Talk:Climate change/Archive 84

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Request for comment: Adding a sentence about reductions of deaths due to pollution in Effects Section (under Humans part)

Should the sentence below be added under Climate_change#Humans section?

"Moreover, decreased air pollution that would result from limiting global warming to 1.5 °C (or 2 °C without negative emissions) could prevent an estimated 153 million premature deaths worldwide over the remainder of 21st century, compared to base 2°C scenario which assumes large-scale carbon dioxide removal." Bogazicili (talk) 20:52, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

My reasons for inclusion:

1) Relevant to climate change per source. See full article [1]

2) Notable. 62 citations already for a 2018 article [2]. Widely reported on media. Eg: [3] [4] (even a tabloid like Daily Mail [5])

3) This topic has NOT been mentioned in the article. Also currently, many smaller number have been mentioned in this section (such as small percentage declines in fish stocks). This is massive impact in terms of human life.

4) It makes organizational sense to add this sentence here, so all human effects of climate change (or effects of limiting climate change) can be under Humans section. Bogazicili (talk) 20:53, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Oppose as is 1) the location isn't right, as air pollution is not an effect of climate change. Our most prominent source on climate change and health, the Lancet countdown, puts it under mitigation: 2) it's a primary source, and insofar possible, this article should be based on secondary and tertiary sources. 3) it compares two relatively ambitious scenarios, and I think comparing a 'business as usual' scenario to an ambitious scenario is more insightful. 4) I agree that the two mentions of the word air pollution in the article are insufficient and open to the suggestion that puts it into the mitigation section. Femke Nijsse (talk) 06:50, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

What?? The following sentence in the Lancet Countdown

"These effects accumulate over time, and into adulthood, with global deaths attributable to ambient fine particulate matter (PM2·5) remaining at 2·9 million in 2016 (indicator 3.3.2) and total global air pollution deaths reaching 7 million."

is under "The impacts of climate change on human health" section. Bogazicili (talk) 20:24, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

That is a sentence from the introduction. If you look at the structure of the article you will find information about air pollution in section 3: mitigation actions and health benefits. Femke Nijsse (talk) 20:31, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

They have a giant section about benefits of mitigation, this article doesn't. Therefore, looking at their summary structure makes more sense. Mitigation section in this article talks about mechanics of mitigation only. Therefore I'm opposed to putting and "burying" this information in that section. Unless you are ok with adding an entire benefits of mitigation section. It could be multiple paragraphs, talking about health benefits, economics, etc. Bogazicili (talk) 20:35, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

Upon second thought, I do think it can be included in the section about human impacts of climate change if we include the fact that climate change makes air pollution worse (because of temperature dependent chemical reactions, which we would leave out to keep the article simple). If you formulate a sentence based on the Lancet report, I'm likely to support. Femke Nijsse (talk) 09:24, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

Not sure where that sentence is in that report, feel free to add below.Bogazicili (talk) 22:11, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

Oppose as is We need to use consensus science based as much as possible on current reality. I don't want to see the 153 million number used- it's an unreliable, alarmist number based on assumptions as to how two alternate future realities will play out. It's based on a single study and presented without context and putting it in an overview article like this undermines the reliability of the entire article. Femke suggested stating current estimates of deaths from air pollution and saying that climate change mitigation could help reduce that number, which I think is a much better way to present the idea. As to which section the information should go in, I have no preference. Efbrazil (talk) 13:45, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Oppose as is reluctantly as the proposer has put a lot of work in and I agree that this is a very important connection. I think that in a top level article like this as many as possible of the scientific papers should be free access so that everyone could drill down and criticise the details whereas this one is not free to everyone. I have only read the abstract. However the proposer is right that the connection between air pollution and climate change is important enough that there should be a third mention of air pollution in this article. I hope to add something now about air pollution to Politics of climate change and if it survives scrutiny it could perhaps later be shortened for the politics section here. I have now also cited the paper in Economics of climate change. Chidgk1 (talk) 16:31, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

So there seems to be agreement about mentioning annual population deaths and mentioning the possible reduction. Is there anyone else besides Femkemilene who oppose for this sentence to be inserted under Humans section? This information in the Lancet Countdown linked above is also under a similar section. Bogazicili (talk) 20:26, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

Here's my current suggestion:

Air pollution causes the deaths of around 7 million people worldwide each year, and decreasing fossil fuel related emissions to combat climate will reduce the number of these premature deaths.

Bogazicili (talk) 22:11, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

Support with modification A better source from the WHO is here: https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution#tab=tab_2 . It states that 4.2 million people die per year from ambient air pollution and actually draws a direct connection to how climate change mitigation can help with those numbers. Another phrasing from the WHO is "Worldwide, ambient air pollution contributes to 7.6% of all deaths in 2016", which WHO presents here: https://www.who.int/gho/phe/outdoor_air_pollution/burden/en/

The 7 million number is an older source (2012) and is grouping in indoor air pollution, which is caused by wood and coal cook stoves. Someone arguing for coal power would say that we should build lots more coal power plants to electrify poorer nations ASAP so people stop using dirty cook stoves. I support adding the sentence if you use the 4.2 million number or the 7.6% number and link to the newer WHO sources. I do not know that the other sources are necessary to make the point. Efbrazil (talk) 16:29, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

after another addition air-pollution in the main text that didn't meet our high standards, I added the following sentence taking into account all of your input:

Air pollution, caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels and worsened by climate change, is responsible for millions of deaths per year

I have removed the part of the sentence that reducing fossil fuel combustion would reduce mortality, as it's an open door (is that English? I mean, it's super clear from the first part of the sentence). I furthermore decided to use the best source we have, and not introduce an exact number to make the sentence still valid in a couple years. A concrete number might work as well, it will just give us more work in the future and is not necessary. Femke Nijsse (talk) 07:37, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I'm not happy with that compromise. The location breaks up the paragraph, which is otherwise focused on climate change impacts on health. The first sentence is about climate change impacts on health, then the later sentences go into detail on how climate change impacts health. Breaking that up with a number that is currently 17X larger in terms of deaths (4.2 million vs 250K) and then not going into any detail just doesn't make sense to me.

I think the only resolution here is to give air pollution its own paragraph, because it really is separate from climate change and is clearly an important idea based on the numbers. I reviewed the WHO site some more and they have better links to more detailed information, which I included in an updated paragraph. I prefer using the WHO because it's not behind a registration wall and will be recognized as more authoritative and acccessible by the audience that is going to be looking at wikipedia. Here's the text which I updated the article with:

In addition to deaths caused by climate change, the WHO estimates that the related issue of ambient air pollution currently causes 4.2 million deaths per year due to stroke, heart disease, lung cancer, and respiratory diseases. The primary cause of these deaths is fine particulate matter produced by fuel combustion. The WHO therefor states that "Policies to reduce air pollution offer a "win-win" strategy for both climate and health, lowering the burden of disease attributable to air pollution, as well as contributing to the near- and long-term mitigation of climate change."

Efbrazil (talk) 15:30, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

I think this is a strong deterioration. This is a section about the effects of climate change on humans, so it's a stretch to put air pollution in there. You can put it in the article about sustainable energy. We should not have an entire paragraph about this. Also, this type of sourcing will not work if we ever want to submit this to the WikiJournal of Science. I'm fine with using grey literature instead of proper peer-reviewed review articles, but not having the public website that doesn't contain any information about how they reached those conclusions. Also, that quote is just unnecessary and way too long. Femke Nijsse (talk) 15:39, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

the WHO website is about air pollution, not about climate change, giving another indication that this is really not due here in this subsection. Femke Nijsse (talk) 15:45, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

I understand not wanting to overshift emphasis, but your solution really didn't work. You can't just stuff the air pollution number into the other paragraph- it's a number almost 17X bigger than the climate change number and it didn't match up with any of the other information in that paragraph. Air pollution is a separate idea and it needs its own paragraph. I included the long quote to clearly draw the connection to climate change, but I have no objection to it being compressed. I compressed the quote below and edited the page to match. Please make a counter proposal if you don't like the solution. Efbrazil (talk) 17:05, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

In addition to deaths caused by climate change, the WHO estimates that the related issue of ambient air pollution currently causes 4.2 million deaths per year due to stroke, heart disease, lung cancer, and respiratory diseases. The primary cause of these deaths is fine particulate matter produced by fuel combustion. The WHO therefor states that "policies to reduce air pollution offer a "win-win" strategy for both climate and health".

--Efbrazil (talk) 17:05, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

I agree with Femke that this paragraph is a deterioration of the article where it is currently located. Although Bogazicili has a good point about the important co-benefit of reduced air pollution deaths from climate change mitigation efforts (and I think this concept should be included in the article), and while Efbrazil has done a good job with crafting language describing that, I think the current placement in the Humans section is not the right place. I think a slightly revised version of this sentence, placed as part of a second paragraph in the Mitigation>Policies and Measures subsection, or as part of a newly include Mitigation>“costs and benefits” subsection, would be a better choice. I still prefer the original WHO language that I had proposed back in June (excluding the originally proposed dollar numbers), as it is more focused, but maybe some of what Efbrazil has written could also be included. I would suggest adding an “Opportunities from Mitigation” (or some similar language) subsection in the Mitigation section, and would defer to Femke for how best to title that subsection. Then this type of language should be inserted there.Dtetta (talk) 17:25, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

I understand the desire to move this to the mitigation section, but that's gonna be a lot of work to get right. Nothing else in mitigation addresses human health, so you're kind of opening a can of worms by putting it there- at least putting in the human health section has the advantage of pairing the numbers correctly with other WHO morbidity numbers related to climate change. The mitigation section is also really the worst in the article at this point, with a lot of redundancy and no clear distinctions between the subsections (Technologies and other methods, Scenarios and strategies for 2050, Policies and measures). We also way underplay the importance on nuclear power relative to renewables in there, reflecting a strong liberal bias in the content. I can't take all that on now, but that's probably the next area to rethink. Efbrazil (talk) 18:53, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

I don’t think what I am proposing is a lot of work at all ...one of the alternatives involves simply moving the paragraph and slightly revising it. Whatever you think of the Mitigation section (and I see that you provided no comments during the three weeks when the section was under active review in May), I still think that it is the most appropriate place to talk about this concept. Within the scope of this article I would most accurately characterize this paragraph as a co-benefit of mitigation. It is definitely not an effect of climate change as currently described, although if there was a description of how climate change can worsen air pollution (and therefore increase the number of air pollution related deaths) that might be a legitimate addition to the Humans section. I would like to move what you have written to the second paragraph in the Mitigation>Policies and Measures subsection, with a few additional edits, unless there are strong objections to doing that. I think that is an ok (if not optimal) place for it, it gets the idea into the article without confusing the flow of ideas in the Humans section, and we can then figure out what further changes need to be made to the Mitigation section as a whole.Dtetta (talk) 21:41, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

OK, I did the move. It also restores the human impacts section, which is well written. I'll take a crack a mitigation soon, sorry I missed the review in May. Efbrazil (talk) 23:56, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

Didn't see the language added to the Mitigation>Policies and Measures subsection, so I just added it.Dtetta (talk) 06:57, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

Thanks guys, one issue sorted out. I'm less certain about the second issue, whether to qualify the public website of the WHO as a high quality reliable source (HQRS), which are required to meet the FA criteria. I will ask the experts instead of going on about it here. Femke Nijsse (talk) 07:46, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

Dtetta- you just missed it, it was moved, you added a second copy! Femke cleaned it up. Efbrazil (talk) 14:10, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

Oops - sorry about that! Femke makes a good point about sourcing the 4.2 million number and the 2050 estimate, since these are pretty significant numbers. We could reference the underlying Lancet study and the WHO COP24 study, p. 27, if we want to provide better sources for these figures.Dtetta (talk) 14:29, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

