Talk:Climate variability and change/Archive 6

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countermeasures, mitigation

As explained above, we have an article that confuses almost all readers by talking about a different topic than they expect to find here and we have at least one active editor of this article that is confused about basic terminology related to this topic. In addition, this editor is so stubborn that they even refused my addition of a short section on countermeasures that most readers will look for and that helps them find the main article on the topic. 99% of readers do not read hatnotes. And mitigate means lessen the gravity or severity of, not prevent. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/us/mitigate --Espoo (talk) 15:35, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

Am I the stubborn editor to whom you refer? Please WP:FOC and you can complain about me at user talk. What is your actionable proposal for improving the article? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 15:42, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

I was and am focusing on content. Since content is determined by edits, i had to point out which ones were illogical and stubborn removal of content that does not disturb the current status quo, i.e. the main topic of this article, but does help the probably more than 90% of users currently severely confused by this article. My actionable proposal is undoing this revert because it does nothing to improve the article and hurts most readers. --Espoo (talk) 15:51, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

(A) Until the scope of this article is changed through a proposal and consensus, going into climate change mitigation at all belongs on the article global warming so I reverted for that reason. You are welcome to start a new thread to propose a different article structure.

(B) Wherever you talk about climate change mitigation, please see

• Preventing Climate Change (Mitigation) NGO Partnership with CA Dept Health funded by CDC (title speaks volumes)
• Climate Mitigation and Adaptation From UCAR "In general, there are two different strategies when it comes to dealing with climate change. We can try to stop future warming (mitigation of climate change) or we can find ways to live in our warming world (adaptation to climate change)."

"prevention" doesn't mean going back in time to stop climate change from ever happening. It means preventing FUTURE human actions from making it worse down the road, to "lessen the impact" of the whole kit and kaboodle. And so PREVENT future warming. This is consistent with the mission statement of the UNCCC which is to prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.

NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 16:07, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

You ignored what i said about most readers being confused by the name and focus of this article and by not finding any instance of any of the words mitigation, countermeasures, prevention, or even "stop" in the entire article. They should at the very least be mentioned in the section on human influence.

You also didn't react to what i said about my short addition helping to keep the article focused on the current topic while helping users find what probably most come here for. --Espoo (talk) 16:22, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for starting this BRD cycle. It has inspired me to make bigger changes to the human section for which I started a new thread titled (as of this moment) "Revised text about human impacts". NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 17:27, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

Revised text about human impacts

I arrived here in 2011. Sometime before that this article had been designated a generic article, talking about climate change in general. In light of this current status quo, I have just removed the following truckload of text about today's human warming. I replaced it with a summary paragraph which you can read here. The removed text should probably be readily available for re-use (either here or somewhere else), as consensus dictates so to preserve it in easy to use form it reads

--- Human disease vectors ---

Climate change has already led to the alteration in geographical distribution of various human disease vectors. Both migration to cooler climates and higher elevations has been observed. It has been suggested that these migration events could in some cases lead to greater disease transmission. However, extinction events may also be expected which could possibly decrease the number of vectors in a given area.

Temperature alone can have an effect on vector biting rates, reproductive cycles, and survival rates. It has been suggested that an increase in global temperature may lessen the potential for seasonally lower temperatures which cyclically decrease vector populations. Humidity and rainfall also have an effect on vector population dynamics. Temperature also affects the survival of the pathogens carried by vectors.

There is significant variability in how various vector borne diseases are impacted by climate change. Climate change has had a mixed effect on Malaria in Africa. Drought in some areas has led to decreased malaria transmission risk, whilst other areas have become more suitable to transmission through increased rainfall. Many confounding variables also make the association between climate change and malaria transmission in Africa difficult to assess. Improved infrastructure and socioeconomic factors along with basic healthcare and preventive care can decrease the risk of transmission and mortality. However, the lack of effective healthcare interventions and other protective factors make Dengue fever more prone to the effects of climate change than malaria. Similarly to malaria, an increase in precipitation and temperature has led to a higher population density of the mosquitoes responsible for Dengue fever and an increase in transmission rates. But, in contrast with malaria, urbanization appears to be positively associated with transmission of the virus. It has therefore been suggested that efforts to control the spread of Dengue in the wake of climate change may be less effective than those directed towards malaria.

Changes in human and animal migration patterns due to climate change have caused an increased in prevalence of vector borne diseases. For example, drought and higher temperatures have led to human migration to water sources, where fly vectors for Leishmaniasis preside. Thus, behavioral alterations due to climate change can cause an increase in prevalence of vector borne diseases. Climate change can also affect migration patterns of vectors, such as those that carry hemorrhagic fever viruses. Increasing temperatures at higher altitudes have led to migration of new species into these areas which can carry vector borne diseases.

--- Human health outcomes ---

Climate change has been shown to cause changes to weather patterns, affecting temperature, wind patterns, precipitation, etc. These changes in weather affect human health outcomes by increasing the rate of major natural disasters, physical trauma, and infections, especially impacting vulnerable, lower income communities . According to a World Health Organization (WHO) report, climate change has already caused 150,000 deaths and lost 5.5 million disability adjusted life years (DALYs), a measure of years of life affected by disability rather than death . It has been estimated that by 2020, an increase in the number of climate change related deaths would be seen due to heat wave induced cardiovascular disease, floods, and vector borne diseases, like malaria. By 2030, it is estimated that adverse health outcomes would double due to climate change .

