Thomas Sowell#Reversion of Sowell's climate change denial.

-- M.boli (talk) 15:51, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

Do we need so many sub-articles on effects of climate change?

I'm copying something here that I had raised on the talk page of effects of climate change. I am putting it here now in an effort to have a centralised location to complete the discussion (it was here before).

While we are on the topic of stale content for climate change articles that deal with effects, I have long wondered if it's really so helpful to have so many closely related sub-articles. If effects of climate change is the main article, do we really need all these sub-articles (and doesn't it create a lot of extra work for us to keep them all up to date and with reliable sources?):

• Physical impacts of climate change (update: now merged into effects of climate change) EMsmile (talk) 16:33, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
• Regional effects of climate change (update: now merged into effects of climate change) EMsmile (talk) 16:33, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
• Effects of climate change on oceans compared with Effects of climate change on marine mammals (perhaps merge the two?)
• Effects of climate change on humans compared with Effects of climate change on human health (I guess the second one is a sub-article of the first one but there is so much overlap and repetition) - (update: now merged into effects of climate change) EMsmile (talk) 16:33, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
• Effects of climate change on island nations (I guess this one makes sense to have as stand-alone)
• Climate change and ecosystems (overlaps with others a lot)
• Effects of climate change on terrestrial animals (overlaps with others a lot)

Overall, I am wondering: does it work in our favour to have separate sub-sub-articles or not really? Another thing we could consider is to use excerpts more. For example, the issue of sea level rise pops up in many of these articles; rather than writing/updating that content each time, perhaps better so simply use an excerpt from the lead of sea level rise. Same with ocean acidification etc. EMsmile (talk) 07:44, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

I am proposing to merge Physical impacts of climate change and Regional effects of climate change into effects of climate change. Also proposing to merge Effects of climate change on marine mammals into Effects of climate change on oceans. And merge Effects of climate change on human health with Effects of climate change on humans. For detailed discussions on each, see below. EMsmile (talk) 01:12, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

Proposal to merge Regional effects of climate change to effects of climate change

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The result of this discussion was to merge. Chidgk1 (talk) 15:03, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

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In order to reduce the number of similar sub-articles that need to be maintained, improved and updated, I am proposing to merge Regional effects of climate change to here. See also discussion just above this section. I will add the merger tags now. EMsmile (talk) 11:15, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

• Support I think the merge will be a bit more engaged than long-term effects of climate change. The majority of the text is outdated, primary or WP:NEWS and can be deleted. The remaining titbits need to be split into this article and various others. Femke (talk) 13:42, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
• Support: "Regional effects..." is in that awkward position between global and national. There are already numerous national-level articles (example: Climate change in China). Simplifying this network of articles makes them a bit easier to maintain. —RCraig09 (talk) 16:22, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

  @EMsmile: I think you can consider this consensus to merge. It's been a while and this discussion has been widely advertised. Femke (talk) 11:51, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

  OK, I've put it on my to do list for the next few days. EMsmile (talk) 12:30, 14 January 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.

Merge Effects of climate change on marine mammals into Effects of climate change on oceans

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Please see talk page of destination article. Chidgk1 (talk) 14:59, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

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I propose to merge Effects of climate change on marine mammals into Effects of climate change on oceans. I see lots of overlap of overlap and outdated information, which will be easier to update in just one article instead of two. See also discussion on talk page of effects of climate change. EMsmile (talk) 03:40, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

• Support Yes it is a bit weird that that the acidification section of that article talks about corals, mussels and oysters without explaining the relevance to mammals - for example will the acidification lead to lack of food for dolphins. Then later on it says "As warmer waters lead to a decrease in dolphin prey" without mentioning acidification. Chidgk1 (talk) 11:51, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
• After having a good look at the article, it seems well-maintained. It sufficiently specific that high overlap isn't much of a worry either. I now think it should not be merged. Femke (talk) 11:43, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

  To me it looks like at least the sections on ocean warming and ocean acidification are a repetition of what's elsewhere (especially the part on ocean acidification). Also I am finding the structure rather strange, as everything comes under "potential effects" even though the article's title is also "effects of...". Also under "species impacted" it lists only 2 species (polar bears and dolphins). Seems arbitrary to me.

