Talk:Climate variability and change/Archive 6

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countermeasures, mitigation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Revised text about human impacts

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

--- Human disease vectors ---

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

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

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

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

--- Human health outcomes ---

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

---- Heat waves ----

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

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

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

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

---- Extreme weather ----

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

---- Infectious diseases ----

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

---- Air pollution ----

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

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

References

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

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

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

Requested move 25 February 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Climate change initial and primary cause

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

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

Splitting proposal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Summary

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

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

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

Climate variability

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

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

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

Split proposal that is probably better to think about first

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

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

Head's up: new climate system article

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

Opening section: opinion or fact?

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Semi-protected edit request on 22 June 2019

The second sentence, "The climate system is comprised of five interacting parts," is grammatically incorrect. It should read either, "The climate system COMPRISES five interacting parts," or, "The climate system IS COMPOSED of five interacting parts." Rpp2119 (talk) 02:37, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

 Done Suingtent (talk) 18:41, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

Climate Change in Oman

Non-permitted use of copyrighted material - Material removed Sean Heron (talk) 20:10, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

References Al-Maamary, H. M., Kazem, H. A., & Chaichan, M. T. (2017). Renewable energy and GCC States energy challenges in the 21st century: A review. International Journal of Computation and Applied Sciences IJOCAAS, 2(1), 11-18. Al-Sarihi, A., & Cherni, J. A. (2018). Assessing strengths and weaknesses of renewable energy initiatives in Oman: an analysis with strategic niche management. Energy Transitions, 2(1-2), 15-29. Chaichan, M. T., & Kazem, H. A. (2016). Energy conservation and management for houses and building in Oman-case study. Saudi Journal of Engineering and Technology, 1(3), 69-76. Shaffer, R. (2017). Emerging security threats in the Middle East: the impact of climate change and globalization. International Affairs, 93(5), 1276–1278.

@Wamlambez: Hey there, this appears to be a direct copy-paste from this online essay. This is pretty severe plagiarism, and has no place on Wikipedia. I was about to suggest you make a new article out of this information, but then put the first sentence into Google - the first hit gave me the essay linked above, which you have copied word-for-word. Please don't do this again, as it violates several Wikipedia policies, and is just poor practise in general. - OliverEastwood talk 00:44, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

Climate change vs Global warming

Not starting a discussion or taking a stance right now but just as a practical note for the perennial discussions on whether to move global warming here, there are several thousand articles that link to this page which you can review to get a sense for how many want modern anthropogenic climate change and how many want climate change in general. ─ ReconditeRodent « talk · contribs » 18:18, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

Hi, ReconditeRodent I don't really understand the point you are making? (I'll disclose that I have argued for changing the title of the global warming article to climate change, and can't wait for it to happen eventually - I am convinced it will, one day). EMsmile (talk) 02:53, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

It seems that the majority of pages that link here mean to link to global warming, and though the exact ratio varies each time I try to take a sample it would in any case be less practical to change all of them than the reverse (if the page was moved). But since I haven’t fully reviewed the other arguments made I didn’t want to jump into a discussion just yet. ─ ReconditeRodent « talk · contribs » 22:52, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

It's true we have a a lot of wikilinks to these two articles, and that some unknown percentage point to the "wrong" one, given the current status quo. This fact has been used to argue against making any name changes. If a group of editors were determined to clean house by auditing the thousands of links it would be a massive undertaking, but with careful planning and expert use of categories and templates it could be done in bite sized pieces. We'd need a team of committed volunteers, a clerk, and some wiki advisors who are expert with the tools needed to manage such a project. A way to get started might be to make a pitch at WP:WikiProject Climate change and possibly form a task force for the effort. This is worth doing in its own right. Once done, the perennial name-change proposals may or may not gain traction. But it would be worth cleaning up the various "wrong" article WP:EGGS anyway. I have had a note to consider doing this myself for a couple of years but the job never bubbles up to the top of my pile. Any takers? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 10:31, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

I'm willing to coordinate the discussion, but I've done way too much gnome-work for at least the next five years in global warming to take up the clerk role here. Don't even know what that would entail. You expressed willingness to take up this role before ircc. What made you change your mind? Femke Nijsse (talk) 17:17, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

I haven't changed my mind, but for me and the way I would approach it I still think its premature. The project is going full blast to set up categories and banners. {Thank you everyone who is helping!) And while this is great, I observe that there is a long list of possible goals projects might wish to pursue with banners and categories. I don't know much about this. With different goals, would we set up the categories and banner differently? I think so. Once its set up, we need time to build team momentum to start knocking off the to do lists. Also time to verify that the banner/category configuration is meetings our needs. So I don't have the drive to charge forward with this other gnome work solo right now. Maybe someone else does. Meanwhile I'm interested in building the project team machine, and other low hanging cleanup fruit that should also be done. And then there are the short term action items that heat up, like working on Greta Thunberg before US papers start covering her much more intensely. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 18:06, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

