Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Climate change/Archive 9

Archive 5

←

Archive 7

Archive 8

Archive 9

Archive 10

Requested move at Talk:Debate over China's economic responsibilities for climate change mitigation#Requested move 4 January 2024

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Debate over China's economic responsibilities for climate change mitigation#Requested move 4 January 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Vanderwaalforces (talk) 21:44, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

What to do about greenhouse gas inventory

I am struggeling with the article greenhouse gas inventory. It might contain some useful content but doesn't it overlap a lot with carbon footprint, carbon accounting and greenhouse gas emissions? Wondering if some of its content should be moved/condensed/updated and then the article could be re-focused. Pinging User:Dtetta. EMsmile (talk) 15:30, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Agree the article needs a lot of work. I think it should focus largely on national/international government inventory efforts. The production/consumption aspects could be shortened, IMO, buy they are still relevant to GHG inventory work. There is some overlap in these concepts, but that is what the “See also” links are for. I think they are largely distinct, and are all techniques in the more general field of measuring and assigning responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions. Dtetta (talk) 20:45, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll copy your comments across to the talk page of greenhouse gas inventory and hope that someone will have time in future to work on this. I also think the production/consumption aspects could be shortened but I am undecided if bits should be deleted or merged into carbon footprint which also covers the production/consumption aspects. EMsmile (talk) 12:54, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Redirect Total equivalent warming impact?

I propose to delete the content that is currently at Total equivalent warming impact and to redirect it to carbon footprint as the nearest term/concept. Unless this term is up and coming? EMsmile (talk) 16:08, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Good idea Chidgk1 (talk) 16:26, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Agreed. It actually appears to have been a briefly considered alternative (since the only references are from 1990s), so it might be worth it to be briefly mention somewhere in the destination that it was an alternative term for the cumulative impact that's seemingly not used anymore. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 10:52, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

That's a good suggestion. I did a quick Google search and found that TEWI seems to be used to compare GHGEs from refrigeration systems. Therefore, I've added a quick paragraph about TEWI to the carbon footprint article like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_footprint#Trends_and_similar_concepts . I can then redirect the TEWI article to that section. EMsmile (talk) 13:09, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Done, redirect from Total equivalent warming impact to carbon footprint is in place. EMsmile (talk) 11:45, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Merge the article low-carbon economy to climate change mitigation?

Your inputs are invited to a discussion on the way forward for the low-carbon economy article which is currently in a rather poor state. I've just performed a major cull of outdated or poorly written content and am now wondering if the article is better off to be merged into climate change mitigation (or possibly into net zero emissions) or should stay (but in a shorter, more focused form than before). Your thoughts? The discussion is here. EMsmile (talk) 23:26, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

The mitigation article is already quite large and attempts to cover so many things. I don't think that a merge would be beneficial. If anything, we might end up having to move certain details from the mitigation article if the need for more sections there arises. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 20:18, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Agreed. That's also the direction in which the discussion headed here, I think. EMsmile (talk) 15:43, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Article on Kyoto Protocol - high pageviews, low quality

I noticed that the article on the Kyoto Protocol still has surprisingly high pageviews, given that the Paris Agreement is now the more current agreement. Both have around 1000 to 1400 pageviews per day, see here. Motivated by those high pageviews and the rather poor quality of the Kyoto Protocol article, I've made some quick improvements today. Mainly by culling out some outdated or digressing content that is now covered better in other Wikipedia articles. Would anyone like to provide some broad pointers or guidance for further improvements (either here or on the talk page of that article)? EMsmile (talk) 15:47, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Merge Antarctica cooling controversy into Climate change in Antarctica?

See the discussion here. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 18:19, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Merge marine ice sheet instability into Ice-sheet dynamics?

The discussion is here. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 18:28, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

What do do about Top contributors to climate change?

I've just come across this article for the first time: Top contributors to climate change. It has about 100 pageviews per day. It's been around for a while but has been expanded in June this year. To me it looks rather messy and I am not sure that such a simplistic article makes much sense. Perhaps its title should be changed to be more specific Top emission sources of greenhouse gases but then it'll overlap with greenhouse gas emissions. Do we really need this article? Isn't it more of a nightmare to maintain it? (I think it used to have a different article title in the past which might have been better) EMsmile (talk) 16:49, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

I came across it some years ago but lost interest once there was no threat of a Turkish entry. I would support a rename which would define the scope as point sources, but I can only think of a clunky Biggest point sources of greenhouse gas pollution. It would need some definition of how large an area a point source could cover.

It should be easier to maintain nowadays as we could just copy some info from https://climatetrace.org/compare once we have agreed on ‘point’. Chidgk1 (talk) 17:19, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

On the other hand it could be limited to organisations rather than points. Dunno Chidgk1 (talk) 17:27, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

It contains important information which clearly deserves a place here. However, I agree that its current state is not ideal. To me, it should be made into a list - i.e. I think List of locations and entities by greenhouse gas emissions could work.

Additionally, we can resolve the issues with the recent carbon bomb (an article which barely meets notability criteria under WP:NEO and where much of the content is WP:SYNTH) by merging it there, since the actual meaning of the term is about proposed fossil fuel projects likely to join that list if they were carried out. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 10:48, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

See also Template talk:Infobox company#Add greenhouse gas emissions? Chidgk1 (talk) 11:09, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

I like your proposal to convert the article to List of locations and entities by greenhouse gas emissions, User:InformationToKnowledge. I think this could work. EMsmile (talk) 15:27, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Pinging User:IPagelocation because they are the person who has done most work on that article. Will also write on the article's talk page (I guess the discussion should continue there). EMsmile (talk) 11:37, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

I've now moved the page to List of locations and entities by greenhouse gas emissions. EMsmile (talk) 12:55, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Carbon bombs

Hello everyone ! I just created the article Carbon bomb, translated from the French WP. I improved it a bit. Could you have a look ? Thanks ! Effco (talk) 10:23, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

@Effco: If you are quick you can put it up for Wikipedia:Did you know Chidgk1 (talk) 14:32, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

@Effco I believe that this article currently has significant issues with WP:SYNTH. To put it plainly, the term comes specifically from a single paper authored last year - a paper which is very specifically focused on fossil fuel projects and does not discuss anything else. From what I can tell, this is also the way this term is used in reference 4 and 10, and the Francophone references 1, 5 and 11 (all of which would collectively more than satisfy the main WP:NEO criteria of three separate references using the term in the same manner.)

Yet, the article keeps trying to drag natural feedbacks into its scope, when there is no evidence that this kind of usage was intended by any of the paper's authors. I.e. there is no evidence that the author of reference #2 from CNN was aware of the paper and is using the word "bomb" in the same way, rather than colloquially. However, it at least uses the same word - references 12 and 13 do not, so their inclusion is pure WP:OR.