• 1Potential effects
• 1.1Ocean warming
• 1.2Primary productivity
• 1.3Ocean acidification
• 1.4Sea ice changes
• 1.5Hypoxia
• 1.6Species impacted
• 1.6.1Polar bears
• 1.6.2Dolphins

What would be the advantage of keeping it separately from effects of climate change on oceans? EMsmile (talk) 12:39, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Closing as I got confused with discussion in more than one place. Chidgk1 (talk) 14:59, 8 February 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.

Proposal to merge Physical impacts of climate change to effects of climate change

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The result of this discussion was to merge. Chidgk1 (talk) 15:16, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

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I am also proposing to merge Physical impacts of climate change to effects of climate change. EMsmile (talk) 01:12, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

• Lean support - Like the other articles, most of the citations are old, primary and/or news. This indicates we do not have the capacity for this many articles. It serves as a intermediate layer between effects of climate change and the specific impacts like sea level rise, tropical cyclones and climate change and so forth. However, not all impacts have specific subarticles (wildfires, precipitation). I think we should do a very selective merge again, with tidbits spread over other articles. If the climate change sections of the non-climate specific articles (like wildfires/precipitation) are out of date, they could be noted on the to-do list. Femke (talk) 14:25, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

  Thanks, Femke. Wondering if anyone else has additional suggestions on how to do this? If not then I'll try to implement Femke's suggestion. Did I understand it right that the article Physical impacts of climate change would cease to exist in the end but its content be moved to several articles (except for outdated or poorly sourced information)? EMsmile (talk) 12:32, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

  I see there is a discussion on the talk page of the destination article about how to do it so closing this one to avoid confusion Chidgk1 (talk) 15:16, 8 February 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.

Editaton

Please continue this discussion at Talk:Greenhouse_gas_emissions#Add_information_about_GHG_emissions_from_internet_usage,_streaming

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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Greenhouse gas emissions from streaming music Chidgk1 (talk) 19:02, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

I don't understand your point? GHG emissions from streaming music or videos is important, isn't it? EMsmile (talk) 13:04, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

Music certainly not important. Video almost certainly not important. But if you have a Holodeck at home or in your office please check its lifetime GHG and let us know. Or if you have something from Star Wars. Chidgk1 (talk) 18:31, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

C.J. Griffin and I have a long running disagreement about Individual action on climate change but I suspect he would agree with me about this. Chidgk1 (talk) 19:01, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

Having said that anyone who buys the latest Gaming computer every 6 months maybe needs to consider GHG. And see Individual_action_on_climate_change#Personal_finance re your cryptocurrency. And some data centers still use fossil fuels - Data_center#Greenhouse_gas_emissions Chidgk1 (talk) 19:18, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

Video streaming of movies is a relevant amount of GHG emissions. I don't have the publications at my fingertips (haven't done a Google search yet); I once read that streaming porn movies is adding a surprisingly high amount of GHG emissions of humans (and one that seems should be mostly "superfluous/excessive"). So I think it's no joke and the data ought to be included in the article on greenhouse gas emissions. Will add it on the talk page there.EMsmile (talk) 08:57, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

I think that even though the studies are fairly recent in time they are out of date in terms of public pressure on big companies to use renewables in data centers in western countries. If you can find any studies on data centers in India or China they might bolster your case, as it will take a long time for Russia to build more gas pipelines to reduce those countries coal use. If anyone from Alibaba is reading this - Greenpeace have already warned you and now Wikipedia is on your case! Chidgk1 (talk) 09:14, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