Separating current climate change from the general phenomena

The current article, even though correct is misleading. We the media talk about climate change it doesn't talk about the repeated phenomena but about current climate change that is cause due to the emission of green house gases. I think we better have two article or to make it more clear. — Preceding unsigned comment added by [[User:{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]] ([[User talk:{{{1}}}#top|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/{{{1}}}|contribs]])

Thanks for your interest and please read the italics at the very top of this article, which explains that topic is covered at our article Global warming NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 12:29, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Hello IP. I think you're completely right. The article about current climate change is found under global warming, which is not the place most people expect it to be. We're working on getting consensus to have both climate change and global warming point to the same page, as these two terms are very similar. General information about climate change will then probably be found under different articles, such as the climate system. Alternatively, we can change this article's name to something like: climate change in the past and future. Bear with us, this consensus seeking might take a while.

@NEAG: more evidence people don't always read the top note, yet another reason for our ideas to go forward. Femke Nijsse (talk) 12:34, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

How about "climate change cycles" for the cycle of the climate changes: sun 11 year cycle, milankovitch cycle etc etc. And keep the climate change article for the current climate change (that is mostly due to emission of green house gases).31.154.23.74 (talk) 13:00, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

or maybe "natural climate change" to separate it from human induced climate change.31.154.23.74 (talk) 13:03, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Natural climate change is an option for me if we decide on a separate article about this (instead of the current discussion at climate system). Climate change cycles implies that all natural climate change changes in cycles: back and forth. That is not entirely true: climate change induced by plate tectonics works in one direction for instance. The same goes for the climate change that was a consequence of living creatures 'inventing' photosynthesis: the 'sudden' drop in CO2 caused quite a lot of cooling. Femke Nijsse (talk) 13:33, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

I agree we need to resolve this perennial issue with a consensus to change to something else, but I also think we have our hands full getting the project up and going, and doing the housekeeping that we would do anyway whether we tackle this or not. As we previously discussed, Femke, all that housekeeping will need to happen regardless and its state of being not done has been cited as a reason to make no change in the past. So.... its tedious and time consuming, but .... on with the job, as far as I'm concerned. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 14:27, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Is there going to be any progress regarding this issue? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.154.23.73 (talk) 12:20, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

Depends if everyone keeps asking other people that question instead of asking themselves "What can I do to help resolve this issue and will I actually do it?" NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 12:25, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

NEAG and me are working behind the scenes on it now. I'd say that the next month should see our discussion going live. Maybe another month or even two for the decision to be made and executed. Femke Nijsse (talk) 12:50, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

Femke, you are the one doing the heavy lifting and timetable push here, and thank you for believing! I'll keep kinda helping a little as I'm able. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 12:58, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

Climate crisis vs Climate change

@Rosvel92: are you aware that old consensus [no consensus status quo] is that this article is about the general concept of climate change, not about current CC? I'm preparing a proposal to have climate change and global warming both point towards the current FA global warming article, as a large portion of editors (definitely) and readers (almost certainly) get confused with the current situation. You might want to withdraw your merge proposal and join my proposal instead. Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:12, September 4, 2019‎

@Rosvel192, I removed the climate crisis paragraph from this article because it is the wrong article, as Femke explains above. Being the wrong article, I have also removed the malformed merge tags. The tags were "malformed" because to use these tags you must select a single place to start a discussion (a single place, per WP:MULTI) and there make your case for the proposed merge. Just slapping up tags is called "drive by tagging". I started to try to redeem the tagging by moving the following paragraph here, but was hasty. I assumed, wrongly, that the paragraph was a discussion comment. After I got started moving things around I realized it was article text and this is the wrong article because it pertains as much to the PETM as it does the modern age. As Femke also observes, veteran climate editors are working on a comprehensive rename proposal. Please be patient. The text I removed from the article was

In the late 2010's a newspaper called The Guardian started a trend where it advocated to call it Climate crisis instead of "Climate change". This due to feeling that the word "change" doesn't properly reflect the severity of the environmental problem, and as such, "crisis" is more appropriate. Several other news media outlets and researchers, agreed and followed the suit (while still considering the "climate change" terminology as an acceptable synonym, they agreed to decrease it's use in favor of using "climate crisis" more).

NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 10:07, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

References

Long period variability

@Femkemilene: something that I'm still confused about.... Let's say we characterize the current climate as CLIMATE-X. Then along comes some variability. For short-period variability, that's just a bit of noise within the bounds of CLIMATE-X so there is no "climate change". After all, climate is usually defined as weather averaged over 30 years. For cycles less than 30 years, their impacts are captured we do the averaging, so despite the noise, we still have CLIMATE-X. So far so good.

The confusion arises for long-period variability. Have we identified cycles in the climate system that play out over greater periods of time? And if so, since their impacts are not captured by the usual averaging, are these long-period cycles potential drivers of climate change, that might bump CLIMATE-X to CLIMATE-Y? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 15:36, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

We have (probably?) identified things like this indeed, where internal variability triggered some tipping point for instance. The Cronin book I'm reading now gives Heinrich events as an example of internal variability happening with a period of 5000 to 10000 years. Some instability in the ice sheets.

