Talk:Effects of climate change/Archive 7

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consensus problems

In this two edit series an editor has changed the text as follows (new text in red)

There is a broad (97%) scientific consensus that climate change is occurring and that human activities are the primary driver.

References

I reverted "broad" and this has been edit warred back in without discussion. Here are the problems with the current version above.

• "Broad" is extraneous WP:Editorializing. It is what it is, we don't need to characterize it.
• The text is not supported by the source. The source does not say 97% of all scientists. It says, as the original Cook study explained, that 97% of actively publishing climate scientists say this.
• There is a sentence that makes two points and each point gets a ref but only one ref talks about 97%. Now it's not so clear which source is offered to support which point, and which point has a 97% consensus of actively publishing climate scientists and which doesn't. So the new addition inject ambiguity.

Those are the policy-based problems. But just stepping back the other editor hasn't explained why or how the original text was deficient. It said there was a consensus that its warming and its us and it provided a wikilink to follow to get more details. So it was fine the way it was. I'm going to remove it (a second time). Before putting it back in please try engaging with me here in some discussion. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 20:45, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

• They are not policy based problems. They are problems relating to accuracy. Mirriam-Webster says the word extraneous means 'irrelevant' or 'not forming an essential part'. Scientists have been telling us for years that climate change is induced by humans. To say there is a consensus among scientists does not convey the depth and breadth of that consensus. Perhaps describing the consensus as 'almost unanimous' would be more accurate.

• If you want to add the point that it is 97% actively published climate scientists who agree - no problem. That's also more accurate.

• But you are splitting hairs in regard to the sentence making two points with only one reference. The one source makes the two points 1) that global warming is happening 2) that is caused by humans. The source supports both points so there is no ambiguity. Notagainst (talk) 22:53, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

Also the fact that climate change is caused by humans is one of the key points of the article - it is mentioned in the very first sentence. The Cambridge dictionary defines "consensus" as "a generally accepted opinion or decision". Generally accepted by whom? That's kind of vague. Lets be more accurate - which means it is important to clarify how widespread the scientific consensus is on this point. Notagainst (talk) 23:49, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for joining the discussion, but when you pound the table with your views and edit again anyway you're not really discussing. Please read WP:GAMING. We'd get along a lot better if you'd float suggested changes here and then wait for discussion. This is a collaborative social project and the ARBS have explicitly prohibited the battleground approach to editing. Ordinarily we don't comment on behavior but try to WP:FOC but since you're new I'm trying really hard to help you not violate WP:3RR. I often come across as a jerk. I've been here a long time. I'm trying to help you be effective. Please apply WP:Assume good faith and re-read this paragraph.

The notion that accuracy issues aren't policy issues is.... I guess a polite word is "wrong". All content must pass WP:Verification (see also the very very important essay that emphasizes we need verifiability, not truth. The most recent change isn't any better than "broad (97%)" but... I don't want to edit war myself.

I'm going to ask for others to peek in and see what they think. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 00:35, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

I agree that editing on WP requires verifiability. The link I provided which says that 97% of published climate scientists agree IS verification. That means the term "broad" consensus is applicable as is "almost unanimous" consensus. You say the recent change (to 'almost unanimous') isn't better but you don't say why. Clearly it has nothing to do with verifiability. Notagainst (talk) 19:52, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

97% does not refer to "scientists" it refers to a specific subset of scientists...and not just the subset of climate scientists either, but the sub-subset of actively publishing climate scientists. We have two articles where we can go into all these details in all their glory. At a higher plane is Scientific opinion on climate change and the really pinpoint article is Surveys_of_scientists'_views_on_climate_change. When Cook first released the study, and for months afterwards, we belabored all this in the talk page at Scientific opinion on climate change. Most (all?) of those threads have been archived over there. It's weary work to repeat the same discussions. Could you take a look at the archives over there please and wade through the prior debates on this point? Just search the archives on "cook". Thanks NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 20:10, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

I agree with NewsAndEventsGuy. Cuntfinger (talk) 00:38, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure what's going on here tbf. I think, referring back to Cook's article, that explicit mention is consensus or cause is usually not really done when there is clear consensus. (Hence him finding a consensus of only 97%, leaving out all articles with implicit agreement). I therefore think the entire sentence should be removed from the lede. This is not an article about the consensus, nor the top article, nor about attribution. For those three articles explicit mention of level of consensus is appropriate. Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:08, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

For some background, focus on the article's scope of describing the physical and social impacts of AGW. Before 2012 the article lead first sentence warmed up to that topic, using WP:WIKIVOICE to say The effects of global warming are the ecological and social changes caused by the rise in global temperatures. It was assumed the reader knew what rise in global temperatures was being discussed. Then in 2012 the word "consensus" was added in 2012 by a regrettably-retired outstanding climate editor named Enescot, in this edit. That added a sentence saying there is a consensus that its warming and its us. That was during the time of AR3. Enescots original was based on the 2009 joint statement cited above. The text and the ref remained unchanged until NotAgainst's good faith bold edit. I reverted for discussion, and I'm glad to see some discussion happening.

Possible RSs have marched ahead since then. After the text was added, AR4 came out with the infamous SPM saying it's "unequivocal" that we're warming and most of its probably us (paraphrased). That expression made it into the lead (mea culpa) at global warming and was oft-debated (see that page's talk archives). Then along came the Cook study, that we parsed endlessly at Scientific opinion on climate change. But still the text here was unchanged.

That was background... as for what I think.... can we remove the sentence as Femke suggests? We could change it, but I think removing it would be unwise. An article about the effects of X implies X is happening. In such cases better to be explicit by just saying "X is happening" as concise as possible. In my view, the seven-years stable text does that job just fine. (The part about it being us is admittedly extraneous, but the RSs on this subject all seem to say in one breath it's warming and it's us, so I don't see the harm in keeping the "it's us" part, but I could live without it. But the part about "it's warming" I think we should definitely keep (and maybe change), to introduce the main topic about the effects of that warming. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 11:30, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

I would say we should just delete that sentence entirely. In this article, in the lede, it feels like an defensive justification. This article is discussing the facts of the effects of the present warming. I just tried taking it out, and the paragraph reads better, I think. - Parejkoj (talk) 17:38, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for joining us! So the question now might be should we say anything about "it's warming" before launching into the effects. There's a principle expressed at [{WP:SELFREF]] that applies, even if that guideline doesn't - articles should make sense when read off-wiki, so we shouldn't expect people to necessarily have read our article global warming before getting here. The other thing is that this article blurs the line between "article" and "list". In one sense this is a list of effects. So it isn't controlling by any means but the list guidelines say we should put list criteria in the lead. So for those reasons, I think we need at least a simple statement that the climate system is warming, with a cited RS, before launching into the effects of the warming. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 17:56, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

It seems to me that this discussion has wandered way off topic - which is whether the scientific consensus that exists can be described as 'broad' or 'almost unanimous', given that 97% of published climate scientists agree on the issue. Notagainst (talk) 06:34, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

You've changed the goal posts. Your disputed text did not say "97% of published climate scientists". THANK YOU for finally acknowledging the subset issue I've been trying to call to your attention since I first spoke up. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 11:02, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

You thank me for acknowledging your point - but then delete it anyway. You're a hard man to please. Notagainst (talk) 21:11, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

An alternative

Since some want to delete the sentence and I think we need to say something about the fact that its warming, what about this as a compromise?