It'll be easy to find that sort of data. I just put into Google "greenhouse gas emissions from streaming porn" and found quite a few recent publications, e.g. this one comes up first: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/porn-online-carbon-dioxide-emissions-climate-change-belgium-a9002241.html. Headline: "Porn produces same amount of carbon dioxide as whole of Belgium, study finds. Digital sector needs to be heavily scrutinised in light of urgent need to reduce emissions." Those publications are mostly from 2019, it seems. I doubt that all the data centres have successfully switched over to renewable energy since then. EMsmile (talk) 09:27, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

(and even if they did, we still ought to explain this linkage to the public who's reading up on greenhouse gas emissions on Wikipedia...) EMsmile (talk) 09:28, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

The Shift project data is also used in this study but I suspect The Independant has got confused as I doubt many people watch hours of porn on a 4G connection. We need a study of people watching Bollywood movies over 4G. Chidgk1 (talk) 10:25, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

We should probably move this discussion to the article talk page in hope others will join in. It has been useful in that I now realise I need to highlight a particular legal problem in one of the Turkey articles. Also if anyone has time I think it would be good to mention in articles about any large company (not just ICT) if they do not reveal their carbon footprint. Chidgk1 (talk) 11:17, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

Which article talk page(s) do you have in mind? I have already added it to the greenhouse gas emission talk page here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Greenhouse_gas_emissions#Add_information_about_GHG_emissions_from_internet_usage,_streaming EMsmile (talk) 10:02, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

I was thinking of Talk:Streaming_media but as you have already moved it I will not as best to keep discussion in one place I guess. Chidgk1 (talk) 10:26, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

OK. I am just wondering if you'd like to perhaps revise the section heading of this section (I mean this "There must be a line from some lyrics which describes this waffle but I can't think of it right now") as it feels a bit mocking to me which I think is unnecessary (I might have misunderstood what you were trying to say about lyrics and waffle). EMsmile (talk) 10:33, 22 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.

Climate change denier vs skeptic

Members of this project may want to chime in at Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Noticeboard#Climate change denier vs skeptic. --Hob Gadling (talk) 14:35, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

Interesting debate. Does WikiProject Climate change have a policy/guidance on this and other language aspects? If so, we could put it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Climate_change#Guidelines,_tools_and_advice . It seems from the discussion that denier makes more sense than skeptic but that we should generally not use labels and if the labels come from a source we should put them in quotation marks. EMsmile (talk) 11:43, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Added info on pageviews under "metric" in our project page

I have just added some information on pageviews in the section on "metric" in our project page here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Climate_change#Metrics . I hope people are OK with that? The link to the massview tool was already there but only in small font. I think the pageview figures are an important justification in our work so I felt it's important to flesh that out a little bit more. Also, those pageviews are a bit inflated as we have also tagged articles that are not primarily about climate change like car or David Attenborough. And how can we reconcile the mismatching numbers between the table (it takes the articles that have a project tag) versus the massview tool (it takes the article in the category on climate change)? I guess it means having to add the category to those articles that have the Wikiproject tag. Could this be done with a bot? EMsmile (talk) 12:49, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Please help with the article on climate justice

I am currently doing some work on the article on climate justice but have some questions where I need guidance. Please come to the talk page of climate justice and help with this important article. It needs to be made understandable for the general public. See also a comment on the talk page of the WikiProject Climate Justice Taskforce here where another editor (User:Cyberperson) pointed out in January: "It seems the Climate Justice page has gotten really messy, with lots of repetition, poor writing and quite a few questionable sections added." EMsmile (talk) 07:26, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

Reassessment of Good Article status for sustainability (March 2022)

Sustainability is related to climate change. Please note that I have listed this article for reassessment of its WP:GA status (which it got 11 years ago). I don't think in its current form it meets GA status and I think the label ought to be removed for now. We can later work towards regaining the GA status. Please see the discussion here. EMsmile (talk) 10:00, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

Off topic - syntax highlighter

EMsmile and anyone else interested (feel free to move to a better place)

thanks for the screenshot. I wonder why it looks so different to mine. Have you customised yours a lot? I don't have that pen visible but I think my syntax highlighting is already turned on in the preferences and therefore it's on, right? So just different font colours, not actually highlighting as such (I feel bad clogging up Wikimedia Commons with my screenshot but I guess there is no other way of doing it):