The books also makes some good points that 'normal' climatologists has slightly different definitions of external than paleoclimatologists. For instance, we ('normal' climatologists) say that volcanic forcing is external, while they treat is as internal. Femke Nijsse (talk) 15:42, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

"normal"....... ROFL. Seriously, this confusion is a big sticking point for me in figuring out our big picture reform, as we ponder article structures names and relation to each other. It's also a bit advanced for me, so I look forward to any additional light you can shine as you read sources and ponder. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 16:26, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

I now think we should keep in mind that the 30-year cut-off is really arbitrary, and that climate variability (typically fast change) and climate change (slower change) are all on the same spectrum. I'm now thinking that it's best to discuss the two terms in this page. (But other days I'm more in favour of a separate climate variability article, where there is approximately a 1/3 overlap with an article on natural climate change. Femke Nijsse (talk) 17:44, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Chop.... Chop...... Chop.......

This article has accumulated an enormous amount of cruft that really belongs in Effects of global warming and sub articles under that tree. As I start to try to focus on the article topic any climate change, whether warming or cooling, at any time in earth history, I've started chopping the cruft that is all about human-caused climate change/global warming.

I know many editors want current climate change to be hosted under this article title. We argue about that repeatedly, but the current article title status quo arose in 2002 and hasn't changed in all that time. FYI some of us are preparing a comprehensive reform proposal. Coming up with ideas is easy. Arguing about them endlessly is tempting (for some). But actually executing a name reform is far greater task than newer and casual editors can imagine. That discussion will be easiest and executing a consensus will be easiest if we clean up this article so it matches the current status quo as well as it can. So that's why I'm chopping.

By the way, the refs etc are all recoverable from the archives. I haven't actually relocated any of this. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 16:31, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

If you believe improving this article is a step towards our goal of renaming, I'll join you and remove weird and outdated information from it. Femke Nijsse (talk) 06:48, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Great! Assume it will take others 6 units of brain energy to think through the proposal and come to the right decision. If this article is full of needless crap, when they come her to think about it, they will have to expend 1 or 2 units of brain power to see past all the needless crap before wondering what to do with the good stuff. So all we're doing is conserving brain power by making the field lean clean and mean before asking folks to ponder the big questions. And if the proposal fails after that excellent thinking, then this article would need the same clean up anyway. So THANKS! NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 10:07, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

That's what I though as well. Also, I want to minimize the words spent in my proposal to prevent Wikipedia:Wall of text, while still covering everything I deem important. In the TO-DO list for two possible directions of change was 'clean up climate change', so those words can now be deleted. Femke Nijsse (talk) 10:33, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Okay, done now. I think the state of this article is again good enough to not confuse people in our discussion. Still an ugly beast, but can't solve it entirely of course. Do I recall correctly you started the climate system section? If so, would you want to add a couple more sentences? Femke Nijsse (talk) 18:08, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

You probably remember correctly, but no, I'm not inclined to add anything. Its my belief all of this content is redundant and/or should be exported to other articles, as we discussed last winter while looking over my user space draft and reform idea Original and updated and streamlined that led up to your excellent launch of climate system. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 18:15, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, I sorta forgot. I'm inclined to disagree with you on this one, as I do think it's worthwhile to discuss natural variability in its own separate article. This would, ideally for me, be a merge of this one and climate oscillation, and climate pattern, but that would be phase 4 of my plan to merge all of those. (Phase 3 is tidying up after agreeing on what we have to do with the name climate change) Femke Nijsse (talk) 20:23, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Wikibreak time for me, back next week NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 23:55, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

One-sided article.