Delete

There is a scientific consensus that climate change is occurring, and that human activities are the primary driver.

Replace with this sentence and ref copied from an earlier version of Global warming

Multiple lines of scientific evidence show that the climate system is warming.

Your thoughts? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 11:48, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

References

Your edit reads ok, but I would still argue that we just remove that "type" of sentence from the lede entirely. It still feels a bit defensive to me: "no, this is really a real thing, and not something we just made up." After all, the next sentence in that paragraph already says that we are currently seeing many effects. But I think your version is an improvement. - Parejkoj (talk) 13:57, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks... just checking here... I often find it useful to change the topic in an example to explore different editors' perspectives... suppose this were an article on Effects of myasthenia gravis. Would you expect such an article to say at least one sentence about the nature of myasthenia gravis, plus, for Wikipedia readers, a link so they can get more details on the "what" at another article? Or would it seem OK to just launch right into MG's effects cold turkey? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 14:37, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

Multiple lines is just another way of saying 'broad'. Notagainst (talk) 21:19, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

And you have removed the point that the consensus is among published climate scientists which you were so adamant about including in your criticisms of my input. Its very hard to reach a compromise with you if you keep shifting the goal posts. Notagainst (talk) 21:19, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

The sentence "There is an almost unanimous (97%) consensus among published climate scientists that climate change is occurring and that human activities are the primary driver" was posted three days ago. Its a 100% accurate statement backed by a RS. When you finally get around to reading it, you described it as 'progress' - but deleted it anyway. Why? (Originally posted on my Talk page) Notagainst (talk) 21:03, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

In which specific WP:DIFF did I supposedly do that? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 11:05, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

On my Talk page under the heading Implied motives, you wrote: "I just saw your recent comment at article talk acknowledging that it isn't 97% of all scientists, but rather the subset of actively publishing climate scientists. So we're making progress." But in the last edit you made in the article on 28 July you wiped out that progress by removing the words "among published climate scientists" from this sentence: "There is an almost unanimous (97%) consensus among published climate scientists that climate change is occurring and that human activities are the primary driver". Notagainst (talk) 12:50, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

(edit conflict, when I said "progress" I meant our mutual understanding of the sources content) NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 13:13, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

Ah, my mistake. I thought we were talking about diffs from three days ago (July 26 2019). The July 28 diff you have cited includes an WP:Edit summary which explains this was a WP:BRD edit. The edit summary says restore stable (since 2012) text pending outcome of talk discussion in thread "consensus problems". I was not thinking about removing this or that or the other. I was thinking about WP:BRD and WP:CONSENSUS. You've been making contested changes to text that has been stable since 2012. You got reverted. Discussion is happening. Two eds besides us want to just delete the sentence completely, and one of them would compromise by accepting the proposed alternative. Per BRD I simply restored the seven-years stable text while we talk and seek consensus about the best way to improve this article based on the reliable sources. Nothing more or less. Per WP:Focus on content, WP:ARBCC#Purpose of Wikipedia, and Battleground editing, maybe we could stop poking each other and stay zeroed in on the content of the sources, and how we can best improve the article content on those sources? And if you'll pardon the pun, given the climate we might want to seek a WP:Non-admin closure to determine the consensus. Alternatively if you think a formal WP:Dispute resolution process would help, you name it and I'll participate. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 13:13, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

If you made a mistake, why don't you fix it? You suggested to me that I should update the page. When I do, you remove my contribution claiming you want to return the page to a version that was stable from 2012. Where is the WP rule that says restoring pages to "stable" outdated versions is preferred to adding updated information. Notagainst (talk) 13:35, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

In case you hadn't noticed, my 'pokes' as you call them are entirely focussed on improving the content. Notagainst (talk) 13:46, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

To help keep from talking past each other, the dispute resolution noticeboard might help. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 13:54, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

Missing or empty |title=

Why are there some many "Missing or empty |title=" errors in the References section? X1\ (talk) 20:15, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

A cursory scan suggests they are all IPCC 2nd, 3rd, or 4th assessment report citations, sort of combining ordinary ref citation with harv citation, if that helps. Eventually maybe these can be udpated to AR5 and that problem will go away but its not something I plan to work on, unless I get interested later. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 21:19, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

Ages ago, it used to be okay to omit the title. Say you would just omit it if you cited a chapter and than cite the corresponding book separately to avoid duplication. To go forward, it's likely best to try and find out whether the statements are still reported in more modern scientific literature or other RSs and if so completely replace the old citations (or the corresponding sentence). Femke Nijsse (talk) 21:44, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

Okay. Seems beyond me for now. X1\ (talk) 21:18, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

I only just saw this (I'm not watching this article), but it might be noted that those citations are in an older style now deprecated, in part for various problems. I strongly recommend the new form now available (at least for AR4 and AR5) at WP:IPCC citation, which corrects those problems, and has additional information. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:21, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

Article drift

[GHG] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:E000:160E:577:3897:89DA:A5DC:27B8 (talk) 03:54, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

Long ago, we worked out a heirarchy where Global warming was the top article and there were a handful of second-tier sub-articles (and then the sub-sub articles and so on). This page was agreed to hold a more detailed account of the physical effects and how those effects will impact social systems. We have other second-tier sub-articles that report on Climate change mitigation and the Politics of global warming and so on. All these articles should cross-link one another to help the reader navigate, but lets try hard to not blur the lines between them. Otherwise, we just end up with lots of hard to maintain redundancy, and a much weaker package overall. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 15:13, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

You wrote "This page was agreed to hold a more detailed account of the physical effects and how those effects will impact social systems." Since the physical effects of climate change include extreme weather, heatwaves, flooding, sea level rise, water shortages, conflict and mass migration as documented throughout this article, climate change is already having a dramatic impact on our social systems. Scientists and other commentators have begun describing the impact as a crisis. That is not the same thing as a neologism (see comments under Pruning below). It is simply one interpretation of the facts - not forgetting that over the years, the IPCC has provided multiple interpretations of the facts and how they will affect social systems. Notagainst (talk) 05:32, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Please, get sources right

Your addition that climate change poses an existential threat to mankind is not reflected by any of the five sources you give. Normally, an existential threat is defined as something like: "(...) existential risks. These are threats that could cause our extinction or destroy the potential of Earth-originating intelligent life." All of your sources instead talk about an existential threat to civilization, a more vague and substantially weaker claim. I'm worried that your editing pattern here and on climate crisis ticks of a few of the signs of WP:disruptive editing: I feel it is tendentious, I think you are pushing for the notion that climate change is worse than what the consensus of scientists state. You often fail to satisfy the reliability criteria by misrepresenting sources. As a way forward, would you be alright first posting your edits on the talk page so that we can reach consensus before posting? You're now editing so fast that other editors cannot check your edits fast enough. Femke Nijsse (talk) 07:46, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

I take your point that most of the sources refer to an existential threat to civilisation - although the first source says: "after nuclear war, human-induced global warming is the greatest threat to human life on the planet." However, there is no need to delete the entire sentence - just replace the word 'mankind' with the word 'civilization'. Removing the entire sentence is tendentious. Notagainst (talk) 19:38, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