---- Heat waves ----

The rise in temperatures due to climate change, estimated to be around 1.4 to 5.88 degrees Celsius, may increase the frequency and severity of heat waves. Heat waves are associated with higher mortality rates, especially in vulnerable populations . The elderly population are more likely to be impacted by the higher temperatures in a heatwave, often perishing from cardiovascular, respiratory, and cerebrovascular causes of death. Other vulnerable populations, such as immunocompromised individuals, the mentally ill population, and children, have an increased mortality rate during heat waves. Urban islands, pockets of land in urban areas where human changes to the landscape can exacerbate the effect of increasing temperatures, are also associated with higher mortality rates during heat waves. Heatwaves can also cause an increase in air pollution and humidity levels, thus increasing rates of mortality. Despite the increase in death rates during heat waves, adaptations for higher temperatures, like increased quality of healthcare and awareness of public health, are known to decrease the effect of climate change on the number of deaths due to heat waves.

---- Floods, droughts, storms ----

Climate change can cause an increase in precipitation, increasing the likelihood of rapid rising floods. These floods raise mortality rates by increasing drowning related deaths. Mortality rates also increase due to infectious diseases and exposure of toxic pollutants after these floods. The increase in rainfall leads to pollutants entering the water system, often contaminating drinking water with sewage, animal feces, pathogens, etc.. Floods also lead to growth of fungal species and habituation of vectors of infectious diseases in previously unexposed areas, propagating the spread of vector borne diseases. Long term effects on human health are also known to be caused by flooding. Malnutrition and mental disorders, along with gastrointestinal and respiratory problems are known to increase after flooding. This most commonly occurs in less wealthy countries or areas that have more people residing in vulnerable areas and a lack of governmental aid for natural disasters and public health structures. It has been shown that the due increased precipitation from climate change, the number of people worldwide at risk of a flood would increase from 75 million to 200 million.

The changing weather patterns due to climate change cause more droughts, by decreasing levels of groundwater. The lack of groundwater leads to a decrease in health of forest trees, leading to an increase risk of wildfires. Wildfires increase the risk of physical and respiratory damage to the human body. Changing weather patterns caused by climate change can also damage crops leading to malnutrition. New wind patterns can present crops with novel pathogens and decrease the number of available pollinators which usually serve a protective role. Habitats are often affected by these changes of weather. Changes in temperature and rainfall have damaged coral reefs by introducing new pathogens and inducing physical trauma by storms. The damaged reefs increase the levels of salt that are taken up by tropical fishes eaten by locals, which may lead to adverse health outcomes.

---- Extreme weather ----

Climate change also causes more extreme weather. It is stated that climate change increases the severity of tropical storms, like Hurricane Katrina. Winter storms may become more severe because climate change increases precipitation levels and the strength of winds. Stronger storms lead to more problems with traveling and increase chances of physical trauma.

---- Infectious diseases ----

The transmission of infectious diseases are affected by changes in climate, by changing levels of humidity, precipitation, and temperature. Warmer temperatures cause land species to inhabit previously cold areas and invade areas closer to human dwellings, increasing the risk of transmission of vector borne diseases. Other factors like overcrowding and poverty levels can multiply the effect of climate change on outbreaks infectious diseases.

---- Air pollution ----

Climate change also affects air pollution. Due to increased temperature caused by climate change, ozone pollutants are formed faster. Increasing levels of ozone lead to a rise in mortality rate caused by these pollutants. Changing wind patterns and levels of precipitation affect distribution of air pollutants, and may cause more wildfires that increase the risk of physical and respiratory trauma. Climate change also increases rates of asthma by increasing temperatures and changing wind patterns. These changes increase the levels and distribution of plant based irritants, like pollen and fungi. Climate change also raises levels of carbon dioxide, which affects the growth cycle of fungi, causing higher levels fungi based allergens.

Again, I replaced all that with a SUMMARY paragraph about human caused Global warming and the effects of global warming. If we ever agree to change the scope of this article so it is not also about Snowball earth and the PETM we can maybe put some of this back. But we haven't achieved consensus on that yet. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 17:14, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

References

Thanks! Good call. . . dave souza, talk 18:01, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

Could this information be repurposed elsewhere? --ElKabong888 (talk) 10:05, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

Sure. Our top article for this sort of thing is Effects of global warming. There are various subarticles such as Effects of global warming on humans. When copying from one Wikipedia article to another, please follow advice at WP:COPYWITHIN NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 10:56, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

Requested move 25 February 2019

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: no consensus to move the page to another title at this time, per the discussion below. Dekimasuよ! 02:07, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

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Climate change → Climate change (historical) – Perhaps a different new title would be better, but almost anything is better than the current title, which is very confusing for almost all users. Another solution would be to make the current title the disambig page (which is now Climate change (disambiguation)). Almost all expect an article on how this term is used almost all of the time in speech and the media to refer to anthropogenic climate change. So the current name is a very clear violation of the most basic principle of article naming, WP:COMMONNAME. Espoo (talk) 16:46, 25 February 2019 (UTC) --Relisting. В²C ☎ 17:21, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose. The article is what it is. I think you want to split out anthropogenic climate change. Guy (Help!) 16:56, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