EMsmile (talk) 11:37, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

yours is already on and it stays on unless you deliberately turn it off - I have not customized - my example was too small to show properly - yours is better example - don't kow why you don't have icon but you don't need it unless you want to turn it off and go back to black and white Chidgk1 (talk) 10:57, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

IPCC_Sixth_Assessment_Report#Climate_Change_2022:_Mitigation_of_climate_change_(Working_Group_3_report)

Hey, very happy to discover this portal collaborative work. I started to edit IPCC_Sixth_Assessment_Report#Climate_Change_2022:_Mitigation_of_climate_change_(Working_Group_3_report. I hope some others wikipedians could help to contribute on this page today. The on line presse conference is due today at 5pm European time Geneva. Reneza (talk) 06:45, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Thanks and welcome to the team, Reneza! EMsmile (talk) 16:42, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Direct links, FYI. —RCraig09 (talk) 05:47, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

• Working Group III (4 April 2022). "Climate Change 2022 / Mitigation of Climate Change / Summary for Policymakers" (PDF). IPCC.ch. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Archived (PDF) from the original on 4 April 2022. (64 pages; 5 MB)
• Working Group III (4 April 2022). "WG III contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report / Technical Summary" (PDF). IPCC.ch. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Archived (PDF) from the original on 4 April 2022. (145 pages; 10 MB)
• Working Group III (4 April 2022). "Climate Change 2022 / Mitigation of Climate Change / Full Report" (PDF). IPCC.ch. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Archived (PDF) from the original on 4 April 2022. (2913 pages; 88 MB)

What do you think of the new-ish article Effects of climate change on the water cycle?

There is a new-ish (from last year) article called Effects of climate change on the water cycle. I am not sure what to think of the article. It seems to overlap a lot with others. Should it be integrated into effects of climate change? Or maybe it should be refocused and be called Effects of climate change on water resources or Effects of climate change on water security. I think those are the more pertinent issues, whereas the effects of climate change on the water cycle (i.e. precipitation, evaporation and alike) should probably be at effects of climate change. EMsmile (talk) 11:16, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

I am planning to refocus this article and to rename it to Effects of climate change on water security. Does anyone object? EMsmile (talk) 21:07, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

That sounds like a good idea, centering the social impacts of the water crises, at both economic and direct impacts would be great, Sadads (talk) 23:08, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

I think the physical article "water cycle" has quite a different audience than the social article ("water security"). Most aspects of the water cycle don't have an immediate effect on water security. It's a WG1 / WG2 divide (WG1 Ch8 vs WG2 Ch4). I think the physical aspects are important to document, and would be undue and too technical in an article about water security. Femke (talk) 16:04, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

The best version to compare with is [1], which mostly lacks the atmospheric aspects of water cycle change (ITCZ, blocking, evaporative demand). The current version is unfocused and misses vital information. Femke (talk) 16:08, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

The earlier version of this article was even more unfocused in my opinion and contained content that I felt fitted better under effects of climate change on oceans, so I have moved it there. To me it seems that this would be another one of these articles that will linger with very low pageviews and will not get updated regularly (given our low resources). Therefore, wouldn't it make more sense to include content about climate change and water cycle in existing bigger articles? The article effects of climate change talks about a part of the water cycle (precipitation) perhaps we can expand a bit there? Interestingly, the main article on climate change does not mention the term "water cycle" even once (is it perhaps included under a different term?). EMsmile (talk) 12:57, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

The other aspect to think about: does the article water cycle do the climate change aspect justice? I see a section called "changes over time" which is probably in need of updating. The relevant paragraph starts with "The scientific consensus expressed in the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Summary for Policymakers is for the water cycle to continue to intensify throughout the 21st century". So I at this stage, with our current resources, I think it would be better to update the CC + water cycle content in existing larger articles (effects of climate change and water cycle) rather than having yet another little sub-article which won't get sufficient tender love and care (see its edit history and pageviews).EMsmile (talk) 12:57, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

