Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Climate change/Archive 10

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How to clean up the mess around trees and mitigation?

I was doing some work today on reforestation and got a bit stuck on one question: I noticed that several articles have content on tree planting + their role for mitigation. That content in the different articles is messy and often outdated. I wonder if we could centralise that content in just one place mainly (which one?) and then link or use excerpts from other articles to there. Here are the articles that all touch on this (the one with the best CC content first):

1. Carbon sequestration#Forestry - this has probably the most up to date content as it was recently worked on (500 page views per day)
2. Afforestation#Climate change mitigation (400 page views per day)
3. Reforestation#Climate change mitigation (200 page views per day)
4. Tree planting#Role in climate change mitigation (300 page views per day)
5. Tree plantation#Role in climate change mitigation (200 page views per day)
6. Biomass (energy)#Climate impacts - detailed but messy; we once tried to clean up this mess but the process got stuck...

In terms of pageviews they are all fairly similar with around 200-400 pageviews per day. (300 page views per day)

As a related issue, these three forestry articles should probably each also have a section on climate change but don't have one yet (this could perhaps be addressed with an excerpt):

• Forestry
• Forest management
• Sustainable forest management - mentions climate change in several places but has no dedicated section for it.

EMsmile (talk) 16:11, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

As usual I think excerpts should be used. I don’t mind which article but if you can reach a decision on that ping me as I hope to be able to do a bit on this next month. Not an expert but the subject is quite interesting for me. Having said that I might end up writing something like ‘mitigation varies so much by location that you should read the national forestry articles’. I looked into this slightly for Forest in Turkey and it seems that one problem here is that, although we have lots of land, with climate change some of the places trees used to grow before the ancients cut them down will be too dry to reforest. But your country may have a completely different obstacle. Chidgk1 (talk) 19:07, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

Thank you. That would be great to collaborate on this topic. I am a bit stumped on which article should become the main article for this content, so that we can then excerpt/transcribe from there. What would be your preference, and does anyone else have an opinion? Maybe if we can't decide, we take the one from that group that has the highest pages views? That would be carbon sequestration (500 views per day) followed by afforestation (400). Maybe tree planting and tree plantation are less suitable as trees get planted for various reasons, not just for climate change mitigation. EMsmile (talk) 09:00, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Carbon sequestration is fine by me. Am busy this week but may have time to ponder and compare next week. Unless anyone else has other ideas we can continue the discussion on the talk page of the carbon sequestration article. Chidgk1 (talk) 12:09, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

I would want to begin by merging the articles which appear to be the most duplicative. So, Sustainable forest management + Afforestation + Proforestation (another relatively small, overlapping article you have not mentioned) would all be merged into Forest management, which should be a top-level article (or at least second-highest level, after Forest), but is currently smaller than all of the above, at a mere 745 words.

Tree planting can probably merged somewhere as well - most of country-level content definitely seems to be more about forest management, for one thing. The parts of that article which are explicitly about planting new trees for carbon/aesthetic/soil management reasons could be merged into a subsection elsewhere? Alternatives include Carbon sequestration, Forestry, or even silviculture (an extremely technical article that seems to have notable overlap with tree plantation?)

In all, it seems like there is a lot which can end up merged or condensed if we really think about it. Once we are sure that we no longer have any forestry-related articles we don't need, it would be obvious which of the remaining pages would be the best place for this material. For now, merging those other articles into forest management seems like the most obvious path, and the rest can be figured out later. The only thing which might be even easier to do is merging Silvology to Forestry, since it appears they are either exactly the same, or at most one is a subsection of the other? InformationToKnowledge (talk) 17:48, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, those are good points! For now, I have left posts on the talk pages of forest management and WikiProject Forestry in an attempt to pull the forestry people into this discussion (that project is semi-active though). I have thought about it in the past whether afforestation and reforestation should be merged (even though they are not the same thing). In both articles, the country examples sections overlap a lot because it's often not a clear cut thing whether the planting of new trees is classified as afforestation or reforestation. (but if they were merged, then under which new article title? Or merge afforestation into reforestation as just a sub-heading).