I hoped with the other edits to have found a compromise (far-reaching & long-lasting in first sentence). The factual inaccuracy wasn't the only problem with that sentence, hence me not simply correcting it. It also contained weasel words. While WP:weasel words are sometimes tolerated in a lede section, it was unnecessary here. More importantly, putting the opinion of that group of people there gave them WP:UNDUE weight. Femke Nijsse (talk) 19:48, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

What weasel words? Notagainst (talk) 20:27, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

"Some commentators". Some is a weasle word, and everybody can be a commentator, making it unclear what it's importance is. Femke Nijsse (talk) 21:27, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

So if you're quoting multiple sources, what would you prefer? Notagainst (talk) 21:41, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

If it's a well-established fact, write the fact down not the people. If possible, the overwhelming majority of text should be about well-established facts. If not, give attribution to at least some of them. The main point I made however was not about linguistics, but about DUE weight. The third sentence of the article is way too prominent for a minority position. Femke Nijsse (talk) 11:03, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

It is hardly a minority position when the IPCC, the UN and numerous other researchers express similar concerns that we may soon exceed crucial tipping points - if we haven't already done so. Notagainst (talk) 21:18, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

Those concerns are not at all similar. Many tipping points will surely lead to damage to societies all over the world, but saying it's existential threat to civilization is a way stronger statement. I'm convinced the IPCC has never said this. Please prove me wrong. If they say it, they don't say it in their summaries (technical/for policy makers), indicating again that UNDUE weight is placed on it. Femke Nijsse (talk) 21:23, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

The concept of balance contains the implicit assumption that information (facts) is interpreted in different ways. WP:Undue says: "Neutrality requires that each article or other page in the mainspace fairly represents all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources." Notagainst (talk) 21:18, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

And currently we have one significant minority as the only viewpoint in the first paragraph of the lede, directly going against that policy. This Vox article gives an overview of the debate about this in scientific circles: while the World Bank and the IPCC sometimes offer bleak predictions, they don't don't predict mass civilization collapse. Even if they are considered too conservative by some, claims of civilization collapse are exaggerated. And we should take into account that my linked article is from Vox, a newspaper with a liberal bias. This article is also the reason I'll be deleting the Breakthrough report from the article, as proper scientists call it "over-the-top and often misleading".Femke Nijsse (talk) 21:50, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

Can I suggest to you that the concept of WP:Undue and the notion of balance requires you to add differing points of view - not remove those you think are 'minority'. Notagainst (talk) 23:14, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

Notagainst, I'll have a shot at it, but giving the main differing POVs a balanced reading requires more text than we have if we want to keep the first paragraph on topic. My reading gives me four groups: a small "existential threat" group, a bigger catastrophic group, the biggest "quite bad" and a final small group that things the risks are "small in comparison with other major social issues". Femke Nijsse (talk) 22:01, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

References

Seminars

Hi Femkemilene: You removed material from the Effects of Global Warming page claiming that "Seminars are not valid sources of information". Whereabouts on WP guidelines does it say that? It seems to me the source is the Professor not the venue at which the information was presented. And by the way - Professor Veerabhadran Ramanathan has his own page on WP and is described on that page as "Victor Alderson Professor of Applied Ocean Sciences and director of the Center for Atmospheric Sciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego." I think that makes him a pretty reliable source. Notagainst (talk) 22:19, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

Can we discuss this on articel talk? Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:04, 20 December 2019 (UTC) (Transfered from Femkemilene's Talk page) Notagainst (talk) 19:45, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

While there are no explicit guidelines written about seminars, the gist of WP:SCHOLARSHIP is quite good. When scientists say something without it being peer-reviewed, nor checked by an editor, the source should be used with care. These sources are often primary, as is the case here. It's not clear that this lecture was prominent at all (and we can't know because we're using a primary source) and therefore I strongly believe it was given WP:UNDUE weight. Femke Nijsse (talk) 20:09, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

The lecture may not be prominent but Professor Veerabhadran Ramanathan certainly is. According to WP "Ramanathan is an ISI highly cited researcher. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Society, American Geophysical Union, and American Academy of Arts and Sciences." He is clearly well reviewed by his peers. So your claim that citing Professor Veerabhadran Ramanatha provides UNDUE weight makes no sense at all. Notagainst (talk) 23:16, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

Please note that peer-review applies to sources, not to their authors. As respected as this professor is, not everything he says necessarily "sticks to the wall" of community approval. Indeed, experts often like to throw out some wild ideas for comment, which may even be commented on. But to cite something as a known and accepted bit of the corpus of human knowledge requires, as a starter, peer-review. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:25, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

I agree with JJ. Seminars are the place we discuss new ideas, which indeed might not have community approval. Furthermore, Ramanathan is respected as a physical scientist, while saying something about existential risk is more of a social science. Femke Nijsse (talk) 19:05, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

And Femke speaks as a scientist. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:06, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

References

Climate crisis in Wikivoice

A reminder that consensus is not to do this, even if some sources might do. I know you disagree, but I'm not here to restart that discussion. Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:01, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

That creates a dilemma if you want me to be more accurate when quoting reliable sources. Do you want me to quote the source accurately or not? Notagainst (talk) 17:56, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

If you quote RSs, you can use the word climate crisis, with the entire quote in quotation marks. When you paraphrase them you can't. This shouldn't have to interfere with accuracy at all. Femke Nijsse (talk) 21:55, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

You should consider the prior question, of whether that source should be quoted at all. Statement by a reliable source is required, but is not sufficient for inclusion. And if the existing consensus here is to not address "climate crisis" in this article, then you should respect that. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:26, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

J. Johnson, Sorry for posing a section without context, but we have as of yet not had a discussion about whether to include the climate crisis. I'm now tentatively in favour of having one, but still thinking about a better title. The previous discussion was about if we talk about it, whether we can use the words without quote marks. Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:36, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

That's fine. My response was more about the quoting part than the Wikivoice part. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:56, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

Units

Shall we use scientific/international units as default (Celsius) and only use local units (Fahrenheit) between brackets? Femke Nijsse (talk) 11:40, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

Definitely. Nobody outside the US uses Fahrenheit, and this is the English language Wikipedia, not the US Wikipedia. --Hob Gadling (talk) 12:36, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

File:Projected change in annual average precipitation for the 21st century, based on the SRES A1B emissions scenario, and simulated by the GFDL CM2.1 model.png

So, this image caught my eye. From reading sources used for writing African humid period and from the IPCC report I get the impression that this particular model output seems to be somewhat unrepresentative of projected precipitation changes - a drier Mediterranean is supported by most models, but a drier Sahel isn't really and a drier Indian Monsoon certainly not. Are we sure we want to use that file to illustrate precipitation projections? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 18:55, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

I was doubting that figure too, from a different perspective. It talks about one of the old emission pathways (SRES) which goes against my desire to introduce as little technical details as possible. If you have any updated projections from an RCP or SSP and a more representative model, that would be very much welcome! Femke Nijsse (talk) 19:09, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

I dunno; IPCC has some figures but one would have to request a copyright release. I also think that a P-E map would be more useful but these are not really as frequent. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 19:35, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Had a quick look (NASA/GISS websites + Google images with copyright settings) and couldn't find any update. We might have to rely on the IPCC for this indeed. Do you have experience asking for permission? We could also ask permission from Carbon Brief, this article: https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-what-climate-models-tell-us-about-future-rainfall. Their license is relatively free already, so there is a good chance they'll give permission.. Femke Nijsse (talk) 20:04, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Writing an email to CarbonBrief now. Femke Nijsse (talk) 20:19, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Sense of crisis

You stated that a sense of crisis is an effect of global warming. To me, that seems very odd. I'd put it as a response to climate change. I feel that section is now shoehorned into the article. A Google search for social effects of climate change or climate change impact humans, didn't give any hit in the top10 supporting this as an affect either. See for instance

References

You seems to be saying that a sense of crisis is a response to climate change - but not to global warming...? Is that right? WP says Global warming is an aspect of modern climate change. Notagainst (talk) 18:47, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

No, the distinction I made was between an effect of and a response to global warming/climate change. Femke Nijsse (talk) 20:12, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

The second sentence in the lede is It (the effects of global warming) also includes the economic and social changes which stem from living in a warmer world and the responses to those changes.