Further, the way this article uses reference 12 is explicitly contradicted by WP:RS. Not only does it make an error by referring to "melting permafrost", rather than "thawing" (see this discussion to understand the difference), but the largest, most authoritative review of permafrost's role in climate change to date strictly rejects any bomb analogies. Likewise, the idea of methane hydrates playing any real role in climate change in our lifetimes (let alone being a "bomb") has been conclusively rejected by the IPCC - see either that article, or clathrate gun hypothesis. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 18:35, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Good points, InformationToKnowledge. So the way forward would be to merge it into List of locations and entities by greenhouse gas emissions (see above)? EMsmile (talk) 11:34, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes, absolutely. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 13:00, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

I've done the merger now and also removed the content about those climate feedback processes from the description of "carbon bomb". See here: List of locations and entities by greenhouse gas emissions. EMsmile (talk) 12:55, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Global Tipping Points Report 2023

https://global-tipping-points.org/

This was published in the middle of COP28, but somehow went unnoticed here at the time, unlike some of the other end-of-year reports. It's from many of the same scientists as the 2022 paper that is already featured prominently at tipping points in the climate system and related articles, so many of the points are familiar, but there is a fair amount of new material as well - most notably with the large sections on "social tipping points" and "positive tipping points". Those have the potential to be useful in a lot of articles here. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 20:10, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Article on Climate change in Asia is needed urgently

Yes, this article does not actually exist - there is a link, but it's a redirect to a fairly poor two-paragraph summary in the actual Asia article. That summary has a whole lot of "Further information" links, but they either point you to [[Category:Climate change in Asia]], which REALLY does not seem to be in line with WP:MOS, or to a mix of what are mostly other redirects. So, Climate change in Southeast Asia and Climate change in Central Asia just lead you to single short paragraphs in those articles (mere two sentences for the latter), while Climate change in North Asia is a redirect to Climate change in Russia. Climate change in East Asia is a disambig that points to pages for country-level climate change articles.

Climate change in South Asia is the only link which actually leads to a separate article, and it's not even as bad as it could have been. We'll probably end up merging it into the new continent-scale article, but I'm not 100% sure on this yet. What is certain, though, is that we needed to have the continent-scale article yesterday. The immediate obstacle which prompted me to look into this is that it's hard to move (excessive) regional detail from the sea level rise article, when there is a lack of a developed destination article, but the issues obviously do not stop here.

Strictly speaking, probably the only continental-scale articles that are in an acceptable state are Climate change in Antarctica after the recent overhaul and merge (though the biodiversity section is still a mess for now) and maybe Climate change in Australia (which is also a country-scale article). Climate change in North America and Climate change in South America do not exist either and instead redirect you to Climate change in the Americas, which is another disambiguation page. It would probably be a good idea to keep those two as redirects but turn the disambiguation page into a proper article (since a separate North America article would certainly end up dominated by the USA content, and the South America one would probably be mainly about Brazil). Climate change in Africa and Climate change in Europe at least exist as proper articles, though both seem to have very significant issues with bloat, referencing, etc.

However, Asia is the continent which accounts for the majority of human population, so its article is clearly needed before all the others. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 07:40, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Agreed. (but I couldn't motivate myself to set it up at the moment). Those "climate change in country X or in region X or in continent X articles" are good and useful but strangely, they tend to linger at low pageviews. They are good articles for students to sink their teeth in, I think. This has been done e.g. as part of this work by Swedish professor Olle Terenius: https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/users/Olle%20Terenius%20(UU) . See e.g. here: https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Ecology_and_genetics_Uppsala_University/Ecological_effects_and_Climate_change_(Spring_2023)/articles/edited? . The work of his students has often been rather good, I find. Usually much better than what has come out of many U.S. university course assignments. Some of that content at Climate change in Antarctica came from his students.

About two years ago, I pushed for a standard structure for these articles to make it easier for everyone to set them up and to read them. This standard structure is available here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Climate_change/Style_guide#Outline_for_articles_about_specific_countries_or_geographies . EMsmile (talk) 10:43, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

It's a good structure, and at first glance, I do not really see anything I would disagree with or add to. I also agree that the improvements to regional articles appear to be fairly good. I wish there were a lot more images there, and I doubt it would be that difficult to find them. However, with their (currently) limited views, that doesn't seem to be a particularly reasonable undertaking for most of us, for now. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 12:02, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Using Copernicus Programme images in Wikimedia

A chart recently uploaded from Copernicus Programme

The Copernicus Programme (related: Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2, Sentinel-3) has generated some excellent graphics, including both satellite images and data charts. See Commons Category:Copernicus Sentinel Satellite Imagery and Copernicus' own legal notice.

After discussion at Talk:Sea surface temperature#Image used in lead, User:Uwappa uploaded the image shown at right after obtaining informal agreement at Commons:Village pump/Copyright.

There is a Commons template, Template:Attribution-Copernicus, that refers to "data from a satellite". Most images using the template are satellite images, but my concern is that data does not have the same copyright protection as expressions of data (that is, charts like the one at right).

Before we go headlong into using (any and all?) Copernicus images, does anyone have authoritative proof we're safe to use them on Wikimedia projects? Are there limitations on the type of image (satellite images versus charted data) we can use? —RCraig09 (talk) 15:50, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

21 apr 2023: The 2022 European State of the Climate Report.jpg

27 jul 2023: Record_Temperatures_in_the_Mediterranean_Sea_in_July.jpg

I agree, Copernicus has some excellent graphics. Same questions apply to other charts, uploaded earlier by OptimusPrimeBot:

The Mediterranean file shows more than raw satellite data such as city names and country borders. The temperature anomalies require comparison against a standard value. The 3 small charts at the bottom are charted data. Uwappa (talk) 18:54, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

Discussion moved to the Commons Village pump for copyright. —RCraig09 (talk) 04:30, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Discussion at the Village Pump fizzled out, being archived without a definite conclusion. The narrow issue is whether Copernicus graphics that require creative originality fall within Copernicus' generally broad permission. The language of their permission is ambiguous. (Satellite photos, which are most of what are uploaded to Wikimedia, aren't at issue.) —RCraig09 (talk) 16:16, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

I didn't see that discussion since I'm mainly active on German Wikipedia. A few points:

• There is currently a very short survey on the Copernicus Climate Change Service. I put in that I want a clear indication of the image licence when clicking on dowload like on the Image of the Day site with the satellite observations. Feel free to do the same.
• Here it says: "Is Copernicus data and information free of charge? Yes. Considered as a public good, Earth observation data delivered by the Sentinel satellites, and the data and information delivered by the 6 Copernicus services are available to users on a free, full, and open basis. [...]" - the Climate Change Service is one of the 6 services.
• there is also Copyright and licences where I don't see commercial use prohibited. The required acknowledgements can be made. Any issues?
• one could also just use the data like The Guardian
• yes, the {{Attribution-Copernicus}} template on commons only talks about images derived from Sentinel satellite data, which doesn't fit these images - should be modified?

Lupe (talk) 10:53, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, Lupe. I was not worried about data, or simple charting of data (both are clearly licensed). Copernicus' attitude seems lenient. However, I was concerned with downloading Copernicus charts that required "originality". Apparently, no one has found a clear licensing for free use of Copernicus charts that required "originality". —RCraig09 (talk) 22:11, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

I uploaded another image from here (Image of the Day). It says "The imagery, data and information produced by the Copernicus programme of the European Union is made available on a full, free and open basis to businesses, scientists and citizens." Lupe (talk) 16:12, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Recent paper relying on WikiProject Climate Change data

Hey all, discovered this paper that uses WikiProject Climate Change data to look at reader attention to climate topics on top 20 Wikipedias: https://vbn.aau.dk/ws/portalfiles/portal/650852934/Meier_Wiki_Climate.pdf Sadads (talk) 12:42, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Article on habitat destruction has a section on climate change

I like to include content on climate change in articles where readers might not specifically look for it. The article on habitat destruction gets around 370 pageviews per day (not that many but OK) and had an outdated section on climate change which basically only mentioned polar bears. I've updated that a bit now and linked better to related articles.