  Please respond to the problem that the current name confuses almost all readers. --Espoo (talk) 16:59, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

Please provide evidence that it does. Guy (Help!) 17:03, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

Wouldn't you agree that almost all use in speech and the media refers to anthropogenic climate change? --Espoo (talk) 17:10, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

It seems you don't know we already have an article on that called global warming, so there's no need to split it out as you suggested.--Espoo (talk) 17:13, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

They don't have sarcasm on Betelgeuse, and Ford frequently failed to notice it unless it was pointed out to him. Guy (Help!) 21:41, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose Can't call it "historic" since the article isn't just about past changes. It is about any changes at any time, past, present, or future. Please review talk archives for the prior discusisons. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 17:53, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

Yes, that wasn't a good choice, but i did say that the point of my proposal was to start a discussion about possible better choices. Would you agree that almost all use in speech and the media of "climate change" refers to anthropogenic climate change? --Espoo (talk) 08:58, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

Since you're asking that question, you probably have not studied the talk page archives. We have talked about this many times before. Please review the talk page archives, and when you have a complete and detailed proposal that isn't just a rehash of earlier discussions, by all means, try again. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 13:07, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose – this article should provide an overview of climate change; past, present and future. The present and immediate future is dealt with in more detail in the sub-article global warming, which should be outlined here summary style without going into excessive information which belongs in the sub-article. Climate change also covers changes in the prehistoric past, changes between the last ice age and 1850, which are outwith the scope of GW, current regional changes which aren't necessarily due to GW, and the long-term future if and when anthropogenic warming and its effects have ended. . dave souza, talk 17:58, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

Yes, i agree that a short summary would deal with the problem of confused readers, who usually don't read the lede or see the hatnote and instead look straight for information on causes, countermeasures, mitigation, etc. and are very confused when they can't find any mention of some of these central concepts. --Espoo (talk) 08:58, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose. There's no need to introduce a parenthetical disambiguator when one isn't needed. The current title is the correct one. The hatnote at the top of the article clears up any confusion that may exist to some readers. Rreagan007 (talk) 21:41, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
• Support. I support the arguments by Espoo and have argued along the same lines myself (see talk pages archives). I am pretty sure that eventually the name change will come but so far we are always meeting resistance from other editors (the ones who opposed it above). So I have given up on it for now but I always chuckle when a new person comes up and tries to get this name change to happen. Courage! EMsmile (talk) 08:53, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
• Comment I think we should move Global warming to Climate change, then add into the header a link to something like Climate change in Earth's past. Global warming is no longer the main terminology when decribing today's human induced climate change. There have been discussions on this at the global warming article. prokaryotes (talk) 10:19, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support. Though it's technically correct to use the term "climate change" to refer to changes in the climate throughout the life of the planet, in practice the term does refer most commonly to contemporary climate change — the subject of our article about global warming. Per Prokaryotes, I also think it would be clearer for Global warming to be renamed to Climate change. ╠╣uw [talk] 18:44, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose per above. This proposition is like changing the Global warming article to Global warming (current). Not particularly fitting or necessary. Vaselineeeeeeee^★★★ 18:49, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose: Climate change is an ambiguous term. In fact, I believe that to be intentional — climate can change in both directions. Currently we're experiencing global warming — and that has its own article already, where most people researching the subject are likely to go. The hatnote at the top of the article is sufficient. --ElKabong888 (talk) 13:43, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

• Also, may I ask whether the article is to be moved to Climate change (historical) or Climate change (historic)? The original nomination uses both, and it is unclear which one the nominator suggested. --ElKabong888 (talk) 13:43, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

• Support per WP:COMMONNAME. I'm not thrilled with the proposed title, but this topic should not be at the Climate change base name, because by far the most common use of the term is to refer to contemporary climate change. Still, that begs the question regarding what to do with this base name? Leaving it as redirect to this article makes no sense (what's the point of moving it, then?) I would favor moving Global warming to Climate change, or at least have this redirect there. Moving the Climate change dab page here is also preferable to the confusing status quo. --В²C ☎ 17:19, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

• В²C, please try to avoid relisting yourself after expressing an opinion. Relisting is supposed to be an alternative to closing the discussion, which an involved editor wouldn't be doing. Dekimasuよ! 02:06, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose - This article gives the best overview of the broad topic, with ample hatnotes and body links to the other topic. -- Netoholic @ 01:15, 5 March 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose. Plenty of confusions, and plenty of scope for improvement, especially in coordinating with similar articles, starting with climate, but this proposal doesn't seem to be fixing a problem. I think a better plan is to split this article into small articles, each small small defined topic tied to the parent article climate. Compare this article with Weather, and subsume Weather and climate. Greenhouse effect and Global warming also appear to have been created independently. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:56, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

climate change and global warming were originally the same article. The split happened in.... was it 2006 maybe? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 11:45, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

• Comment Isn't the current article at "Climate change" a broad concept article (per WP:DABCONCEPT) perhaps as В²C suggests we should have Global warming here though (or more wight given to it here). Since the topics are related I don't think we need a DAB at the base name. Crouch, Swale (talk) 10:41, 5 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support "Climate forcing mechanisms" is really what today's article is about, that would be my prefered rename. The existing global warming article is excellent and the "climate change" topic should point to that. Having said all that, almost anything is better than what we have in the article today. It is like if our article on "Evolution" talked about all the different uses for the term "evolve", how words can change over time, how company cultures can be evolved to be more productive, etc. I support almost any effort to blow up or move the existing article, even if I'd prefer a different name.--Efbrazil (talk) 16:44, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