A sense of crisis is a natural response to the growing crisis that global warming presents. We cannot ignore the responses made by humans because the speed and efficacy of those responses will have a massive impact on the ultimate size of the effects. The effects and the responses are interdependent. Notagainst (talk) 04:09, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

I'm glad we agree that it's a response and not an effect. The first section of the article observed and future warming gives background information about how much warming is expected. If we could find a RS linking protest to 'potential to increase mitigation', that could be the location to include a single sentence about this. We do have a hierarchy of articles though, and articles like global warming itself that describe all the interdependencies. This article is already longer than the ideal maximum readable prose size, and we should really stay on focus to describe all the important effects of global warming, instead of providing too much background information. Femke Nijsse (talk) 09:51, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Looking back at the history of this page, I see I'm not the first person objecting to the addition of a section of 'sense of crisis': on 24 July NEAG reverted your addition. Femke Nijsse (talk) 17:44, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

You can call it a response but it's also a psychological effect stemming from the sense of crisis felt by millions of young people in particular. It makes no difference if its an effect or a response because the two are interdependent. The greater the response (as in potential protest and mitigation) the less (damaging) effect there will be from global warming.

If you want to reduce the size of the article, there is an awful lot of generalized waffle that you and I have been trying to get rid of. Notagainst (talk) 01:19, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

Notagainst, it makes all the difference in the world whether it's a response or a an effect as responses belong in different articles. Currently, it is listed as one of the seven effects of global warming on humans, together with effects on health, agriculture and freshwater availability. We already have mention of mental health impacts on youngsters in the mental health paragraph, no need to repeat this.

And yes, many things are interdependent with the effects of global warming: adaptation to those effects, economic growth & resilience, mitigation. We mention those however where they are applicable and don't order the article in such a way that it seems to imply they are an effect of GW. If you argue that protest might help mitigation and you can find a RSs stating thus, I'm okay with you adding a few words to the background section that deals with how much warming we'll be getting.

We've come a good way to get rid of generalizing waffle, but not far enough yet into detailly waffle: quotes, statistics for single countries, that sort of stuff. Femke Nijsse (talk) 14:43, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

@Notagainst: I've listed the discussion for a third opinion, as we don't seem to be able to agree. For the person providing a third opinion: within the history of the page you can see there was an attempted compromise proposed where the climate emergency was put in a more prominent position at the top of the section, but the subsection sense of crisis completely removed. Femke Nijsse (talk) 10:56, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

(Responding to this request for third opinions) In this context, the difference between effect and response is that responses involve an intervening act of human volition. With the possible exception of 'Conflict', the other subsections in "(Effects) on humans" ^{(namely, Food security, Water security, Health, Migration, Conflict, Economic impact)} do not essentially constitute acts of volition. Further, unlike 'Sense of crisis', no other subsections involve a mere (subjective, mental, cognitive) "Sense of xxx". By definition, Crisis terminology involves a human-reaction characterization of a phenomenon, rather than a description of the phenomenon itself. The effect on humans (presumptively, mental or emotional stress) is properly included in this "Effects of GW" article, but humans' responses should not be included here. Conceivably, Responses to climate change could be converted from a redirect to a substantive article hosting 'response' content—(afterthought:) though that might be duplicative of what's in Climate change mitigation and Climate change adaptation. —RCraig09 (talk) 17:30, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

The concept of 'security' in relation to food and water involves a psychological response (sense of security) to shortages. Conflict in this context is a human response to a lack of security in relation to food and water. The decision to move away (migration) is a response to a crisis. The decision to raise the price of food and water (economic impact) in response to shortages is exactly that - a response. None of these are automatic effects - they all involve "intervening acts of human volition" as you put it. The distinction between effect and response is not clear cut. Notagainst (talk) 22:30, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Notagainst, I replied to a very similar point below about your rescoping of this page in the first paragraph. Most importantly is that you need to show at least one, but preferable more, RSs that list 'sense of crisis' as an effect of GW. If not, you're engaging in WP:OR. I've shown that multiple sources list the "responses" to the effects of GW as an effect, but the fight against GW as a response. Femke Nijsse (talk) 14:48, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

To merely clarify my 17:30, 1 Jan 2020 post:

— Economic impact: to raise prices is a response; to lose a crop to drought is an effect.

— Migration: to migrate from California to Montana for the climate is a response; to migrate because farms are flooded or homes are burned by wildfire are effects (bare survival involving no real "choice")

— More generally: for The Guardian to change its style guide to adopt crisis terminology is a response, not an effect.

etc. I was trying to refine the definitions of effect and response using volition (choice other than for bare survival). —RCraig09 (talk) 15:56, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Migration & requests

@Notagainst:. I love that work is being done to the article. It's in dire need of updating. Some background info why I reverted you recent edit about migration. Around 2007 (not sure of the year) a paper came out stating a number for how many migrants expected due to climate change. This number was highly cited, even though it only contained a back-of-the-envelope estimation. Since, these numbers have become highly controversial.

For the global warming article, we've set some pretty high standards for citing sources. I don't want that here, as it's a lot to ask. But I would like you to add the bare minimum information: author, year, title. You're now omitting author and year sometimes, and in case of your recent addition from the 'IPCC', actually citing an old report by the IOM hosted on their website. You added that a 143 million people are predicted to be climate migrants. Yet the article you cite indicates this to be a worst-case scenario. I've asked you in previous interactions to better read sources you cite, but the point doesn't seem to come across. Hereby another request. Femke Nijsse (talk) 11:44, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

I've deleted two of your four sources, for they did not support the statement. The two remaining sources are an NGO that needs to simplify science for 'a living' and a news organisation that also isn't on the highest rung of reliability. That's not to say they are wrong, but just that we can't trust them at face value. A lot of high quality sources are slightly biased. Can you provide a scientific report or scientific article (as a secondary source) that claims this? My understanding is that migration is supercomplex and multifaceted and we don't know yet whether that statement is true. Also, when is something mass migration? Let's leave out such a controversial statement from the lede and state it's a factor in migration instead of leads to mass migration. Femke Nijsse (talk) 21:50, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

Mass migration is defined in WP as "the migration of large groups of people from one geographical area to another." Since we are talking about millions of people being displaced, that qualifies as a 'large group' wouldn't you say?