Broadly speaking there are three main areas where I think CC leads to habitat destruction: (1) melting of sea ice, (2) sea level rise and (3) destroying coral reefs. The other things are more nuanced, right, where habitats are changing, like getting too wet, too dry, too hot. This is probably better covered in effects of climate change on biomes, which I have linked to. - The article on habitat destruction is overall pretty bad but for now I just wanted to ensure that at least its climate change section is OK. Have I missed anything important here? EMsmile (talk) 14:48, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

It might be worth highlighting climate soultions and maladaptation: i.e. humans change the environment to adapt to climate change, but leads to extensive habitat destruction, because they misunderstand the effects they are having. Examples, include things like bad coastal management or the recent consideration of daming another river in order to deal with drought effects on the panama canal. Sadads (talk) 12:56, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

That's a good point, thanks. By the way a better wikilink for maladaptation is this one: Climate change adaptation#Maladaptation. I could maybe repeat some content from there at the habitat destruction article or find other examples plus sources, avoiding writing about WP:OR. EMsmile (talk) 22:18, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for Invasive species

Invasive species has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 22:26, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Problem with very strange peer-reviewed article about Greenhouse gases saturation

In the past few days a very strange article [[1]] was published in the peer-reviewed journal "Applications in Engineering Science" (Elsevier), which was immediately used by some deniers in the czwiki. What to do with it?? Have we to wait until some scientific critiques will appear?

When I pointed out the content of the article to a Czech climatologist - representative in the IPCC, he wrote to me:

"If someone measures the thermal radiation from the Moon at the Earth's surface, finds that it is negligible, and concludes that CO₂ in the atmosphere does not absorb this radiation??? And therefore does not absorb thermal radiation in the opposite direction (from the Earth's surface)?

I looked up the lead author (Institute of Optolelectronics, Military University of Technology, Kaliskiego 2, Warsaw 00-908, Poland) and his work. Opto-electronically it has measured definitely correctly. But where did he get the idea that heat from the moon reaches the Earth??? And it is also stated at the end: "No data was used for the research described in the article." So that explains everything." Jirka Dl (talk) 06:53, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

There are different kinds of peer-reviewed journals. While this one is part of the generally respected (for academic rigour, if not for their business model) Elsevier family, it has a CiteScore of 2.1, which means that it is extremely minor and obscure. Genuinely compelling findings would have been published in a much more prominent journal. That's not even to mention that instrumental observations are only one line of evidence, and paleoclimate reconstructions which can only be explained by greenhouse effect are another, which this article does nothing to address.

Considering the strength and extent of the scientific consensus on climate change (does Czech wiki have a version of that article yet?), there is no need to pay attention to it. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 16:13, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

Pageviews for AMOC spiking and generally going up

This is a nice example of how news stories make people go to Wikipedia and look up stuff: See the spike in the pageviews for AMOC here around 10 Feb. There were news reports about AMOC weakening or collapsing. Wondering if information from those new studies should be added to the AMOC article but don't have the expertise, time, energy to do it myself. EMsmile (talk) 09:12, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Rewilding (conservation biology)#Requested move 4 March 2024

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Rewilding (conservation biology)#Requested move 4 March 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Vanderwaalforces (talk) 15:09, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

A section on "threats" for each plant and animal article?

I've started a discussion at WikiProject Tree of Life arguing that each plant and animal article ought to have a main level heading on "threats" (which is also where any threats from climate change could go in future). This was prompted by User:InformationToKnowledge's addition of climate change effects content to flowering plant, somewhat hidden in the section on "conservation". If you are interested, please participate in the discussion here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Tree_of_Life#Proposal_about_%22threats%22_in_the_standard_outline . (I think it's important to add climate change content not just in pure climate change articles but also in all the other articles where climate change has impacts.) EMsmile (talk) 12:29, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

Added new section on "climate hazard" to hazard

I've just added a new section on "climate hazard" to the main hazard article, using content from the IPCC AR6 report. Its glossary didn't have an entry for "climate hazard" but the term is used a lot in the WG2 report. Climate hazards are pretty much those things that we call also effects of climate change. Please help me improve what I have written so far. Perhaps you also propose other publications that should be cited there, not just the IPCC AR6 report. In parallel, I have also proposed to merge anthropogenic hazard into hazard. (by the way, our main climate change article does not mention "hazard" once). EMsmile (talk) 12:33, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

Land use change articles

Land use change is a big topic for us. When I see the term mentioned, or variations of it like "land use modification", I am undecided where to wikilink the term to. I used to wikilink to Land use, land-use change and forestry but now I see we also have land change science (I wasn't aware of that article before). Is it better to generally link there? Or should those two articles maybe be merged? I also noticed that the article on land use is rather bare. As a small quick fix, I have added an excerpt from land change science to land use. Just wondering if anyone is interested in this topic and could help to improve the situation? EMsmile (talk) 11:03, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Please correct permafrost "melt" in 2 schematics

Please remember the correct terminology is "permafrost thawing", not "permafrost melting". This was pointed out by User:InformationToKnowledge on a few of the talk pages (see e.g. here). I now noticed the wrong terminology in two schematics that we use in several articles. Can someone please change it. This schematic and this one. Can someone please correct that; I don't know how to edit those schematics. EMsmile (talk) 23:07, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

 Done and  Done. —RCraig09 (talk) 04:18, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Awesome, thank you! EMsmile (talk) 08:41, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

Help needed with direction of climate change scenario article

I am currently discussing with User:Uwappa the way forward with the climate change scenario article. Would appreciate an extra pair of eyes and brain power if anyone has time. The question is: do we keep the article on just the theory/fundamentals of scenario setting (my preference) or do we expand it to give actual practical information about the different likely scenarios that are ahead of us (Uwappa's preference). EMsmile (talk) 08:43, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

Adding Topical table to Scholarly Journals and News Report:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Climate_change/Recommended_sources

Hi @Clayoquot, @EMsmile, @Femke and others! we are back after major changes this past six months – my family medical needs, one of my contractors having major family medical needs for three different nuclear relatives, and the Washington DC Tool Library that I jump-started being robbed three times one week - with subsequent incredible support by the media and community swamping us with love! (Our team raises a toast, almost, to the burglars.)

So, one of the projects we want to move along was in two phases: 1) Now Completed: merging many of your climate action refs with ours and collaborator Earth Hero’s to create a table with at least 4-5 key, overview references per type of climate action (e.g., transportation, buildings, energy, communication). 2) Now we want to make it available for use, commenting, and hopefully editing within the PCC , for those editors interested in having articles summarizing some of the latest climate actions for individuals (not government- or industry-level.).  

First, the goal of the reference compilation was to assist CSteps, WP, and Earth Hero EDITORS in the beginning stages of researching individual action pros and cons, based on some secondary/consensus documents with a science underlayment. We were not seeking to create a table of resources for the articles themselves, though they could be used as such. More a table version of resources for editors, that also includes secondary articles.

@Loupgrru did the bulk of the research, with the understanding that this is an initial framework to build upon - with lots of discussion back and forth  and additions by any interested PCC editors – to help WP editors find the latest “consensus” information in addition to the IPCC and some generalized solution reports.

Since we created this table, further work has been done on the Individual Action on Climate Change article [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individual_action_on_climate_change that is wonderful, so that it provides better coverage than before across a range of topics, and perhaps provides a good tagging structure for the references already. We seek to add some of these references now to a table structure.