I agree with you Efbrazil, and have argued along those lines for months. I really hope a solution can be found because the existing situation is not satisfying. The mere fact that we have to have those hatnotes to explain things, already tells me that it's not intuitive! EMsmile (talk) 00:49, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

• Commment Google Trends certainly supports 'global warming' having fallen out of fashion in recent years and I would agree that climate change is the WP:COMMONNAME for describing anthropogenic climate change. I'd be interested to know whether this is mirrored in the academic literature. SmartSE (talk) 17:30, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

Agree with you, SmartSE. And yes, I'd say it's mirrored in the academic literature. Think of all the spin-off topics which are e.g. "climate change adaptation", "climate change mitigation", "climate engineering", etc. They all use the words "climate", not "global warming". EMsmile (talk) 00:49, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Why the rush in closing this discussion, Dekimasu? It was still active as far as I could see, and no clear consensus had emerged. Can't we wait and collect a more diverse range of opinions first? Of course it's always the easiest to preserve the status quo but I would say let's keep it open for longer and see who else has something to say. EMsmile (talk) 02:40, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

Climate change initial and primary cause

To find the initial cause of climate change you must review the great flood that covered the Earth. The Flood lasted long enough to reflect the majority of the radiation of the sun back out and hyper-cooled the planet creating the ice age. The Earth has been warming ever since and melting the glaciers. These thermal changes have caused many weather phenomena and we still see it's effects today. This is the primary cause of climate change. It's also common sense. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.146.189.198 (talk) 15:21, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

You appear to be rather misinformed about the Earth's geological history. I would suggest taking an Earth science course at your local college. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 15:29, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

Splitting proposal

The majority of the current Climate change article (2536 words out of 5469 total) is contained under the Causes section of the table of contents, yet we have no article dedicated to that issue. On the other hand, we already have several articles on climate feedback effects: Climate change feedback, Climate sensitivity, and Tipping point (climatology). We need a dedicated article on what causes climate change in the first place.

I propose a new article called Climate forcing mechanisms. The new Climate forcing mechanisms article would contain all sections currently under Causes:

• 3.1 Internal forcing mechanisms
• 3.1.1 Ocean-atmosphere variability
• 3.1.2 Life
• 3.2 External forcing mechanisms
• 3.2.1 Human influences
• 3.2.2 Orbital variations
• 3.2.3 Solar output
• 3.2.4 Volcanism
• 3.2.5 Plate tectonics
• 3.2.6 Other mechanisms

This split will not only help balance the Climate Change article and allow expansion on causes, it should help deescalate the conflict about the content of the "Climate Change" article itself. Since the current article is primarily focused on enumerating the many climate forcing mechanisms that are not relevant in modern climate change, it can look like we are playing into the hands of climate deniers that make the claim that modern climate change could be a result of natural effects.--Efbrazil (talk) 23:43, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

• Support my proposal-Efbrazil (talk) 23:43, 7 March 2019 (UTC)
• This sounds like a good idea in principle. The content of the new article might overlap a bit with Attribution of recent climate change. --Pakaraki (talk) 19:22, 10 March 2019 (UTC)
• A good idea, to be carried out in line with WP:SUMMARY so a brief outline remains of the main points. This would be more general than attribution of recent climate change, though clearly that article has to deal with showing the extent to which recent changes have been affected by natural mechanisms. . . . dave souza, talk 20:33, 10 March 2019 (UTC) missing name, error corrected dave souza, talk 07:02, 3 April 2019 (UTC)
• Support: Having a separate article may encourage these topics to be expanded on as well. A summary will be necessary, though. --ElKabong888 (talk) 01:24, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
• Different

(A) For external forcing mechanisms, make them briefer here and improve the main article(s) on the phenomena, plus a paragraph about external forcing due this phenomena. That will make all of those articles better while reducing duplication and therefore the maintenance overhead down the road.

(B) For internal forcing, which I think AR4 called "internal variation" lets leave that here for now. There is work afoot to clean up the climate sub pages. As that bears fruit, I intend to bubble up to the top here, and adding text about the 5 parts of the climate system. All that internal stuff would fit though some of it might be better suited at Effects of global warming.

(C) Just a note to emphasize we need to remain super brief about human external forcing, so we don't end up inviting a POVFork or duplication with Global warming

NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 02:40, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

first time editor: yes I support splitting into Climate Forcing Mechanisms. secondly: 3.1.2 Life 3.2 External forcing mechanisms 3.2.1 Human influences Shouldn't "Human forcing mechanisms" be the 3.1.2.1 subset of 3.1.2 Life? How could it not be? Just answer the question: Is there Life on the planet? Thank you — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:1C2:1380:E4D:CD59:B2BD:FA48:E265 (talk) 01:31, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

modest oppose. I've had a bit of a think about this, hence the slow reaction. I think we can agree that the current article about climate change is unwieldy. The climate forcing mechanisms article would probably overlap too much with radiative forcing. I wouldn't mind is some of the material from this article is placed in that article. For instance, volcanoes are not yet mentioned in that article.

