Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Climate change/Archive 6

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Good article reassessment for Urban heat island

Urban heat island has been nominated for a 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) 17:39, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

Synthesis report now out

https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/ Chidgk1 (talk) 17:10, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

: The only report that seems to be available now (beyond the "press release") is the Summary for Policymakers, whose footer says "Do Not Cite, Quote or Distribute". :-\ —RCraig09 (talk) 17:20, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

Update: The Summary for Policymakers] (36pp) and Longer Report now merely state "Subject to Copy Edit". "Full Volume" is "coming soon". —RCraig09 (talk) 20:40, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

IPCC full report content vs the Summary for Policymakers

People might be interested in this thread: https://twitter.com/curious_founder/status/1638994074333216770 . It says the Summary for Policymakers (SPM) can have "wildly different language" than the full report, as the SPM is often massaged by non-scientists. The takeaway for us is that for important or controversial claims, it's best to use the full report or the Technical Summary as a source rather than the SPM. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 17:57, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

A good read! I find the SPM are often too densily written to paraphrase easily anyway. But yeah, what they say is correct (scientists still have to sign off), but they can be biased in what they omit. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 18:11, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Oh yeah, densely written. Which brings to mind a Friday diversion our group might appreciate, in which ChatGPT is asked to summarize The Cat in the Hat, IPPC-style: https://twitter.com/simondonner/status/1637611323721916416 . Enjoy! Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 18:16, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Climate apocalypse and climate endgame articles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks for bringing this up, ITK. Just a procedural aspect: I suggest that you copy (or move) this detailed critique to the talk page of Climate apocalypse and then afterwards you put an alert on this talk page to alert members of this WikiProject to your work. I don't think that climate apocalypse was primarily the work of @Bluerasberry (I would have been surprised as they are a very experience Wikipedian). Another editor has contributed more content, so I am pinging them as well: User:Ebenwilliams. (There's a tool called "Who wrote that?" which I find very useful, see here: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Who_Wrote_That%3F). Apart from that I agree with you (and RCraig09) that:

• climate endgame should be merged into climate apocalypse and does not need a separate article. Or maybe merge into climate crisis.
• climate apocalypse needs major work and culling. You can see that in mid December I started a little bit of work on it, replacing some of the text with excerpts (which reduce maintenance work). You have my full support if you want to make bold changes to it. :-) EMsmile (talk) 22:23, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

  Well, having waited to see if anyone else wanted to comment here, I started a merger proposal on Talk:Climate_crisis. Thanks for all the advice! InformationToKnowledge (talk) 06:33, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

• The merger proposal has been closed. In effect, it has been withdrawn: ITK has posted the extreme-scenario material in a standalone user sub-page. —RCraig09 (talk) 20:56, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

Next steps for climate apocalypse article

I'm late to this, just want to say that I completely agree; the Climate apocalypse article is filled with pseudoscience that is completely at odds with both mainstream expert opinion (including the IPCC) and other, more factual Wikipedia articles on the subject. I can't think of another instance of Wikipedia mischaracterizing a scientific consensus this badly. —Will^(B) 19:31, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this back up, Will-B. I hope someone can devote some time to this. User:InformationToKnowledge how would you summarise the current status? I guess the discussion at the talk page of climate crisis came to a point where a merger of climate apocalypse and endgame into climate crisis was rejected. But that still leaves the to-do of merging the apocalypse and endgame articles together and culling out non-encyclopedic content? Anyone available to have a go at this? Merging and culling is fun - and easier than writing new content. :-) EMsmile (talk) 11:02, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

I actually wrote a draft article at the time to demonstrate what I would replace that mess with. Unfortunately, no-one paid attention to it at the time (to be fair, I did drop it at the tail end of a somewhat charged merge discussion), and I didn't have the time recently to go further with it. It was done relatively quickly and I would certainly like to give it another couple of revisions before suggesting it's published. If anyone here would like to offer feedback on that draft, by all means, do so! InformationToKnowledge (talk) 15:27, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

Hi, I took another look at your Draft Climate change and civilizational collapse. It's a great piece of work and a pity that it hasn't received much attention yet; but I have to admit that personally I always find it rather confusing when people propose a new article and it's not clear to me which parts of the old article they have now merged/reused. I think we should first merge climate endgame into climate apocalypse, then remove any content that is rubbish/outdated/not encyclopedic. Then add any new content that you have developed and then lastly discuss if the article should get a name change.

I see that a lot of this climate change type content is already at societal collapse (which you linked to with an excerpt, which is good). But some of that content at societal collapse could at the end be moved to the revamped climate apocalypse article (which maybe be renamed to Climate change and civilizational collapse as per your suggestion; it could hence be seen as a sub-article to societal collapse.

So the first "easy" baby step would be to merge climate endgame into climate apocalypse (without thinking much about quality at this stage) - right? Anyone could do this? EMsmile (talk) 11:21, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

So...no-one else commented, still. If we were to do things this way - does this topic alone (and the old, now-closed merge discussion about climate crisis, where many of the same points were brought up) count as a sufficient justification to go ahead with it right now, or should a separate merger proposal and vote take place first, still? InformationToKnowledge (talk) 09:24, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

I've just added the new merger tags to both pages and removed it from climate crisis. I feel that consensus has been reached by now and you're free to go ahead with merging climate endgame into climate apocalypse.EMsmile (talk) 16:48, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

OK, I waited for nearly a week in case there were still any objections, but there apparently weren't, and so it's done.

What should be the next step? Would it be to publish the draft as an article and start a merge discussion? Starting a discussion to rename the apocalypse article and then changing it in line with my draft? Or something else entirely? InformationToKnowledge (talk) 16:41, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

Hi InformationToKnowledge. I just repaired attribution to a CC-BY source. Before you bring this into mainspace, can you see if there are more instances of unattributed copying?

I think publishing and starting a merge discussion could work. Assuming you've not copied from the old articles, that may give us the cleanest attribution history? —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:11, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for doing the merger, InformationToKnowledge. I am wondering if further discussions on this should now be moved to the talk page of climate apocalypse rather. Also I am wondering if it's perhaps easier that you move the relevant content from your draft to the climate apocalypse bit by bit, with explanations in the edit summaries - rather than publishing your draft and then merging (which seems to me like a roundabout way). Also start the discussion about renaming the article there on the talk page, I would say. EMsmile (talk) 10:31, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Editathon today! 29th March

Hi everyone! Open invite to anyone interested in joining the Edit for Climate Change Editathon happening today, 29th March, 15:30 - 17:30 (GMT+1).