This could blow out into quite a big sub-project. So it would be great if we could get forestry people interested in this... As forests (new and old ones) are so important for climate change mitigation, this should also be of interest to members of WikiProject Climate Change. EMsmile (talk) 09:42, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

I have made a start by merging Silvology to Forestry Chidgk1 (talk) 06:21, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Please comment at Talk:Forest management#Merge proposal Chidgk1 (talk) 06:43, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Even more forestry articles are coming out of the woodwork. For example Outline of forestry includes Analog forestry and Ecoforestry - should more articles in that outline be merged and if so where? Chidgk1 (talk) 08:32, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Your comments welcome at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Ecoforestry#Merge_proposal Chidgk1 (talk) 10:25, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

@InformationToKnowledge As I have 2 merger discussions on the go now for several articles I am not thinking of starting any more but have no objection if you like to formally propose merges of Tree planting or Silviculture. Also if you have time I would welcome your comment at the 2nd merger discussion linked above Chidgk1 (talk) 15:41, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

But I got tempted with one last big merger proposal at Talk:Agroforestry#Merge proposal. Thank you @Chiswckchap for commenting so quickly - perhaps you have thoughts on this discussion too. Chidgk1 (talk) 13:37, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Commented on both of those discussions now. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 19:10, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks - I have requested they be closed Wikipedia:Closure requests#Three proposals to merge several forestry articles Chidgk1 (talk) 13:48, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks everyone - please continue discussion at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Carbon_sequestration#How_to_clean_up_the_mess_around_trees_and_mitigation Chidgk1 (talk) 06:53, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

I was asking myself where we stand with this proposed mammoth merger work, so I looked at the merger closure pages and am giving the following update here:

• The result of this discussion was to merge Analog forestry and Close to nature forestry into Ecoforestry. No consensus to merge Mycoforestry at this time. --> this merger has been carried out but post-merge tidying work is needed.
• Discussion of merge proposal for forest management (several articles):
  • Proposal to merge Sustainable forest management into Forest management - There is a weak consensus in favour of the merge. However, there is a clear concern that this would be a massive undertaking due to the size differences between the 2 articles which could result in Forest management becoming imbalanced.
  • Proposal to merge Afforestation into Forest management - No clear consensus for or against this merge.
  • Proposal to merge Proforestation into Forest management - There is a very weak consensus in favour of the merge. There are also some notable alternative suggestions on this proposal.
  • Several inline proposals to merge or combine other related articles such as Reforestation - No clear consensus for or against such merges. Outside the initial comments, very little discussion took place on these suggestions.
• Regarding this: "I propose merging Silvopasture, Dehesa, Forest gardening, Forest farming, Syntropic agriculture, Inga alley cropping, Farmer-managed natural regeneration and Kuojtakiloyan into this article, because they all seem to be types of agroforestry and are fairly short." the consensus was "Consensus to not merge Silvopasture and Dehesa, at least for now, to allow further development. Consensus to merge the remaining articles into Agroforestry."

@User:Chidgk1 are you in principle ready to carry out all these mergers? It'll be so much better once it's all done. I think whenever it says "weak consensus" it means you can go ahead. EMsmile (talk) 10:50, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

Unless I missed something they are all done Chidgk1 (talk) 16:43, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Climate action investing articles

Some Wikipedia articles to create/update: Climate Action 100+, Ceres (organization).

Climate action investor networks have become big players in the business world, but I think Wikipedia coverage is out of date. The above two are in the news because of a House Republican subcommittee report alleging anti-trust violations.

The report document repeatedly refers to Climate Action 100+ and Ceres as main players in what it terms a "climate cartel" which is compelling corporations to address climate change. And it turns out this is non-trivial. Many of the biggest investment and pension funds are participating in these networks, using shareholder persuasion to institute carbon accounting and quantify climate change risks and so forth.

But as a Wikipedia users I don't find much here.

• Climate Action 100+, described by Reuters as "the world's biggest climate investor group", does not have an article or a redirect, it seems to be nowhere mentioned.
• There is only little in the Ceres article about climate action investing. The article describes an organization Ceres created Investor Network on Climate Risk, which seems to have gone defunct long ago. The INCR URLs redirect to defunct pages on the Ceres web site. Following Archive.org history of archived redirected URLs, I get eventually to Ceres Investor Network, which is I think what the House Republicans were bloviating about.

The House committee is holding hearings on the investor action networks' "war on the American way of life" (I didn't make that up). Some really big investment houses have been forced by political pressures to drop their participation.

But Wikipedia seems to be behind on this. No article on Climate Action 100+, Ceres article is out of date, Ceres Investor Network seems to be represented by an obsolete article on a defunct subsidiary. I'm not at all sure what to do with the subcommittee report. (Which maybe shouldn't be included until there is informed news coverage and reactions.) And I am very ill-equipped to provide the needed updates.