A table within PCC (or outside) can provide the benefit of searchable tags and quick discovery of key, basically recommended references for multiple uses by multiple editors. Right now, you can see our reference table, with tags (and whether it is a secondary or primary source, and considered suitable for Wikipedia) here: https://airtable.com/invite/l?inviteId=invm4SukrrNzNI8LG&inviteToken=0c48e41a14c273460a30b2570172ef461a4014c176b6667516ccf9a64e5747f7&utm_medium=email&utm_source=product_team&utm_content=transactional-alerts.

We still see the references being put as a table in a subpage under the Recommended Sources page, as some of you supported before.  Comments are welcome here and in the table before we put it into a temporary or permanent subpage, so we can make it a community tool.

Cheers, all!

Annette AnnetteCSteps (talk) 00:19, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Hi Annette, and welcome back. Could you please put the content you'd like us to see on a site that doesn't require registration? Needing to register for a new website is a barrier to participation for me and probably others. Cheers, Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 05:45, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

Sure. Will do that. It's a big table though. AnnetteCSteps (talk) 16:18, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks Loupgrru for providing a link to the table in a more open website: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uvSHdygLfC6X-c6KeRy02suRtfoyUSH5LkrHCD5FLEI/edit . I did some spot-checks. Many of these sources are great, however some do not meet even the minimum wp:RS requirements. E.g. this is a self-published source from someone who is not a recognized expert. Other relevant considerations for some of the entries are at WP:MDPI and WP:FORBESCON. Pressure groups such as the Rainforest Action Network are sometimes OK but usually not considered top-quality. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 21:41, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

Sorry about that, @Clayoquot. I thought I’d weeded all of those out in what I shared on that Google sheet. We include references on AirTable that don’t necessarily meet Wikipedia’s standards, and I thought I had set up what I shared to avoid those. Loupgrru (talk) 15:28, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

I was pretty sure we had also designated the Rainforest Action Network as not suitable. We will take that one out and review again for that issue. For the new standards, I must say, there are a lot of standards/guidance out there about the basic primary v. secondary guidance, but I hadn't heard of this one - this looks so very helpful Wikipedia:FORBESCON. Your materials are great but obviously there arise questions. Good to know about the other resources.

One of the things we had hoped for, as newcomers when we first joined, was to work with WP editors to build this database. But with the loss of one of contractors, we lost the time to really maximize relationships with experienced editors and build and learn. We hope to in the future. In the meantime, we've gotten that contractor back, so now we have two eyes on the resources, which is always a good thing.

Thank you @Clayoquot! AnnetteCSteps (talk) 01:18, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

Yes, fyi, Mark and I just met, and the broader information had been sent, versus the Recommended articles. We're still going to have the returned contractor look over the materials. AnnetteCSteps (talk) 17:08, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

Again, I apologize. I misunderstood one of the columns in AirTable, thinking it indicated a reference that met Wikipedia standards. It was not. I also chose some of those references when I was still fairly new to Wikipedia reference standards, and included some references that were not high quality. I’ve removed them, but we’re still double-checking it. I’ve temporarily removed access to that Google sheet while Shoshana (I don’t know her Wikipedia username) and I work on it. I’m sorry for the delay. Loupgrru (talk) 08:14, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Dealing with the tropical regions article?

Climate change effects on tropical regions was created the other month. It's a very encouraging effort by a new editor, but I don't see how this article can be kept. Logically, its presence would necessarily entail articles on midlatitudes and high latitudes, and I don't think this subdivision would be practical. You could argue we already have Climate change in the Arctic and Climate change in Antarctica, but the former is clearly a special case, and the latter is more akin to the continent-scale articles like Climate change in Europe.

I would propose moving the material on tropical forests to the subsection of effects of climate change on biomes, and the ocean/reef material to any of the related articles. (The section on adaptation seems very general, and probably does not have anything we don't include elsewhere already.) Does anyone have other ideas? InformationToKnowledge (talk) 05:29, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

Hmm, I am not sure. The article can be improved. I like the simplicity of the title, not much knowledge required to understand what that is about, so a good entry point. An even simpler title could be: "Climate change in the tropics". Other articles at the same level could be:

• Climate change in temperate regions
• Climate change in polar regions, linking to Climate_change_in_the_Arctic and Climate_change_in_Antarctica

I think such articles can be short and sweet, pointing to main articles for details per region.

An other idea: convert it to just a category. Uwappa (talk) 10:55, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

I hadn't seen this article before, thanks for pointing this out. I support the suggestion by User:InformationToKnowledge, and don't think that a stand-alone article is suitable. The other "climate change in xx" articles are for countries or political regions, like the EU. Artic and Antarctica are exceptions to this rule. Pinging the person who crated this article, User:OliveTree39. And I guess further discussions should take place on the talk page of that article. Thanks for the alert, I2K! EMsmile (talk) 14:34, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Do we really need the article Deforestation and climate change?

Please take part in the discussion about this: do we really need the article Deforestation and climate change? I think its content is probably better off moved to deforestation, reforestation etc. Currently it contains a lot of excerpts (to avoid overlap with other articles). EMsmile (talk) 09:41, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

Do we need an article on global greening?

I noticed that we don't have an article on global greening yet. We do touch on this topic in several of our articles, as climate change can lead to both: an increase in desertification and a reduction. For example in Tipping points in the climate system we mention Sahel greening. But in effects of climate change we don't mention greening at all. I got onto this topic through these two articles: The Earth is getting greener. Hurray? and Anthropogenic climate change has driven over 5 million km2 of drylands towards desertification. I've just added content from the latter paper to desertification.

Global greening is interesting because part of it is due to CC (counter-intuitive perhaps, as we often talk about droughts from CC). And it also does help a bit with mitigation. But it's not necessarily good for biodiversity. EMsmile (talk) 10:24, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

See here where User:InformationToKnowledge has already put some sources together which explain the varied effects of climate change on greening vs. desertification: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Effects_of_climate_change_on_agriculture#Effects_of_desertification Could be used to enrich either a new or an existing article that explains global greening and the role of CC. EMsmile (talk) 12:49, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

It should be covered, but I don't know yet if it should necessarily be covered in a separate article. In general, we should try to have fewer, stronger, higher-view articles rather having a low-view stubs for every single term/phenomenon. In that regard, a sub-section in an article like carbon sink might work better - since global greening is, fundamentally, the main process responsible for the growth of land carbon sink in absolute terms (if not in relative terms), and to my knowledge, there aren't that many references which discuss greening outside of the carbon sink aspect. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 05:27, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. I fully agree fewer, stronger, higher-view articles are better. We could start with having "global greening" in an existing article and create a spin-off article later, if needed. However, the causes for global greening go beyond global warming. Some of it is simply more irrigation projects in agriculture (like irrigation in Saudi Arabia), or afforestation projects (see this article: The Earth is getting greener. Hurray?). So a proportion of the global greening is due to climate change, another proportion isn't. That's why I don't think it would fit within carbon sink. Wondering if it could become part of desert greening but then change the title of desert greening to global greening and expand its scope. EMsmile (talk) 08:49, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

We'll see. As far as the things this WikiProject should be doing, though, I don't think this ranks anywhere near as high, as, say, creating a proper Climate change in Asia article (you remember this discussion right here, right? InformationToKnowledge (talk) 09:43, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Merge cloud forcing into cloud feedback?