Register here: https://editforclimate-march.eventbrite.co.uk TatjanaBaleta (talk) 08:42, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

All the best with your event! Is there a page somewhere where we can see which articles have been worked on through your edit-a-thons and project in general so far? EMsmile (talk) 08:47, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

Hi @EMsmile, the campaign dashboard is up here. I'd like to collate a list of articles worked on under this project on the project page - perhaps check back in a week and I'll try get a list up before then? TatjanaBaleta (talk) 12:12, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

Project-independent quality assessments

Quality assessments by Wikipedia editors rate articles in terms of completeness, organization, prose quality, sourcing, etc. Most wikiprojects follow the general guidelines at Wikipedia:Content assessment, but some have specialized assessment guidelines. A recent Village pump proposal was approved and has been implemented to add a |class= parameter to {{WikiProject banner shell}}, which can display a general quality assessment for an article, and to let project banner templates "inherit" this assessment.

No action is required if your wikiproject follows the standard assessment approach. Over time, quality assessments will be migrated up to {{WikiProject banner shell}}, and your project banner will automatically "inherit" any changes to the general assessments for the purpose of assigning categories.

However, if your project has decided to "opt out" and follow a non-standard quality assessment approach, all you have to do is modify your wikiproject banner template to pass {{WPBannerMeta}} a new |QUALITY_CRITERIA=custom parameter. If this is done, changes to the general quality assessment will be ignored, and your project-level assessment will be displayed and used to create categories, as at present. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:38, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Good idea - personally I think we don’t need a project-level assessment Chidgk1 (talk) 07:00, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Carbon offset#Requested move 5 April 2023

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Carbon offset#Requested move 5 April 2023 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. MaterialWorks (contribs) 16:15, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

Would you like anything from Carbon Brief?

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

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

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

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

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

Excellent!

For now, I can think of these two things:

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

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

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

Great ideas, InformationToKnowledge! I'll ask them to take a look at this discussion. Cheers, Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 05:34, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

I would find it easier / more intuitive if Carbon Briefs released all of their own charts (i.e. those which they created) under a compatible licence and then if a batch upload to Wikimedia Commons could be carried out. Why do it piecemeal and only for those graphs that we specifically ask about? Our World in Data has done this, and someone organised a batch upload at some stage, and that's been very useful.

If you ask for a specific graph that we'd like to have, I thought of that earlier discussion we had about the climate change mitigation options graph by IPCC. See previous discussion on talk page of climate change mitigation here.

Another example I have is a graph that shows the dropping pH value due to ocean acidification together with the rising CO2 concentration on the same graph. I searched long and hard and eventually found one that I could use but I had to upload it to Wikipedia only (not to Wikimedia Commons) because it was a fair use licence (I didn't know before that that was even possible). I mean this file which I have used for ocean acidification: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Time_series_of_atmospheric_CO2_at_Mauna_Loa.jpg EMsmile (talk) 11:45, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Good comments, thanks! I've let them know you added a comment here. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 16:57, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

An update on this: Things are still moving on the Carbon Brief end, but slowly as lawyers as involved. Anyone who has worked with a corporate legal department can empathize. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 18:06, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

Housekeeping: WikiProject Climate Change task force pages

Hi everyone. I'm starting to look at ways to improve how we engage new editors at WikiProject Climate Change. We currently have four "task forces": Africa, Agriculture, Climate Justice, and Biodiversity. These pages have not been recently maintained and when people add their names to the Participants lists, I'm not sure if anything happens. I'm thinking of 1) marking them as historical, 2) removing the tabs from the main navigation bar, and 3) adding links to the historical task force pages to our task list page. At some point I'd also like to create a new user welcome message for the people who sign up to the Participants list at WikiProject Climate Change. Thoughts? Pinging @YaguraStation, Phoebe, and Sadads:. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 21:50, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Done. Task forces can always be revived if someone wants to lead something. Thanks everyone who has participated. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 00:24, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

Hi. We're finally getting back into chatting here, after some research. But I would say that I found the former task force pages helpful, especially as they highlighted a lot of work on climate change science and impacts, and less on climate mitigation for the public (within the African task force page for example,) so I saw a need. But I understand the reason for archiving. I was hoping that the three African mitigation volunteers I brought on board would join in the African task force and start adding mitigation information - but it looks like we're going in another direction with them. We will have a page we'd like to add on African mitigation efforts beyond agriculture; some great examples and studies are coming.

But one Task Force page I was wondering about was a Climate Mitigation Task Force - beyond what is present on the Talk page for Climate mitigation, instead more cross-cutting across pages. For instance, there is also the Climate Movement page and the Individual Climate Action article - all are relate to climate mitigation, but also Climate Adaptation efforts can overlap. But we especially hope to really provide more information on individual and community-level climate mitigation that ties to many many other pages, whether thought related to climate or not. (table coming). I would like to have a Task force on this as a result. However, I can't guarantee that it'll be a permanent project. Is it okay to have temporary task forces?

Sorry for any typos - the "e" an "d" keys on my computer have shorted out. In the process of switching to another computer. Have to cut-an-paste instead. AnnetteCSteps (talk) 19:09, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

Sure, it's perfectly OK to have temporary task forces. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 19:33, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

Great! AnnetteCSteps (talk) 19:52, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

Sources that explain "enhancing carbon sinks"

One thing we've struggled to explain in plain language is the IPCC's glossary definition of climate change mitigation, "A human intervention to reduce emissions or enhance the sinks of greenhouse gases." Enhance the sinks of greenhouse gases is the hard part to explain. In the contexts that I've seen, the IPCC uses the term "enhance sinks" to mean any form of carbon dioxide removal (CDR). But I can't find any source that actually says "enhance the sinks of greenhouse gases" is a synonym for CDR, and I'm not sure if these terms are actually synonymous or slightly different.

Enhance sinks is a tough term for the general reader to understand. If it actually means CDR, it's a strange term as some CDR methods involve geologic storage of CO2, which is more about creating new sinks than enhancing existing ones. Can anyone point us to a good source that explains the relationships between "enhancing sinks" and CDR? Any ideas Our2050World and OxfordNetZero? Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 04:33, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

"increase the rate at which CO2 is taken out of the atmosphere by any process" would be my go-to explanation. I think the key to that sentence is knowing what is meant by a sink in the earth sciences. I see Wikipedia doesn't have an article about sinks in that context, but it's basically anything that takes the compound you're studying out of the atmosphere and into some form of longer-term storage. I'm not sure what a source would be needed for here. EDIT: nevermind, found such an article. Whatever source you need to rephrase the IPCC glossary definition can probably be found here. --Licks-rocks (talk) 20:05, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

Interesting - I think what you're saying is that we can just write something like "Climate change mitigation is efforts to to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere" and cite that to the IPCC glossary, because it's a reasonable way to paraphrase what the glossary says. I like that idea. What do others think? Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 14:15, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Yes. "Climate change mitigation involves efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere" cited to the glossary would be correct.

However - it may be better not to add something like "and into some form of longer-term storage." IPPC use the old school definition of 'sink', where it means a removal process - but not a storage receptor.