There is nothing controversial about the FACT that millions of people have already been displaced. "How many people will be affected by climate change by 2050? Forecasts vary from 25 million to 1 billion people with a figure of 200 million being the most widely cited estimate." Migration, Environment and Climate Change: Assessing the Evidence, International Organization for Migration, p.7. Notagainst (talk) 06:16, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

Estimates of migration caused primarily by environmental factor, and specifically by climate change are highly controversial. The page number you cite refers to a blank page. A non-controversial statement (fact) would be: it is clear that climate is influencing patterns of migration and displacement. The source you cite shows the scientific difficulties as well. I cite from your old report: Estimates have suggested that between 25 million to one billion people could be displaced by climate change over the next 40 years. For the most part these figures represent the number of people exposed to the risk of climate change in certain parts of the world and do not take account of the measures that could be taken to adapt to these changes. Although experts have dismissed such figures as, at best, “guesswork” (...). The science behind migration has developed fast, and if you quote numbers, an 11-yr old source, based on older scientific papers, doesn't do. Please include the year of your source your citation. The UNDP source I quoted before (2017) states: In addition, directly attributing human mobility to climate change is extremely difficult: people move for a wide variety of reasons, and even where hazards contribute to this decision, it is the underlying socioeconomic, cultural, political and environmental processes that either enable or constrain people’s ability to cope where they are or result in them moving Even when we can find some climate-related aspect to migration, it's not always clear they are climate change driven. Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:03, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

References

My mistake - try page 5.

The 2017 UNDP source you quote also says "In 2016, over 24 million people were newly displaced by sudden-onset climate-related hazards, such as typhoons and floods." (p.7) Typhoons and floods are not patterns - they are sudden onset disasters, so your suggestion that "climate is influencing 'patterns' of migration and displacement" is probably not appropriate. However, I agree with you that migration is supercomplex and multifaceted and happy to "state it's a factor in migration instead of 'leads' to mass migration." Notagainst (talk) 20:24, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

I suspect the sentence: climate change is a factor in mass migration is factually correct. Note however that climate-related hazard are not at all the same as climate change related hazards, so that sentence still doesn't support the article's claim. I'd like to see a recent scientific source. Why do you think the sentence of pattern is incorrect/inappropriate? Femke Nijsse (talk) 21:35, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

I already explained - Typhoons and floods are not patterns - they are sudden onset disasters, and becoming more frequent. Also, in this context, 'pattern' is a weasel word. It makes what's happening sound harmless. Even if only half of the predictions about millions more climate change migrants come true, that will be a global disaster, potentially an existential crisis... definitely not a pattern. Notagainst (talk) 21:46, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

Notagainst, I think I see the difficulty here. The technical/jargon word pattern has a different meaning than how normal people use it. And you're right, we should avoid it because because of that; the technical term sounds harmless to a general public. What do you think of the sentence from the global warming article? Climate change can be an important driver of migration, both within and between countries.

1. It recognizes directly that migration happens within borders
2. It recognizes that other drivers exist
3. It stresses the importance? Femke Nijsse (talk) 14:36, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

Once again, I feel that still minimises the problem. How about "Climate change has contributed to the internal displacement and migration of millions of people worldwide." Notagainst (talk) 21:37, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

, I'm okay with that sentence only if we can find a reliable source. We've found reliable sources saying that a lot of these often-quoted numbers about are guesswork. Considering many sources that would be considered reliable for easier facts quote these debunked numbers, we need a source of particularly high quality. I think there are two types of sources we can use here. Peer-reviewed reports (like IPCC) or peer-reviewed review papers, both under ~5 years old. Femke Nijsse (talk) 11:33, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

Given that many estimates of climate refugees are 'guesswork', I agree you need a high quality source if we quote a specific number of X millions. But there is one thing these sources all agree on - that millions will be affected. So if the sentence in the article refers to 'millions' in general rather than a specific number of millions, most of these sources should be acceptable.

This opening sentence from the IPCC report on migration is 11 years old and refers to conclusions that are more than 20 years old... "As early as 1990 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) noted that the greatest single impact of climate change might be on human migration—with millions of people displaced by shoreline erosion, coastal flooding and agricultural disruption.... " Migration and Climate Change (2008) No doubt the problem has got a lot worse since then. Notagainst (talk) 20:13, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

The following statements are pretty definitive, even with a specific number of millions, from the updated source you provided: Climate change, migration and displacement UNDP 2017, p.9. "Sudden-onset climate-related hazards contribute to large numbers of displaced people on an annual basis through evacuation and moving out of harm’s way (Adamo, 2009). Such hazards newly displaced over 24 million people in 2016, and overall have displaced 32 times more people than other geophysical hazards such as earthquakes, and three times as many as those fleeing conflict (IDMC, 2017). Sudden-onset hazards include storms (e.g. typhoons), extreme temperatures, and flooding. All of the ten largest disaster displacement events in 2016 were related to floods and storms (Figure 1). Between 2008 and 2016, sudden-onset events were responsible for 99% of internal displacement: an average of 21 million people annually." Notagainst (talk) 22:50, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

Notagainst, Thanks for your effort :). I really prefer to get a recent source, as the science behind this has changed a lot since 2008. About the second source: this is about climate-related hazards, not about climate change related hazards. As such, it's nice background information, but we need a source stating what percentage is due to climate change. My suspicion is that that's under 10%. Femke Nijsse (talk) 09:36, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

What makes you think "this is about climate-related hazards, not about climate change related hazards". The report is called: Climate change, migration and displacement. Just because one sentence uses the words "climate-related hazards" does not mean the paragraph (and the report) is not referring to climate change related hazards. Afterall the very next sentence describes the hazards referred to by saying: "Sudden-onset hazards include storms (e.g. typhoons), extreme temperatures, and flooding." The reference to 'extreme temperatures' strongly suggests the authors are referring to global warming related hazards.

I think you are reading way too much into that one phrase - they may simply have said climate-related hazards because constantly referring to climate change related hazards is clumsy and unnecessary because the report is clearly about global warming (climate change) and migration. Notagainst (talk) 06:45, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Notagainst, Every source about climate-change related impacts will necessarily start with climate related impacts as part of a detection and attribution study. All of the hazards you describe were present to some extent without global warming and extreme cool temperatures and tropical cyclones in some basins have actually decreased since. Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:36, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

verification failed

copied from Talk page Notagainst, as discussed veered from user conduct to content

Femkemilene. I cannot see any explanation anywhere for the failed verification tag in the Migration- slow onset section. What's wrong with "The UN forecasts that by 2050 there could be 200 million environmental migrants." It is taken from this sentence in the source: "UN International Organization for Migration posit that there could be between 25 million to 1 billion environmental migrants by 2050, moving either within their countries or across borders, on a permanent or temporary basis, with 200 million being the most widely cited estimate." Do you want to include the entire sentence...? Notagainst (talk) 04:59, 1 January 2020 (UTC) (cancel reply)

Here the UN report comments that other sources cite 200 million most often. They don't state that they agree with this number. Concluding that they forecast this has no basis in this source. They explicitly say that they are wary of these numbers, as studies typically don't take into account adaption measures: Although experts have dismissed such figures as, at best, “guesswork” these statistics have helped to focus policy makers’ attention on the likely implications of climate change on migration. We could paraphrase their sentence, without implying it's the opinion of the UN. Femke Nijsse (talk) 11:06, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