As to my proposed article on Effects of climate change on water security, I suppose I could create that as a new article instead, keeping it independent of what we decide to to with Effects of climate change on the water cycle. EMsmile (talk) 12:57, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

Hi sadads and all, I've now completely reworked the article on water security and have added a section there about climate change effects. I am undecided if it's still worth having an article on "effects of climate change on water security" or if it's enough to include that content at water security. I have the same question in my mind for water cycle: Is it better to include more climate change content in water cycle or is it better to have a stand-alone article on effects of climate change on the water cycle? Given the low pageviews for sub-sub-articles, I am tending to rather focus on water cycle than on working on a sub-sub-article. EMsmile (talk) 14:57, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

Change article title to "effects of climate change on mental health" (currently psychological impact of climate change)?

I've started a discussion here on changing the article title to "effects of climate change on mental health" (and reworking it accordingly) (currently called psychological impact of climate change). Note separate discussion regarding the article on climate psychology just above. Does anyone object to the new title "effects of climate change on mental health"? Justification: This came as a suggestion from content expert Fiona Charlson: "My thoughts are to change the title to ‘mental health’ which encompasses ‘psychological’ aspects but is a bit broader. This is also what is typically used across the field and by WHO." The other advantage would be that it would fall into the group of "effects of climate change on..." for which we have a few articles by now. - I've already pinged the main contributors of the article and received two responses so far. EMsmile (talk) 10:58, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

Please also note that I have split off the topic of eco-anxiety into a sub-article (just like ecological grief which was a sub-article already). EMsmile (talk) 10:58, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

Update: the current compromise solution was to keep both articles (i.e. Psychological impact of climate change and effects of climate change on mental health but to rework them to reduce overlap. More info is on the talk page of Psychological impact of climate change. EMsmile (talk) 08:34, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

What are your thoughts on the article climate psychology?

I don't really understand the point of this article: climate psychology. Do we really need it? Should it be merged with effects of climate change on mental health (currently called Psychological impact of climate change? Or is it more about the "psychology behind climate inaction" or "psychology behind climate denial" which is completely different and probably covered elsewhere? Note not many articles link to it yet. It was created last year. EMsmile (talk) 23:07, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

@EMsmile: Psychology and mental health are distinct concepts. Some of the sources cited in those articles are actually about different topics.

Right now, things are as you say: the content of each of those articles overlaps. I wish that they were distinct and that the scope was easy to separate, but that is not what is happening. Cleanup would not be easy. Bluerasberry (talk) 23:17, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for that Bluerasberry. Perhaps the best approach would be to set up the page climate psychology as a disambiguation page, similarly to how we did it for climate action. So it could say: Climate psychology can refer to:

• Psychological impact of climate change (in the process of being renamed to "Effects of climate change on mental health")
• Psychological aspects surrounding climate inaction
• Psychological aspects surrounding climate communication
• Psychological aspects surrounding climate denial (existing article: psychology of climate change denial)

The content of the existing article would then be moved and merged into those other articles accordingly. EMsmile (talk) 07:42, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

@EMsmile: Based on available information I am going to take the position that merge is not worthwhile and no action is best.

As always, if anyone wants to edit wiki and they personally find it to be fun, then they should do this.

In this case (1) these are distinct topics which have different scope (2) they have sources and pass WP:GNG (3) merging is a significant amount of labor (4) they are low traffic so have no meaningful impact as compared to other project priorities (5) they have almost no incoming links.

Consider the many other opportunities we have to develop content, this seems like a bottom 10% priority to me. If there were a merge we lose cited content, affect no particular readers, and pass on doing other more useful things.