I am proposing to merge cloud forcing into cloud feedback, please contribute to the discussion here. EMsmile (talk) 12:47, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointer. Please avoid linking the word here, as it's bad for accessibility. You can easily link the words "the discussion". —Femke 🐦 (talk) 16:54, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

in which sense bad for accessibility? Because "here" is shorter than "the discussion"? Just trying to understand what you mean. EMsmile (talk) 22:20, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

Because 'here' does not explain the target of the link. See Nielsen's tip 35 at https://www.nngroup.com/articles/113-design-guidelines-homepage-usability/#toc-links-4

Alternative: I am proposing to merge cloud forcing into cloud feedback, please contribute to the discussion.

Uwappa (talk) 07:25, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! I wasn't aware of that. Much appreciated. EMsmile (talk) 08:10, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

I've carried out the merger now. EMsmile (talk) 07:40, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

Merge discussion on Talk:Environmental impact of cattle

The question is about whether or not it should be merged into Environmental impacts of animal agriculture. The discussion began a little over a month ago, but hasn't had much activity and is currently deadlocked. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 15:38, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

I support the merger proposal and have written on the talk page there. EMsmile (talk) 07:42, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

RFC on Food and Health in Climate change

There is an RFC requesting that editors choose between one of two draft sections on Food and Health in the article on Climate change. Please take part in the RFC. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:25, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Reverted edits: Cloud seeding UAE

Lots of attention on the Cloud seeding in the United Arab Emirates article at the moment due to the floods. From what I've read, current consensus is that the floods are more likely due to climate change than cloud seeding activities but tonnes are blaming cloud seeding on social media. But when I tried to add this, I was reverted a couple times by an IP user for what I feel are unfounded reasons (view history). They did not engage with my comments on the Talk page.

Given the tendancy for cloud seeding to be popular with conspiracy theorists I'm concerned, that at worst, this could be climate denialist coopting another narrative to avoid a possible climate change link to the April 2024 floods.

(On another note, I hope to conduct some reviews of cloud seeding content with experts shortly). TatjanaClimate (talk) 06:41, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Could someone please take a look at the dispute on the Cloud seeding in the United Arab Emirates article?TatjanaClimate (talk) 06:48, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Climate change in country X redirects

I've started nominating a bunch of "Climate change in country x" redirects for deletion. The discussion is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2024_April_22#Climate_change_in_Bahrain Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 18:22, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Black carbon needs all the clean-up it can get

This is a reasonably important contributor to climate change (and to general air pollution) and its article receives ~100 daily pageviews. Yet, whole paragraphs are unreferenced, there is a large table cited to 2000s research which is bound to be obsolete by now, and there are a lot of other, fairly basic structural issues which I would hope many of us can fix. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 20:35, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Added climate change content to water cycle

I had noticed a while ago that the climate change content for the high level article on water cycle was very weak or non existent. So then I added a section to the main text, waited a while for reactions and then just the other day also added it to the lead as a new paragraph at the end. Anyone interested in CC and the water cycle please take a look and help me improve it further. Interestingly, the pagewviews for the water cycle article are not as high as I would have thought. They have been dropping over the years and are now at around 1000 pageviews per day. The article is not great (that's probably one of the reasons for the low-ish pageviews), and a google search gives loads of other websites explaining what the water cycle is.

In any case, I think it's important and strategic for us if the water cycle article makes it very clear how climate change is changing the water cycle and making it more intense. Of course we also have effects of climate change on the water cycle which will hopefully grow and mature over time as well. EMsmile (talk) 10:25, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! I don't know where (or when) I might do anything with that article and for now, this is a good start! I guess I should also note that ~1000 daily pageviews isn't really "low" as far as our topic goes, unfortunately: that makes it #84 in March stats for the WikiProject, for one thing. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 21:04, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

2024 GHG reports now out

I see from the chart in https://unfccc.int/biennial-transparency-reports they are still called national inventory reports. There is not yet any link to 2024 from https://unfccc.int/ghg-inventories-annex-i-parties/2023 but I would have thought some countries would have submitted them by now as the deadline is the 15th.

Of course I tried googling and simply overtyping 2023 with 2024 in the url but presumably UNFCCC have changed “ghg-inventories-annex-i-parties” to something else now “annex 1” is becoming irrelevant. Any idea where they are? Chidgk1 (talk) 06:52, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

Hmm maybe nobody has handed in their homework yet as I can only see old ones at https://unfccc.int/reports?f%5B0%5D=document_type%3A2040 Chidgk1 (talk) 10:14, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

Or perhaps they will be put at https://unfccc.int/reports?f%5B0%5D=document_type%3A3517 but I cannot see how to filter or sort on GHG year. Have messaged UNFCCC but don’t expect any response as they never replied to a question I asked years ago Chidgk1 (talk) 10:30, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

Some of them are at

https://unfccc.int/reports?f%5B0%5D=document_type%3A3517 and others at

https://unfccc.int/reports?f%5B0%5D=document_type%3A4590 Chidgk1 (talk) 17:22, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

There is now a page at https://unfccc.int/ghg-inventories-annex-i-parties/2024

I see four countries have handed in their homework on time - well done Australia, Japan, Switzerland and USA Chidgk1 (talk) 18:16, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps some rich countries will not submit their spreadsheets until the Biennial Transparency Reports are due in December? Chidgk1 (talk) 20:59, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

However https://unfccc.int/FAQ-moving-towards-the-ETF#__Reporting-of-Greenhouse-Gas-Inventories-in-the-Enhanced-Transparency-Framework says the GHG inventories for rich countries are still due 15 April - so why are so many so late this year I wonder. Chidgk1 (talk) 21:24, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

Remove Energy Tracker Asia from the spam blacklist?

Energy Tracker Asia is a non-profit website that covers the energy transition in Asia. It was added to the spam blacklist last year. The website, at energytracker.asia, looks like a reliable source to me for energy issues and climate change mitigation. Would anyone like to take a look at the site and share what you think of it? (Sorry you'll have to copy energytracker.asia into your URL bar as the spam blacklist isn't letting me create a clickable link here).

For transparency, Energy Tracker Asia is a group that I occasionally work with but I don't know what, if anything, they tried to do on Wikipedia that might have led to this. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 17:39, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Good luck with that. Removing something from the spam blacklist might be an enormous amount of work and can waste days of person-time. I tried for years to get PV magazine off the list and gave up in the end. By the way I see that their content is under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. At one point there was a draft article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_undeletion/Archive_357#Draft:Energy_Tracker_Asia and see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Johnasonlily/Archive If anyone succeeds please let me know how you did it so I can copy your method as it seems to me that the argument for removing PV magazine from the blacklist is stronger than for this organisation. I am not saying either are reliable sources but there are plenty of unreliable sources which are not blacklisted. Chidgk1 (talk) 06:44, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

Sigh, thanks for sharing and commiserating. I once tried to add a ref to PV magazine and was blocked by the blacklist. Now I wish I remember what it was so that I could ask for the URL to be whitelisted. Maybe if a bunch of us make whitelist requests that will change the cost/benefit calculus. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 17:41, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Could somebody make a barnstar?

Contributing to climate change related articles is sure to be met with a lot of discouraging vandalism and flaming since it's such a controversial topic. I think it might be a nice way to encourage people who are helping with such articles by having a barnstar to award to them, as so many other WikiProjects, even less important ones, have: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Awards_by_WikiProject I'm not really good at that sort of thing though. Maybe someone else would care to make a WikiProject Climate Change Barnstar? I would really appreciate it.SigurdsSister (talk) 18:42, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

A few such barnstars already exist: click on any of the following: — — . —RCraig09 (talk) 18:59, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Awesome! I will put them here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Awards_by_WikiProject SigurdsSister (talk) 19:49, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Best way to communicate with UNFCCC?