I actually wrote to the WHO about those numbers, since I don't see why only a million will be saved of the 4.2 million. Meeting Paris by 2050 effectively means eliminating fossil fuel use, and that should save the bulk of the 4.2 million, right? Anyhow, I think the 1 million number is the one to go with for now, since that's what WHO published that was directly connected to climate change (we could cut out the 4.2 million number from the article). If you are up for improving the info by diving in on the numbers more, please do. Efbrazil (talk) 14:44, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for taking that extra step, and good point about the math. I’ll work on some additional refinements, including revising the citations, over the next couple of days. Would love to know if you hear back from the WHO:)Dtetta (talk) 15:00, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

References

Hi all, I am sorry for arriving late, but I see you have already made the change and the RFC is still in place. Please remove it once you are done. I have a note, though. The new addition is a violation of WP:NPOV and you need to either reword it to sound like a possibility, rather than a fact, or supplement the WHO report with several others that give a range. Further, you should not find the reports to use, there should be a secondary source out there that tells us the range of results from various studies. These are all simulations of chaotic systems, I hope I don't have to tell anyone that the numbers don't really mean much. They point to a problem, but say nothing definitively. This is why Wikipedia strives to give the point of view on scientific topics as it is accepted by the scientific community, not by politicians. Simulations and scenarios are important but depend on parameters we make up, they are not reliable sources for use in making bold claims. When it comes time for feature article review, this statement must have been fixed, it is not proper for a featured article, which must be exhaustive. Thanks! Footlessmouse (talk) 03:32, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

If anyone is still paying attention to this, I don't think I made myself clear in my first post, this is the problem statement Reducing air pollution from the burning of fossil fuels will have significant co-benefits in terms of lives saved. It must be qualified with secondary sources at the least, but it would almost certainly be better to be rewritten to be less definite. A simple could would fix the problem, you need a lot more than a political report to say something definitive like that. Footlessmouse (talk) 09:41, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Hello foodlessmouse. Thanks for chiming in. I agree that we should use secondary sources and that the current sourcing is not sufficient. We have a secondary source in the 2019 Lancet report which uses definite language to describe life saved by reducing air pollution. (f.i. Coal phase­out is essential, not only as a key measure to mitigate climate change, but also to reduce morbidity and mortality from air pollution.). Only when talking about specific numbers do they use the word could. Unfortunately, they do not make clear whether they are acting as a primary source or secondary source when describing the actual number of premature deaths, 2.9 million in 2016. Femke Nijsse (talk) 10:15, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

@Femkemilene: thanks for getting back to me. There is a fair argument to be made that it's universal knowledge and we can just state such things citing the reports. My reservation is that the topic has become quite political and we need to strive for neutrality at all times. The NPOV should align with scientific consensus, so the underlying point is good, it's just a matter of emphasis. It would be great if we could find another source that loosely says "most experts agree...", as that would maintain the definitiveness of the statement but from a more NPOV. Footlessmouse (talk) 11:43, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

I believe this article in nature communications is the underlying source for the WHO reports and statements on this estimate. So I can replace the citation with this, if that seems appropriate, and then modify the language.Dtetta (talk) 04:49, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

I've updated the paragraph with all the secondary sources that we collected here. Although it is important to be able to trace the primary sources to establish whether the secondary sources are reliable (unreliable sources often don't point towards the source of their claims), they are almost always unsuitable to be cited directly in this article. I hope this can conclude the request for comments. Femke Nijsse (talk) 15:50, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Steel, aluminium and fertiliser

MurrayScience: Our article currently states Additional CO2 emissions come from deforestation and industrial processes, which include the CO2 released by the chemical reactions for making cement, steel, aluminum, and fertilizer.. The statement is however not fully supported by the (5!) sources and I believe also partially WP:UNDUE.

1. The source for steel production is not high quality. The website seems to be made by a hobbyist.
2. None of the sources indicate that the industrial production of fertiliser causes CO2 emissions. They do mentioned that methane and N2O are emitted after application of fertiliser .
3. None of the sources indicate that theindustrial process of aluminium production causes CO2 emissions.

• Surely if the steel production process, aluminium production process and fertiliser production process themselves are an important sources of CO2 (in contrast to energy used by the production, which is an important source and already mentioned a paragraph later), more sources should mention this. We have a report of 70 pages that describes greenhouse gas emissions (the Olivier source), which fails to mention this. That fact alone makes me conclude these three industrial processes should not be mentioned alongside with cement. The other high quality source about the carbon budget is. This source has a passing mention of process emissions of fertilisers, does not mention aluminium at all and I don't understand what it has to say in passing about steel. Given the fact that these processes are barely mentioned in very long documents that we need to summarise in a few sentences, I think it is very clear that adding those is undue for our article.
• It has been reiterated that the technical level of this article shouldn't be too high. I think most people will be unfamiliar with chemical processes producing CO2, so we shouldn't try to put it in unless necessary. Femke Nijsse (talk) 17:01, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

If you give me some time (five days or so) I can get super high-quality sources for these. In the meantime, all you have to do is click the wikilinks. MurrayScience (talk) 17:08, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Turns out I didn't feel like waiting. And if that Olivier source doesn't mention these things - I guess all that says about it is that it wasn't so high quality after all. Thanks for keeping me to high standards in terms of citations. MurrayScience (talk) 17:30, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

I'm learning a lot, so thanks for getting all the sources. I was unaware that fertiliser is made with fossil-fuel derived hydrogen.

However, I'm not quite happy with this result: you've not addressed my point about these things being WP:DUE and WP:OVERCITATION. Having reviewed many of the sources you have specified and digging a bit myself, I'm getting convinced that the inclusion of steel is a matter of preference (and as you seem to have a big preference for inclusion, I'm totally okay with that). It is actually properly sourced to the EPA source, but unfortunately a bit hidden as you have to click carbon dioxide. Shall we:

a) leave out aluminium (I've never seen it in overview sources, and the sources you provide aren't quite appropriate; they are not overview sources and cannot be used to show that something is due).

b) remove (1) the Oertel source (not really used in the sentence), (2) remov the BBC source; news sources should not be used as the primary source for scientific facts + it's not an overview source. Remove the (3, 4) aluminium sources..

c) cite Friedlichstein as the overview source for fertiliser (neutral towards that news article; it's well-written, but a news article)

if we can agree to this, I'm willing to put everything in the correct formatting. Femke Nijsse (talk) 18:53, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

• When we need nearly zero emissions, there’s no such thing as an unimportant source, if it’s at least 0.5%. MurrayScience (talk) 20:53, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
• Here's a (by the way an absolutely fantastic - and recent - overview source) with aluminum [6] MurrayScience (talk) 21:20, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Our world in data always has pretty and insightful graphs. However, the graph indicates that non-energy emissions (the 5.2%) are mostly in cement and chemicals. The steel and aluminium emissions fall under the energy emission category. We already have a sentence about embedded emissions, one paragraph further: These emissions take into account the embodied fossil fuel energy in manufacturing materials including metals (e.g. steel, aluminum), concrete, glass, and plastic, which are largely used in buildings, infrastructure, and transportation. This very detailed graph strengthens me in believing that aluminium and possibly steel should not be mentioned alongside cement, but fertiliser is okay.

Furthermore, , it isn't really up to us to decide what important emission sources are; we should follow the literature. We have now collected five reliable sources on emissions (EPA, IPCC SR15, Friedlichstein, Olivier, Our world in Data); and none mention the non-energy emissions of aluminium. Femke Nijsse (talk) 07:51, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

The sentence falls under industrial process ‘chemical reactions’, and if that’s the case, aluminum is very clearly one of those (hall heroult, water gas shift reaction) and it’s only one singular word. I think it would actually be misleading to not include it in that sentence, especially when, if you go to the aluminum smelting page, I think it cites 14 tons of co2 for every ton of aluminum produced. The point is that the co2 is not emitted just from the electricity generation that runs the electricity through the reaction, but also the electrolytic reaction itself. One single word that links to the more in depth wiki article which explains it - seems good to me. If we wanted to we could include the kraft process to make paper, but we didn’t. So I suppose that was my compromise. Sources agree and it is important that we discuss the industrial processes where fossil fuels can sometimes be used as chemical feedstocks (as in coke being a reducing agent to remove the oxygen from Iron ore) in addition to being used as ‘fuels’ - energy to power the reaction. Here we focus on the chemical feedstock - the C is provided by coke to reduce aluminum ore and comes out as co2. MurrayScience (talk) 09:15, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Also why didn’t those sources mention it, maybe they didn’t do their research carefully enough? Maybe they think that we can just smelt iron ore with hydrogen fuel - but then where’s the hydrogen going to come from? I’m not going to purposefully reduce the quality of the article just because some seemingly high quality sources weren’t actually so great, especially when there’s hundreds of activities - it’s honestly quite hard for them. For example, how many high quality sources mention the carbon emitted from soil, how many mention crop burning, or rice production, the our world in data does, but I’m sure other ‘great’ sources - when you have to get every single source of emissions - might miss a few things. As in the case of airplanes, the our world in data left out the effect of contrails, which actually has a slightly more radiative forcing than all of the co2 emitted. People make mistakes - because it’s super complicated - but we don’t have to force ourselves into the mistakes of others. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-04068-0 MurrayScience (talk) 09:21, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

If you can find any high quality reliable overview source for aluminium, I'm happy to go with it, but you haven't. We can go for a different chemical process, such as plastic, which is explicitly mentioned by Our World in Data. The textual description in OWiD of chemicals clearly doesn't refer to aluminium. I'm really trying to find an excuse to go with your text, but I haven't found one. Femke Nijsse (talk) 09:36, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

References

Reorganizing the mitigation section

I think the first and second subtopics under mitigation are confusing and overlapping.

"Technologies and other methods": Why is transport not in that area? Changes to be made in transport are very technology driven. What is "and other methods" supposed to mean? Aren't "policies and measures" another method?

"Scenarios and strategies for 2050": All the stuff in the "technologies and other methods" could be in here, plus all the stuff under "policies and measures". Instead, we have transportation and agriculture in there, for no reason I can see. It's better to break things down clearly, then conclude sections by talking about 2050 changes needed.

After reviewing how the UN gap report organizes things, I think we should rename the first and second subtopics like this:

Mitigation

• Technologies and other methods --> Alternatives to fossil fuels
• Scenarios and strategies for 2050 --> Decarbonization
• Policies and measures

I think those 2 new topics offer a clear divide, and you can see that in how content pretty easily reorganizes on a paragraph by paragraph basis.

If you take P0 to be the first paragraph under "mitigation", there are 8 paragraphs before "policies and measures". P0 and P5 would go under the mitigation header, P1 P2 and P6 would go under Alternatives to fossil fuels, and Decarbonization would be p3 p7 p8 and p4. There would need to be a few wording tweaks, but I think the change could be pretty seamless and the end result would be a lot easier to process.

Thoughts? Efbrazil (talk) 23:16, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

I agree with you that the current structure isn't optimal, and I've probably contributed to that. I understand where you're going, and I think your suggestions makes some sort of sense, but I'm not sure they're there yet. Decarbonisation includes the move away from fossil fuels. Furthermore, we might need to change sourcing if we want P6 in a different section, as it's very much part of the idea of decarbonisation pathway. I propose we change your suggested heading from decarbonisation to decarbonisation pathways. Furthermore, I propose Dtetta to take the lead in any shuffling, because they are most familiar with the used sources. If you would really like to do it yourself, please do take care to read the sources you're using very carefully. Femke Nijsse (talk) 19:08, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Dtetta, you want to take a crack at this? I'm happy with Decarbonization --> Decarbonisation pathways (is better to go with a z or an s? British use a Z, USA uses an S). Efbrazil (talk) 20:11, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

We use European English on this page, so z. Femke Nijsse (talk) 20:19, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

Efbrazil - I would be willing to try to help do some reorganizing, but I have a few things I would like to clarify, starting with my thoughts behind the current structure.