Femkemilene. You are splitting hairs. The first part of the sentence clearly states "UN International Organization for Migration posit (put forward as fact or as a basis for argument) that there could be between 25 million to 1 billion environmental migrants by 2050..." In other words the UNIOM states there could be up to 1 billion climate migrants. It then says "that 200 million (is) the most widely cited estimate". Since the article does not say who the estimates are made by, this indicates the UNIOM accepts this figure as the most reliable estimate. Notagainst (talk) 20:14, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

You're right that your news article stated something along those lines, but that's not a reflection of the report. Citing from the actual report: Predictions of migration flows caused by environmental factors are impossible to make on the basis of this literature. Myers’s projection of 200 million ‘environmental refugees’ by 2050 (Myers, 1995) has been dismissed as apocalyptic and based on no more than anecdotal evidence and intuitive judgement (Castles, 2004; Hugo, 2009: 47, quoting Lonergan & Swain, 1999). Two fundamental things are thereby wrong about your sentence. A) The UN explicitly states it is impossible to make an estimate so they have not worked on making a forecast themselves and B) they cite concerns about that number that describe it as apocalyptic, giving clear indication they don't endorse it. I've removed the news article for being inaccurate. Femke Nijsse (talk) 21:05, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

I don't know what you're talking about. The quote is from page 5 the UN report - which is 448 pages long - not from a news article.Notagainst (talk) 06:39, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

The quote on page 5, which is the foreword to the report, states that 200 million is the most widely cited estimate. It doesn't say that the UN posit this. Your quote with the word posit is absent from the report. Within the report itself (not foreword), literature is cited that indicate the 200 million may be apocalyptic, based on no more than anecdotal evidence and intuitive judgement. We could include a couple of sentences like this:

A) Difficult to put a number on migration

B) Most widely estimate is 200 million

C) This number has been dismissed as anecdotal and apocalyptic. Femke Nijsse (talk) 11:11, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Social and economic effects/responses

Femkemilene. You have just removed "and the responses to those changes" from the lede arguing that that "I've yet to come across a source that includes responses into their definition or scope of effects/impacts GW". On that basis you will need to remove this sentence from the lede as well: "It also includes the economic and social changes which stem from living in a warmer world." Economic and social changes ALL involve human responses.

We will also need to remove any reference to projections about the impact (effects) of global warming because projections into the future are meaningless without taking into account the likely human responses to current changes in the climate. In regard to warming, the only 'effects' that meet your new criteria for this article are observable increases that have already occurred - which at the moment amounts to about 1 degree Celsius. Any projections beyond that depend on what level of mitigation strategies governments adopt over the next 50 years or so - ie they depend on human responses - which you seem to be claiming are not acceptable in an article on the effects of global warming.

The distinction between effects and responses is not clearcut. They are two sides of the same coin. Notagainst (talk) 23:15, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Maybe there are two levels of 'responses'. There is the way individuals react to global warming - which includes the economic impact, conflict, migration, sense of crisis, etc. These individual 'reactions' can be seen as 'effects'. Then there are government, national and political 'responses' which are intend to reduce the future impact of global warming - ie mitigation and adaptation. The latter do not belong in this article, but the former do. Notagainst (talk) 07:07, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Omitting the responses from the definition of the article does not imply we have to omit all the effects whose severity is response-dependent. We just have to write down it's response-dependent.

I think you're right that there are multiple levels of responses, but I think the line is drawn differently in sources. There are changes in behaviour (/responses) to the effects of global warming that happen even if people not necessarily unaware that global warming plays a role (hike in food prices, migration). These are typically listed as a response to global warming, for instance in:

• Bradford, Alina Science. "Effects of Global Warming". livescience.com. Retrieved 2020-01-03.
• "Climate Impacts". Union of Concerned Scientists. Retrieved 2020-01-03.
• MacMillan, Amanda (2016). "Global Warming 101 11". NRDC. Retrieved 2020-01-03.
• "The Top 100 Effects of Global Warming". Center for American Progress. 2007-09-24. Retrieved 2020-01-03.
• PBL (2013-03-18). "The effects of Climate Change in the Netherlands: 2012". PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. Retrieved 2020-01-03.

On the other hand there are responses to global warming stemming from an awareness (international politics, protest). I have not come across any source that lists those as effects of global warming.

In short, we can write down were effects are response-dependent, but we can't pretend responses are an effect themselves. Femke Nijsse (talk) 11:28, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

The entire second paragraph of the section, On humans (the Bioscience letter, climate emergency declarations, the Stiglitz quote, commentators' assertions), definitely describes responses (improper here) and not effects. Arguably, including such material in this article damages its credibility. —RCraig09 (talk) 21:41, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

RCraig09, I agree mostly, but wanted to go a bit slower. The climate emergency letter is not an effect, but is a qualification by scientists of how bad the effects are. The same goes for the existential threat which is a quantification of the totality of effect. That latter sentence has POV and vagueness problems, so needs some work. Femke Nijsse (talk) 21:46, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

I understand, and I appreciate the situation here (why I did not simply delete the paragraph). Definitely, those documents/commentaries—which might be considered reliable sources if placed in context—might have content that could be included here. However, for an encyclopedia article to recite the bare existence of those documents/commentaries as "effects" is problematic. —RCraig09 (talk) 21:54, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

I do not argue that a climate emergency is an effect, and I don't think the article now gives the impression it is. (If you think it does, can you try to reword them?). I think qualification of the effects (not the declaration itself) is what is important for this article. The question: is the net effects good/bad/disastrous/wonderful is a logical one and should be touched upon in the article. Femke Nijsse (talk) 21:59, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

Your edit leads to an excellent result: it succinctly puts responses in context. —RCraig09 (talk) 13:20, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

Positive effects of global warming?

Reading the article it seems like there are only negative consequences of global warming. There must be some, on the grand scale certainly small, but positive effects. In the Swedish version of this article there is a small section termed "Positive effects", mentioning for example the positive effects of a temperature rise in countries situated on higher latitudes. This could be longer crop seasons, less energy consumption for heating of buildings etc. I think that, in the name of NPOV, such a section should be part of the article. BeowulfSE (talk) 18:30, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

Nope. Back in the 1970s (?) and 1980s industry was harping on all the benefits, but they tend to be trivial and very limited. E.g., the "reduced heating costs" at higher latitudes is a small fraction of the increased cooling costs of places like California. There was some study just this year that a "longer crop season" (ie., earlier spring and later fall) doesn't necessarily result in more crop. (I think it was something to do with less sunlight at higher latitudes.) Etc. I doubt that the Swedish WP has as many editors watching these articles as we have, so there is no telling what kind of junk slips in. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:12, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

Citations

For the record I note that currently there are a lot of problems with the citations in this article, particularly with the IPCC reports:

• Disorganized (can't tell right off what the main sources are).
• Lots of full citations cluttering the text.
• Lots of chapter/title errors.
• Lots of duplication.
• Inconsistent, incomplete, incorrect, and untemplated citations.
• Use of author-date references (not suitable for IPCC reports).