RS-free WP:SOAP and [{WP:FORUM]] click show to read anyway

There is no reference in the article to the science that sustains that climate change is not related to CO2 emissions. My understanding is that WIKIPEDIA articles need to have a space for dissenting views. NEUTRAL POINT OF VIEW All encyclopedic content on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all of the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic. For example, the scientific conference https://climateconference.heartland.org/ is dedicated to the analysis of the science that shows no influence of CO2 atmospheric level on climate change. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cuye (talk • contribs) 14:16, 16 September 2019 (UTC) The Heartland Institute is not a scientific organization, it's a corporate-funded shill for denialism. Please review WP:FRINGE - we do not give equal credence to pseudoscience. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 14:24, 16 September 2019 (UTC) A conference is just a venue, obviously, I´m referring to the views of the scientific that give presentations at the conference. So, the question continues. How we give space to the scientists that have a dissenting point of view? The answer remains: We don't, not in this article - just as we don't have a section in Evolution which discusses people who believe God created the universe in six days. Rather, we have an article about their belief system: intelligent design). Likewise, we have an article called climate change denial which discusses those who reject the scientific consensus about climate change. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 14:49, 16 September 2019 (UTC) THE article called climate change denial is a pamphlet against a dissenting oppinions, THERE is no a single reference on it a Papers published in a peer-review magazine that dissent. SORRY, my mistake. , I´m not suggesting to give space to "Climate change denial" I don´t suggest that. Obviously, if something has been changing is the climate, with periods of High temperature and periods of lower temperature, it looks that there is a consensus that the climate DO change, and we have previous global warming maximum temperature that exceeds the temperature of today. The point is to present the scientific investigation that has don´t find a relationship between increase in temperature and CO2 emissions. Your opinion is a little totalitarian, for example, "WE DON¨T" Really? you are the owner of the article? I think that an opinion published in a peer-review magazine is the standard to be considered.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Cuye (talk • contribs) It's somewhat hard to make out what you propose. Climate change is a field in which literally thousands of peer-reviewed articles are published. A single article might be noteworthy, but it would have to be very well-received, and probably published in a first-rate journal like Nature or PNAS, not some crappy pay-to-play predatory outlet. Do you have something concrete in mind? --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:20, 16 September 2019 (UTC) @Cuye: Can you find peer-reviewed secondary sources that discuss this alleged claim about CO2 and climate? Take a look at the medical sourcing guidelines for a sense what what good sources might look like. (I'm not saying that we need to apply precisely the same sourcing guidelines here, I'm say that it's a good overview for trying to understand how to deal with these fringe claims.) Guettarda (talk) 15:38, 16 September 2019 (UTC) Many thanks for your comment, I will add later here the articles that I think are relevant. I agree with you, we don´t like to have "not some crappy pay-to-play predatory outlet.", FOR SURE, this is why I´m always referring to peer-review magazines, and I likes to add, Per-review magazines that are LISTED. By the way, Nature is not a peer-review magazine, it is an advocacy journal of the importance of CO2 in the rise of temperature. Scientific magazines DON¨T have opinions about the subjects, they publish articles that the scientific community consider that are science-based. For example "The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)" PNAS is abstracted and/or indexed in, for example CABI, Chemical Abstracts Service, Current Contents Connect, EBSCOhost, Elsevier Scopus, Gale, H. W. Wilson, Index Medicus, Journal Watch, JSTOR, OCLC, Portico, ProQuest, Psychological Abstracts, PubMed, PubMed Central, RePEc, and SCI. So, this is a key point of peer-review magazines the relevant ones are LISTED, this means that his articles are included in the scientific search databases. If a magazine is NOT listed the articles there will not be used in good scientific investigation. Also, good articles show results that are conflicting (good articles are not advocating articles.) For example, The PNAS article "Quantifying the influence of global warming on unprecedented extreme climate events" Shows the influence of global warming, don´t advocate the SOURCE(S) of global warming, but the article has some interesting points A)The article found "extremely high statistical confidence that anthropogenic forcing increased the probability of record-low Arctic sea ice extent." B) but the article also said "The strong imprint of internal variability at the local scale creates substantial uncertainty in the influence of anthropogenic climate forcing on individual local trends (e.g., refs. 45 and 46), with even greater uncertainty for extremes than for the long-term mean" C) Aso said: "For example, neither the observed nor simulated trend in extreme precipitation is statistically significant over most grid points (Table 1 and Fig. S4), which could imply that global warming has not substantially influenced such events. However, thermodynamic arguments suggest that global warming should have increased the event probability by increasing atmospheric moisture (2, 48). SEE also atmospheric moisture plays an important role. Coming to your point I suggest that paper that I mention previously needs to be an acceptable reference.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Cuye (talk • contribs) I think you must be confusing Nature (journal) with some other publication. The nature family of journals are listed in all the general indexing services you mentioned and one of the most prestigious journals out there. Note that it is not listed by for instance Elsevier, as they only list journals they they happen to own. Could you come up with a proposed change (including reliable source) for the article. The talk page is not meant for a general discussion of the topic (it's not a WP:FORUM). Femke Nijsse (talk) 19:16, 16 September 2019 (UTC) This seems to be the PNAS paper referred to. SmartSE (talk) 19:29, 16 September 2019 (UTC) I would guess you are actually looking for the article Global warming rather than this one. As to other effects affecting climate change others are described here including ones like solar output. As far as recent global warming is concerned though that is a minor factor. Dmcq (talk) 19:30, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

Example things that link here

There has been discussion of the things that link here. Specifically, the question is whether the incoming link really means to come here (because it means generic climate change) or maybe meant to go to global warming (because it meant to refer to Human-caused global warming and climate change, or other expression that means the same thing). So here are some examples

• Article useage meaning climate change in a generic sense (i.e., "the right way" under the current status quo)

• This section in this version of Radiative forcing
• This section in this version of Snowball earth

• Article useage where writer means Human-caused global warming and climate change or other phrase that means the same thing (i.e., the "wrong way" under the current status quo)

• Since the 2004 rename in this version of Attribution of recent climate change
• Since June 2019, in this version of Environmental law

(to do add talk examples) NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 23:14, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

In User:Femkemilene/sandbox I've got a link (Q1.1) that shows it links correctly 10% of the time and should link to ongoing climate change 90% of the time. Renaming this page and making climate change a redirect will solve decrease wrong links from 0.9*5000 = 4500 to 0.1*5000 = 500 :). Femke Nijsse (talk) 06:34, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

• Anthropogenic climate change and Anthropogenic global warming both redirect to Global warming. I expect to see "anthropgenic" used more often. "-genic" meaning originating.