I'll probably post something over at Wikiproject Business also. -- M.boli (talk) 14:14, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

I suspect you are as well equiped to create an article on Climate Action 100+ as most of us here. Although perhaps companies are leaving it ( https://www.ft.com/content/6ae809be-2b87-48e9-bac2-d243155fbb49) as they might be afraid of what Trump would do to them - just speculating wildly. You could create a draft and submit it. Chidgk1 (talk) 18:12, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

References

Zero carbon v Net Zero house

Hello, WikiProject Climate change. You have new messages at Talk:Zero carbon housing.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Someone changed "zero carbon housing" to be also "net zero home" in June 2024. This conflates two different concepts. We already have a separate article for low-energy house -- 64.229.90.32 (talk) 21:46, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Moved to Talk:Zero carbon housing

64.229.90.32 (talk) 21:46, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

New to Wikipedia editing process

I joined today (Monday17 June 2024) Wikipedia and am interested in contributing to its extensive climate crisis coverage. I would appreciate any suggestions or advice anyone may wish to offer please. Alfred Robert Hogan (talk) 17:19, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia Alfred! I am sure you will contribute a lot! Alexander Sauda/אלכסנדר סעודה (talk) 17:25, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

@Alfred Robert Hogan: It's best when starting out to look at changes previously made to an article, and make small changes that adopt a similar approach. Start with small, non-controversial changes. When in doubt, you can ask other editors about a particular question or suggestion, by posting on the article's talk page. —RCraig09 (talk) 18:52, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Woo hoo, great to have you on board! Thanks for dropping by and introducing yourself. In terms of suggestions,

1. Be bold - people's first contributions to Wikipedia are often their most valuable ones even though they often aren't perfectly formatted. I don't think it's important to look at the changes previously made to an article, which can be confusing. If you see an error, just fix it.

2. Include a citation to a reliable source for everything, immediately, and include page numbers if the source has more than 10 pages. Ensure every sentence has at least one citation.

3. Cite IPCC reports as much as you can. Don't sweat about the formatting of citations to IPCC reports initially - if you get it almost right we'll standardize it for you later.

4. Improve existing articles before you create new ones. For the most impact, spend most of your time on existing articles as new ones tend to get a lot less traffic.

5. Don't start by editing wp:Featured Articles (Climate change and Sustainable energy) as they are more difficult to improve.

6. If you run into any difficulty, you can ask questions here or at the wp:Teahouse.

7. If you want to start with non-controversial edits, look for outdated content and replace it with updated content from the same publisher. E.g. replace 2018 Our World in Data statistics with 2023 Our World in Data statistics. Nobody could possibly object to that and it really helps.

Cheers and welcome ! Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 20:16, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Welcome.

What you could do: Describe climate change in a way that local people can relate to. Answer the question: What does climate change mean for me, the people in my town, my state, my country, my continent?

• Is data available for local climate change graphs such as and ?
• How has climate change effected local people? Which changes are positive? Which are negative?
• What are scenarios for the future? Can local people adapt? Will they have to relocate?

Uwappa (talk) 08:31, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Introduction

Hello! I am Amen Azoon I am new in this project! I want to contribute to climate editing in Wikipedia. I would appreciate any help! Thank you Amen 34571 (talk) 18:15, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

Hello and welcome! Are there particular articles or topic areas you're interested in? We could use help pretty much everywhere :) Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 01:01, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

@Amen 34571: You may want to look above, in the above section titled "New to Wikipedia editing process", which has some helpful suggestions. —RCraig09 (talk) 05:38, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Discussion on PV Magazine at the Reliable Sources Noticeboard

People might be interested in the discussion on PV Magazine here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Is_pv-magazine.com_reliable? Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 01:20, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Deeplink including questionmark: WP:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Is_pv-magazine.com_reliable? Uwappa (talk) 05:45, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

I just cited it - thank you Chidgk1 (talk) 12:11, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

University of Ghana edits

I mentioned this talk page to one of the students User talk:Bernard Opoku 1234#Greenhouse gas and climate change who is doing some stuff in case they have questions. But as there are several students I wonder whether there is a prof or anyone else we should mention this project to.

It seems https://wikiedu.org/about-us/ only cover US and Canada - don’t know if there is anything similar for Africa Chidgk1 (talk) 14:24, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Readings and References for WP Editors on different climate topics.

Hi all,

On the other side of a lot of work now, we went back and revised a table of topical readings/references for WP Editors that we had compiled as part of a Rapid Grant from Wiki Foundation. Our goal was to find overview readings/references for at least 10 main topics on climate actions (energy, food, transportation, personal....) to share - items that we can use to help structure WP articles or our own articles, or to be able to quickly answer questions about climate action topics. We based this idea off of the previous Africa climate project page's table of recommended references.