For now, I support NEAG way of moving foreward. Let's clean up & expand the subarticles first. Femke Nijsse (talk) 11:32, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

• Supplemental comment As a practical matter, Climate forcing already exists and redirect to Radiative forcing. Without a comprehensive assessment about how the climate sub pages are arranged, I don't think we will have a sufficient grip on the big picture to make an intelligent choice. And on the basis of numerous usertalk discussions I think this effort is another example of trying to "fix" this stand alone article without much thought to the overall systemic implications. Ironically its sort of analogous to the debate over climate engineering, such as injecting sulfates into the upper atmosphere, just because that would reduce insolation, but without thinking through how it would effect everything else, climate and otherwise. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 14:25, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
• Supplemental comment I'm happy with stuffing all the forcing elements into "radiative forcing" if that's the general preference. The key point that I think everyone here agrees with is that they clearly don't belong in this article. I'll tackle that now.Efbrazil (talk) 18:40, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Change made! Moving the content into radiative forcing actually made life much easier- didn't need to write a new intro and all the rest. The one hesitation is that we have 3 articles on feedback effects and they also impact radiative forcing, so why are those separate but not initial forcings? Anyhow, good thing is that the content really slotted over seamlessly, like the article was just waiting for the content. If people don't want it there, it can be subsequently split out from that article.Efbrazil (talk) 19:01, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Opposed and reverted to executing a poorly thought out split prior to a consensus on how to do this, so I reverted the emergency rushed WP:CONSPLIT to radiative forcing while we try to get consensus that this is the best way to do the split. Didn't you say in user talk you didn't want to do anything half-donkeyish? Do plate tectonics ONLY... or even PRIMARILY.... affect climate by changing incoming to outgoing energy ratio? Is internal variation ONLY .... or even PRIMARILY... a matter of changing radiative forcing? These things are not at all clear. Some of these alter climate by changing the energy flow through the system rather than changing Earth's energy balance, or so I understand things. So far all we have is a consensus to try to work on a well crafted split. Let's not urgently "fix" this article by messing up others. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 19:20, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

You are thinking about this the wrong way- counting trees instead of looking at the forest. The particulars you're complaining about are under the headings titled "forcing elements", so if you think they aren't forcing elements then you should move them out of forcing elements, right? If you want things done a certain way then go ahead and execute the change yourself, but please don't be your own worst enemy and block progress towards what you have said is your goal. Efbrazil (talk) 19:45, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

The only way to think about these things is to FIRST research THEN decide. Does our current treatment of internal vs external comport with current RSs? Do the current RSs talk about all of these things in terms of Radiative forcing? I have my doubts about both. What do others think? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 20:36, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Efbrazil, I understand that it can be frustrating to stick to the formal procedures when it seems that consensus has arrived. I would not say that there is consensus in favour of your first proposal on splitting the article into climate change and climate forcing mechanisms. I would also not say that consensus has been established for my idea of merging some information of climate change into radiative forcing. If you think that is the way forward, could you start a new proposal?

We have been working (productively, thanks!) hard on merging and splitting articles and discovered it is a very difficult process where RSs are contradictory in their definitions. The best way forward I see is to quote our most reliable sources on the matter and then slowly move to a consensus which topics merit their own article and which are better discussed separately. For me one of the criteria for having an article about a certain topic, say climate forcing mechanisms, is that reliable sources exist that discuss this solely or in a clearly defined chapter/heading of a bigger source. I think articles that are synthesised from RS are generally poor and tend to have a lot of overlap.Femke Nijsse (talk) 21:09, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Thanks Femkemilene, I have found your approach to be very productive. I am fully in favor of making subsequent edits after an edit is made, but backing out a good change everyone was agreeing on and declaring it as "poorly thought out" and "half-donkeyish" without any rationale is just obnoxious. If you want to try and make the change go for it, I'll support you, but I've taken enough abuse for now. I'm not interest in a revert war with NewsAndEventsGuy. --Efbrazil (talk) 21:18, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Getting pissed and making it personal is very toxic for the sort of large reform you want to make. In the past, I've looked forward to working on this with you. As I anticipate your next comments, how would you be feeling if you were me? A possible point of confusion here... when I brought up the existing Climate forcing redir to Radiative forcing I was trying to point out a hiccup in the original proposal to create Climate forcing mechanisms. I expected us to have a discussion about making sense of these very similar article titles, and was not suggesting we could export perceived problems here to another article. For one thing, I'd ask if anyone actually plans to work on that other article, and if anyone said yes then I'd be interested in figuring out an incremental approach. You see, I think BOTH articles are important even if this one gets more traffic. IF we can do this in a way that brings both forward instead of just using one as a dumping ground so a Phase 2 or something can happen here, when we really haven't talked about what Phase 2 would entail, I am not interested in that approach. So GO TEAM!! If we stop sticking knives in each other we can improve a number of articles. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 22:07, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Please compare Earth's energy balance and Radiative forcing. I would like to see a plan that integrates all three articles. The way I would do it is to assign Radiative forcing the job of going into a bit more technical detail sort of like it does now. Any article with math formulae is an instant turn off to most readers. So we could maybe say the target audience for our writing is college science major at Radiative forcing. The hugely overlapping article Earth's energy budget might keep its overlap concepts but would ideally come out of this as an easy-to-comprehend read for highschool students (USA level, that is). To extent we external forcing mechnanisms are tweaking this concept (whether you call it the Earth energy budget or radiative forcing) I tend to think Earth's energy budget is a better home for this material. That still leaves the problem that not some of these phenomena are driving climate change by altering the energy distribution in the climate system, and it doesn't answer the question "How do the current RSs view internal variation/internal forcing? But its a start. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 22:43, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Also, since we were just talking about volcanos as one example, please see Volcano#Effects_of_volcanoes, where the climate implications are split between subsections "volcanic gases" and "prehistory". Another place to clean up climate change material, and think how it interacts with the changes we're making. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 18:05, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