• The “Technologies and Other Methods Section” is compromise language based on Femke’s comments back in May…originally it was Technologies, Nature Based Methods, and Individual Actions. It was meant to describe pretty much what is currently in that subsection. I did neglect to cover nuclear and hydropower, as well as transportation (but I was including transportation in the scenarios section, along with energy codes and other types of societal actions). To me the main difference between the two subsections is that the first is focus on specific techniques, and the second focuses more on ways these are combined from a societal perspective to achieve the 2050 net zero goals. Policies and Measures is meant to discuss the kinds of specific governmental type policies that are used to move societies toward those 2050 scenarios. I’m sure there are other ways of organizing this set of ideas, but that was my perspective.
• Although this will be easier since most of the text is probably there, it will still take some time. I probably put in 90-100 hours on this in May, and I don’t think I can commit to nearly that kind of time right now. So, although I am somewhat reluctantly willing to work on this, I would find it easier to start with an outline of one sentence ideas for each of the sections you are envisioning. At a basic level, I count nine paragraphs to your eight, so I think listing key ideas would be a more organized way of developing consensus. I’d suggest you start by listing each section heading you are proposing and then list some short, one sentence paragraph themes under each.
• I think we need to bring some other people into the process who might be interested, including Hedgehoque, and Chidgk1, who participated in the May review, and MurrayScience, who had mentioned ideas on grid related issues earlier this year. Hoping they will respond to this comment. Of course all are welcome to comment.

Thanks for letting me know but for the foreseeable future I want to concentrate on the articles specific to Turkey as no one else is likely to write them (although I have had lots of useful criticism which I need to spend time fixing).Chidgk1 (talk) 06:17, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

• Glad you have been looking at the UN Gap report. I agree it is one of the most useful references for this, along with SR15,Ch.4, Teske 2019, and IPCC 2014:Mitigation of Climate Change Those were probably the most important for me in constructing much of the section. We should check and see if there are any other references not listed in current footnotes 203-237 that people think should be used for this new effort.
• We should be using a process similar to what I used in May, (which was based on what Femke did for Peer Review), in describing how we are addessing individual comments.
• I think if we can’t get consensus on the new organization, we should probably stick with the current version, and work on tweaking that based on input from the discussions that are created here.
• Can’t help but add that I think the effort we are putting into this might be better spent building out the Adaptation section.
• So I’m hoping as a next step you would be willing to work on that detailed outline.Dtetta (talk) 00:10, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

This is maybe me being naive, but I think you are over-estimating the amount of work here. It's literally a resorting of paragraphs I'm asking for. After the reorganization, there's some redundant information that could be cut back or merged, but it's not necessary. In a bold move, I just stepped in and made the edit. Nothing has been lost in the edit, just stuff moved around so that it's better organized. My feelings won't be hurt if you back it out, but please read it through first, as at least the current form gets the idea across. Better still, add to the edits if you see room for improvement. My edit got saved before I finished making my edit comment unfortunately (I pressed enter by mistake when typing the comment). Efbrazil (talk) 21:41, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Efbrazil So I am including your revised text here. Will take a look this weekend and provide comments. Don't really have a good idea why you made the changes you did. Definitely not the best way to do this.Dtetta (talk) 01:02, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Efbrazil I tried to revert your changes by undoing them in the history, but I am not sure if I did that correctly. So I re-edited the text in the article this morning to reflect the version on October 14 (left in your new title of “Decarbonization pathways”). If you could look at the text below and confirm that it’s the way you intended the edit to be I’d appreciate it...if there is an error in it, and it does not reflect your intended edit, please just correct the text below.Dtetta (talk) 15:20, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

---

Mitigation

The IPCC has stressed the need to keep global warming below 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) compared to pre-industrial levels in order to avoid some irreversible impacts. Climate change impacts can be mitigated by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and by enhancing the capacity of Earth's surface to absorb greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. In order to limit global warming to less than 1.5 °C with a high likelihood of success, the IPCC estimates that global greenhouse gas emissions will need to be net zero by 2050, or by 2070 with a 2 °C target. This will require far-reaching, systemic changes on an unprecedented scale in energy, land, cities, transport, buildings, and industry. To make progress towards a goal of limiting warming to 1.5 °C, the United Nations Environment Programme estimates that, within the next decade, countries will need to triple the amount of reductions they have committed to in their current Paris Agreements.

Energy alternatives to fossil fuels

Fossil fuels accounted for 80% of the world's energy in 2018, while the remaining share of power production was split between nuclear power, hydropower, and non-hydro renewables. Nuclear power has seen costs increasing amid stagnant power share, so that nuclear power generation is now several times more expensive per megawatt hour than wind and solar. Hydropower growth has been slowing and is set to decline further due to concerns about social and environmental impacts. Non-hydro renewable energy technologies include solar and wind power, bioenergy, and geothermal energy. Photovoltaic solar and wind, in particular, have seen substantial growth and progress over the last few years, such that they are currently among the cheapest sources of new power generation. Renewables represented 75% of all new electricity generation installed in 2019, with solar and wind constituting nearly all of that amount.

There are obstacles to the rapid development of renewable energy. Environmental and land use concerns are sometimes associated with large solar, wind and hydropower projects. Solar and wind power also require energy storage systems and other modifications to the electricity grid to operate effectively, although several storage technologies are now emerging to supplement the traditional use of pumped-storage hydropower. The use of rare-earth metals and other hazardous materials has also been raised as a concern with solar power. The use of bioenergy is often not carbon neutral, and may have negative consequences for food security, largely due to the amount of land required compared to other renewable energy options.

To achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, renewable energy would become the dominant form of electricity generation, rising to 85% or more by 2050 in some scenarios. The use of electricity for other needs, such as heating, would rise to the point where electricity becomes the largest form of overall energy supply by 2050. Investment in coal would be eliminated and coal use nearly phased out by 2050.

Decarbinisation pathways

Although there is no single pathway to limit global warming to 1.5 or 2 °C, most scenarios and strategies see a major increase in the use of renewable energy in combination with increased energy efficiency measures to generate the needed greenhouse gas reductions. To reduce pressures on ecosystems and enhance their carbon sequestration capabilities, changes would also be necessary in forestry and agriculture. Scenarios that limit global warming to 1.5 °C generally project the large scale use of CO₂ removal methods in addition to greenhouse gas reduction approaches.

Where energy production or CO₂-intensive heavy industries continue to produce waste CO₂, the gas can be captured and stored instead of being released to the atmosphere. Although costly, carbon capture and storage (CCS) may be able to play a significant role in limiting CO₂ emissions by mid-century. Earth's natural carbon sinks can be enhanced to sequester significantly larger amounts of CO₂ beyond naturally occurring levels. Forest preservation, reforestation and tree planting on non-forest lands are considered the most effective, although they raise food security concerns. Soil management on croplands and grasslands is another effective mitigation technique. As models disagree on the feasibility of land-based negative emissions methods for mitigation, strategies based on them are risky.

In transport, scenarios envision sharp increases in the market share of electric vehicles, low carbon fuel substitution for other transportation modes like shipping, and changes in transportation patterns that increase efficiency, for example increased public transport. Buildings will see additional electrification with the use of technologies like heat pumps, as well as continued energy efficiency improvements achieved via low energy building codes. Industrial efforts will focus on increasing the energy efficiency of production processes, such as the use of cleaner technology for cement production, designing and creating less energy intensive products, increasing product lifetimes, and developing incentives to reduce product demand.

The agriculture and forestry sector faces a triple challenge of limiting greenhouse gas emissions, preventing further conversion of forests to agricultural land, and meeting increases in world food demand. A suite of actions could reduce agriculture/forestry based greenhouse gas emissions by 66% from 2010 levels by reducing growth in demand for food and other agricultural products, increasing land productivity, protecting and restoring forests, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural production.

Individuals can also take actions to reduce their carbon footprint. These include: driving an electric or other energy efficient car, reducing vehicles miles by using mass transit or cycling, adopting a plant-based diet, reducing energy use in the home, limiting consumption of goods and services, and foregoing air travel.

Policies and measures

A wide range of policies, regulations and laws are being used to reduce greenhouse gases. Carbon pricing mechanisms include carbon taxes and emissions trading systems. As of 2019, carbon pricing covers about 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Renewable portfolio standards have been enacted in several countries requiring utilities to increase the percentage of electricity they generate from renewable sources. Phasing out of fossil fuel subsidies, currently estimated at $300 billion globally (about twice the level of renewable energy subsidies), could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 6%. Subsidies could also be redirected to support the transition to clean energy. More prescriptive methods that can reduce greenhouse gases include vehicle efficiency standards, renewable fuel standards, and air pollution regulations on heavy industry.

The WHO estimates that ambient air pollution currently causes 4.2 million deaths per year due to stroke, heart disease, lung cancer, and respiratory diseases. Reducing air pollution from the burning of fossil fuels will have significant co-benefits in terms of lives saved. For instance, meeting Paris Agreement goals could save about a million lives per year worldwide from reduced pollution by 2050.

As the use of fossil fuels is reduced, there are Just Transition considerations involving the social and economic challenges that arise. An example is the employment of workers in the affected industries, along with the well-being of the broader communities involved. Climate justice considerations, such as those facing indigenous populations in the Arctic, are another important aspect of mitigation policies.

---

Thanks dtetta. The main idea is to untangle the content into digestible sections. "Technologies and other methods" could mean almost anything and the old 1.5 °C subsection also doesn't correspond to the content it contained. I'm glad you agree with the title change to "Decarbinisation pathways", that helps with the problem already.

On review, I tweaked the text above to move the "pathways" intro paragraph back down to where it was before. I had moved it because it's redundant with surrounding text, but that probably means we need to cut the text down instead of moving it. Also, fewer edits = less to digest.

Since "decarbinisation pathways" is locked in and I'm backing off moving the pathways intro paragraph, the only other change I'm proposing here is to rename "Technologies and other methods" to "Energy alternatives to fossil fuels", then to put heavy industry carbon sequestration and individual behavior into the pathways area and to move the renewable energy paragraph out of pathways and use it as the conclusion to "Energy alternatives to fossil fuels". Thoughts? Efbrazil (talk) 18:35, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Just for background, the organization of the Mitigation section as currently written is intended to answer the following:

• Lead - What are the goals of mitigation in terms of emission reductions and the pace of reductions?
• Technologies and other methods - What the main tools that are available to achieve those needed reductions, and what are their strengths and weaknesses?
• Decarbonization Pathways - How will those are those tools be combined at the societal level to achieve the 2050 goals?
• Policies and Measures - What are the main policies being used to move us toward those goals?

I think this is a logical, coherent approach to treating the topic. I see you’d like to focus the Technologies and other methods subsection more on renewable energy, but I think that is just a partial picture of the available mitigation tools. And I think it’s important for the reader to get a good picture of those before we get into what future decarbonization pathways look like.

Along that line, I think the CCS/land based NET methods paragraph still fits better in the “Technologies and other methods” subsection, rather than as the second paragraph of the “Decarbonization..” subsection. “Technologies and...” would still need a title similar to the current one, as I think it should be more than just Energy alternatives to fossil fuels. But maybe you can think of a better title, I like your change to “Decarbonization pathways”.

Similarly with the proposed move of “To achieve carbon neutrality...” paragraph where you are currently proposing it; I prefer it in the subsection it is currently in. One of the ideas of the Decarbonization subsection is to capture the range of categories covered in Teske in describing the main societal changes that are expected to occur, and with your proposed move we are losing some of that picture.

Moving the “Individuals can alto take actions...” paragraph to the Decarbonization subsection seems to work fine.