"Human-caused ..." is a slightly stronger term, enough stronger that it leads to troublesome pedantic arguments. Causation is usually expected to be proved. Causation is stronger than "triggered" or "amplified" (or "made worse"). --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:23, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

Discussions about the ideal title for our "global warming" article should be held on that page ideally. A quick response might not do any harm though. I agree with you that human-caused (which I see as the non-technical synonym of antropogenic) is quite strong and that terms like modern climate change might possibly be a bit better. It is a scientifically accurate term though and also often used by scientists (see Google Scholar). Not sure if you suggested it as a possible direction of a new title proposal, but amplified or made worse are scientifically inaccurate, as they (A) imply that natural changes were/may have been first, whereas the last 2000 years were very stable and (B) imply that human-caused changes and natural changes work in the same direction. The best estimate of current climate change is that the Earth would have cooled very slightly if we hadn't interferred. Humans have caused between ~75% and 150% of the current temperature rise. Femke Nijsse (talk) 21:44, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

For any passers-by: The inanity of causing "150%" of anything – per the source – arises from using percentages for a probability distribution. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:20, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

References

Merge alternative(s)

Housekeeping note... the merits of merging this content do not depend on what the article title says, and we can debate merging at any time as a separate issue. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 11:42, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

• Consider a Merge to Climatology. The general concept of climate change is a subset of climate changeability, which is a subset of climatology. The current content at that title is largely duplicate. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:31, 20 October 2019 (UTC)
• Very strong oppose I believe it's very bad form to discuss a major term from a field solily in that field's page. It's similar to saying we shouldn't have an article about Fundamental interactions or Elementary particles because we an article about particle physics. (Furthermore, For some weird reason, there isn't even overlap between the pages. Climatology only mentions climate change once, and then only in the context of future climate change). Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:03, 20 October 2019 (UTC)
• Sources???? @SmokeyJoe, I'm thrilled to see new subject editors in the climate pages, regardless of prior subject knowledge. Welcome! I recognize your name from Wikipedia space, but not the climate pages and to your credit your userspace says you edit outside your areas of expertise. That's awesome! But it still requires following our core content policies. Where do you get the idea that climate change is a subset of climate changeability? Just working from my gut, I supppose Sex change is a subset of Sex changeability. A hypothetical patient could be told "sorry, won't work". But I would be making stuff up. Likewise Earth's orbit is a subset of Earth's orbitability. So when I hear a new topic editor toss out a claim that I've never heard or seen, I am dubious. As you may know the IPCC's every-seven-years literature reviews are prepared in three parts. THe first part is the scientific basis of climate change. The most recent one is the Fifth Assessment Report, where WG1's contribution is over 1500 pages long. The phrase "climate changeability" is not even in the top science panel mega seven year literature review. Sure, you can find that phrase in a mere 1750 regular google hits. Moving to GoogleScholar, there are only 48 hits on that phrase since 2015. But I feel like you're inserting opinions while shooting a bit from the hip. Can you provide a rock solid RS that climate change is a subset of "climate changeability"? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 10:49, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

Why are you ranting about “climate changeability”. I said consider climatology. I see the issue as laid out in the proposal, but I don’t think the proposed climate change (general concept) is serious. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:22, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

I'm asking for RSs to support the first thing you said to support your merge proposal, i.e., your naked assertion that The general concept of climate change is a subset of climate changeability.... I and (hopefully THE CLOSER) would like to know if your opinions are based on our core content policies, or are WP:Original research? If you'd like to take that back, no problem. Otherwise, please support it by showing RSs. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 12:39, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

• Strong support! We should consider merging the content of this article into Climatology. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:43, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

Would you then also want to merge fundamental particles into particle physics? Do you see the analogy? An important topic of research from a research discipline should never be solily discussed in that discipline's page. Femke Nijsse (talk) 07:14, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

Fundamental particles and particle physics don’t have severe title and scope issues, as does climate change. Your third sentence doesn’t make sense. Could you rephrase it please? —SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:23, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

The reason fundamental particles is called that and not simply particles, is to make sure it doesn't have severe title and scope issues. They decided to go for a natural disambiguation. We don't seem to be able to do this. We should surely follow them and allow a page on the clear technical definition of climate change. To remind you, the IPCC and other equally high quality technical RSs define it as: Climate change refers to a change in the state of the climate that can be identified (e.g., by using statistical tests) by changes in the mean and/or the variability of its properties and that persists for an extended period, typically decades or longer. Climate change may be due to natural internal processes or external forcings such as modulations of the solar cycles, volcanic eruptions and persistent anthropogenic changes in the composition of the atmosphere or in land use and all note one alternative definition: current human-caused climate change.