• Support - the split will just make both articles more concise and easy to read. Although perhaps it would be good to have a section on causes in the climate change article along with a redirect to the Climate forcing mechanisms article, just to give some base information. - OliverEastwood (talk) 04:17, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

Summary

To help us forward in the discussion, I'm proposing a summary of the points made and points that need resolving still.

1. I sense a consensus of unease about the current state of the page. The sections 'causes of climate change' and 'Physical evidence and effects' don't seem to be balanced.
2. I think we have not found a good RS about climate change which we want to rely on for the scope and structure of the article
3. There seems disagreement about whether the current proposal will necessarily improve the current uneasy, with more people thinking it will than that it won't. A reason it might not, is that climate change mechanism is feared to be a dumping place of the lower-quality part of climate change.
4. Problems raised about how the 'climate change mechanisms' will differ from 'radiative forcing' have not been resolved.

As a way forward, I propose that an overview is made of RSs that make a similar distinction between climate change mechanisms and climate change, clearly distinguishing climate change mechanism from radiative forcing. (the IPCC AR5 glossary does not give a definition of climate forcing/climate change mechanisms, which raises doubt whether there are RSs to help us). I we cannot find such a RSs, in say a month, I propose we abort the proposal and improve the current article in a different way. If we do find these RSs, let's work on the remaining worries: put out a good structure for BOTH articles and only then proceed with the split. Does that sound okay? Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:23, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

Climate variability

In our whole discussion about article scopes I'd like to throw in an other thing to think about: climate variability. This now links to climate change. I don't think that is the correct way of looking at it. Our definition of climate change is a change in mean/variance of the climate. The variance itself is therefore not climate change.

A quick Google gives some secondary sources that explicitly draw the distinction between the climate change and climate variability, such as: https://www.climatechangeinaustralia.gov.au/en/climate-campus/climate-system/variability-vs-change/. NEAG, can you add this consideration to your big list of articles with too much overlap/new articles to be created? Femke Nijsse (talk) 12:00, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Having had a minute more to think, maybe the solution here could be to add a section on climate variability in the Climate article and change the redirect to climate afterwards. Femke Nijsse (talk) 12:03, 28 March 2019 (UTC) I've recently discovered the poorly-cited article climate oscillation. This seems to cover what many sources would put under a heading of climate variability. In our master-plan in development, we have to make sure that climate change and climate variability don't overlap too much. Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:25, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

Split proposal that is probably better to think about first

I've proposed to either split climate oscillation into climate variability/oscillation or delete a big part of the text. I think by more precisely defining climate variability, we can also more easily define what climate change should be. Hereby ping for those interested. Femke Nijsse (talk) 20:15, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

FYI, I seem to have wiki burn out so whatever anyone wants to do is fine with me, despite my prior comments. I'm not wiki-retiring just don't plan to apply myself much for a while. Good luck! NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 02:37, 13 April 2019 (UTC)

Head's up: new climate system article

I've just made a new article: the climate system. There is quite a bit of overlap between the two articles and I've copied large parts of the climate change#causes of climate change section to the new article. I hope the creation of this new article will help future discussions over the scope and existence of this article. I do welcome some feedback on the new article. Femke Nijsse (talk) 11:06, 8 June 2019 (UTC)

Opening section: opinion or fact?

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

There is an overwhelming consensus not to change the current wording SmartSE (talk) 19:12, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

---

The opening section, third paragraph, first sentence reads "Human activities can also change earth's climate, and are presently driving climate change through global warming." It should read " "Human activities can also change earth's climate, and MANY SCIENTISTS BELIEVE are presently driving climate change through global warming." While many scientists, perhaps even a majority, agree that human activities are presently driving climate change, that is still an OPINION, not a FACT, and should not be presented as such. To do so clearly violates the neutral point of view. JohnTopShelf (talk) 14:09, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

(I Put comment JohnTopShelf under separate heading, as it did not contribute to discussion previous section.) You have been pointed towards WP:YESPOV a few times now, so I think you understand that presenting a fact as opinion is considered not neutral. An overwhelming majority, almost all expert scientists, now state global warming is at least 50% caused by humans, with a best guess slightly above 100% (natural cooling would then have taken place simultaneously). Look at our articles on scientific opinion on climate change and Surveys of scientists' views on climate change for sources backing these claims. Putting emphasis on the 1% or less of expert with a deviating opinion (these surveys often have don't knows as being the major component of the 3%), is not neutral. Femke Nijsse (talk) 15:35, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia articles are based upon reliable sources and reflect the mainstream scientific point of view. We do not say that "many scientists believe the Earth is round" despite the fact that some people still think the Earth is flat. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 15:50, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