So I would much prefer cancelling the proposed moves of the CCS/NET and “To achieve net neutrality...” paragraphs, and work on a different name for the “Technologies and other methods”subsection.Dtetta (talk) 16:03, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Maybe one path forward would be if you could say whether you disagree with the basic outline that I described above, or whether the current text doesn’t do a good job of answering the questions I described in the outline. I agree there is some redundancy between the descriptions of the technologies/methods in one subsection, and then how they are further described in terms of societal actions in the next, but that seems like a wording problem rather than an organizational issue.Dtetta (talk) 00:50, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

We need a short Benefits of Mitigation section. 3,4 sentences. Includes air pollution part we added, economic benfits etc. Bogazicili (talk) 03:28, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

References

1.2 billion displaced

The following sentence was added to the article: A recent report put the number of people at risk of displacement by 2050 at 1.2 billion.. There are multiple problems with the sentence, and I'm not sure that the sourcing is sufficiently good. Most importantly, the current formulation gives the impression that the displacement is caused by climate change, instead of a very wide selection of ecological threats. Less importantly, we should avoid the word recent in this article (WP:RELTIME). I'm not that familiar with the think tank, but I'm always sceptical of them. A further concern is that there is cherry picking by only quoting high numbers of people at risk of displacement, without indicating that confidence is low in a certain direction. Femke Nijsse (talk) 07:19, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

That's fine, I only added that since you insisted on a newer source. Bogazicili (talk) 03:38, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

References

"Manufactured" and "unwarranted" doubt

“ Like the tobacco industry before, the main strategy of these groups has been to manufacture doubt about scientific data and results. Many who deny, dismiss, or hold unwarranted doubt... ” — Section 7.3 "The public. Denial and misinformation"

How can doubt be "manufactured" or "unwarranted"? Doubt is always possible and it's always "warranted", if we are commited to critical thinking. What really can be manufactured is perception that there is no prevalent view among scientists (which is a false perception), and what really can be unwarranted is the opinion that there is no prevalent view among scientists (this opinion has no basis in reality).

Moreover, the tobacco industry exploited a really existing uncertainty to its own advantage. After the relevant evidence had accumulated and uncertainty had been largely cleared, it ceased to claim anything along the lines of "the harm of smoking is unproven" etc. The whole point of the concept of "climate change denialism" is that the people holding the views encompassed by the concept reject the scientific consesnsus and do not exploit any controversy.

109.252.202.95 (talk) 13:17, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

Manufactured doubt: That's not how reliable sources see it.

Tobacco industry: That's not how reliable sources see it.

You should read the related article Climate change denial. It will tell you how manufacturing unwarranted doubt works. Denialism may help too. --Hob Gadling (talk) 14:03, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

You don't need "reliable sources" to understand and appreciate the first point. As regards tobacco industry, you can't deny that tobacco industry already acknowledges firmly established health risks from smoking. No article can tell "how manufacturing unwarranted doubt works", because there is no such thing at all. Doubt is always warranted and always natural, you don't need to manufacture it. Doubt is also the driver of science. Doubt differentiates science from pseudoscience.

109.252.202.95 (talk) 03:10, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

Hysteresis of the Antarctic Ice Sheet

See here:

"...at global warming levels around 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, West Antarctica is committed to long-term partial collapse owing to the marine ice-sheet instability."

"...the West Antarctic Ice Sheet does not regrow to its modern extent until temperatures are at least one degree Celsius lower than pre-industrial levels. Our results show that if the Paris Agreement is not met, Antarctica’s long-term sea-level contribution will dramatically increase and exceed that of all other sources." Count Iblis (talk) 02:04, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

that is bad news, those authors are solid. I'm reluctant to include this specific information in this article as its primary source. It definitely needs adding to sea level rise. Our article currently says "An example [red, of a tipping point] is the collapse of West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, where a certain temperature rise commits an ice sheet to melt, although the time scale required is uncertain and depends on future warming". In the estimates of sea level rise, some Antarctic contribution is already taken into account, but these estimates may be a bit low. In April next year I believe the next IPCC report is due to be published, which should have an assessment of the article you cited above. Do you propose specific changes? Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:10, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Rewriting first paragraph of "Mitigation / Technologies and other methods"

Current paragraph is this:

Key factors to reducing greenhouse gas emissions in all long-term scenarios include rapid and significant investment in renewable energy, nuclear energy, and energy efficiency. Renewable energy technologies include solar and wind power, bioenergy, geothermal energy, and hydropower. Photovoltaic solar and wind, in particular, have seen substantial growth and progress over the last few years, such that they are currently among the cheapest sources of new power generation. Renewables represented 75% of all new electricity generation installed in 2019, with solar and wind constituting nearly all of that amount. However, fossil fuels continue to dominate world energy supplies. In 2018, fossil fuels produced 80% of the world's energy, with modern renewable sources, including solar and wind power, accounting for around 11%.

Suggested rewrite is this:

Fossil fuels accounted for 80% of the world's energy in 2018, while the remaining share of power production was split between nuclear power, hydropower, and non-hydro renewables. Nuclear power has seen costs increasing amid stagnant power share, raising questions about its future prospects. Hydropower will continue to grow slowly due to efficiency gains, but expansion is difficult as there are few remaining places to build dams that are environmentally, economically and socially acceptable. Non-hydro renewable energy technologies include solar and wind power, bioenergy, and geothermal energy. Photovoltaic solar and wind, in particular, have seen substantial growth and progress over the last few years, such that they are currently among the cheapest sources of new power generation. Renewables represented 75% of all new electricity generation installed in 2019, with solar and wind constituting nearly all of that amount.

Reasoning: I believe the section benefits from breaking down the current power mix, and in particular spelling out the prospects for nuclear and hydro. Nuclear equals non-hydro renewable power production, and hydro currently leads both nuclear and non-hydro renewables by quite a bit. Nuclear needs to be mentioned to say why it is not a focus of the rest of the section. Hydro needs to be broken out because too often it is grouped with renewables for the purpose of talking about power share (where it dominates the power mix), then ungrouped when talking about future prospects (where there is not much growth prospect, plus major environmental concerns). There's also some verbiage and puffery in the current wording that can be squeezed out (what is a "modern renewable"?). I think the rewrite better grounds the introduction, to justify why the remainder is focused on non-hydro renewables (other than bias). Efbrazil (talk) 18:50, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

I think the text you provide is okay, but the sourcing is poor where you changed it. Let's stick to high quality reliable sources, and most importantly sources about climate change or climate change mitigation. The risk to give undue attention to certain aspects of related topics is quite big when editors use the literature about that related topic instead of about the main topic. Verification failed for the nuclear source. If you cite the report (instead of the webpage to the report, what you seem to be doing now) you should cite a page number. The term modern renewable is jargon (it might seem puffery if you're not familiar with the jargon), so I agree it can be removed. Femke Nijsse (talk) 19:13, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

I'll update the references as best I can and put the new text in the article. I chose sources as the best places to go if you wanted to learn more about the topic, such as the future of nuclear power, rather than sources needed to justify pretty basic statements of fact. If you are looking at the future of nuclear power it is better to read the best source about nuclear power rather than to find some general statement on climate change. You're right I should add page numbers and I'll also add quotes like I did in the intro for the "effects" paragraph. I think quotes are as important as page numbers, as they make the source much more accessible to the reader and discourage edits that will disconnect the content from the source. Efbrazil (talk) 17:08, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Done, but I could use your help with the World Nuclear Status Report. It appears to be the main source all the news articles use for talking about nuclear power, but I can't find an ISBN or other info to make it more like a "real" source. It's an annual report with an author, but that's not a reference type. Maybe we just switch over to a reputable secondary source that uses it, like reuters here: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy-nuclearpower-idUSKBN1W909J ? I switched hydro sourcing over to the IEA. The quotes aren't as good, but source is more obviously credible. The sources that were originally used are all still there. Efbrazil (talk) 19:58, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Hoped I would have a little more time to comment, but here are my first impressions/thoughts. Although I appreciate your interest in minimizing redundancy and attempting to characterize the power mix more completely, I think this paragraph has serious flaws.

• It lacks focus. What is your basic message for this paragraph? That should be captured in the first sentence.
• The sentences about nuclear and hydro read like opinions, and are followed by a generic list of renewable energy technologies. This is a serious disconnect in the tone of the paragraph.

As there seems to be a strong interest in rewriting this paragraph now, I would suggest the following thoughts for the framework of the intro paragraph, which I think is trying to set the backdrop for an overview of the principle mitigation technologies/techniques in the rest of the subsection:

• Since 90% of GHG emissions come from the use of fossil fuels, expanding renewable energy and decarbonizing the transportation and heating sectors are the most likely paths for limiting energy related GHG emissions.
• The current installed power mix is largely fossil fuels, but new investment is dominated by renewable energy, particularly wind and solar, as these are now among the most cost effective energy production technologies.
• Fossil fuels have particular dominance in the heating and transportation sectors, and most of the inroads made by renewable energy to date have been in the electricity sector. That is envisioned to change significantly over the next 30 years. (We should probably also have a brief mention of decarbonizing technologies in this subsection).
• Although they play a significant role in today’s power mix, for a variety of reasons, nuclear energy and hydro power are unlikely to see expansion globally as countries carry out their mitigation efforts.

I will propose a revised paragraph based on these ideas....let me know if you think there are any other important concepts that should be included, or if any of these ideas should not be part of the intro paragraph.

I think first sentence of the second paragraph also needs to be redone, but that can be addressed later. Dtetta (talk) 21:34, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

The message of the paragraph is "this is how power sourcing is now, and this is the direction it is moving in". We shouldn't just lead with renewables, because they remain a tiny fraction of the overall grid, and leading with them comes across as bias.

Efbrazil - I don’t think you are recognizing and adequately addressing the concerns and suggestions that Femke and I have expressed. Maybe the earlier version of this paragraph had problems (I think the first sentence could be better written), but they are not as significant as you make them out to be, and I think your edits are a step backwards for a lead-in paragraph, given the rest of the text in the subsection. In addition, I don’t think you have responded at all to my suggestions for the general framework of the paragraph, and I don’t think what you’ve written it is consistent with what you are claiming as your stated message. Your paragraph probably would reflect your stated message if you eliminated the sentences on nuclear and hydro, but you seem clearly opposed to doing that, and those sentences greatly shape the overall flow of thoughts in the paragraph. If you are truly striving for a NPOV, why isn’t a one sentence assessment of biomass/bioenergy included here? Or geothermal, which is significant in some countries? Both are part of the figure you reference.Dtetta (talk) 00:18, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

I just updated the references above to the ones I put in the article. A key point that we need to address is the nuclear vs renewable debate, as that's where a lot of discussions happen. We previously just ignored nuclear. I attempted to address the issue stating the reason for the lack of progress in nuclear, then putting a quote in the references that has the numbers to make it not come across as "an opinion". I agree it would be better if we had a paragraph on nuclear so the statement came across less as an opinion. I recommend you read this article as well, the last half of the article really breaks things down well in terms of numbers, and I'm hoping we can ground the discussion more with number like this: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy-nuclearpower-idUSKBN1W909J Efbrazil (talk) 00:56, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

Nuclear vs renewable may be a debate topic in some circles, but that does not mean it needs to be covered in this paragraph. I think the nuclear and hydropower sentences should be eliminated from the intro paragraph and placed somewhere else in the subsection. That would be a better way of addressing your NPOV concerns.Dtetta (talk) 00:18, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

While we are writing the new version, shall we go back to the old version? The two new sentences are not supported by the sources. Furthermore, the sources don't make clear that this information is due, because specialist literature is used instead of climate change literature. Per WP:SCIRS: Cite reviews, don't write them. I think using reviews is very important in this case as we have a discussion about the relative importance of different topics in these paragraphs. Review sources are the easiest way to solve these questions, and we're lucky to have plenty of high quality reviews.