In terms of WP:CIVILITY, could you rephrase 'doesn't make sense' to 'doesn't make sense to me'? I find it difficult to rephrase, as to me that sentence is perfectly clear, but I'll try. We have a climatology page, which is a page about the scientific field of climate science. In pages about disciplines we give an overview what those scientists study, how the field is related to other fields of science, what the history is of the field on science and a quick overview of topics studied by them. The content of these topics are not discussed in any detail. Climate change (general) is only one of the many topics studied by climatologists. Currently, it's not even mentioned on the page (only future climate change is). It's quite a big topic, and should be discussed somewhere in detail in this encyclopedia. If we decide to merge, which I am against at this stage, we should put it in an article about a topic studied by climatologists, namely the climate system article. There it can have 1/4 of a page, instead of a single sentence. Femke Nijsse (talk) 09:09, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

• Premature, off topic, and wrong target We should first work through the rename proposal and then we can debate merging. The text will still be here, so there is no reason to undermine the rename logic-processing by simultaneously debating other related tangents. Merging has its own set of policies, and trying out a different name will provide additional data for weighing the merits of merging (specifically how will a different name impact reader confusion?). When it becomes timely to talk about merging, a better target is described in this very talk page in section #Alternative_-_Merge_this_content_to_Climate_system NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 01:08, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

• Strong oppose. Burying the worldly phenomenon "Climate change" inside the broader field of study "Climatology" discredits the importance of "climate change (general concept)". Also, per NAEG above, urges to "consider" a merger are indeed off-topic, and promote endless inaction on a long-existing problem (namely, readers arriving at "climate change" when they're actually searching for content that has long been in "Global warming". —RCraig09 (talk) 03:45, 22 October 2019 (UTC)
  • The problem is that this page doesn’t focus on what you consider to be “climate change”. The scope of the page corresponds to climatology, and unfortunately a number of other content forking pages. What you mean by climate change is covered at Global warming. This page should be merged into climatology, freeing the title to redirect to Global warming, or vice versa, or something similar. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:24, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

@SmokeyJoe, Your apparent goal of "freeing the title ('climate change') to redirect to Global warming, or vice versa, or something similar would also be accomplished by the original rename proposal moving Climate change to Climate change (general concept), and if there continue to be reasons to merge the content anywhere that discussion can happen anytime. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 21:32, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

@SmokeyJoe, further to NAEG: the fact that "CC" doesn't focus on what common- and RS-usage^{not "me"} consider to be climate change, plus the fact that the scope of the content of "CC" concerns the many important findings of climatology and not the scientific discipline itself, convinces that "CC" should be renamed "CC(GenCon)" now.Argue merging later. —RCraig09 (talk) 21:55, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

I do not support "Climate change (general concept)" as a title, both as a bad title, and because this is a path of worsening content forking. The hardest part of a restructure is merging, forking is going the wrong way. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:52, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

When people toss out rule links without even attempting to show HOW they apply, its called WP:VAGUEWAVE, in this case you didn't even bother to cite the rule but I will.... At WP:Content forking we find the TOC lists several examples of acceptable forks. VAGUEWAVES of this sort should just be discarded by any closer. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 23:36, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

@SmokeyJoe, "bad title" does not constitute reasoning. Further, renaming "CC"-->"CC(GenCon)" takes the CC general concept in one direction, and an ensuing redirect "CC"-->"GW&CC" takes the popular-use concept in another direction; collectively, the two actions do not constitute content-forking since the two contents are distinct, not the same. —RCraig09 (talk) 03:32, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

@SJ: I've deleted the third paragraph in the lede about climatology, as it (A) is not mentioned prominently in articles and books about climate change in general and (B) it's not mentioned much in our article, so doesn't conform with the aim of a lede to summarize the article. I think much of your confusion about how related these terms are might have come from this paragraph. Also added some space to discuss specific instances of climate change, as our sources seem to do this a lot. Femke Nijsse (talk) 07:14, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

User:Femkemilene, I agree with that edit. I would go further, cutting a lot. Basically everything in the article I continue to read as belonging in climatology, or clunky summaries of other pages with a feel of a high school poster, and some of that as somewhat random additions. The whole article can be cut and merged into climatology. Although much smaller, climatology is a better structured more logical article, and I think it would benefit from everything of value in Climate change that does not belong in Global warming. Are you really attached to “Climate change (general concept)”? What material do you see as belong in it that has no other article to host it. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:05, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

Very short answer: yes, I think a separate article is helpful. I agree with you that (A) more cruft can be cut and (B) the quality of the article is high school poster like. But: there is also quite a bit of information missing in comparison with the chapters on climate change in books about the climate system. I don't think much of the information can be copied to climatology but I will try to give an overview of important details that don't really fit in our climate system article. Stay tuned, I'll be back in 10 hours or so. Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:51, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