I am not suggesting that we disregard the majority point of view. But scientists' views on climate change, no matter how much they agree, are still not fact and should not be stated as such. Indeed, the article title "scientific opinion on climate change" supports that the scientific views are opinion, not fact. It may be a strong opinion, and a majority opinion, but an opinion nonetheless. Perhaps this language would be better - "Human activities can also change earth's climate, and the majority of expert scientists are of the opinion that human activities are presently driving climate change through global warming." — Preceding unsigned comment added by JohnTopShelf (talk • contribs) 22:41, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

The best informed scientific views are not equivalent to what is commonly conceived as an opinion, so presenting it as such could result in WP:FALSEBALANCE. The shape of the earth was already mentioned, but another example is evolution. Wikipedia articles don't present it as if there was a legitimate scientific debate, but instead has an article dedicated to the public controversy. —PaleoNeonate – 13:33, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

Dear —PaleoNeonate : The "best informed scientific views", as you call them, are still opinion, not fact. I understand that a majority of scientists share the opinion - but that does not make it a fact and it should not be stated as such. That is why I proposed "Human activities can also change earth's climate, and the majority of expert scientists are of the opinion that human activities are presently driving climate change through global warming." The language drives home that the majority of expert scientists hold this opinion, while still not stating this opinion as an absolute fact.JohnTopShelf (talk) 23:19, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

It is as much a fact as the fact that the Earth is an oblate spheroid. We are not going to dilute this fact because some American corporations find it inconvenient or potentially damaging to their profit margin. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 23:29, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

JohnTopShelf - When scientists tell us that humans are impacting the earth's climate, they are not expressing an opinion. They are describing the results of decades of research conducted by people with very high level academic qualifications, and a similar amount of experience, in a complex field, a field where lay people could not reasonably claim any expertise at all. So, just as with every other scientific field, we write what the scientists tell us. HiLo48 (talk) 23:53, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

This explains well my "best informed scientific views", thanks. Other than qualifications, we can also think about the peer review, new studies, etc. Their assessment rests on evidence. —PaleoNeonate – 02:42, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

The IPCC reports help move us away from opinions and towards assessment of evidence. Often their findings are qualified by language to indicate the level of confidence or the level of likelihood, but where the evidence is overwhelming (where there are multiple lines of evidence that are individually strong and that are even stronger together) then they state the finding without a qualifier. On the topic of whether human activity has warmed the climate, the IPCC AR5 (2013 [1]) finding is given without qualifier that it has and then with likelihood language when presenting the assessment of the size of the contribution (my emphasis):

Human influence has been detected in warming of the atmosphere and the ocean... It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.

The current wording that human activities "are presently driving climate change through global warming" therefore seems appropriate and no need to change this to an opinion. TimOsborn (talk) 09:18, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

The majority scientific position is that human activities are presently driving climate change through global warming. I get that. But trying to equate this scientific opinion to a proven fact like the shape of the earth is nonsense. The shape of the earth has been proven - it is not an opinion based on "best informed scientific views" - it is a fact. However, despite decades of research, it is simply not a proven fact that human activities are causing climate change - it is a scientific opinion, albeit one shared by the majority of experts in this field. Look at the scientists' words - "'scientific opinion, "extremely likely", etc. They understand it is not a proven fact. All I am suggesting is to get the wording right; I suggest "Human activities can also change earth's climate, and the majority of expert scientists agree that human activities are presently driving climate change through global warming." That captures the majority scientific opinion accurately, and strongly, without stating this opinion as an absolute fact. JohnTopShelf (talk) 19:47, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

I'm not sure that it should replace the current text, but I admit that the above sentence is an improvement over your previous propositions/edits. —PaleoNeonate – 20:45, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

The whole definition of a fact is that there is an overwhelming scientific consensus for a certain statement. We haven't had any consensus studies in the last five years, but even before the strong warming we've seen over the last 5 years, Surveys of scientists' views on climate change indicate that the consensus among physical climate scientists is 97 to 100%. ALL science academies of industrialised countries recognize this. As a climate scientist active over the last 3 years, I've never met any scientist disputing this consensus. I think we moved from expert opinion to fact about 10-20 years ago. Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:22, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

In science 95% sure is commonly seen as enough to accept a certain hypothesis as correct. In this case you have 97% or more of the scientific world agreeing on the hypothesis that there is man made climate change. And of the remaining 3 percent, there have been multiple scientists with studies proven to contain errors in logic and even worse, fake results. This is kinda comparable to the case of vaccines and autism, although the consensus is even higher there. It is not because some studies and scientists say vaccines cause autism that saying that vaccines don't cause autism is an opinion.Jarne Colman (talk) 10:27, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

All these statements support my suggested language: "Human activities can also change earth's climate, and the majority of expert scientists agree that human activities are presently driving climate change through global warming." That captures the majority scientific opinion accurately, and strongly.JohnTopShelf (talk) 14:47, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

If you disagree with the existing consensus version, you're welcome to file an RFC to gain broader input from editors. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 15:07, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