Here's how IPPC defined the word back in 1992 "Sink" means any process, activity or mechanism which removes a greenhouse gas, an aerosol or a precursor of a greenhouse gas from the atmosphere The definition in the AR6 glossary is near identical. "Reservoir" is their seperate term for storage: "Reservoir" means a component or components of the climate system where a greenhouse gas or a precursor of a greenhouse gas is stored. Granted, with CO2 , the two terms can be seen as closely related even by the IPPC definitions - i.e. in some contexts, talk of 'Reservoirs' means "Trees", while 'Sink' can be seen as meaning the "growing of trees".

But the IPPC mitigation definition speaks of GHG, not just CO2. The removal process is different with the non CO2 GHGs - there tends to be zero storage involved. Rather, sinking involves the gasses being transformed into something with less radiative forcing effects. Nitrous oxide can be reduced to harmless N2 & O2, and methane oxidised to CO2. Admittedly, it's not totally clear cut. Methanotrophs can effectively store some of the methane they oxidise - they use some of the Carbon to build up their body mass, but that accounts for less than 1% of total Methane draw down.

Back in the 1980s & 90s when I was studying Chemistry, I recall everyone using the same definition of sink. I guess the alt definition to mean storage (which is now to be found in many academic & government sources, not just our articles.) arose due to semantic drift caused by the internet, but partly it was due to an interesting example of intentional language corruption by the Europeans. This occurred in the sink wars. I'll box some information on this as it wont be relevant to most of our articles, but it may be interesting to those who like to know the wider context. FeydHuxtable (talk) 14:21, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

Interesting! "the sink wars" would make a fun article, I think --Licks-rocks (talk) 14:34, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

Thank you! I think so too. Unfortuneatly, the POV expressed in the box isn't the prevailing mainstream view yet, though moving in that direction. And while I could source most of it, no WP:RS calls them the 'sink wars' yet. FeydHuxtable (talk) 15:07, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

the sink wars

The sink wars were a bitter 30 year struggle over the role of sinks in Kyoto & later UNFCCC additions. Initially, the EU wanted to totally exclude sinks, so that Kyoto would have been solely about GHG sources, i.e. just about emissions reductions, with no credit giving for actions that took GHG out of the atmosphere. Later, the dispute was about the degree to which sinks would be limited. They were at their most intense in the mid to late 1990s, consuming the energies of some of the worlds best delegates. Though they did have the pleasing side effect of helping to heal some of the animosities lingering from the then recent cold war, and to forge some useful friendships between US & Russian negotiators. On one side you had 'Team USA' - the US, Japan, Canada, Australia & Russia. They are sometimes called the 'Umbrella Group' in the few sources that cover the sink wars. Team USA were outnumbered by opposing delegates at several points, and largely restricted themselves to honourable tactics. Fortunately, their sound analyses and persuasive abilities won out in the end. On the other side stood 'Team EU', who for parts of the war had the support of most of the RoW delegates. Naturally, most of the EU players thought they were the good guys. They imagined that by excluding or limiting the role of sinks in UNFCCC agreements, they could force the world to focus on fossil fuel emissions reduction, and transition to some kind of renewable utopia. Only a tiny inner circle knew they were effectively in thrall to the fossil fuel lobby, who then as now were funding the renewables push as the best way of tackling what they see as the real threat to their interests, the nuclear sector. (As is now quite well known the private sector scientists working for fossil fuel companies were way head of their academic peers in some of their climate predictions. They knew that pushing for a renewable only utopia would always leave a large role for fossil fuel due to the intermittency effect, and help them against their real competitor, nuclear industry.) In despair at how they began to lose ground to Team USA's superior arguments, Team EU stooped to tactics like commissioning sources to use conflicting definitions of 'sinks' , to muddy the waters. It didn't work, but as result of the EU's tactics (& also unintentional semantic drift) we still have many sources using the sink = storage definition.

@Licks-rocks: and @FeydHuxtable: thanks for you help on this! Your observations helped us to get consensus on rewordings in Climate change mitigation and in Climate change. Cheers, Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 16:43, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Licks-rocks: and @FeydHuxtable:, I found this really interesting, thank you! In March, I tried to improve the article carbon sink and that issue of process versus storage, sink versus pool or reservoir really stumped me. No wonder! Could you please take a look at carbon sink and at my edits there and tell me if it's OK like this or could be improved more? Just briefly some thoughts that I pondered in March, together with User:Richarit:

I put this into Chat GPT to find out: "what's the difference between carbon pool and carbon sink?" Answer by ChatGPT:

Both carbon pools and carbon sinks are important concepts in understanding the carbon cycle, but they refer to slightly different things. A carbon pool refers to any natural or human-made reservoir or storage of carbon. For example, the atmosphere, oceans, soil, plants, and fossil fuels are all examples of carbon pools. A carbon pool can be thought of as a container that holds carbon. A carbon sink, on the other hand, is a specific type of carbon pool that absorbs more carbon than it releases, thereby removing carbon from the atmosphere. Carbon sinks can be natural or human-made and can include forests, oceans, and wetlands. Carbon sinks are important for mitigating climate change because they help to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. To summarize, a carbon pool is any reservoir or storage of carbon, while a carbon sink is a specific type of carbon pool that removes carbon from the atmosphere. 

So if Chat GPT is right then carbon pool is the overarching term, and carbon sink is a particular type of carbon pool.

User:Richarit also pondered this: "I don't know much about the topic, but it seems to me that pool and sink are different things (based on the comment of Epipelagic "It is not so much a movement between sinks - rather movements into a sink, which creates another reservoir" and if so it might be easier to have the explanation all together on carbon cycle page" EMsmile (talk) 07:43, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

I don't put too much stock in ChatGPT as a rule, but in this case it is mostly correct. A carbon pool is all the places where carbon can be, while a carbon sink is a carbon pool that has the capability to take up more carbon from the atmosphere than it releases. --Licks-rocks (talk) 08:33, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping. I can't think of good source to integrate the ChatGPT distinction into main space, though I agree with Licks-rock it sounds mostly right. I'd say the good work you've already done on carbon sink is fine for now. Richarit's suggestion for explaining related terms at carbon cycle sounds good, but I don't see any reason why it would be a priority unless you happen to know good sources. Or if you wanted to be really comprehensive and inluce detailed discussion on the different meanings of sink with respect to CO2 & non CO2 GHG as discussed above, then a nice place for that might be to create Greenhouse gas balance, as per Article 4 of the Paris agreement. I might even eventually create that myself if no one else does, though would likely wait until anthropogenic non CO2 sinks become more of the thing. (They've been getting more attention these past few years, there's a view that returning CH4 concentrations to pre-industrial levels could reduce warming by 0.5C, but it remains mostly theory & talk right now. See here & here if you're interested in that sort of thing.) FeydHuxtable (talk) 16:40, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

Let's do something about the article carbon source

I've just added this to the talk page of carbon source but also solicitating wider inputs by adding it here as well: At this stage, the existing article called carbon source is not about climate change. I've added a hatnote accordingly. But I think we need to rework this: It might be best to either rename the existing article to carbon source (biology) and then have carbon source redirect to greenhouse gas emissions, or to set up a disambiguation page that contains two entries: one for the biology concept and one for the climate change concept. What do you all think? EMsmile (talk) 13:36, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

Climate Emergency Fund

I recently created a draft for the Climate Emergency Fund. Any help with expansion would be appreciated. Thriley (talk) 18:21, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

RSN notice

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is Is PRISM a reliable source or not?. Thank you. -Lemonaka‎ 01:53, 6 June 2023 (UTC) -Lemonaka‎ 00:39, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

Food and Agricultural Climate Actions - Requested information by users.