Shortly after Türkiye uploaded their GHG tables to https://unfccc.int/reports?f%5B0%5D=corporate_author%3A249 on 18th April I wrote to UNFCCC via their Facebook page to say that I thought the wrong tables had been uploaded - they only go up to 2020 so seem to be a repeat of the 2022 upload. But UNFCCC have not replied and the tables still seem to be wrong. So I looked at https://unfccc.int/transparency-contact-details and emailed their iar@… address to tell them again and to say that the Türkiye National Communication uploaded on 6th May 2024 is dated 2023 on its first page.

Am I making a silly mistake or is UNFCCC not checking dates properly? If the latter is anyone else having similar problems and how did you communicate with UNFCCC? Chidgk1 (talk) 13:37, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

Ah it seems from https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/sbi2024_inf03.pdf that they were deliberately resubmitted following a review but that the review has not (yet?) been published Chidgk1 (talk) 14:29, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

Better redirect target for decarbonisation?

I am copying something below that came up on the talk page of hydrogen economy where I said I'd like to define the term decarbonisation for our readers explicitly at least once before using it more often in the article. Now I am wondering if the current redirect of decarbonisation to the main page of climate change mitigation is sufficient. I think it should redirect to a definitions section within either climate change mitigation or greenhouse gas emissions. And once again, I suspect that some sources say decarbonisation is only about CO2 (IPCC AR6 WG 3 does that) whereas others say it's about all GHGs (?). Copied from the hydrogen economy talk page my thoughts in this:

So then let's mention it at least once in this article that decarbonisation means reducing GHG emissions, and then afterwards we can continue to use the term. For me, this is not intuitive because decarbonisation seems to refer to carbon or CO2 specifically when it actually refers to all GHGs.

By the way, the IPCC AR6 WG 3 report uses the term a lot (520 times) but in the Annex they define it like this: "Decarbonisation: Human actions to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from human activities." This means they use the narrow definition to refer to CO2 only.

This means to me that we should somewhere in Wikipedia provide this definition and then have a redirect from "decarbonisation" to that page and section.

Also I find it interesting that our article on greenhouse gas emissions does not mention "decarbonisation" at all, and the one on climate change mitigation uses it only four times.

The question in my mind is: do we think this term is important, useful and should be used more often in our articles? If so, then let's ensure that people know what we mean when we use it. Or do we think it's not such an important / useful term, in which case we should avoid using it and simply spell it out each time. Now that I've seen how much the IPCC AR 6 WG 3 report uses it, it seems to me that it's an important term (more important than I realised).

P.S. I forgot that decarbonisation already redirects to climate change mitigation but I think it should probably redirect to a specific section within climate change mitigation, or within greenhouse gas emissions, and at that section the term should be clearly defined. EMsmile (talk) 09:31, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

At the moment it seems that we are implying that decarbonisation is a synonym for climate change mitigation, which it is not. Right? We say in the first sentence of climate change mitigation: Climate change mitigation (or decarbonisation) is action to limit the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that cause climate change. EMsmile (talk) 09:40, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Merge/rename discussion over at Climate change in the Middle East and North Africa

Directly related to the topic immediately above. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 10:23, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

Adopt a dedicated navbox for Climate change by country?

Presently, we are using a variation of the "Worldtopic" template, which looks like this.

I think that it is clearly not great, as it effectively functions as a giant wall of hyperlinks that's really hard to parse. Further, it automatically lists every bluelink that starts with "Climate change in", even if it's just a redirect.

I propose that we replace it with this navbox that I had created just now. As you can see, it groups everything by continent (also linking to continent-scale articles in the process) and it also summarizes what each one of those articles is meant to contain.

InformationToKnowledge (talk) 10:11, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

Looks very nice! By the way, we also have this article Climate change in the Americas (although it's only a listing). EMsmile (talk) 10:38, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

I've used it for the first time here now: Nationally determined contribution#By country. However, is it acceptable to use a navbox within the main text (rather than at the very end)? Also, such a navbox is not displayed when using a mobile phone to view a Wikipedia article. How can we get around this? For the NDC article it now says this "By country -- Information about NDCs by country are shown in some of the country climate change articles below." but the problem is that on a mobile phone the navbox that follows is not displayed. EMsmile (talk) 17:28, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Great! Meanwhile, I have finally added it to every one of the regional sub-articles. I also adjusted the K-G maps on all those articles while I was at it. Took forever, but felt so good to finally get it over with!

However, is it acceptable to use a navbox within the main text (rather than at the very end)?

Climate change in the United States does it already, so I would assume yes?

And no idea about mobile interfaces. Sounds like something Wikimedia tech support needs to figure out, not us. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 18:04, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

MENA is a Eurocentric term. IPCC uses proper terms such as West Asia [2] Countries under MENA should be put in Asia or Africa. Bogazicili (talk) 06:29, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

Well, we already have an article titled Climate change in the Middle East and North Africa, so I was just following that. It wouldn't make sense to change this part of the template but leave the article itself alone; presumably, we would first need to reduce that article to a disambig and move its content to Asia/Africa articles, then change the template?

Of course, this kind of a change would require a full discussion first. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 06:54, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

It looks nice and very structured, but... Hick's_law favours one big list. One choice from a big list is easier than two choices from smaller lists.

The first choice, continent, is hard, requires knowledge that is subject to discussion. Is Morocco not in Africa? Is Afghanistan not in the middle East? Is Turkey not in Europe? Why is Kuwait not in the middle east?

Alternative: one big list and highlight every first new character, e.g. Afghanistan · Albania · Algeria ... Bahamas · Bangladesh · Barbados ... Cambodia · Cameroon · Canada ...

The country name will suffice to find it in the list. Uwappa (talk) 07:15, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

We should just use UN terms: United Nations geoscheme. Bogazicili (talk) 07:57, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

@Bogazicili @Uwappa The point of this navbox is to showcase all of our regional content in a single format - and that includes continent-scale articles, so the continental subheadings are non-negotiable. And until we as a community make a decision to junk/rework the MENA article, it should stay in place as a subheading.

I should also say that numerous climate change articles still use the term even now - i.e. consider this 2021 paper, which includes authors from Turkey, Morocco and Saudi Arabia. Plenty of other examples can be found. So, I don't think this subject is so clear-cut, and longer discussion would be needed.

Is Afghanistan not in the middle East? - According to Middle East, not really.

Why is Kuwait not in the middle east? - Because Climate change in Kuwait is a redirect, and I decided to limit this navbox to actually existing articles (similar to what @Clayoquot was advocating the other month). InformationToKnowledge (talk) 08:32, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

You went by continents in the navbox except "MENA", so it looks biased now. MENA can be linked under Climate change in Asia and Climate change in Africa. Bogazicili (talk) 08:39, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

Please read Hick's law.

• It is easy to select one item from one big list, if the list is sorted by a known search criterion, e.g. country name.
• It is harder to select one item from a nested, 2 level list, even when the reader knows both search criteria.

The high level search is the problem here. The reader needs a lot of knowledge for the high level search. Morocco is in North Africa and that is part of MENA, not Africa. Turkey is not in Europa, it is not in Asia either, it is also part of Mena. Afghanistan is not in the middle east, it is in Asia. And there is no information about climate change in Kuwait as Climate change in Kuwait is a redirect and redirects don't count. Pffft... Why do I need to know all this just to navigate to a country? Why have a complex nested list if one big list is easier?