And there you go again with the 'opinion' stuff. When doing a research you are either 95% or more sure that your hypothesis is true, which makes it viewed as a fact, or less than 95% sure in which case your hypothesis is discarded. It depends on the statistics wether you discard the hypothesis (in this case: a correlation between human activity and global climate change) or wether you accept the ground statement (no correlation). In this case over 97% of the people that publish research about climate change come to the conclusion that they are over 95% sure that climate change is real. This can be a small or large impact, but nevertheless an impact significantly greater than 0. You can deny it, but by scientific standards that is considered more than enough to make it a fact, and not an opinion. The 95% has been chosen specifically to remove the need of argumentation and subjectivity in the debate about what is considered significant (valid) and insignificant (invalid). If you deny that standard you can start saying about everything that it is an opinion: scale of the earth, true weight of food sold to you, effectiveness of medicine, .... In the end it's fine by me if you want to deny the entire scientific method, but please go do it somewhere else. There are websites enough for that purpose.Jarne Colman (talk) 13:17, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

The sentence in the article that is in question is not about whether climate change is real - it is about whether human activities are presently driving climate change through global warming. I am not denying the scientific method. But even the scientists who are experts in climatology are careful to call their beliefs "scientific opinion", and state that it is "extremely likely" - they stop short of saying that it is a fact that human activities are presently driving climate change. Accordingly, Wikipedia should not go beyond what the expert scientists themselves have stated, by including a sentence in the climate change article that characterizes this position as a proven fact. That is why I phrased my proposed language the way I did. And this talk page is the proper forum for suggesting changes to the language of an article.JohnTopShelf (talk) 13:32, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/4/048002 Those 97% agree on human driven climate change. And as long as their research is above the 95% sure threshold it doesn't matter wether they say extremely likely or very significant or whatever they call it. Their research concludes that this climate change is more than 95% sure at least partially caused by humans, and that for 97% of the studies. That's above the scientific threshold to accept the hypothesis of human induced climate change as a fact. Yes, they could be wrong, but that counts for every scientific research. And Wikipedia is definitively not the place to start arguing about that threshold to see something as a fact or not.Jarne Colman (talk) 14:03, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

I didn't really want to go down this road, but I assume most here know that the "97% of scientists agree on human driven climate change" statement is not accurate. The 97 percent claim is from John Cook, who runs the website SkepticalScience.com. He famously stated that over 97 percent of papers he surveyed endorsed the view that the Earth is warming up and human emissions of greenhouse gases are the main cause. However, Cook could not support his 97% statement. Cook's study was challenged by economist David Friedman, who calculated that only 1.6 percent of climate scientists explicitly stated that man-made greenhouse gases caused at least 50 percent of global warming, with a number of others stating only that human activities contribute to global warming to some extent. However, in an effort to refrain from arguing the percentage of scientists further, I am willing to concede that a majority of scientists hold the view that human activities are presently driving climate change. But the point remains that stating "Human activities can also change earth's climate, and are presently driving climate change through global warming" as a proven fact is not accurate. The language of the opening section, third paragraph, first sentence should be changed to read: "Human activities can also change earth's climate, and the majority of expert scientists agree that human activities are presently driving climate change through global warming." I honestly cannot understand how anyone, even someone who passionately believes that human activities are solely or primarily responsible for climate change, could take issue with this revision as proposed.JohnTopShelf (talk) 16:46, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

You state that we climate scientist don't state human impacts are responsible as a fact. This is simply not true if you look at recent sources, here the first three I found via Google:

• IPCC 1.5 report (2018): Human activities are estimated to have caused approximately 1.0°C of global warming above pre-industrial levels, with a likely range of 0.8°C to 1.2°C. Global warming is likely to reach 1.5°C between 2030 and 2052 if it continues to increase at the current rate. (high confidence) (Figure SPM.1) {1.2}
• NASA (current website, 2019): Scientists attribute the global warming trend observed since the mid-20th century to the human expansion of the "greenhouse effect"1 — warming that results when the atmosphere traps heat radiating from Earth toward space.
• Met Office (current website, 2019): Since the Industrial Revolution, atmospheric CO2 has increased by over 40% to levels that are unprecedented in at least 800,000 years. This has caused warming throughout the climate system.

As for Cook's paper. First of all, it is not true that this is the only paper finding 97% or more. Secondly, he assessed now (very) old literature, finds an increasing consensus over time and necessarily hasn't assessed work that come out over the 6 last years, that all ranked among the warmest 10 years on record. David Friedman has not had his critique peer-reviewed and published, which I don't find surprising given John's Cooks rigour in his findings. Also, a 1.6 percentage is completely ridiculous. Please read Surveys of scientists' views on climate change to see all other studies confirming the consensus. I understand your frustration, johntopshelf. Misinformation is actively being pushed about this, and it is frustrating to feel not heard here. Please do have a look at actual recent peer-reviewed work and statements by acadamic institutions. By skeptical over 'fake' skepticism!

Your proposal is not only problematic in making a fact into an opinion, the vague 'majority' also leaves the door open for interpretation that maybe only 2/3 of us agree with this statement.

Is there a way to close this discussion? We are not getting anywhere. Femke Nijsse (talk) 17:17, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

How about "Human activities can also change earth's climate, and the vast majority of expert scientists who have taken a position on this issue agree that human activities are presently driving climate change through global warming."JohnTopShelf (talk) 17:47, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

"Among those that have taken a position on this issue, the vast majority of expert scientists agree that the earth has an oblate ellipsoid shape". —PaleoNeonate – 18:07, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

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