And lots of other little problems.

Is it time to sort this out? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:13, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for taking a look here. If you think citations are a mess now, look at this article a year ago...

I think it's safe to say that the standards on global warming don't function well. For me, it almost doubles the time I need to make a contribution, as I often make mistakes in forgetting parameters, and have to click preview quite a few times before it's all done. Plus, it leads to so much time asking other editors to comply. So for me, it's a definite no to introduce a similar system here.

• Why don't you use the Visual editor for this article? No full citations cluttering the text then.
• Chapter/title errors are usually for AR4 or earlier. I'm keeping them for now as a way to check whether I want to update the sentence, or just correct the source. Most of them are gone compared to a year earlier.
• I agree every cite should be templated
• The author-date references are the standard way of citing IPCC reports. We've gone funky in global warming, but no need to impose that on other articles.

Femke Nijsse (talk) 07:50, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

Well, all those now deprecated AR4/AR5 citations are mostly my work, done back in 2012. What I would like to consider as a valiant effort. But, as is said in the software industry, "plan to throw the first one away". Even so, I think it was an improvement on what was before. E.g., check out the 2 January 2011 version. Note especially the lengthy citations with lots of redundant text.

Taking your points in reverse order:

• While the author-date style of short-cites – e.g., "Smith et al., 2019" – is a general scientific way of referencing full citations (and what I tried to implement in the older form of IPCC citations), yet is not suitable for the IPCC AR reports. If an article cites only two or three chapters then the full citations are not too bad (though still bad enough), but the redundant text quickly adds up. And if you go with the IPCC's preferred citation you've got long lists of authors and editors, even long titles, which most WP editors are not up to. (Unless they simply copy the preferred citation, which creates another set of problems.) But what really sinks author-date style is, first, these names are not significant to anyone but specialists heavy into the reports, and, second, there are conflicts. E.g., in the current version of this article there are multiple references to Bindoff et al., Ch. 5. But with different chapter titles! Huh? Okay, one is ch5 in AR4 WG1 (2007), and the other is ch5 in SROCC (2019), and the years distinguish. But then there are the two chapter 11s in AR5 (in WG2 and WG3), both of which per author-date style should be "Smith et al. 2014". Distinguishable with an appended "a" and "b", for sure, but that's just the kind of piddly detail most WP editors are not going to be consistent about. I really did try to make author-date work, but as you can see: yuck. The current WP: IPCC citation style is MUCH more workable.

• Yes, of course. And we need prepared templates, cut-and-paste ready, because the level of templating required for IPCC citations is such that most editors (even where they are not too intimidated to try) will seldom get them correct, let alone consistent.

• While the old style of citation is useful for tracking what content needs to be checked and possibly updated, I don't want either conversion to the new style to be held up pending checking and updating, or to lose track of what needs to be checked. The latter could be done with tagging, so that conversion and tagging could be done independently of subsequent checking and updating. In looking over the in-line cleanup tags I didn't see any that looked quite suitable, so I am thinking of creating a new tag, perhaps one that displays only a small symbol, along the lines of "review requested", or some such. How would you define this task of reviewing content referenced to possibly obsolete sources?

• Visual Editor... huh?? To avoid cluttering the text with full citations just don't clutter the text with full citations. How does VE have anything to do with it, except that it is an offender?

• Would we really save any time, and be better off, if we did not have any standards, and let everyone proceed in whatever what every fashion strikes their fancy? Do you really want to slip back to this?

I am a bit baffled how the new system "almost doubles the time" you need to make a "contribution". The way I see it, doing the citation for an edit is likely the smallest, easiest part of an edit: just copy in the prepared short-cite (Harvnb}, and add the page number (and possibly a section number). Sure, you also need to copy in the WG and chapter citations the first time, but only once per article, which you have to do anyway. Perhaps you might explain how this "doubles the time" needed.

Reminding non-compliant editors is indeed a drag. I'm still thinking of some kind of tag we could just drop in, and the reminding is automatic. Note that I am not suggesting we require that here. But if I work on the citations in this article I will put the full citations in their own section; I find the alternatives to be unworkable. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:25, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

Quite the wall of text, no time to reply to everything.

Let me reply by saying I'm only doing a small adjustment to the IPCC citation style you've developed. The full citation comes in the reference section, but instead of short-cites, I'm putting chapters + page numbers directly in the text. Most chapters don't get used multiple times, so this doesn't replicate that much. The short-cite system is a lot of work because it's not automated. If I normally add a scientific paper or news article, I only have to insert the URL and the VE collects the full information, templated. Not using the short-cite system has the further advantage that chapters the Smiths are easily distinguished by other co-authors. Femke Nijsse (talk) 10:40, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

Take your time, I prefer well-considered thought. And fold in the following: I have found several cases of multiple chapters where the first three authors are the same, and a pair of cases where the first five authors are the same. Yes, ambiguous short-cites can distinguish by adding co-authors (e.g.: Smith, Jones, Wang, et al. 2014). But unlike a book, where there is unitary editorial control and all of the ambiguous short-cites are resolved at one time, we have sources being added by different editors at different times, and whether any citation needs such an augmentation depends on what other sources are present at that time. Even if an editor is willing to check for a conflicting usage (rare!), and knows how to disambiguate sources, this leads to situations where a source is cited differently in different articles. A similar case applies to the SROCC and SRCCL: both have an author of "IPCC" and date of "2019". If only one is used in an article, "IPCC 2019" works. But how should the addition of the other report be handled? That can be a problem. The system I have devised doesn't get into that kind of problem. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:51, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

I am aware of why we chose a certain kind of short-cites for global warming. The type of referencing established here doesn't have this problem as short-cites aren't really used (except rare old cases, and the figure copied from global warming). Notes 101-106 are well-executed versions of this articles' cite-var. Note that I'm using the IPCC citations you prepared for those notes.

The {{update needed?}} works well for tagging possibly obsolete sources, right? In terms of your time-dedication: I plan to have everything checked and ready for GA in 6 months. Whether you want to do a stop-gap measure by fixing sources with a high chance of being deleted later, is up to you. Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:31, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

I'm a little embarrassed when you say you're using "the IPCC citations [I] prepared", as that could apply to the earlier "et al." versions. Which I would like to scrub out. Though if you can live with them a few more months perhaps I can also tolerate them that long. But whether here or elsewhere, I think we will eventually hit a situation where you have converted AR4 citations to the new form because you have reviewed the reference and found it still valid (perhaps as "back in 2007 ..."), while I will be converting them without such a review. In such cases, I would like to flag them as needing review (which might result in deletion rather than update), so I don't cause you to miss any.

I still maintain that all forms of author-date style short-cites are unsuitable for IPCC reports, as laid out above.

I also maintain that relying on URLs for citations is dubious generally, but particularly poor for IPCC reports, on account of they keep changing their URLs. I don't know how VE determines a suitable citation for a given URL, but given some rather poor design decisions in VE, I don't trust it to do citations.

Incidentally (re URLs): I revised that URL you changed at Climate sensitivity for the AR5 WG1 Full report. I wanted to see if "WG1AR5_all_final.pdf" reflects any new changes, but I can't download it. From multiple browsers/OS/sites the download hangs, then fails. (Can you download it? Let me know.) So I swapped in their updated URL that links to the old file. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:27, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

I'm copying the most recent ones. I may have been lazy and not changed some of the old ones into the format showing 4 authors. Feel free to change them.