Hi all, Sorry for the late start on this - I came down with COVID. I mentioned below that we at Climate Steps were collaborating on two items with the WPCC - 1) pooling our key secondary, tertiary climate references with you all and creating a resource page here in PCC, plus editing some pages; and 2) conducting research on IMPACTFUL climate actions that individual people can take. Will put in the links to the proposals here shortly, but I have to run and man a tool library in one sec. OK, back now: Rapid Grant - focused on references, and WikiCred grant on food and ag.

But, I wanted to share with you the results of two surveys we conducted (as our first steps on this project) on what information people are seeking in terms of food/ag-related climate actions. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1or_fjQPhHSHfBAQ06LbjqnY1iKLG1smRr9O1f-d3NFk/edit?usp=sharing. There are no doubt more, and there are no doubt solutions that we know of that we want to add. But sourced from over 140 comments/questions plus 1000 reviews, this is a starting place to what information people want to know.

Please take a look, and feel free to comment. One of our folks is going to search WP for what is well-covered, and potential holes - you know the scene better than we do, so suggestions welcome. The next step will be then to prioritize this list for what to research this spring, and we'd appreciate your ideas very much. Perhaps even we can have a webinar to discuss. @clayquot @EMsmile @tajanabaleta.

I'd also like to introduce Mark Stewart (@Loupgrru) who will be doing a lot of the nitty gritty work on references, but also is our community expert, and Shoshana Risman, who is not yet on board, but coming. We also have two volunteers from Africa, Frake Lewis and Alhassan Sesay, who are coming on board to help with African-specific climate actions. ``Thank you! AnnetteCSteps (talk) 18:58, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

​​Hi @AnnetteCSteps. The link to the google docs documents doesn't seem to work.

It's cool to see a reader survey! This is something we don't often have a chance to see. Writing about individual action on climate change isn't always the easiest topic, as there are widely varying opinions on this, and it's not always easy to see which ones are the most mainstream. Having a pool of resources would be great, as these articles have often overused news articles rather than peer-reviewed secondary sourcing. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 19:06, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

Okay. I just replaced the link and made sure the permissions were open. Hope it works now! Glad you are interested. It is interesting and sometimes surprising stuff. As Shoshana says, some of the questions may not have info sources, but they are still interesting climate questions. AnnetteCSteps (talk) 20:38, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

A couple of semi-random thoughts: 1) We could really use an article on Greenhouse gas emissions from food. Our World in Data is an excellent source to start from.[1][2] 2) I'll bet Wikipedia's articles related to gardening could use some TLC, Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 05:31, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

Not the worst idea, but wouldn't that proposed article overlap quite a lot with Environmental impacts of animal agriculture in practice? I suppose that fertilizer-derived emissions might end up as the main point of difference between the two in practice, and I'm not sure how that would look. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 15:32, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

We also have greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, which would overlap more strongly. Not a perfect overlap, but given the rapid-changing food system, it may be too much too maintain both. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 15:36, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

Hello Frake Lewis and Alhassan Sesay and anyone else interested in agriculture. I am hoping to work on getting Agriculture in Turkey up to good standard soon. So if either of you are planning to edit any “Agriculture in country X” articles please contact me as I will be interested to exchange ideas as my knowledge of agriculture is pretty small Chidgk1 (talk) 12:22, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

Hi. Frake has bowed out of the project, but Alhassan is back after a break. Once he joins in here, I'll introduce you. AnnetteCSteps (talk) 19:13, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

Low-carbon diet could do with some tender loving care Chidgk1 (talk) 12:41, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

Great idea! That's the article that would actually be best suited to cover the topic of greenhouse gas emissions from food. Greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture overlaps to some degree but does not include food transport, food processing and storage, or emissions from the decomposition of food waste. Also some agriculture produces biofuels, cotton, etc. rather than food. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 23:44, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

Hey all. We'd definitely love to help set some priorities on this research, especially for our gang, because we can't do everything listed so far. But first, I just want to ask a question here about the term Greenhouse Gas Emissions. I am finding in my own line of work that far more "regular" people/climate activists use the term 'carbon emissions' than GHG emissions, even though not all GHGs are carbon-related (nitrous oxide). Kindof like "carbon sequestration." I am sure we need the most defined terminology, and a search for carbon emissions in WP automatically brings up GHG emissions article. But we may want to add the tag 'carbon emissions' to the pages GHG emissions from agriculture, low-carbon diet, etc., as these do not appear in a search.

I think also that a "low-carbon diet" topic is too narrow for food-related carbon emissions - as it also doesn't cover food storage issues (feezing) or food waste for the general public. I think diet is a subset of the food topic in general. Being new to Wikipedia, can there be a "Food and Climate" page? I know page maintenance is an issues, as @Femke said above. I think, however, it might be a good entrance to multiple sub and related pages. AnnetteCSteps (talk) 18:46, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Oh, there is also Sustainable Food System, which overlaps, of course. AnnetteCSteps (talk) 18:59, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Hi Annette. If you want to a particular search term to lead to a particular article, you can do so by creating a wp:redirect for that search term. With respect to prioritization, there is a Wiki Edu training module with some useful principles. For more specific feedback, Alex Stinson at the WMF might be able to help?

I was just thinking that one angle that might be of interest to your group would be to improve articles on the development of eating habits in children. Our Infant feeding article, for instance, needs some TLC. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 03:47, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks @Clayoquot. A redirect would work, and I need to visit that training module.

In terms of children's eating habitats, I think that will have to come later, and not during this pilot project. But it is an interesting thing at least to link up to climate action and food. But right now, actions have to focus on adults because we have less than 10 years to fix the worst of climate emissions to prevent a disastrous temperature threshold. That rules out focusing on children - there are so many great adult actions to tackle!