An other alternative: Stick to country name as the only required search criterion. Make the visual search easier by grouping countries by first character:

• Afghanistan · Albania · Algeria ...
• Bahamas · Bangladesh · Barbados ...
• Cambodia · Cameroon · Canada ...
• ...

Uwappa (talk) 12:31, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

I did read that article - I am simply unconvinced about your interpretation of it. Most people will know their country's continent very well - particularly now that I took out the MENA subsection. The differences you are claiming are practically impossible to ascertain without an empirical study, and would amount to a couple of seconds at most even if they exist. Once people have seen it more than once, they would likely find it easier to navigate than the alternatives.

And grouping by country alphabetically has another big issue - it will most likely result in a very ugly navbox. It'll have to be quite long (>20 lines if there's going to be 1 per letter, as opposed to 10 lines in the current navbox) and really top-heavy because so many country names start with the first handful of letters of the English alphabet, then it would be practically skeletal until a second bulge at M and another at S.

Lastly, if you really want to see Kuwait in this navbox...maybe it's time to actually create Climate change in Kuwait? I made Climate change in Asia practically from scratch earlier this month: an article for a fairly small country is bound to be much easier to do. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 10:54, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for taking out Mena and listing Morocco under Africa. Good!

Please note that the formula in the Hick's_law article defines the time for processing just one menu. For a two level menu, you will have to add up the times of both levels.

Please watch https://www.nngroup.com/videos/hicks-law-long-menus/ A long menu with many items is fine if:

1. the menu items are sorted
2. items are known to the user. That is my worry with the continent of a country.

Navigation will be difficult or even fail if:

• a reader does not have a clue of a country's continent. Such a reader will have to scan all continents and may give up as that is too much trouble.
• a reader may have doubts and be slowed down by a puzzle. Where to look for Russia?
• a reader has a different idea about the continent of a country. e.g. "Turkey is in Asia". I can't find Turkey in Asia, so Climate_change_in_Turkey does not exist!
• a reader that knows about Turkey and Russia being both in Europe and Asia might look in Asia and Europe, but that is a doubling of effort.

The mental step -what-is-the-continent is a needless mental detour. Go from country to continent and back again to find the country. Why o why???

Chunking by the first character of a country name avoids these problems. The first character is known, no additional knowledge required. Anybody that can find the letter T will be able to find Turkey.

And yes, it is a bit of a design challenge to get the design of the list right. That is a solvable puzzle.

I am not happy with leaving out climate_change_in_Kuwait and other redirects. It will give the false impression that no information is available yet. Uwappa (talk) 14:21, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

...Sometimes I suspect that if even a fraction of the effort which goes into these arguments was devoted to actually creating articles, we would not have had to debate the question of these redirects in the first place, as full articles would have already existed by now. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 18:14, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

That article can be renamed to West Asia and North Africa. But for now I don't see any reason why the navbox shouldn't be changed. Bogazicili (talk) 07:56, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

If this navbox is used I will add Turkey to both Europe and Asia to make it easier to find. Chidgk1 (talk) 19:29, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

Climate change will not follow arbitrary human UN geoscheme allocations, we should not expect our articles to conform to those groups. (National borders are relevant as they affect policy and legal response, geographical groupings do not.) CMD (talk) 07:12, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

@Chidgk1 AR6 WG2 lists both Cyprus and Turkey in "Southern Europe" on page 1882, and does not appear to list either in Asia, so I have kept them in Europe only for now.

@CMD Right, climate change is about physical geography. According to the IPCC, that means that the real unifying factor for that area is actually the Mediterranean Sea. If we want to follow their consensus exactly, that might mean reviving Climate change in the Mediterranean article from a redirect. See the discussion linked over at the next topic down. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 10:41, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

OK, I changed it. See more details about why I changed my reasoning over at the (soon-to-be-gone?) MENA article talk page.

Though, I can't help but observe that if this logic is to be followed consistently, then a whole lot of articles currently referring to the Middle East would need to be altered as well. I.e. right now, besides that climate change article, we have Demographics of the Middle East and North Africa, Education in the Middle East and North Africa, Obesity in the Middle East and North Africa and Water conflict in the Middle East and North Africa. Would you take on the responsibility to look at those and others like them as well? InformationToKnowledge (talk) 10:36, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

Are you asking me? I'm not really involved in those projects. In any case, Wikipedia is not a source for itself. So we don't have to follow what other Wikipedia pages do. Bogazicili (talk) 18:37, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

My point is simply that standardization is a good thing (there is a reason why the International Organization for Standardization has existed for so long), and if one way to refer to a given region is clearly superior to the others, then it should be adopted across the entire Wikipedia, and sooner rather than later. It wouldn't make sense to rename "our" article with MENA in its title but leave any others standing if the arguments for/against are exactly the same. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 18:11, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Definitely don't include countries where the link is a redirect to a "Climate in country x" article. These articles rarely say much about emissions. If anyone is up for a challenge, what I think would be really helpful is navboxes like "Countries with highest greenhouse gas emissions", "Countries with highest per capita greenhouse gas emissions", "Countries with highest per capita cumulative greenhouse gas emissions", and "Countries with fastest-growing greenhouse gas emissions". Restrict each box to the top 10 countries and sort the links with the worst countries at the top. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 22:23, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

It seems like there is no consensus for the change InformationToKnowledge did. So I'll be reverting the navbox if there are no additional comments. Bogazicili (talk) 06:10, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

InformationToKnowledge does have a point. The current navbox is a giant wall of hyperlinks. I also agree that the set of hyperlinks should be chunked. The disagreement is just on the way of chunking. Should chunks be by area of by first character of the country name? Uwappa (talk) 07:31, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

Do we need a navbox with every country? It is replacing the usual continent navbox, eg.., which is much smaller and likely more directly applicable given outside of edge cases it will include nearby states with similar climate challenges. CMD (talk) 08:13, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

The issue with those continent navboxes is that a large fraction of their contents consists of redirects to (usually) tiny sections in "Climate of ...", "Environmental issues in..." or "Geography of..." articles, as opposed to an actual "Climate change in" article. Yet, a reader looking at that continent navbox has no way to tell at a glance which link will take them to a proper article and which one won't. (Well, outside of a general inference that poorer, less influential countries are less likely to have full articles.)

In theory, we can delete every single redirect (which is what Clayoquot has been proposing), but that is a really blunt approach, and I think it's better to have readers directed somewhere then no place at all - I am extremely doubtful that proper articles will spring up anytime soon once the redirects disappear. So, this dedicated navbox which is curated to only include the actual articles is the best solution.

Further, I think it's important that people get to see the links to continent-scale articles at a glance, as well as that this template includes an "overview bar" (Greenhouse gas emissions, impacts, mitigation and adaptation in each country) that immediately tells the readers what each of those articles is meant to contain (and what is missing from some of them/from the redirects.) InformationToKnowledge (talk) 09:11, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

@Clayoquot I thought other editors (particularly @Chidgk1) were opposed to editorial decisions that effectively seek to ascribe blame? ("fastest-growing greenhouse gas emissions" in particular is bound to be dominated by the developing countries which are expected to increase emissions as part of their development even in AR6 - see page 61 of WG3 TS, for one thing.