EMsmile - if you like this topic, then edit as you wish. Otherwise if this is not your personal interest, then how did these low impact articles get your attention? I am curious about how anyone sets priorities in this WikiProject. Bluerasberry (talk) 17:09, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

Hi User:Bluerasberry, I got to this article as part of this project that I'm working on. It started with SDG 13, led me to climate change (already FA), then to effects of climate change (hoping to bring to GA) then to effects of climate change on human health (perhaps B quality) and then "effects of climate change on mental health" and then climate psychology. In general, I feel that there are a myriad of overlapping, often outdated articles around "effects of climate change on..." which I try to streamline so that we have a better chance of keeping the content updated and well written. I've also written about that here. At the end of the day, I think it will increase our efficiency, i.e. less work required for better results. Does that answer your question? EMsmile (talk) 13:10, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

@EMsmile: That is a great project page and those are sensible plans. One of the criteria on that page is that there is "A preference on terms with high view rates (ideally more than 200 views per day)". "Climate Psychology" is about 200 view a month, which is very low.

I agree with you about this being overlapping and outdated, and I also agree that if all these articles were sorted then everything would be more efficient. But with this article having such low traffic and so few incoming links, it seems like one of many hundreds of articles which likewise are not being read.

I am supportive of the project design, and I also agree that merging the articles could be useful, but doing the merge seems like a lot of work for little impact.

I am indifferent - if you find it useful then proceed. Bluerasberry (talk) 21:39, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

I agree that Climate Psychology has low pageviews and one shouldn't waste too much time on it for that reason alone. However, my experience with climate change articles is that many of them become the subject of student assignments over the years. Students might then add content to that article which creates extra maintenance work for us as it's overlapping with other articles. By converting the article to a disambiguation type or (list-type?) article, we would indicate "this is not the right place to add new content, rather add it here: XXX". My current proposal is therefore to change it to this (and to move its text blocks to the relevant other articles):

Climate psychology can refer to:

• Effects of climate change on mental health
• Psychological impact of climate change
• Psychological aspects surrounding climate inaction
• Psychological aspects surrounding climate communication - Climate communication#Applying findings from psychology
• Psychology of climate change denial EMsmile (talk) 08:40, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

User script to detect unreliable sources

Main page: User:Headbomb/unreliable

I have (with the help of others) made a small user script to detect and highlight various links to unreliable sources and predatory journals. Some of you may already be familiar with it, given it is currently the 39th most imported script on Wikipedia. The idea is that it takes something like

• John Smith "Article of things" Deprecated.com. Accessed 2020-02-14. (John Smith "[https://www.deprecated.com/article Article of things]" ''Deprecated.com''. Accessed 2020-02-14.)

and turns it into something like

• John Smith "Article of things" Deprecated.com. Accessed 2020-02-14.

It will work on a variety of links, including those from {{cite web}}, {{cite journal}} and {{doi}}.

The script is mostly based on WP:RSPSOURCES, WP:NPPSG and WP:CITEWATCH and a good dose of common sense. I'm always expanding coverage and tweaking the script's logic, so general feedback and suggestions to expand coverage to other unreliable sources are always welcomed.

Do note that this is not a script to be mindlessly used, and several caveats apply. Details and instructions are available at User:Headbomb/unreliable. Questions, comments and requests can be made at User talk:Headbomb/unreliable.

- Headbomb {t · c · p · b}

This is a one time notice and can't be unsubscribed from. Delivered by: MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:01, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

Citing AR6 chapters that say not to cite them

Some of the chapters from AR6 seem to still be in some sort of of print-layout purgatory, like this one: https://report.ipcc.ch/ar6wg3/pdf/IPCC_AR6_WGIII_FinalDraft_Chapter03.pdf . A footer says "Do Not Cite, Quote or Distribute". Should we cite them anyway? Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 05:28, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

Yes, they have been formally accepted and it can take ages for the formatting to be done. I believe somebody in the WikiProject already double checked with one of the authors. . Because page numbers are temporary, it's easiest to use the loc parameter in the sfn template, or the at parameter in the standalone citations. Femke (talk) 19:45, 7 May 2022 (UTC)