Luckily, one of our contractors, @resilientsage (Shoshana), came back after a year hiatus and took over the project from the first draft we shared. Shoshana is a trained researcher and has worked for the EPA on agriculture and food topics, and she (and I some) reviewed and edited the table to meet Wikipedia standards more strongly. Shoshana notes:

This reference list is for climate wiki editors (and wiki editors writing outside WP) to consider reading and conveniently have available to cite when adding to climate pages specific to topics, as well as to build upon (i.e., add articles into).

Under the column *Wikipedia Status*:

a) The sources listed as "Recommended for Wikipedia" are meant to be solid references about relevant topics and we believe likely to meet wiki community standards.

b) As examples and to consider using again, we have included select citations used in climate-related Wikipedia articles as “From Wikipedia”.

c) Because wiki standards are specific to context, we have also created a list of potential references that may be useful but are unclear as to whether suitable for potential inclusion/or that depend on context: i.e., the "To Be Discussed."

So, for instance, if you want to write about climate and transportation - there are some potential articles that might be of interest - just look for Transportation under the column Topics.

We really want this to be of help by being a starting point for discussion about key articles we can/should use, and for editors to add to, comment on, etc, as time goes by. I think the first step is to have @Clayoquot and any others interested look at the Google sheet, and then we can create a subpage under the Recommended Sources where this could be the start of a framework of resources we recommend each other read on particular action topics.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1d3nGAncF973_pnmDknke8nGL_fMNxuoXmeMRYiH3Abk/edit?gid=0#gid=0

Cheers, Annette AnnetteCSteps (talk) 19:29, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

Hi Annette. Sorry, I am not willing to spend more time working on initiatives to create lists of sources. I cannot justify further investing my volunteer time in a project that seems to be more about spreadsheets than about editing articles. I know your heart is in the right place. I think what Wikipedia needs most is for strong researchers and writers like you to edit articles. I could be totally wrong though - maybe someone else here will find this kind of spreadsheet useful enough for their work that they offer to review it. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 21:26, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

Thank you Clayoquot. I didn't mean to automatically volunteer you. Just to let you know, the references for WP editors is actually a side part of the deliverable that we are providing. (another side was the climate action Quotables) - and were mostly because we already had the start of a key-articles database to help answer questions from our users and for our writers to refer to, and we thought it might be useful for you all. Learning your standards has been helpful to our writers as well. We tended towards primary science or popular lay articles to pass on to our readers, not secondary overview. So working with you as helped us.

Anyway, the main deliverable is the food/ag climate action article that we've written in my sandbox that I think you may have seen parts of? Now that my main editor is back after 8 months, we're making it more of an encyclopedic tone. We need to doublecheck it against work in WP that's been done in the meantime, but then we can either add it as a page, or more likely, put sections in existing pages. @resilientsage will do that comparison.

In the meantime, anyone else in taking a brief look at the articles? We can just add it as a link to a subpage at the bottom of Recommended Sources. Those who use it great - those who don't, no worries. There's a place for comments and additions, and we'll maintain it. Thanks. AnnetteCSteps (talk) 18:34, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

Why are IPCC reports copyright?

Back in June I cut and pasted a bit from an IPCC report into Carbon sequestration and then inadequately tried to paraphrase it. So @Diannaa quite correctly warned me and hid the edits because of https://www.ipcc.ch/copyright/ In 2021 there was a suggestion at https://apps.ipcc.ch/eventmanager/documents/65/240320210608-INF.%206,%20Rev.%203%20-%20Progress%20Report%20-%20TG%20Data.pdf that AR6 be creative commons but I cannot find out why this was not done as a whole not just partly for data and images. Did anyone ever ask the IPCC why the reports are not under the same creative commons licence as Wikipedia? If not I will ask (but don’t hold your breath for a reply). Chidgk1 (talk) 18:41, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Yes, that would be so much better! (and paraphrasing content from IPCC reports is so hard; I struggle with that all the time) There was a previous discussion on this two years ago, see in the archive here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Climate_change/Archive_2#Petition_to_open_IPCC_6

I also spoke about it with User:Jonathanlynn who made some enquiries with the IPCC secretariat. It was a dead end though. I think they are worried/scared that someone could change the statements and graphs and give them different meaning and results. I think RCraig09 and Efbrazil have worked hard on making many of the IPCC graphs accessible for us by re-creating them from scratch in a way that the new graphs don't infringe copyright. This is a very laudable effort! EMsmile (talk) 09:47, 7 August 2024 (UTC)