Coming soon - a suggested list of priority topics to work on, that we'd love to discuss with you all. More in a new topic. AnnetteCSteps (talk) 19:04, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Avoiding the term "natural disaster"

The term natural disaster is a misnomer, and especially in the context of climate change it's not particularly helpful. Often, things like floods or droughts are referred to as "natural disasters". I see it's not being used in our climate change and effects of climate change articles. So that's good. But I think the Wikipedia article natural disaster (which has high pageviews, about 3000 per day) should be renamed and merged into either disaster or natural hazard. I've written about that here, please join the discussion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Natural_disaster#Moving_away_from_the_term_%22natural_disaster%22 EMsmile (talk) 09:19, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

I think I understand what you are going for, but natural disaster is a commonly used term and an important qualification that has clear meaning to people. People go to wikipedia for natural disasters because they are interested to learn about examples and see lists of them and see them compared and so forth.

"Natural hazard" is a rarely used term outside of academia. People searching on natural disaster don't just want the list of risks, they want the impacts.

People also don't go to wikipedia for "disaster", because it's too wide a category to have encyclopedic value. Disaster can refer to a relationship that blew up or the sinking of the titanic or the outcome of a war on a losing country.

It seems like you are trying to force people to stop using the word "natural" because it's not correct given human control and understanding of nature. I think that sort of qualification is best done in the lead, where the term is defined. We don't eliminate terms like "eugenics" from wikipedia because we disagree with them, instead we carefully describe what makes them incorrect.

Consider that many natural disasters like earthquakes can be mitigated by human action like making earthquake safe buildings, but that doesn't mean the disaster is not of natural origin. Storms and such can be more or less likely because of human activities like climate change, but that doesn't mean the storm didn't originate in nature, it's just that people have modified nature. If an asteroid hits the Earth, is it not a natural disaster because we could have dedicated more resources to asteroid detection and deflection? To go even further, the butterfly effect means that every storm inherently arises from chaos, so should we say that everything is causal and nothing is natural? Point being that we can get too pedantic about this. Natural disaster is a useful category even if humans effect the odds or can prepare better. Efbrazil (talk) 16:31, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

The Natural disaster article itself includes critiques of the term, even in its lead. These critiques have the beneficial effect of disambiguating and explaining the term(s). Efbrazil makes good points, which I think are in line with WP:COMMONNAME, even if the "common name" isn't exhaustively precise. To merge the Natural disaster article out of existence would disregard WP:COMMONNAME. —RCraig09 (talk) 19:03, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for these inputs. I agree that natural disaster is likely the "commonname" but there is still scope for optimising how this is represented on Wikipedia. The critique of the term (in the definition section and in the lead) is something that I added / expanded on today. (I just want to make sure that you read the full explanation of why the term is problematic and additional refs (written by Kevin Blanchard) here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Natural_disaster#Moving_away_from_the_term_%22natural_disaster%22 (?). He is more eloquent about it than I am.) I think especially in the context of climate change, the term "natural disaster" when applied to those things that climate change is impacting on (droughts, floods, wildfires and coastal flooding) is quite misleading. There is a human contribution there, not just "nature doing its thing".

But an argument for keeping the article title as it is, is also the example that we are keeping Third World even though it is no longer a "correct" term, whereas developing country is "more correct" (some would say it should be only Global South etc).

Looking at the article natural hazard, I am finding it rather weak and overlapping to 80% with natural disaster... Could an argument be made that natural hazard should be merged into natural disaster at least? One could say they belong together (even if they are not the same), just like we recently merged carbon offsets and credits into one article even though it's two separate concepts. The concepts are so closely related that they might be better off to be dealt with in one article, not two. This would already be an improvement in my opinion. And the (theoretically) correct term might be disasters linked to natural hazards but I know this would seem overly academic for a Wikipedia article title. EMsmile (talk) 19:51, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

There is a distinction between hazard (a chance of negative effect) and a disaster (an actual negative effect). That said, practically all of Natural hazard is about actual disasters, whether to humans or nature in general. Accordingly, I think Natural hazard could be changed into a redirect and merged into Natural disaster. However, the closely intertwined relationship of cause and effect (humans causing natural events like climate change) argues that the WP:COMMONNAME article Natural disaster should remain—perhaps including an explanatory section like the /* Definitions and scope */ section in terminology Climate change mitigation. —RCraig09 (talk) 20:43, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

UNDRR uses the term 'hazardous event' to refer to an actual effect which could result in a disaster. This term also seems to get simplified to 'hazard', so the hazard can either refer to the category (flood, landslide etc and its potential) or to the specific event/process (which can be slow onset or sudden, so it is quite nuanced I think). It doesn't really surprise me that the article is mostly about the negative impacts. If natural hazards do not contribute much to risks of negative impacts/disasters, then there is not much concern about them! I do think the article could do a much better job of explaining risks, and how these connect to disasters. I am against merging it because I think the risk discussion fits better in natural hazards than natural disaster (because of the misnomer issue). Richarit (talk) 17:16, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

I would currently lean towards integrating the content that is currently at natural hazard (which is not much) into natural disaster and then explaining both terms together in the one article.

I find it interesting to examine the different Wikipedia language versions: The natural disaster article exists in 102 languages and they mostly seem to use the word "nature" in them. The "natural hazard" article exists in only 12 languages, and not in German for example (which I find telling because the German Wikipedia is very detailed on anything to do with climate change). Maybe at some point in the future the article title could be changed to something else although there seems to be no obvious alternative to the term?

When I asked Kevin Blanchard about this he said: "Instead of "natural disaster", we recommend simply "disaster". We (the campaign) argue that the context of the piece should clarify whether the author is referring to a natural hazard or a technological/ anthropomorphic hazard linked disaster. Our view is that there is no need for a clarification before and we try to state that it simplifies the discussion." He also said: "Maybe something like "Disasters with links to natural hazards". It keeps enough distance to allow an explanation why the disasters aren't caused by the hazard but also makes clear that in the process of our failing to prepare, the natural hazard is the first step."

In Google Trends, the term "disaster" gets far more "search interest" than "natural disaster" or "natural hazard", see here. In Wikipedia the pageview comparison looks like this. So natural disaster about 3000 pageviews per day (with a decreasing trend), disaster about 1500 per day (relatively stable, no clear trend) and natural hazard about 300 per day (also decreasing trend).