The whole short-cite system gave rise to so much friction, that we should not use at all it in any frequently edited article. Let's not discuss the most appropriate version.

You don't trust VE, but give an indication you don't really understand it. It is quite simple and elegant in fact. I type in an URL and Wikipedia then automatically substitutes it with a fully templated citation. No manually typing in all authors of scientific papers, dois, and all that. If news media or scientific articles change URL, the templated citation doesn't change. For IPCC this has never worked, but I can just copy your citations into the VE.

And yes, the link to the normal website works equally fast as the mirror. Wouldn't you agree that the official website is more likely to be stable than the mirror? I really don't understand why you prefer the archived version of the AR4 website anyway (recent addition in 'global warming')... Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:58, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

I understand what VE does. I disagree with the resulting citation, which makes citation generally harder to do. Also: "manually typing in all authors", etc., is a red-herring: no one needs to do that, nor should they. Just copy the prepared citation. I don't understand what you mean by "the templated citation doesn't change" when the URL changes, as the URL is specified in the template.

Regarding IPCC urls: as that has a broader applicability let's continue that at WT:IPCC_citation. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:37, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

Minor correction needed in "Warming in context of Earth's past"

Please change At that time mean global temperatures were about 2–4 °C warmer than pre-industrial temperatures but were up to 25 meters higher than today. to At that time, mean global temperatures were about 2–4 °C warmer than pre-industrial temperatures, and the global mean sea level was up to 25 meters higher than today.

The most important change suggested is the addition of "global mean sea level," as the original sentence seems to imply that global temperatures were 25 meters higher than today: a nonsensical statement. I also changed "but" to "and," as the sea-level clause is congruent with the temperature clause. Least important: I added a comma after "At that time" for readability. Elbong (talk) 20:19, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

 Done, but if anyone's watching and wants to improve it further, "today" should be specified more precisely. And ideally, we shouldn't be comparing temperature to pre-industrial, but sea level to current. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 00:02, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 28 June 2020

Change "The black stains, are the areas in wich the mean annual temperature..." to "The black stains, are the areas in which the mean annual temperature...". "Which" is a typo. 0qd (talk) 19:03, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

 Done Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 20:42, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Effects of global warming

I check pages listed in Category: Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilink articles. I have found content for some of Effects of global warming's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "nasa temperatures":

• From Sea surface temperature: "Global Annual Mean Surface Air Temperature Change". NASA. Retrieved 23 February 2020.
• From Attribution of recent climate change: "Global Annual Mean Surface Air Temperature Change". NASA. Retrieved 23 February 2020..

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 23:03, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

effects of climate change

should include more than physical impacts on humans (bottom of chart) .. eg, psychological impacts and thus psychological "mitigation" and "adaptation" — Preceding unsigned comment added by Thro6ne (talk • contribs) 20:36, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Sounds good... Anyone can edit Wikipedia, go for it. See WP:HELP. Be sure to read WP:Verification, [[WP:Reliable sources] etc NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 20:51, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

The section about effects on humans is too long

In my opinion, the section "On humans" is too long, given that we have a sub-article on Effects of climate change on humans. I plan to cull and move content. Any objections? EMsmile (talk) 08:14, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Table of effects

Here is the interesting table started by אלכסנדר סעודה. NewsAndEventsGuy is right that it is not quite ready for the article yet. I put it here in case others have ideas

The effects of climate change and possibilities to avoid the warming - degree by degree

Temperature rise above pre-industrial level	Impacts on terrestrial ecosystems	Impact on marine ecosystems	Sea level rise	Impact on humans	Impact on GDP	Aggregate impacts	Possibility to avoid
1 °C (1.8 °F)	Example	Example	Example	Example	Example	Example	already happened - Climate restoration
1.5 °C (2.7 °F)	Example	Example	Example	Example	Example	Example	Reduction of CO2 emissions by 45% by 2030 (relative to the level of 2010) and by 100% by 2050 is needed.
2 °C (3.6 °F)	Example	Example	Example	Large parts of the tropics can become too hot to live.	With warming of 2 degrees by 2050, Global GDP can be reduced by 2.5% - 7.5%.	Example	Reduction of CO2 emissions by 25% by 2030 and to zero by 2070 is needed.
1.2 °C (2.2 °F)	Example	Example	Example	Example	According to Swiss Re If the temperature will rise by 3 degrees by 2050, the world GDP will fall by 18%.	Example	Current mitigation policies will result in about 2.9 °C warming.
4 °C (7.2 °F)	Example	Example	Example	Example	Reduction of global GDP by 30% in the worst case	Example	Example
5 °C (9.0 °F) to 6 °C (11 °F)	Example	Example	Example	Example	Example	Example	Fully implementing the Paris Agreement can prevent a temperature rise of 4 - 5 degrees above preindustrial level through Climate feedbacks.

אלכסנדר סעודה - what do you mean by "Aggregate impacts"? Maybe "long-term impacts"? Chidgk1 (talk) 09:09, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

Aggregate impacts is often stated in GDP loss. FemkeMilene (talk) 10:29, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

There is such a long list of non-monetary ecosystem services that will likely be disrupted by the Climate crisis I'd like to see the RS' fine print that asserts GDP numbers in the RS capture all (i.e., "aggregate") impacts. Can we measure ALL the impacts of Ecological grief in GDP? I doubt it, but would be interested seeing how the RSs define the numbers the they toss around. (Relevant op ed FYI)NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 11:46, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

Interesting table! You can also add images from this commons category: Category:Global warming prediction maps --PJ Geest (talk) 20:54, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

References

Use excerpts more, specifically for ocean acidification and sea level rise?

I am proposing that we replace the content about "ocean acidification" and "sea level rise" with excerpts of those two articles. I find the information on those two topics is repeated in different words and often with outdated data in a bunch of climate change related articles (also at physical effects of climate change). If we replaced it with excerpts then we'd only have to update the information on pH levels and sea levels in one place, and it would automatically update everywhere else. What do you think? An article such as "effects of climate change" is kind of a synthesis of a lot of sub-articles that deal with those effects. EMsmile (talk) 02:02, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

Proposal to merge long-term effects of climate change to here

Please see this discussion to merge long-term effects of climate change to this article. So far, I see broad consensus (well, only two people have reacted so far). So if there are no objections in the next little while, I'd suggest we go ahead with it. EMsmile (talk) 11:49, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Consensus was to delete and redirect to here which is what I've done now. EMsmile (talk) 03:30, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

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

(Copied from talk page of long-term effects of climate change:) 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
• Regional effects of climate change
• 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)
• 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've been tempted to suggest a merge of the 'regional' article into the main article as well. The marine mammals can probably also be merged. Don't have a strong opinion on others as of yet. Femke (talk) 07:55, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

When you say "main article", do you mean the one on effects of climate change or do you mean climate change?EMsmile (talk) 03:32, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

The effects article. Femke (talk) 06:42, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

I've added a new section plus the merger tags for that now. What about the sub-article Physical impacts of climate change, does it really make sense to have that one as a separate article? I would propose to also merge it into here. EMsmile (talk) 11:20, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

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