@SmokeyJoe.... Also agree many improvements can be made. I take the opposite view of one detail in your negative criticism... As to the level of writing I say "Hooray!" Since this content is a top-level WP:SUMMARY of a complex technical subject, if we target 1st year university and then apply WP:ONEDOWN, presenting it at a level easily understood by teenagers (i.e., 'high school') is perfect. Whatever other changes are made, that basic, intro-style language should be encouraged. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 09:56, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

My interpretation of the high school comment is not that it's aimed at 16-yr olds, but that it's quality of the article is as low as if it was written by a 16-yr old. The WP:ONEDOWN comment is something we can all agree on I think. Femke Nijsse (talk) 10:08, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

Today, I went to a physical library to get books about this (should I feel old?). I managed to get some books dealing with climate change and climatology. Many books about climate have a section about climatology in their introduction. I have completely restructured the climate change article (mostly following Burroughs) and also restructured the climatology page based on these sources. As you said, climatology would benefit for some of the info in this page, so I copied one of the lede paragraphs into it. There was no information about climatic changes on the climatology page, which was kinda strange, because it's identified as one of the three major topics of climatologists' research.

You asked me to identify what kind of information I would expect on a page about climate changes that I would not expect on a page about climatology (or the more specific climate system article). I consider Causes and Consequences to be the most important two sections in the climate change article, with the others mainly background info. From these sections, I would name the following waaay too detailed for climatology and also too detailed for an article about the climate system

• The theory of climate change due to a random walk process (random forcing) vs cyclical change (change caused by internal variability) (Updated 21:15, 24 October 2019 (UTC))
• Quantification of how strong volcanoes have to be to be considered strong
• Examples of how plate tectonics have changed climate
• The possible climate change as consequence of (A) meteor impact (B) nuclear war and (C) ionized particles
• A detailed explanation how climate change affects various aspects of flora
• Explanation what can happen to glaciers as a consequence of climate changes.

The fact that I was able to find multiple books with climate change as its topic also indicates that the topic deserves its own page. I found a good book about climatology: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=WhtZKBCv7NMC&printsec=frontcover&dq=climatology&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj1oIuglLLlAhXvShUIHRXTAysQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=climatology&f=false. Reading its index, it's clear that only half of 15 chapters is dedicated to cliamte change.

I do think your comments have led to big improvements in the structure of the two articles. Thanks! Femke Nijsse (talk) 19:42, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

@SmokeyJoe:: I've worked boldly over the last few days to improve both articles, using actual secondary sources that cover the entire subjects (this seemed not really done before). I'm starting to understand better your idea that the two pages overlapped a lot, and have de-emphasized background information (akin to climatology) from the climate change page. Considering my argumentation above and these restructures, have I managed to convince you that these two pages merit their own articles? Femke Nijsse (talk) 07:43, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, Femke, for listening and responding. I think this is productive, I think you are doing very good stuff. Let me jump straight to the problems. You have moved the conversation from climatology to climate system. Why? In terms of a "general concept" article, I still think that "climatology" is the obvious title for it. The -ology tells most English speakers clearly that this is probably a scientific general approach article. The title asserts no more than that there is a thing such as climate, and that people study it, formally. Climate system sounds like a subtopic of climate. I think it is redundant, and ask "where was the consensus established to spin it out (WP:SPINOUT)?" There is a awful lot of redundancy at play, also called content forking, and WP:Reference bombing (not quite the accurate essay as the question is not notability, but it is the related question "does thistopic warrant a stand alone article"). WP:Reference bombing is largely on point on the question of too many highly focused citations, probably being used as primary sources for the thing being cited, and this sitting poorly with WP:PSTS. Excessing fine referencing and PSTS trouble is a feature of unjustified WP:SPINOUTs. Climate change and Global warming are two highly connected terms, too highly connected too, and both are subtopics of climatology, being climatology as applied to the post industrial world. The current content at climate change does not belong under that title, I still say "Merge to climatology". Global warming is climatology applied to the post industrial world plus implications (eg. #Effects, and #Responses). Climate change and Global warming are synonyms, too close for them to title two separate full length articles. Personally, I prefer Global warming --> Climate change over Climate change --> Global warming because climate change is more broad, it includes all of global warming, it is a notch less POV of a title,and because many aspects of global warming do not involve local global warming. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:56, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

The main point of your various concerns with our set of general articles, is that you believe they overlap too much, right? That per WP:MERGEREASON 2, (some of the) pages should be merged. I very much agree with you on the need to prevent forks and highly overlapping articles, and have undertaking various merges myself to make sure of that. I would consider merging for overlap reasons if the overlap is >70%/80%. I don't think for any of the articles this is the case. Using the three books I have about climatology (Rohli, Robinson, Wang), I conclude that they dedicate about 6%-21% of their space to climate change (about half current, half general or paleo). Conversely, the books I have about climate change (Burroughs, most of Ruddiman) only dedicate about 0-5% of their chapters to the scientific field of climatology (history & scope) and another 10-27% to background information studied by climatologists (f.i. data gathering, components climate system). For the sake of not discussion everything at once, I'll move the conversation back to discussion only the climatology/climate change merge. You say that in terms of a general concept article, climatology is the most obvious title for it. But with climate change being only one of many topics within climatology, this a is misplaced.