In general, in particular with regards to floods, I find it quite odd to call floods a "natural disaster" when there is often so much human influence into what makes a flood disastrous, like building houses in flood plains, below sea level, robbing rivers of their natural flood plains and so forth. EMsmile (talk) 07:40, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

This seems like a discussion that should take place at Talk:Natural disaster. Per our guidelines on appropriate notification, a neutrally worded link to the discussion may be placed on the talk pages of relevant WikiProjects. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 20:20, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I did start the discussion at the same time at Talk:Natural disaster but people tend to reply on whichever talk page they are most comfortable at replying... So I had more replies here than there (e.g. from Efbrazil and RCraig09). Also, when there are several articles involved (5 in this case: disaster risk response, disasters, natural disaster, natural hazard, hazard), it feels more intuitive to discuss it on a sixth talk page sometimes. (I admit that my notification was not neutrally worded, and that I should reach out to other Wiki projects as well). - Anyhow, I'll have another think about how to get more discussion going at Talk:Natural disaster and how to reach a consensus eventually. So if anyone wants to participate in the discussion, please go here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Natural_disaster#Moving_away_from_the_term_%22natural_disaster%22. EMsmile (talk) 10:22, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Proposed name change to economic analysis of climate change

I am copying here something that I had written on the talk page of economics of climate change three days ago, for wider discussion: I am proposing to change the name of the article economics of climate change to economic analysis of climate change. I think it would make it clearer to our readers what to expect to see in the article. The word "economics" is too vague. Note the article economic impacts of climate change would be regarded as a sub-article for this article. - This proposal was prompted via a discussion with an external reviewer of the Wikipedia article (see here). EMsmile (talk) 12:16, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

There was no reply yet (neither here nor at the talk page of economics of climate change, so I plan to change the name to economic analysis of climate change unless there is some objection in the next few days. EMsmile (talk) 11:22, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Readability user script

Hi all, posting here as readability is a key thing for many of use. I just discovered that @Phlsph7 wrote a userscript to get the readability of a Wikipedia article (User:Phlsph7/Readability.js. It gives the Flesch reading ease score score. Which means we won't have to rely on https://readabilityofwikipedia.com/check/Vaccine anymore (which seems to have broken lately).

Do mind that while the score is very useful to know you're on the right track, relying on it too much can lead to insufficient variety in sentence length, while other aspects of readability cannot be measured by this score (f.i. active voice vs passive..) —Femke 🐦 (talk) 14:42, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks I did not know about that script and have now installed it and asked the writer if they might be able to add SMOG. I have written a sentence to start Readability#Wikipedia - all welcome to expand it of course. Chidgk1 (talk) 11:50, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Wow that was quick - thanks @Phlsph7 for adding it Chidgk1 (talk) 12:11, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the idea and the feedback! You might also be interested in the discussions found at Wikipedia_talk:Good_article_nominations/Archive_28#Script to highlight reading difficulty, Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_candidates/archive90#Script to highlight reading difficulty, and Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Guild_of_Copy_Editors#Script_to_highlight_reading_difficulty. Some editors there raised concerns about overrelying on simple readability measures to assess the quality of Wikipedia articles. Phlsph7 (talk) 12:31, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, Phlsph7 for creating this (and thanks to Femke for bringing it to our attention here)!! This looks awesome! I've just installed it, no hassles there (just clicked on "install" and it shows up as an additional tool on the right). I am loving it already! I glanced over some of the discussions that you linked to. That's useful and obviously one needs to apply common sense thinking when applying this tool; it's not a magic bullet. But I think I will use it a lot. Just to point me to the problem areas, for example.

So far, I have been using this website to get the Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease score: https://www.webfx.com/tools/read-able/ . I look at the scores for the lead and for the main text separately. Within the SEI project that I work on, the reading ease score is a quality parameter that I have weighed quite heavily with 20%. See here if you are interested in our quality scoring system for our project: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/SDGs/Communication_of_environment_SDGs#Quality_scoring_system_for_Phase_2 Or direct link to Google doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WROIjC29K87cs-so2mrKJ7M6G2ihjUaPkqa8L363TDY/edit. Thanks again! EMsmile (talk) 13:09, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. I wasn't aware of the SEI project but focusing on the improvement of SDG-related articles with high pageviews sounds like a great idea. This is the first quantitative scoring system for Wikipedia articles I've seen. If you want to get the reading score not for the whole article but for a specific part, like the lead, there is a work-around using this script: copy the relevant text into your sandbox, click "Preview" or "Publish", and use the script. Phlsph7 (talk) 18:36, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

~blushing~ I couldn't find any "Install" button at User:Phlsph7/Readability.js. What am I missing? —RCraig09 (talk) 19:35, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

To install this script, go to your common.js and add the following line:

importScript('User:Phlsph7/Readability.js'); // Backlink: [[User:Phlsph7/Readability.js]]

Some people use a script installer, which adds an install button to automate this process. Phlsph7 (talk) 19:55, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

More information on how to install and use it is found at User:Phlsph7/Readability. Phlsph7 (talk) 19:58, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Some new links

Hi folks, just stumbled across these links, which may be worth bookmarking and/or sharing.

New article on The Conversation - Greenhouse gas emissions are at an all-time high and Earth is warming faster than ever – report:

https://theconversation.com/greenhouse-gas-emissions-are-at-an-all-time-high-and-earth-is-warming-faster-than-ever-report-207234

Indicators of Global Climate Change:

https://www.igcc.earth/

This one may count as a primary source? I'm not certain about the guidelines:

https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/15/2295/2023/ Cadar (talk) 15:44, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks - glad they are trying to provide updates before next IPCC report Chidgk1 (talk) 06:40, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

2023 Asia heat wave ITN nomination

Wikipedia:In the news/Candidates#Asian heat wave is nominated for ITN, but currently opposed for lack of quality. It might be a good article to work on. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 05:38, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

There is a draft article for Greenhouse Gas Protocol

There is a draft article for Greenhouse Gas Protocol. If folks agree that a separate article is needed for this topic ?), does anyone have time to help convert the draft into something that is suitable for mainspace? I don't have a feel for how much time would be involved but at first glance the draft looks fairly well developed. See talk page discussion here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:RonaldDuncan#Greenhouse_Gas_Protocol_moved_to_draftspace EMsmile (talk) 11:15, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

I agree that it's a pretty great draft. We do have carbon accounting, but that only dedicates one line on scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions, so an article which explicitly defines all three is going to be very helpful.

I think it mainly needs the standard improvements: a larger lead, a lot more sources (several sections unfortunately lack them entirely) and probably a lot more on the socio-political context. I have already seen negative references to these specific categories of the protocol in some political rhetoric, unfortunately, so that is also something which would have to be included.

Unfortunately, I am unlikely to free up enough from handling my own drafts/possible article merges to assist with this particular article any time soon. Hope that someone else can pay attention to this for sure. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 17:19, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

New photos on Commons from Climate Visuals

There's a new climate change image collection up on Commons - Category:Climate Visuals upload! Please do take a look and make use of the photos. Photos include agricultural practices, electric vehicles and carbon-friendly transport, extreme weather events, and more.