There is also a practical issue of attempting to maintain navboxes with an inherently dynamic structure - every time the top 10 changes (according to who?) such a navbox would have to be changed as well. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 11:10, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

I agree that cumulative emissions is also important. Maybe we can have links to List of countries by greenhouse gas emissions and List of countries by cumulative greenhouse gas emissions (this article should really exist) as links in the navbox. We can also have another section for hotspots. The navbox would have 3 categories: by continent (above) or by county (like Uwappa suggested); by hotspot (Mediterranean etc); and by topic (Greenhouse emissions list by country, net zero goals by country, Climate Change Performance Index etc) 19:19, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

I've struck my "fastest-growing greenhouse gas emissions" idea as I agree this one needs context. In terms of maintenance, the others would just need one good citation per navbox, updated once a year. That's relatively easy. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 21:43, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Laboratoire des sciences du climat et de l'environnement#Requested move 27 May 2024

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Laboratoire des sciences du climat et de l'environnement#Requested move 27 May 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Safari Scribe^{Edits! Talk!} 01:16, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Decocidio#Requested move 24 May 2024

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Decocidio#Requested move 24 May 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 20:35, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

Managing Köppen-Geiger graphics in the regional climate change articles?

So, some time back, pretty much every one of our "Climate change in X" articles had a pair of graphics added: one showing their current Köppen climate classification, and another with the projected classification for 2070-2100. There were two issues with those:

1. The labels on the graphics are not very readable without zooming in. Whoever added them originally decided to address this by blowing them up to a truly disproportionate size that ended up effectively breaking the page layout and forcing the readers to scroll the entire page horizontally. Perhaps it was not the case when it was first added, but that's certainly what happened once the new default skin was adopted. Here is an example of what it used to be like.
2. The only available projection was for RCP 8.5, and we all know how unrealistic it is.

When I added the new template across all of these articles recently, I also decided to rescale those graphics to more wiki-friendly sizes (like in the example above which now looks like this) and to add the same disclaimer I now place on all RCP 8.5-only graphics. Then, though, it turned out that @Uness232: had found a newer paper, which now has Köppen-Geiger projections for a full range of IPCC scenarios. You can see an example at Climate change in Turkey.

Even so, there are still two issues we need to decide on:

1. How many graphics should we include, and for which scenario? For the Turkey page, Uness232 decided to go for SSP3-7, describing it as a "mid-range, relatively likely scenario" in the caption. That really isn't accurate, as SSP3-7 is still a scenario where the CO₂ emissions never go down in this century - they just don't accelerate like they do in SSP5-8.5. Methane and N₂O emissions actually go up more in that scenario than in any other - one look at AR6 WG1 SPM (p.13) ascertains that. Considering that even last year, global CO₂ emissions increased by a mere 0.1%, I think it's safe to say that scenario is nearly as implausible as the worst-case. The citations I have in the captions both refer to RCP 4.5/SSP2-4.5 as the most plausible.
   1. However, the thing with Köppen-Geiger zones is that they can be fairly persistent. I.e. according to that classification, zones in the countries like Egypt, Indonesia and Tanzania would barely change even under RCP 8.5, because most of their territory is already at the furthest ends of the classification. With SSP2-4.5 maps, a lot more countries may not appear to have significant change by 2100. I guess we could attempt a three/four image collage and say that the 8.5 projections represents the plausible 2300 state? (Enough references say that climatically, RCP8.5 2100 = RCP 4.5 ~2300.)
2. Once we have decided on the graphic selection, do we want to rewrite their legends in larger font or something, in an attempt to make the text visible in reasonably-sized thumbnails?

Long question, I know, but please comment, as it is fairly important. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 16:19, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Hi, and thanks for opening this discussion.

Before everything, I want to say that my pick of SSP370 was unintentional. I meant to pick either 2-4.5 or 4-3.4 (I don't remember which one right now, but those are, as far as I know, the scenarios most in line with the 2.5 to 3.0C warming prediction), but I think I just misread something and never checked back. As for the questions:

1. If the sources explicitly state 2-4.5 to be the most likely, we should use that one. It does not matter if the zones are persistent in my opinion; we are here to present information, and if the relative persistence of zones in some countries makes the image collage unnecessary, the best practice may be removing those collages on those pages. Using RCP 8.5 maps for 2300 would be fine, I suppose, but with the existence of a map that specifically clarifies itself to be 2071-2100, this might be somewhat confusing.

2. I'm neutral on this; I am comfortable with zooming in, and so for me this is not an issue. Some people might prefer more accessible legends though, so I also don't have any objections. Uness232 (talk) 17:56, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Not every climate change leads to a different Köppen climate classification.

I would prefer just one graph, for a specific region, that shows changes for the 2 basic variables of a climate: temperature and precipitation.

A graphic could show the differences between pre-industrial and current. It could also show future scenarios, what will the climate be when we reach the +1.5C and +2.0C from the Paris agreement? Such scenarios would not be pinned down to specific years.

Design ideas for such a graph: Uwappa (talk) 04:15, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

I think for places with minimal projected Köppen changes, these ideas are doable, but for a few reasons I find Köppen maps more appealing when there are noticable changes between time periods:

1) Beck et. al. came up with a methodology for estimating the monthly precipitation and temperature for different periods by through a complex process that we can not easily replicate. Therefore we would be unable to easily use accurate "future" maps.

2) A graph can only give information about one place, or the average of a place. There are countries (including Turkey) where climate change will have opposite effects on different regions.

3) Real-life cities have problems measuring climate change; they have UHIs. Bakırköy, by the 2030s, will have 30-year climate normals 3C warmer than its pre-industrial temperature, and obviously we are not at 3C of warming. Uness232 (talk) 21:45, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

A map similar to could show dangers and opportunities.

Such a map could show impacts for global +1.5C and +2.0C, not for specific future years. Uwappa (talk) 06:53, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

Sure, though if we are going to use a map like that, why not use Köppen maps anyway? Places where there's a desertification threat would be indicated by A/C/D -> B, places with new possibilities of summer drought would be represented by Cf -> Cs, warmer temperatures would create a chain of E -> D -> C -> A, and Xxb to Xxa would signal new heat dangers.

And even with a 'danger' map, some areas might need to be completely blank, as it is in the map above. Uness232 (talk) 09:45, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

Yes, that sounds great to filter dangers: desertification, drought and heat.

To add: floods in low areas. Uwappa (talk) 13:10, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

I think you misunderstand. I was not saying that we should make a map ourselves, borrowing criteria from Köppen and renaming these criteria as risks to fit our needs. That would be WP:OR. I was suggesting that, as long as there are environmental changes that can be captured by Köppen, we should just use a Köppen map. If that is not possible for that region, we can think of alternatives. Uness232 (talk) 11:36, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Re the legend would it be too difficult to only include the zones which are on that particular map? For example I don’t think we need “polar tundra” on the Turkey legend. Also rather than having to look alternately at the legend and map I would find our map more readable if I could put the main zone names directly on the map. The smaller zones could have their label nearby off the map with an arrow. Chidgk1 (talk) 20:11, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Re the legend would it be too difficult to only include the zones which are on that particular map? For example I don’t think we need “polar tundra” on the Turkey legend.

That's already how it is: Turkey has alpine tundra on a few of its highest mountains. Uness232 (talk) 21:49, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Ah I see now on Ararat - that would be better shown with an arrow I think Chidgk1 (talk) 21:14, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

I like the bar graph. Chidgk1 (talk) 20:33, 3 June 2024 (UTC)