I have given an overview of topics that are discussed in books about climate change, but are too specialized to be discussed in books about climatology. Can you confirm whether you think they should either not be mentioned at all, or mentioned in the climatology page?

I understand what you mean by WP:PSTS (even though the text is about something else). Historically, a lot of the climate pages have been constructed using primary sources (that were not really understood by the editors). My trip to the library this week was to make sure that we have a set of proper secondary sources about the set of topics under discussion. Note scientific articles can be used as secondary sources as they almost always contain a literature analysis in their introduction.

I agree that climate change is used mostly in its narrow sense as a synonym for global warming. I agree that if we choose between climate change and global warming, the former is (a) scientifically more accurate and (b) more widely used. We might have to compromise on conciseness if people are too worried about neutrality issues or preciseness and call it 'global warming and climate change'. Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:42, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

(Addition.) Your insistence that the topic of investigation of a scientific field and the 'scientific field in itself' can be one and the same page had me looking. We have a few examples where this is the case, for instance optics and quantum mechanics and quite a few where this isn't the case history has Human history, biology has living organism, Earth science has Earth. There is a subfield/focus field/subcategory of climatology called climate change science. Would you agree that this is a better target for the content in this page compared to climatology? Femke Nijsse (talk) 09:38, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

@SmokeyJoe: You may have missed this contribution. Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:49, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

OK, I'd like to see you continue, except I oppose the rename to Climate change (general concept). A bad step is not excused by it being a small step. WP:TITLECHANGES. Excessive page moves causes trouble. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:29, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

@SmokeyJoe: Sorry to be a asking for yet another clarification of something that is already 90% clear. Could you translate that OK for me? My translation is: (A) You are not in favour of a merge with climatology anymore (B) You now prefer a small rescoping and move to climate change science (C) You think climate change (general concept) is a step in the wrong direction (OR) you think it is an ugly step in the right direction that will make it more difficult to find the right article name? My reading of the situation is that it is going to be MORE easy to move the page from climate change (general concept) to a better title because the whole discussion of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC doesn't have to be redone.

You have shifted you opinion on the matter quite drastically over the course of this discussion (which requires a form of bravery). Would you be willing to adjust your motivation for you oppose of the rename to make it easier for the closer to see this? Femke Nijsse (talk) 07:53, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

Hi Femke Nijsse. What opinion have I shifted? I think more likely than somewhere I was unclear.

(A) You are not in favour of a merge with climatology anymore. No. I do favour it. I have not yet comprehended why you do not agree. You write sensibly, but a book on climatology will of course digress into things well beyond the scope of a single Wikipedia article (A 30 and 40 minutes read. I am not obsessed with sending all the material there, but I think it is better to send the core of this there than to climate system. Maybe the content needs to go to multiple pages, though I think that there is a lot of material here that doesn’t need to be preserved. The underlying point, which I think we share, is that the current material should be separated from this title.

(B). You now prefer a small rescoping and move to climate change science? I don’t remember that idea at all. Did I say that?? I guess it is a possibility. I think I prefer improving climatology to speak to “climate change science” before considering spinning out that article. I think there are too many unstructured articles on climate change.

(C) I think climate change (general concept) is the wrong direction, because it represents preserving the current content, which is bad because it contains redundancy with other articles, and worse because I think it will collect even more forked material, starting with trying to explain “general concept”. Yes, it is ugly.

I don’t agree that PRIMARYTOPIC applies, as there are not multiple different topics for the term. Just variations on the definition. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:53, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for your clarification. My interpretation of your OK was quite wrong (I though it was an OK of shifting opinion) and it's good to know that.

(A) A summary of the books about climatology is exactly what Wikipedia is. That's why I'm referring to chapters, not to individual facts on pages in determining how much overlap there is between the two topics. Also, if you give me an overview of details in this page that you consider discardable, I can go over them and remove those I agree with or give a rationale why I would like to see them covered on a page like this.

(B) Feel free to drop me pointers towards other unstructured articles about climate change on my talk page. Merged two unstructured pages into structured pages this month alone. In the history and scope sections, I'll add some introductory sentences containing the words climate change science when I find good secondary sources about it. I think that if we develop climatology to a featured article, there is still only about 5 paragraphs on climate change science and it won't contain the information about climatic change I deem essential from this page (summarizing the books about this topic).

(C) I don't think it represents preserving current content. A merge discussion can always be held afterwards. It becomes possibly even easier to do it, as the article's title is less natural so people are possibly more willing to consider change.

I think we're getting close to the point where we should agree to disagree and letting consensus be determined, wouldn't you say so? Femke Nijsse (talk) 13:15, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

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