Thanks to everyone who gave input on the images they'd like to have. @Chidgk1 there are a couple pictures in the collection relating to geothermal energy that you might be interested in. TatjanaClimate (talk) 09:35, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

This is really awesome, thank you! These are very high quality photos. I like in particular those photos that have a long detailed description because this increases the likelihood that these particular photos will be found in future in Wikimedia Commons through keyword searches. I recommend you also link to this from the front page of WikiProject Climate Change (I couldn't find an obvious spot yet but we could create a section on "images"). EMsmile (talk) 14:00, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for this! While I tend to use scientific graphics from open-access papers for illustrating my more recent edits, photos of high quality always help to make a connection. I have already used two on Draft:Effects of climate change on livestock draft just now. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 17:58, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for the feedback @EMsmile and @InformationToKnowledge. I should also mention that Climate Visuals has optimised the search function for their photo library on their website to try make it more useful for people like Wikipedia editors (by adding the ability to sort files by their license type). There are loads more images there as well. If you have any feedback on the search function, I can pass it on to Climate Visuals - they are keen to hear it! TatjanaClimate (talk) 08:32, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Draft article on Adaptation gap needs some attention

Unless there are some strong objections, I'm probably going to accept it to mainspace in uh, probably the next week or so. It does need a lot of work content-wise, but I don't see it as within discretion to decline for that, it clearly merits an article and I don't see the content as bad enough it would have any chance of being TNT'ed at AfD (and it's clearly not going to get the improvement it needs languishing in draftspace where nobody will see it). Figured I'd advertise it here though, to see if there was anyone interested in refocusing it a little bit, either before or after the accept. I actually meant to when I originally made the comment but I kinda forgot about it. Alpha3031 (t • c) 04:36, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

I've added general comments at Draft talk:Adaptation gap. —RCraig09 (talk) 05:43, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

Same, I've also written on that talk page. In short: I don't see why such an article would be needed. EMsmile (talk) 09:06, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

Submission was declined on 3 July 2023. —RCraig09 (talk) 13:17, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

Held v. Montana

Hello! I've just noticed that @Czar started an article for the Held v. Montana case a while ago, and since the trial has been notably taken to court, that page should really use an expansion now.

So, I wanted to bring that to your attention, if there's anyone who can help insert new information (I should be able to chip in soon, as well); by the way, I think we could also use the help of someone at WP:LAW.

I've already managed to retrieve a few useful sources about the start of the trial, which happened yesterday: here are articles by Le Monde, The Guardian and Grist.

Oltrepier (talk) 20:09, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

I've already added a brief summary to 2023 in climate change, also, if that helps. Similar content might belong in other articles, like Climate justice etc., even though there won't be a ruling for some time. —RCraig09 (talk) 21:28, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

@RCraig09 Ok, thank you. Oltrepier (talk) 08:18, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

►►►►► I've just nominated Held v. Montana for a "Did You Know" entry: Template:Did you know nominations/Held v. Montana. —RCraig09 (talk) 20:44, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

The article has passed the review and is viewable at Template:Did you know/Preparation area 3. I don't know when it will appear on the front page. —RCraig09 (talk) 05:36, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

The hook for this court case is now in the Did You Know... section of Wikipedia's splash page. —RCraig09 (talk) 02:13, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm hoping that some objective person could rate the article for Class and for Importance, at Talk:Held v. Montana. I started it out weeks ago with very modest ratings. —RCraig09 (talk) 06:50, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

@RCraig09 I've upgraded the article's class to B, and set the importance for all the projects (except Law) to Mid; I feel like this could be a good compromise.

To be honest, I think you've done an amazing job on that page, certainly leagues better than I could've ever done! : )

I don't know if it's ready for a GA nomination, but it might be once we'll get even more news about how the lawsuit has evolved. Oltrepier (talk) 12:03, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

I don't know the standards for who should rate articles, but someone who has not been actively involved in the editing process could judge the article's quality more objectively. Separately, whether an article is a Good Article has to do with Wikipedia standards, and not with the importance of the subject. I've found that GA nominations bring in some editors who (think they) know standards in the abstract but don't appreciate the particular demands of a specific article, so the GA process can be frustrating with little substantive benefit. I'm disinclined to nominate. —RCraig09 (talk) 14:48, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Climate change litigation

@Oltrepier: This discussion should take place on the Talk page of Climate change litigation. I'll move it there and leave the heading here so that others are aware of the discussion. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 15:24, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

I've moved the discussion. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Climate_change_litigation . Happy consensus-building! Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 15:27, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

@Clayoquot You're right, thank you for going ahead. : ) Oltrepier (talk) 09:52, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Better image for lead of carbon footprint?

Discussion moved to Talk:Carbon footprint. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 17:12, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Dear Americans - hoping for your quick help

Hello my cousins across the pond. As you can see at Template:Did you know nominations/Climate change in Puerto Rico if it is not fixed in the next couple of days it will not be linked from the main page - which would be a pity I think Chidgk1 (talk) 16:34, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

2022 Siberian wildfires

This page comes up under a google search today. I just updated the total area with today's figures - but the article is start class and makes zero mention of climate change which can't be right. It clearly needs some attention including a title change, unless there's another page dealing boreal wildfires? I'll do some more at some point. Cheers. Thelisteninghand (talk) 20:10, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Wikiquotes on climate action

Hi all,

One of our side projects in sharing Climate Steps, Wikipedia, and Earth Hero info was to merge CSteps and Wikiquotes's databases on climate-action-related quotes. A small project, but interesting and useful - and now completed.

Now Wikiquotes does not actually have a database of quotes, everything is embedded in articles about notables or themes (though I think they are exploring tagging,) but we scanned through them and have now added 1) WQ climate-action quotes to our database ([3]https://airtable.com/invite/), and 2) our quotes that fit WQ guidelines to the WQ Theme page: [4]https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Climate_action. Research was by @Loupgrru. Eventually, when time allows, we'll input Earth Hero's collection of quotes.

Now, these are probably not relevant to the writing of encyclopedia articles here, but you may be interested in them anyway. If you want to access (and contribute) to the actual central database we're creating of climate action quotes, click the link and join our open-to-colleagues AirTable database. In the same database, we also have a tab we're filling in with climate action references - with references tagged when they met WP standards. I'll be talking about that separately here soon. Another one is of Experts, but we've barely started that.

Here's my favorite quote from the project:

"Fair or not, boomers and the Silent Generation have about 70% of the country’s money, compared with about 5% for millennials. So if you want to push around Washington, or Wall Street, or your state capital, it helps to have some people with hairlines like mine." Bill McKibben, American journalist (and climate change activist), 2023. AnnetteCSteps (talk) 19:44, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

More than facts

I perceive that active editors in the climate change area do a very good job of communicating information neutrally and fairly, letting the facts speak for themselves. Speaking for myself, the energy and motivation behind my edits is not merely to post facts for their own sake, to not only educate but—I admit—to convince. Even though we're imbued with the attitude to choose the most reliable sources, I think that our choice of which content to include in Wikipedia articles is influenced to some extent by our own motivations for being here.

For climate change and other topics that for whatever reason some people deem "controversial", I often read about how communicating "information" to people is one of the least effective ways to educate or convince (see graphics). For the factually inclined, the truth-avoiding and fact-discounting human tendency we've witnessed in public life is discouraging and scary. By continuing to edit, though, we're not bemoaning the human tendency to overlook facts; we're staying true to the conviction that eventually, facts and reality will win out.