I agree with Dtetta that there is a mix match between how nuclear and hydro are described compared to the power sources that are projected to play the main role in decarbonisation. I think having expert assessment language is fine (the nuclear sentence if sourcing is fixed), but the sentence for hydropower is too long and more certain than the sources it cites. We should not have an entire paragraph dedicated to nuclear, that will be undue. I'm happy for Dtetta to propose a revised paragraph based on the ideas described above, and based on various review sources. Femke Nijsse (talk) 17:11, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

The original paragraph is really a mess, so I oppose going backwards. The original paragraph says key factors are nuclear, energy efficiency, and renewables, then ignores nuclear and puts all the focus on renewables without explaining why. It comes across as pure bias. I updated the sourcing on the new content, hopefully that works for you? Efbrazil (talk) 21:55, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

I disagree that the current paragraph is a mess, as I explained above. This is starting to seem like a dispute resolution situation, which is very unfortunate given that this article is going to be in FAR review.Dtetta (talk) 00:18, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

dtetta: I'd like to see us move forward on a converged language. I included Femke's suggestions on sourcing so I think that issue is addressed, and we are in agreement on the wording in general. Can you suggest wording that addresses your concerns, or just make edits to the content if there's a minor change you want? Efbrazil (talk) 20:17, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

Sure - I will work on a proposed revision based on the framework I described above and post it here this weekend.Dtetta (talk) 18:58, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

After thinking about other ways of rewriting the sentence, I think we should just go with the October 6 version of this paragraph, as Femke suggeated, although we could substitute my original sentence from May: “Long-term scenarios all point to rapid and significant investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency as key to reducing GHG emissions”, for the October 6 lead sentence. We could keep your edit that eliminates the sentence that discussed how much power renewables are capable of providing, although I think that strengthens the point being made, and I don’t see this as necessarily a nuclear vs renewables debate. The mention of nuclear energy in the October 6 first sentence should be eliminated, as it was not in the UNEP report citation that is being used. Not sure how it ended up being there.

The first sentence (and main message of the paragraph) are from page 46 of the same UNEP report that you cite...and I think its one of the best ways of introducing the technologies that are being covered in the rest of this subsection. I think it’s stronger and more focused than the general power mix lead-in that you’ve written in your 10/12 edit. I don’t think it’s biased, in that it is simply paraphrasing the UNEP report, and the paragraph already clearly stated how fossil fuels currently dominate the power mix.

We could add your sentences about hydropower and nuclear power, with minor modifications, at the end of the second paragraph in that subsection, which involves a more specific assessment of the relative merits of the various RE technologies. I think they would be less out of place there.

Hope to get thoughts from others on this. Femke? Dtetta (talk) 05:27, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

I think Efbrazil is right hydro and nuclear should be mentioned, and they fit perfectly in the second paragraph. I hope you can use our overview sources we have, as news articles aren't appropriate for scientific facts (Reuters). I'm okay with going back to the October 6 paragraph with the failed verification fixed. I think the paragraph on how much energy renewable sources can provide isn't biased, but it is a slight repetition of sentences in the decarbonisation pathways section, which already indicates that renewable sources can provide almost hundred percent of energy needs, so for brevity I think it should be left out. Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:04, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Efbrazil - what do you think of this as compromise language?

Long-term scenarios point to rapid and significant investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency as key to reducing GHG emissions. Fossil fuels accounted for 80% of the world's energy in 2018, while the remaining share of power production was split between nuclear power, hydropower, and non-hydro renewables.; that mix is expected to change significantly over the next 30 years. Renewable energy technologies include solar and wind power, bioenergy, geothermal energy, and hydropower. Photovoltaic solar and wind, in particular, have seen substantial growth and progress over the last few years, such that they are currently among the cheapest sources of new power generation. Renewables represented 75% of all new electricity generation installed in 2019, with solar and wind constituting nearly all of that amount.

The second paragraph of the currently tItled “Technologies and other methods” section would then read something like:

There are obstacles to the continued rapid development of renewable energy. Environmental and land use concerns are sometimes associated with large solar, wind and hydropower projects. Solar and wind power also require energy storage systems and other modifications to the electricity grid to operate effectively, although several storage technologies are now emerging to supplement the traditional use of pumped-storage hydropower. The use of rare-earth metals and other hazardous materials has also been raised as a concern with solar power. The use of bioenergy is often not carbon neutral, and may have negative consequences for food security, largely due to the amount of land required compared to other renewable energy options. Hydropower growth has been slowing and is set to decline further due to concerns about social and environmental impacts. While not a traditional renewable, nuclear energy has continued to be a significant part of the global energy mix. However, nuclear power has seen costs increasing amid stagnant power share, so that nuclear power generation is now several times more expensive per megawatt hour than wind and solar.

Dtetta (talk) 14:30, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Dtetta Sorry for disappearing, life got in the way of my highly paid job as a wikipedia editor. I'm fine with the above language, thanks for rolling it out. I'm still not fine with the section title "Technology and other methods", which to me means nothing at all. I split the title up into 2: "Changing sources of energy", and "Carbon capture and sequestration". I hope that's OK? I'm fine with further edits to the section titles, but I really hate "Technology and other methods" for reasons I've gone into ad nauseum up above. Efbrazil (talk) 14:32, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

References

I wanted to make a change in a similar direction. Seems like improvement. Femke Nijsse (talk) 14:56, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Efbrazil I think that is a good way to break it up, and the titles are now more clearly connected to the text. Thanks for doing that. Dtetta (talk) 15:37, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Today's coverage in Mashable

		The Teamwork Barnstar
		Good to see the collaboration here being recognized.[7] Congratulations to everyone involved! Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 18:34, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Yup: And here is Mashable's Facebook link to the article. Kudos to all involved. RCraig09 (talk) 19:39, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

I though MurrayScience’s comments on how collaboration can result in work that is better than any one person would write was a particularly nice touch. Dtetta (talk) 19:44, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! It really was a wonderful article about a wonderful wiki page. Congrats everyone. MurrayScience (talk) 21:16, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

You are a wonderful bunch to work with :). Very much agree that none of us could have done this alone. Femke Nijsse (talk) 19:23, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

... and here's the post from Wikipedia's Facebook page. —RCraig09 (talk) 21:29, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Scientific Consensus Image

This image was deleted by Efbrazil.

It's not dated as the review study is from 2016. It also shows the actual scientific consensus, which is the subsection it is in. It's a better image than the current image to represent that subsection. The current image in that subsection should be replaced with this one again. Bogazicili (talk) 15:24, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

A review study concluded that "the finding of 97% consensus [that humans are causing recent global warming] in published climate research is robust and consistent with other surveys of climate scientists and peer-reviewed studies." The pie charts show the results of some of the climate consensus studies cited.

References

I think this is the better image indeed. I'm now on mobile and think it's readable, but ideally the font would be a bit bigger. The caption should be condensed a bit. Femke Nijsse (talk) 15:44, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Efbrazil: is it editable? We could put the year on a next line and bump up don't size of the authors? Femke Nijsse (talk) 15:47, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Using an image with a bunch of near 100% pie charts to emphasize a point that is already in the text without adding any substantive visual information comes across as heavy handed propaganda. The image could just be a bunch of text that was enlarged and in bold and red and blinking and it would have the same effect- e.g. "get it through your thick skulls that there is scientific agreement!!!". I understand the image I replaced it with has drifted from the text (the text used to talk about areas of scientific agreement and disagreement, not simply agreement). I would rather have no image in this location than the pie chart image. If I have time, I will try to restore some balance to the section in general. There are some very dodgy decisions that the IPCC has made that undermine their credibility, like using sleight of hand to ignore the carbon cycle in their reports in order to increase the certainty of their predictions. Efbrazil (talk) 17:34, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

The pie chart graphic is much more appropriate to the section than a chart of carbon sources and destinations. Assuming that the surveys themselves are reliably sourced, I think a fair graphical representation of those surveys does not constitute propaganda, either in substance or appearance. For a lay audience that is unlikely to read the text of an 8980-word article, a graphic that conveys the critical concept of scientific consensus is essential to this article. —RCraig09 (talk) 18:02, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

• I prefer no image to the current off-topic image, so that compromise would work for me. We are quite heavy-handed in this article with images and having one fewer will be good.
• These graphics are reliably sourced, and have been summarized in a peer-reviewed paper. I agree that it's not propaganda: it's a common feature of science communication that is done by a wide variety of scientists.
• It's nonsense that IPCC doesn't include the carbon budget (+uncertainties) prominently. It's in all of their summaries for policymakers. I hear way more often that the IPCC AR5 has overestimated uncertainty in future warming than the opposite among my colleagues.
• Always happy to get a new proposal for text here on the talk page. I'm especially keen on giving the 'warning to humanity' less prominence. Femke Nijsse (talk) 19:13, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

• I pulled the carbon sources and sinks image, although it pains me because I think it is very informative, just not a good fit in that location.
• Sourcing is not the issue, it's that they are presenting info that is not visual and are simply belaboring a point, not adding any informative value.
• In AR5 the IPCC explicitly changed their analysis to talk about CO2 concentrations (RPCs) instead of emission scenarios (SRES). My understanding is that they did that to eliminate the uncertainty that the carbon cycle introduced, which is roughly half of the uncertainty we have around expected global temperature changes. The sleight of hand is that all their asks of people are in terms of behavior relates to emissions and how we influence the carbon cycle, but all their analysis is based on RPCs. In other words, they obviously talk about the carbon cycle, but they ignore it where it counts- their predictions, which are all RPC based. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
• Thanks, will do if I get time. Efbrazil (talk) 20:45, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

I fail to see how this image is "heavy handed propaganda." That sounds like Psychological projection. The point of an image is also not necessarily to provide new information, but sometimes to summarize a point visually, which the deleted image did. The only thing to improve in the image would be to add another pie chart showing 89% agreement for (Verheggen et al (2014)). The other 80's are before 2010.[8]. This image is also better than the Sydney demonstration image, which looks like a generic demonstration. If too many images is the concern, we should get rid of Sydney demonstration image. Bogazicili (talk) 18:51, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

Created a RFC for this. Bogazicili (talk) 19:02, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

1964 Reference

Popular Mechanics, Aug 1964, p 81 on: https://archive.org/details/PopularMechanics1964/Popular%20mechanics-08-1964 'The Air around Us: How it is changing' — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.13.173.22 (talk) 10:32, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Consider talking more about the future

I kind of get information overload when reading this article. But one of the high level things I was looking for, was a succinct paragraph on what a year 2100 Earth looks like with everybody's CO2 emissions staying the same. Or just any summary of the main problems that un-checked global warming causes.

Yes, the trees have more pests, and some permafrost melts. But those issues by themselves are surely not the main reason that people are sounding the alarm.

What are some of the serious problems that late stage global warming would cause? Uninhabitability of the equator? Crop disruption and famine? Quadruple the number of hurricanes?

Did I fail to see this info? Or do we need to insert a succinct paragraph or two somewhere to cover this?

Thanks for your time. – Novem Linguae (talk) 07:27, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

I just ran across the Climate apocalypse article, which seems to discuss this topic in depth. Perhaps adding a link to it somewhere in this article, or putting a See Also or Main Article template somewhere, would be appropriate. – Novem Linguae (talk) 07:41, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

A lot of people focus on climate denialism, but there is also a serious problem with exaggeration. Just as there is good money to be found in denying climate change, there is good money to be found in exaggerating it. People rarely get a lot of press for featuring likely outcomes, they get press for talking about the extreme possibilities. Quadrupling hurricanes is an example of this- most science I've seen predicts little to no increase in hurricane frequency, although there will be some increase in intensity.

This article deals in the areas of scientific agreement, and a lot of the best work here is in keeping unwarranted alarmism out of the article. I think we are doing a good job of highlighting serious areas where there is agreement, such as ecological collapse of coral reefs, loss of the arctic, record setting heat waves and forest fires, desertification and crop loss. Whether those issues result in apocalyptic outcomes like famine or war or uninhabitable regions depends on how society responds. Some other extreme possibilities like the collapse of the Amazon rainforest have more to do with deforestation than they do with climate change. Efbrazil (talk) 18:11, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

User:Efbrazil, thanks for the detailed response.

In 2017, in the second warning to humanity, 15,364 scientists from 184 countries stated that "the current trajectory of potentially catastrophic climate change due to rising greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, deforestation, and agricultural production – particularly from farming ruminants for meat consumption" is "especially troubling".

Quote above is from the article. Looks like the scientific consensus is that there will be "catastrophic" climate change. Seems to me that the scientists support "alarmism". I guess my point is, everybody keeps referencing "catastrophic" and "alarming" things, but it is rare to see folks spell out exactly what that would entail. It's super nebulous to me. I would be very interested in having a clear section, paragraph, or even just one sentence spelling out what the worst potential consequences would be. – Novem Linguae (talk) 05:06, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

I rouhgly agree with Efbrazil. There are some places we might do a slightly better job highlighting potentially catastrophic climate change. For instance, our description of tipping points is accurate, but doesn't convey the seriousness of passing through these tipping points. The collapse of the Amazon rainforest, which is half to do with climate change, is now not mentioned. With high temperature rise, it is inevitable that some regions become uninhabitable, adaptation becomes unfeasible. I don't think we must put loads of emphasis on those warnings to humanity; it's unclear what percentage of climate scientists think these words are appropriate. There are more authoritarive sources out there. The climate apocalypse article, at first glance, puts minority views among climate scientists as facts. Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:48, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

I think a separate section on "Potentially catastrophic outcomes" would be helpful, maybe beneath "tipping points". It would allow us to focus on the edge cases in a contained space. It looks like we are ignoring them now, and also if we let up on editing (femke in particular), I can see the entire article drifting towards apocalyptic predictions as though they are fact. Efbrazil (talk) 19:25, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

I think having a separate section would have the reverse effect: it may give undue space to catastrophic outcomes. Like the section criticism, which is discouraged from Wikipedia articles, collecting outcomes by their severity would lead to subjective choices what to include and how long the section should be. Instead we should evaluate each paragraph about an actual topic (f.i. Sea level rise) to see whether more severe outcomes have been given a lot of space in our most reliable sources. I'm not planning to let up on editing anytime soon Femke Nijsse (talk) 20:37, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Novem_Linguae, I'm trying to add some of these effects into Humans sections, but the progress have been slow. Bogazicili (talk) 03:55, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Climate crisis

The scientific consensus on climate change says that climate change is real. It does not say that climate change is dangerous, or that there will be a "climate crisis". Because Wikipedia requires content to be WP:VERIFIABLE and does not allow WP:ORIGINALRESEARCH, the encyclopedia should not be using the terminology "climate crisis", "climate catastrophe" or other similar terms. However, school strike for climate uses "climate disaster" in lead, effects of climate change on human health uses "climate crisis" in lead, climate change in Turkey#Public perception of climate change in Turkey uses "current climate crisis", Global Day of Climate Action 2020 uses "climate crisis" and appears to be written with a pov and Rory Kennedy#Activism and politics uses "climate crisis" while talking about an interview with Rolling Stone. There are probably other examples out there. I would like the Wikipedia community to stop using the wording "climate crisis/catastrophe/disaster" outside of refs and quotes. 122.60.173.107 (talk) 10:10, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

ALL OF THESE SOURCES DO NOT MENTION "CLIMATE CRISIS":

This page is for the discussion of improvements to the Climate change article. A more appropriate place to raise this issue is Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Climate change. Mikenorton (talk) 11:48, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

In climate change in Turkey the word "crisis" is a direct translation of the Turkish word "kriz" in the source. You may be right that it should be in quotes but please come on the talk page of the article to make your point. Chidgk1 (talk) 14:33, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

So you want to remove a word because there are sources which do not use it? By that reasoning, all Wikipedia articles must be deleted, or at least reduced to "is", "a" and "the". --Hob Gadling (talk)

References

This article reads like it is trying to convince the reader that climate change exists.

Immediately bombards with such like "that human activity has caused climate change is not disputed by any scientific body of national or international standing" 200.118.62.87 (talk) 23:23, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

And? --OuroborosCobra (talk) 23:40, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

In response to comments at the review it's currently undergoing, I've done two tweaks to make the article less 'defensive'. The consensus statement in the lede is now de-empahsized by putting it in the middle of the paragraph. One of the statements that the sun is not causing CC has been removed as repetitive. It's a good question whether we're still trying to convince instead of just stating the facts. Femke Nijsse (talk) 12:34, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Short paragraphs and sections

One of the comments we got in the featured article review, was that we have too many short sections and paragraphs. I've expanded one paragraph, but most of the remaining text has come about as part of consensus, so I would like some input on the solutions I have in mind.

1. The paragraphs in carbon capture and storage could be merged
2. I don't know what to do with individual action on climate change. I think the best option is to bin it. Expanding it would give it undue weight, and there is no logical other paragraph 2 merge it with.
3. Climate engineering is a small subsection. I think by making a subsection we're giving it undue weight. We are explicitly following the framing in the climate engineering literature that there are three possible responses, whereas most literature (on mitigation and adaptation) only mention these two main options. I think it can be added to mitigation (explicitly saying that it's not all mitigation). We can add it to the policies and measure subsection. I think it won't become bloated if we remove the individual action paragraph.

I think these are the three places that need changing, but I'm no expert on the manual of style, so there might be more. Femke Nijsse (talk) 10:59, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

I've boldly removed the paragraph on individual action, which was placed in an odd section and was somewhat repetitive to other sections. If placed back, it may be in the context of dividing responsibility between individuals, business and government in the 'policies and measures' subsection, but I think that is a difficult discussion to succinctly add in this article. Of course, always open to discussion. Femke Nijsse (talk) 13:13, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

I wanted to add a Benefits of Mitigation section, with health, economic etc benefits but would probably be a short section. I wonder if Humans section is the right place (since those positive effects such as health and economy are about humans) or Policies and Measure or if a short section would be feasible? Bogazicili (talk) 23:08, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

The mitigation subsection is disproportionately long now. It's length is more appropriate as a section, which I hope will get support. I'd be against adding anything now, but I think some of the introductory material of political response could be moved to a cobenifits paragraph. The humans subsection of effects is inappropriate as said before. As always: for big changes, propose on talk page first to get consensus :). Femke Nijsse (talk) 21:34, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Recommended Reading

• This article in the New York Times today follows the research of this Princeton group working on Net zero by 2050 (in the US), although the lessons learned apply much more broadly. Highly recommend for those interested in improving climate change mitigation/net zero content. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MurrayScience (talk • contribs) 13:40, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

"Large parts of the economy still rely on fossil fuels and don’t yet have obvious solutions. How do we fuel airplanes and trucks that can’t easily shift to batteries? What about industries like steel or cement? How do we keep the lights on when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining?

There are plausible options, the studies found. Wind and solar power could be backed up by batteries, some existing nuclear reactors and a large fleet of natural-gas plants that run only occasionally or have been modified to burn clean hydrogen. Millions of acres of farmland could grow switchgrass, a more sustainable source of biofuels than today’s corn-based ethanol. Devices that suck carbon dioxide from the atmosphere could help offset emissions.

But most of those technologies are still in early development. That would have to change quickly."

• The intermittency of renewables is, in my opinion, their most crucial weakness. We really should include the word 'intermittent', which then relates to battery storage, nuclear, etc. MurrayScience (talk) 13:51, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! I'll read it. Had a very interesting talk this morning about ammonium storage, which was hopeful about quick cost reductions for seasonal storage. Too new and off-topic here. I think the current sentence on intermittency and grids is good because it's omits the difficult word of intermittency. Very weak oppose to adding that single word. Femke Nijsse (talk) 14:05, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Nuclear is not intermittent. Battery storage fixes the intermittency issue [9] Bogazicili (talk) 20:51, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

I've read about the study in my detail now. It's probably too biased to be useful here. Funded by Exxon and BP, it has very optimistic estimates of CCS costs and has high estimates of renewable costs. Solar energy, which has come down 50% in price over the last 5 years, would only get another 50% decrease in price over the next 30. This is at odds with empirical learning rates.

@Bogazicili: battery storage seems to work great on fixing the intermittency issue on time-scales of days, but isn't great on longer time scales. Countries with highly seasonal wind/solar production need different solutions. Ammonia storage seems a hopeful solution there, but it isn't expected to become commercial till 2030. Femke Nijsse (talk) 21:04, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

@Bogazicili: Yes nuclear is not intermittent, that's precisely the point. It's supremely important to emphasize that renewable electricity, which is essentially energy farming (dispersed over land and dependent on solar/wind/weather conditions, etc.) is variable and intermittent over short and long time scales. Obviously solar has a planned outage every day and if it's not windy or even too windy, electricity is not generated. The solutions to this are increasing capacity, which leads to over-generation (not really a problem), battery storage (but that doesn't scale to long periods of time, e.g powering city for hours on end), and increasing the connectivity of cross-regional transmission (to get electricity to the non-windy and non-sunny places, etc.). Getting variable renewable sources to cover 60% of overall electricity demand is do-able and largely dependent on deployment, but getting them to cover 95% or even 100% is much more difficult and requires solving this all-important intermittency challenge. Please see the part of this talk (where you can see that in some hours of the year there's almost no solar/wind generation so natural gas is needed, and in other hours of the year there's way over-generation) by one of the lead researchers Jesse Jenkins or [his literature review]:

There is a strong consensus in the literature that reaching near-zero emissions is much more challenging — and may require a very different mix of resources — than comparatively modest emissions reductions (50-70% or less)... In addition, there is strong agreement in the literature that a diversified mix of low-CO2 generation resources offers the best chance of affordably achieving deep decarbonization. While it is theoretically possible to rely primarily (or even entirely) on variable renewable energy resources such as wind and solar, it would be significantly more challenging and costly than pathways that employ a diverse portfolio of resources.

That's why 'clean firm' (e.g. combined cycle natural gas with CCS, biofuels, nuclear, or hydrogen), or less likely, major breakthroughs in battery or other energy storage technology, is really important to cover that last 20-30% that's very difficult for intermittent sources to cover. Lastly, at the end of the day we're talking about electricity generation, which is only 18% of world energy consumption, see world energy statistics or World_energy_consumption#Electricity_generation (two different sources, same number). That means even if wind and solar instantly covered 100% of electricity generation today, only 18% of energy would be renewable. You'd still have to figure out transportation other than cars, and industrial processes like steel and cement, and of course, providing heat for buildings during the cold season, which is almost never done using the electrical grid. So when we talk about clean energy, getting the electricity generation to be from solar and wind is only 18%, we need to focus on all the sources of emissions. MurrayScience (talk) 12:56, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

I'm very very tempted to discuss numbers here / write a semi-rebuttal, but let's not unless it is about improving our article. Femke Nijsse (talk) 13:09, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

The 18.9% figure on page 35 is at the point of final consumption. Because coal is weighted towards electricity generation (oil more for transportation), electricity is responsible for 25% of emissions. In any case, it's the same percentage region. The point is that obviously it's necessary to get clean electricity generation, but it's not nearly sufficient for getting to zero. Electrification of space heating and transportation, and other fuel/storage/industrial innovations are needed, which is why the major R&D is so crucial to begin now, with its long lead-time, etc. MurrayScience (talk) 14:04, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

I can agree with that (p35 is OECD, not world). Femke Nijsse (talk) 14:18, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

Yeah page 35 of the pdf is page 34 of the document, which shows the figures for the world. Page 36 of the pdf shows OECD, which is higher at 22%. MurrayScience (talk) 14:30, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

Recent Deletion Spree

I had missed that Femkemilene had deleted this part [10], which was thankfully reverted by C.J. Griffin [11]. That part was reliably sourced and relevant, and I consider it to be massively important. Being bold is one thing but excessive and rapid deletion of long-standing material needs to slow down I think.Bogazicili (talk) 19:08, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

As one of the signatories of the later warning, I'm pretty sure it's undue. To be included in this article, items need to be relevant after the news cycle has died down. I'm happy for them to be re-added if their continuing importance can be shown. I fully agree with the reviewer here that the old text did not do that. Femke Nijsse (talk) 19:22, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

It's reliably sourced and very notable (wide coverage in news). It doesn't lose notability because a year or whatever has passed since news publication. 2019 warning article has 312 citations, which is a lot for a 2019 one [12]. Please don't create artificial issues like this, the page has lots of issues already.Bogazicili (talk) 15:07, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

It wasn't me who brought this up first, but CMD. I am surprised by the amount of citations and I believe this is sufficient evidence of continuing importance. Femke Nijsse (talk) 15:12, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Effects on humans with respect to Climate Security/Tipping Points/4C warming

We need a paragraph or two about these topics in Humans subsection under Effects section. This was my previous suggestion:

Climate change has also been called a security threat. US intelligence analysts have expressed concern about the "serious security risks" of climate change since the 1980s. The Pentagon has also released a report stating that climate change is a national security threat to USA. Moreover, the available evidence suggests that scientists have underestimated the impacts of climate change in their projections. Exceeding tipping points can also bring abrupt and irreversible climate changes which could be an existential threat to civilization.