I write this post to encourage thoughts and comments about which facts and which information we can present, along lines we may not have thought of before. The content of the two graphics gives us clues as to how we can move beyond dry numbers; we can present content that's not merely reliably sourced but relevant to the larger question of why we spend hundreds or thousands of hours editing here. I hope these thoughts help us to broaden our sensibilities, to recognize potential content that we might have overlooked before. Thus endeth my vague post. —RCraig09 (talk) 19:43, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

Interesting. But I think what you're saying goes a bit beyond what we can achieve with Wikipedia editing. Our job here is to stick to WP:DUE and to write in an encyclopedic way. According to the graphs that you have put here, this might not be the most impactful method with regards to climate change awareness / changes in behaviour. But those other methods (like "story telling") goes beyond Wikipedia editing, doesn't it? It's what science journalists and politicians can and should do (and they in turn might come to Wikipedia to get their facts straight). So overall, we might have some advocacy type motivations within us when we edit Wikipedia but we have to stick to the rules of the game and play by the Wikipedia manual of style, right? (not sure if we are straying into WP:Notforum now) EMsmile (talk) 21:55, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

You've focused on what we can't do. Examples of what we can do (based on the bottom two bars of "Motivating action" graphic) is contribute more content re how jurisdictions reward climate action, or describing steps taken by individuals or companies—not just in "softer" articles like Individual action on climate change but in higher-level articles as well. It's a subtle additional emphasis beyond the "hard" science that form the backbone of our main articles. I'm expressing vague ideas at this point, hopefully getting thought processes started. —RCraig09 (talk) 04:16, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

Hi @RCraig09 Yes. and what @EMsmile said, Yes - a conundrum. But I think I'm interpreting your first paragraph above as acknowledging the encyclopedic nature that we need to keep, but that facts will help for those ready for them - and will win out. And if - out of all the information we can add - if we add information that is truly useful to making progress in climate change, that's where our focus could be. From what I know of EMsmile's work, she's focused on getting solutions in; I am too. If we focus on helping people find out how to take action, that's great, and it's actually what my group has been funded via some pilot grants from WMF. We have an article we're moving into my sandbox for review that we've been working on about individual and community climate actions in agriculture and food. It can either stay as an article or wind up in pieces in others, but that's a separate discussion. But you can see it here as: [5]https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pnZbvOFjUD3NuKB2hgFYNO6U9myYuIhcRiZRQXdUk28/edit?usp=sharing.

And a lot of information has been added lately by others in the Individual action on climate change.

Another area is in adding information to existing pages, as @Clayoquot suggests is really needed. We're about to rank pages within the following spreadsheet that outlines many, many pages that could have more climate action information added.[6]https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1P3SS8vO3DaY33UmDA6kS8RaHa6e0MEvyn8B2O-UuCPk/edit?usp=sharing.

It's the graphs you provide above, though, that make it seem like we could accidentally apply a bias, not that I think that's the intent. The graphs imply that how we write an article in tone can make a difference. But, I still see our method as encyclopedic. For instance, the comparison to others has been acknowledged by science to be one of the primary movers in climate action - and we can add within articles examples, which help illustrate actions. (We haven't done that in ours yet, but want to do some of that.)

I'm kindof rushing our response because I have to run. But here in a day or so, we'll share the article in the sandbox for comments. Right now only page 1 of like 6-7 is in. But you can see it in the Google doc above. While we were working on it, some more work has been done on food and ag already in WP, so now it comes time to merge our info. AnnetteCSteps (talk) 22:21, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Two new drafts derived from the terrestrial animals article

Effects of climate change on terrestrial animals is one of the weakest articles we have right now, with very poor structure and an inherently flawed scope ("terrestrial animals" is an overly broad category, and so its content is all over the place). I and @EMsmile noticed this months ago, and we decided to eventually remove the article once there was no unique content left. Yet, it turned out to also mention in passing some subjects we currently have limited coverage of, and ultimately, I drafted two more articles to find a better place for some of its information, and to fill such gaps.

Draft:Effects of climate change on livestock draft (started as a userpage when I wasn't yet aware of the namespace, thus the awkward name. Currently, we only talk about livestock in terms of how they contribute to climate change, and there's next to nothing on how climate change will affect them.)

Draft:Decline in wild mammal populations (right now we have Decline in amphibian populations and Decline in insect populations as well as Climate change and birds and Effects of climate change on plant biodiversity, but no equivalent for wild mammals, in spite of the dramatic historical and ongoing trends.)

Edits and input welcome. Livestock draft in particular is something where certain paragraphs were rewritten and expanded dozens of times as I kept coming across further research, and I am aware that its structure is likely to need reorganization. That draft is in dire need of images as well, and while I have some ideas, I'm interested in what others might do. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 17:50, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Hi, I am a big fan of your thorough work! Perhaps it's also useful to tell the others where most of the content of Effects of climate change on terrestrial animals has been or will be moved to and what is the plan for Effects of climate change on terrestrial animals afterwards. The plan is to have a redirect from there to where, once the content has been fully moved?

With regards to Draft:Decline in wild mammal populations, I wonder if the article title is sufficiently clear. The first sentence mentions "have declined over the past 50,000 years". So this article will cover all sorts of things, not just the effects of climate change. How do you deal with potential overlap with other articles on this topic. For example, the article on biodiversity loss will have overlapping content? Would you regard that one as the parent article to your new draft article? EMsmile (talk) 20:51, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes, the mammal article is meant to cover more than climate change, so it does not have climate change in its title. In that way, it's more like the articles on insects (where the decline is mostly due to modern agricultural practices) and amphibians (habitat loss and fungus infections, which is only tangentially linked to climate change) than, say, climate change and birds (which I had to almost completely rewrite just recently) It reflects that the most dramatic decline of wild mammals happened before climate change, and also that current climate change research is surprisingly limited outside of charismatic species. I think it's very useful to keep information on mammalian trends accessible in one place, and I don't think it overlaps any more than many similar articles. I think it should simply be linked under a small "Mammal loss" subheading at Biodiversity_loss#Observations_by_type_of_life, similar to the way other animal groups are treated there.

Much of the Effects of climate change on terrestrial animals had been outright duplicative. With the rest, much went to Extinction risk from climate change (i.e. that table), some became the basis of the livestock draft, some has been integrated into the mammal draft and the birds article, and some has been added to the infectious diseases article by you. As for the redirect, the easiest and most logical one is most likely Effects_of_climate_change#Wildlife_and_nature. Either that, or a disambiguation page linking to mammal, extinction risk and livestock pages (and maybe some others) but this is probably too complicated. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 20:44, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

So, a little update: Effects of climate change on livestock is now a fresh B-class article. The other draft will probably be reviewed soon enough. I was told on my talk page I am no longer required to create drafts for such articles, so I think I'll go straight ahead with the reptile article and the modified bird/plant diversity impact articles in due time.

I also finally merged the terrestrial animal article itself. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 15:42, 31 July 2023 (UTC)