Additional sources: [13], "Warming of 4°C or more could reduce the global human population by 80% or 90%,35 and the World Bank reports “there is no certainty that adaptation to a 4°C world is possible”" [14], "The broad consensus in the literature is that expected damages caused by unmitigated climate change will be high and the probability of catastrophic tail-risk events is non-negligible...There is growing agreement between economists and scientists that the tail risks are material and the risk of catastrophic and irreversible disaster is rising, implying potentially infinite costs of unmitigated climate change, including, in the extreme, human extinction" IMF Bogazicili (talk) 22:57, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for your suggestions. Having an entire paragraph dedicated to security is exaggerated. The scientific literature on climate security is significantly less certain about those links as you suggest. the first sentence suffers from having weasel words. As this is a live scientific debate, I think review type articles that are peer reviewed are the only high quality sources we should be using. Also, why focus on the single country that only accounts for a small percentage of worldwide population?

Saying that scientists have underestimated impacts may be true, but the source is from 2013. Maybe in the meantime (and I don't really think so) we have overestimated impacts. I don't think a statement like that is sufficiently important for this article, but if there is consensus to include, it should be cited to a more recent source. I'd say that climate change being an existential threat is a significant minority view among scientists, and the wording is correct using the word 'could'. I'm okay to be overruled on that point if other editors believe this is not neutral.

The statement of 80 to 90% is sourced to a PowerPoint presentation... The source talking about human extinction doesn't back that up at all. They cite a source that talks about the extinction of civilisation and incorrectly translate that to a far more radical statement of human extinction. Femke Nijsse (talk) 06:46, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

I agree that the suggested additions will detract from the validity of the article. A single sentence talking about the US military could be helpful though- both talking about its own climate impact / mitigation efforts (there were some efforts under Obama) and the geopolitically destabilizing impacts of climate change. Efbrazil (talk) 15:32, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

talking about the US military in terms of mitigation is clearly undue, right? There are way bigger sectors out there. The geopolitically destabilising impacts of climate change should be attributable to an actually neutral source. My feeling is that the Pentagon will not be perceived as neutral by most people in the Middle East, nor in Europe. Femke Nijsse (talk) 15:46, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

Poking the Internet, it looks like about 10% of US emissions directly come from the US military, although it is the primary supplier of weapons systems worldwide and has negative impacts like construction and power use that I don't think are factored into that 10% number. The value in raising the topic of the US Military, as I see it, is to reach people that are viewing the article from that frame of reference- people in the military or concerned with geopolitical stability. If the US military is trying to solve global instability caused by CO₂ emissions, it should be taking the lead on the mitigation issue. In terms of source, if the source is critiquing the military it could be more reliable if it actually comes from the military itself. Efbrazil (talk) 16:44, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

you have been talking about removing bias ( always funny that liberals are left-wingers in the US, but centre-right in Europe), and this feels like an insertion of such bias. Were not trying to convince anybody, and our overview sources do not single out the US military. We don't mention other sectors of the economy of a single country. Femke Nijsse (talk) 19:18, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

I'll break down the issues to keep focused on where agreement lies: Bogazicili (talk) 01:15, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Tipping Points/4C warming

1) I guess everyone agrees mentioning this?

2) Femkemilene said "climate change being an existential threat is a significant minority view among scientists, and the wording is correct using the word 'could'". So I think we can agree to add this along with the scientific consensus (from IMF: "The broad consensus in the literature is that expected damages caused by unmitigated climate change will be high and the probability of catastrophic tail-risk events is non-negligible"). I'm looking for more sources about this.

3) Note that even some scientist that do not agree with existential threat still see massive damage:

"Johan Rockström, the head of one of Europe’s leading research institutes, warned in 2019 that in a 4°C-warmer world it would be “difficult to see how we could accommodate a billion people or even half of that … There will be a rich minority of people who survive with modern lifestyles, no doubt, but it will be a turbulent, conflict-ridden world”." [15]

"Why terrifying? As Professor Kevin Anderson, a leading climate scientist at the University of Manchester, said: “There is a widespread view that a 4C future is incompatible with an organised global community, is likely to be beyond adaptation and be devastating to the majority of ecosystems.” In other words, a world where food crops would collapse, billions could starve, governments collapse and coastal cities flood, making hundreds of millions homeless." [16]

So basically, three sentences for this: scientific consensus of massive damage, opinions of likes of Rockström and Anderson, existential threat to civilization (from Nature article). Does this reflect the accurate viewpoints of scientists? I'm just looking for best sources to construct this part. Bogazicili (talk) 01:15, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

1. I think the IMF quote or paraphrasing it would work best to show the possibility of massive damage
2. I think including individual opinions isn't even appropriate for subarticles of this topic, so no to that one.
3. I would like to have input from other editors about including a sentence about an existential threat to civilisation, as this is quite a tricky one. Efbrazil, Dtetta, RCraig09?. Femke Nijsse (talk) 17:30, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

1) Ok then we agree. Do you also agree with catastrophic tail-risk events part (we can paraphrased tail risk)?

2) Well, we have "untold suffering" [17] from more than 11,000 scientists and "widespread misery" from 15,364 scientists.[18]. We cannot ignore these sources.

3) It's from here [19] Bogazicili (talk) 03:37, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

Another highly cited paper linked above [20], 1050 citations (2018 paper) [21]:

"with serious challenges for the viability of human societies."

We have enough material for a sentence such as "could be an existential threat to civilization[22] or challenge the viability of human societies[23]" Bogazicili (talk) 11:10, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Apologies, just saw this request for input. I need to take a day or so to review the sources...will post a response by 24 Oct.Dtetta (talk) 04:56, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Dtetta, just added more stuff above, after your response.Bogazicili (talk) 11:10, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

I’m glad Bogazicili has raised the issue, and some of his references may be useful here, but I’m concerned about cherry picking specific web articles or papers. It seems like the question here is how best to revise the two current tipping point paragraphs, and to what extent the paragraphs should discuss/emphasize hothouse earth type scenarios, or other cataclysmic possibilities. Personally, I think the tipping point paragraphs could be improved a bit, but I would prefer to see our efforts focus on a better discussion of more specific reasonable worst case 2050 and 2100 scenarios in the other parts of the effects section. I think recent studies are now discounting the 4C scenarios as a little less likely, so I think more emphasis on 2C and 3C scenarios would be more useful to readers.Dtetta (talk) 21:50, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

What? There are no tipping point paragraphs in Humans subsection currently. That's the whole issue. Bogazicili (talk) 02:54, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

I understand there is no tipping points discussion in the current Humans subsection. My point is that I think that subsection would be better served by more clearly describing reasonable worst-case-scenario effects at 2C and 3C. As it is right now the wording has been revised from what I wrote in early September (Archive 83 Section 9) in a manner that downplays the effects. So it seems counterproductive to downplay the most likely effects and then end with some sort of cataclysmic statement, even though that statement might be supported by certain reliable sources. I think that juxtaposition detracts from the credibility of the article.Dtetta (talk) 03:18, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

Can you post your updated wording for "reasonable worst-case-scenario effects at 2C and 3C" here again?

Because what you wrote earlier has a lot of strikethrough's and some of it is already in the article, so not sure what would be your current suggestion to add into Humans subsection.

I'd still like to add once sentence about "could be existential threat" or "viability of human societies". We have so many sources saying something similar in this vein.Bogazicili (talk) 03:58, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

I'll get back to this in a few weeks. Bogazicili (talk) 14:33, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Bump (I don't want these parts archived yet. I've been sidetracked but will get back to it) Bogazicili (talk) 23:36, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

climate change induced mortality

I don't have specific suggestions at present; my point was that this is something that should be worked on, preferably in a collaborative way. If you look at the Wayback Machine for Climate Change, and go to one of the Sep. 9 archives, you can see the original text when this subsection was revised based on the talk page proposal I made. In particular, I think the editing downward of the sentence describing estimated annual deaths is an example of what I was saying in my earlier comment about downplaying the effects.Dtetta (talk) 15:58, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

I see. The downward revision was made by Efbrazil on September 15 [24]. Efbrazil, can you explain your edit??

Here's what WHO says:

"Between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause approximately 250 000 additional deaths per year, from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhoea and heat stress." [25]

Here's what the original source said:

"The model projects that by 2050, climate change will lead to per-person reductions of 3·2% (SD 0·4%) in global food availability, 4·0% (0·7%) in fruit and vegetable consumption, and 0·7% (0·1%) in red meat consumption. These changes will be associated with 529 000 climate-related deaths worldwide (95% CI 314 000–736 000), representing a 28% (95% CI 26–33) reduction in the number of deaths that would be avoided because of changes in dietary and weight-related risk factors between 2010 and 2050." [26]

These are completely different things. The Lancet study ("529 000 climate-related") is only due to dietary change, and does not include things like malaria, diarrhoea and heat stress (although there might be overlap with malnutrition).

If no objection, I'll add this information in addition to the current information, as they are two different things.

We also have a new paper, but it's not peer reviewed yet. Could be added if and when it does get reviewed:

"A new analysis published this week by the National Bureau of Economic Research suggests that, if left unchecked, climate change could drive temperatures up to the point where they would lead to 85 deaths per 100,000 people globally per year by the end of the century. That’s more than are currently killed by all infectious diseases across the globe." [27] Bogazicili (talk) 00:24, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Actually, in the last sentence of the second paragraph that I wrote, in the wording I was trying to capture both the WHO and Lancet studies. Both are included in the citation at the end of the sentence. I thought that wording actually addressed both, but if you want to propose an alternative wording here I’m fine with that.Dtetta (talk) 06:14, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

I think the current wording should stay. The following sentence should be added into third paragraph (which became food and water paragraph)

"By 2050, changes in global food availability alone due to climate change (business as usual scenario) will be associated with 529 000 annual deaths."

This is RCP8.5 by 2050 though. Femkemilene, what do you think? It's a primary source, but it's a novel methodology study from 2016. Would be hard to find a review article on this topic I think.

Also, this is my suggestion for what Dtetta said, I still think we should have an additional sentence for tipping points etc.Bogazicili (talk) 08:15, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

Dtetta, I actually found a secondary source for 529 000 number and added it into the Humans section. What I added is bolded:

"World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated that between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause approximately 250,000 additional deaths per year, from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea and heat stress.[172][173] This is a conservative estimate, as it does not include deaths due to other related reasons. For example, additional 529,000 adult deaths are predicted worldwide, due to expected reductions in food availability.[173]"

This is a good review article/secondary source as it makes it clear that 250,000 and 529 000 numbers come from two different things. Here's what the article says:

"The World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that approximately 250,000 deaths annually between 2030 and 2050 could be due to climate change–related increases in heat exposure in elderly people, as well as increases in diarrheal disease, malaria, dengue, coastal flooding, and childhood stunting.16 This is a conservative estimate, because it does not include deaths from other climate-sensitive health outcomes and does not include morbidity or the effects associated with the disruption of health services from extreme weather and climate events. For example, a climate change–associated net increase of 529,000 adult deaths worldwide (95% confidence interval [CI], 314,000 to 736,000) was projected to result from expected reductions in food availability (particularly fruit and vegetables) by 2050, as compared with a reference scenario without climate change." Haines, Andy; Ebi, Kristie (2019-01-16). "The Imperative for Climate Action to Protect Health". New England Journal of Medicine. doi:10.1056/nejmra1807873. Bogazicili (talk) 17:09, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

that new source seems valuable, thanks for finding it. The current two sentences in our article are contradictory, as we do attribute those 250,000 deaths to malnutrition, which is different from the paper in the new England journal of medicine. I delved into the 2014 WHO report (which is the source of these numbers), and apparently they only include malnutrition of children under the age of five. The World Health Organisation website isn't a great source, as it doesn't even include a pointer to the actual scientific source making specific scientific claims.

• I think I'm repeating myself if I say my preferred solution doesn't include any numbers, as uncertainties around those are too big and I don't really feel that people have a sense of what these numbers mean anyway. I will fight any crime against significant numbers (no way the researchers can estimate mortality to 3 different significant digits)
• I would also like the paragraph to be shorter, so that there is no undue emphasis on health. I think the best candidate for removal is the new sentence about social factors which is quite vague. I will make the new addition of mortality less wordy.
• If we go for a solution with numbers we probably want to cite the WHO report directly, in addition to the new source. My accessibility software is horrible for these type of citations, Dtetta, would you willing to include report in the appropriate citation style? Femke Nijsse (talk) 12:30, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

I added the Haines reference to the peer reviewed article section, and modified the <ref> tags in the text that link to it.Dtetta (talk) 17:05, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

You deleted 529,000 number from a review article/secondary source. Sorry, but your personal opinions about what researchers can estimate or not is irrelevant when it comes to published peer-reviewed articles. And that number is actually a mean point estimate, 95% confidence interval is 314 000–736 000. We also can't have just superlatives ("worst health crises in 21st century"), without any quantitative backup, that just reduces the credibility of this Wiki article.Bogazicili (talk) 14:07, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

The WHO number seems to be due to reasons below, this information could be edited, unless you can confirm if its only about malnutrition of children under the age of five.

"The World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that approximately 250,000 deaths annually between 2030 and 2050 could be due to climate change–related increases in heat exposure in elderly people, as well as increases in diarrheal disease, malaria, dengue, coastal flooding, and childhood stunting" [28]

Bogazicili (talk) 14:11, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

I did not delete the number, I just wrote it in a more appropriate form. When there is such an confidence interval, it makes no sense for us to quote the median value to such precision, which is where we commit a crime against significant digits. In contrast to what I implied before, the researchers do not make the claim that they know the number to 3 significant digits. (In contrast to previous discussion we had where the error of the researchers was so bad, that the only conclusion I could draw was that the research was not of sufficiently high quality to be added to this article).

That it's only about the malnutrition of the children under the age of five I got from the 2014 report itself. I wouldn't be surprised if NEJM describe that as childhood stunting. I think however that that is medical jargon, and maybe not even appropriate. The way I'm familiar with that word means that people don't become as tall as they otherwise would have become; not as a cause of mortality. Femke Nijsse (talk) 14:23, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

Lol sorry, I undid my revert. This is because I try to be fast on Wiki and had just done a keyword search (Ctrl + F: 529,000). Yes, I'm fine with current wording or correcting the causes for the number from WHO link. Bogazicili (talk) 14:33, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for finding that Haines article, Bogazicili, I think it is excellent. I would still recommend something like: “It is estimated that, by mid century, climate change will be responsible for well over 500,000 additional deaths globally per year due to undernutrition, heat stress, and disease alone” for sentences 4 & 5, and include the WHO report and Haines/NEJM article as the citations for this statement. This characterization of mortality seems to strike a reasonable balance between the need for some context in the extent of the impact, while recognizing that more exact numbers are probably not appropriate. I agree that sentence 6, dealing with other health risks, could be deleted for the sake of brevity.Dtetta (talk) 17:32, 7 November 2020 (UTC) It would be nice to have an article that referenced the original Nature Communications work, as Femke points out. But that seems like something we can flag to work on.Dtetta (talk) 18:29, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

I think that is an excellent compromise now that we have this new 2019 secondary source. I think the source can stand on its own but I don't mind having those WHO report and the original 2016 paper included as well. This solves multiple issues: having too many numbers in the text is ugly prose, it complies with summary style, the contradictory statement is gone, by combining the two numbers we don't overly focus on the RCP 8.5 scenario. Femke Nijsse (talk) 10:15, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Made that edit, including adding the WHO 2014 report to the references.Dtetta (talk) 17:46, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Dtetta and Femkemilene, I'm certainly not ok with this edit. WHO says 250k. Newer article says 500k IN ADDITION. So we have 750K predicted deaths total from those two sources, and those sources do not include all climate-change related causes. Whats the rationale for downgrading this to "well over 500,000"? Why not "well over 750,000"? Moreover, this could be considered a misrepresentation of the source. Again, here's the full quote from the article:

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that approximately 250,000 deaths annually between 2030 and 2050 could be due to climate change–related increases in heat exposure in elderly people, as well as increases in diarrheal disease, malaria, dengue, coastal flooding, and childhood stunting.16 This is a conservative estimate, because it does not include deaths from other climate-sensitive health outcomes and does not include morbidity or the effects associated with the disruption of health services from extreme weather and climate events. For example, a climate change–associated net increase of 529,000 adult deaths worldwide (95% confidence interval [CI], 314,000 to 736,000) was projected to result from expected reductions in food availability (particularly fruit and vegetables) by 2050, as compared with a reference scenario without climate change.23

Below is what I had added, which made it clear WHO number and reductions in food availability number were mutually exclusive, and they were also not exhaustive:

The World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated that between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause approximately 250,000 additional deaths per year, from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea and heat stress.[177][176] This is a conservative estimate, as it does not include deaths due to other related reasons. For example, additional 529,000 adult deaths are predicted worldwide by 2050, due to expected reductions in food availability.[176]

I'm kinda ok with changing 529,000 to half million (and actually I'm not even sure about that now, since it caused lots of confusion. I'm thinking maybe Dtetta did not see we had "half a million" in the text in addition to WHO number?), and ok with fixing the causes for WHO source. But I am not ok with the downward revision and merging the two numbers that Dtetta did. If you want the wiki-specific term, this is against Wikipedia:No_original_research#Synthesis_of_published_material, since you merged 250,000 deaths and 529,000 adult deaths as "well over 500,000." Bogazicili (talk) 19:21, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Actually here's my full suggestion, I fixed the WHO causes (Figure 1.1, page 4 [29]; also correctly summarized here [30])

The World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated that between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause approximately 250,000 additional deaths per year due to heat exposure in elderly people, increases in diarrheal disease, malaria, dengue, coastal flooding, and childhood stunting.[177][176] This is a conservative estimate, as it does not include deaths due to other related reasons. For example, additional 529,000 adult deaths (95% confidence interval, 314,000 to 736,000) are predicted worldwide by 2050, due to expected reductions in food availability.[176]

Since I noticed a lot of second guessing of numbers published by reliable sources (ie: peer-reviewed journals), I included the full 95% confidence interval range. Bogazicili (talk) 19:49, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

summarising numerical information is not originally research, although it is fair to argue how it is best done. I think a more conservative summary is appropriate because we know the number of adults deaths comes from the unrealistic RCP 8.5 scenario.

I'm against anything that mentions more than one number for prose reasons and brevity. Your new proposal is to wordy as well. I didn't think it complies with the well written criterion features article because of this. You reintroduced a grammar error well (..an.. additional), as well as unnecessary repetition (having both predicted and expected in one sentence). We don't use the word predict in climate science; we usually use project. Saying that something is a conservative estimate is a waste of words is the second part of the sentence already indicates these are two separate issues. In short: this proposal ignores any of the small improvements I made. Femke Nijsse (talk) 20:01, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Obviously not suggesting adding grammatical errors.

I used the RCP 8.5 number, because that is the number the secondary source uses. Projected number for RCP 4.5 is still 368,000 for the middle of the road scenario in the original article. They didn't give a CI for that but 500k would probably be within it.

If conservative is too redundant, there will still need to be something additional saying that numbers given are not exhaustive. Adding "alone" at the end is insufficient. And again, current version misrepresents the sources, which is a much bigger issue than grammar:

"It is estimated that, by mid century, climate change will be responsible for well over 500,000 additional deaths globally per year due to undernutrition, heat stress, and disease alone"

Are you claiming all diseases consist of "diarrheal disease, malaria and dengue"? Bogazicili (talk) 20:34, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Maybe we could break out the WHO 2050 numbers for heat and disease, and describe the Lancet/Haines 2050 numbers for undernutrition separately. I can take a shot at doing that if that makes sense. It might also makes sense to mention that some of these estimates (particularly flood mortality) could vary significantly depending on the success of adaptation measures, as the WHO report mentions. The Lancet/Haines estimate does comes from a higher temperature scenario, but as I mentioned earlier, 1)the various temperature scenarios don’t deviate that much in 2050 (the differences become more pronounced after that) and 2) the authors go into a fair amount of detail looking at all of their assumptions, and come to the conclusion that, if anything, their numbers are more likely an underestimate.Dtetta (talk) 20:30, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

They were already separated before your edits, are you suggesting returning to that or a different version? They will definitely need to be separated, you can't merge them and round up to the nearest .5 million (and wrong .5 million by the way). It doesn't matter if Lancet estimate comes from a higher temperature scenario. That is the number used in a secondary source. Bogazicili (talk) 20:43, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

I’m talking about using the 2050 heat mortality(~100,000) and disease mortality(~60,000) numbers from WHO, and separately mentioning the undernutrition mortality number(~500,000) from Lancet/Haines.Dtetta (talk) 22:58, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

There is no "disease mortality". WHO source looked at only "diarrheal disease, malaria and dengue". You can't claim that's ALL of the climate change influenced disease mortality for ALL DISEASES. There's also no "heat mortality". WHO source looked at only heat exposure in elderly people. I'm pretty sure non-elderly people are not 100% immune to this. And why are you breaking down the 250k number from WHO source? On what basis? I'll have to undo your latest edit, as it misrepresents the source per my answer to Femkemilene; it's not appropriate for a FA class article. Bogazicili (talk) 18:27, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

Here's my updated suggestion, which is basically the version after Femkemilene's edit, with 3 changes:

1) corrected causes for 250k WHO number 2) added "further" instead of "additional" 3) added 529,000 instead of half million

The World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated that between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause approximately 250,000 additional deaths per year, from heat exposure in elderly people, increases in diarrheal disease, malaria, dengue, coastal flooding, and childhood stunting.[176] [177] A further 529,000 adult deaths are projected yearly by 2050, due to reductions in food availability and quality.[178] Other major health risks associated with climate change include air and water quality, and social factors.[179] The WHO has classified human health impacts from climate change as the greatest threat to global health in the 21st century.[11]

First and second changes are self-explanatory. Third change is because I think we should stick to the exact numbers the sources use. I also think this is more sustainable. If new editors come down the road and question the half a million number, I don't want to go through lengthy and time-consuming discussions again (about that 3 significant numbers were too much and we settled on half a million number). We can also add the confidence interval or make a footnote for it if required. Bogazicili (talk) 18:44, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

Bogazicili I just reverted your edit, because 1)you did not propose language here first and wait for a response from other editors such as Femkemilene or me, 2)your reversion incorrectly cited the NEJM study in support of your sentence on WHO estimates, and 3)I believe you are double counting the malnutrition/undernutrition mortality estimates when you say “an additional half million adult deaths”. Since this is a significant issue on this page, I think we should take the time to get it right. The language I used is factually correct; I believe yours is not. I’m fine with language other than what I proposed, if other editors believe there should be something different. But I proposed language here first, and it was given a positive review by another editor (in this case Femke), before I posted it. Let’s see if there are any positive comments on what you are proposing here before you actually make these changes.Dtetta (talk) 02:14, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Page 2 of the Lancet report specifically discusses the WHO analysis and relates their estimates to WHO’s in a manner that indicates that their mortality estimates differ from WHO’s for a few different reasons, but that both studies were attempts to quantify the same kind of CC effect, and that it’s not appropriate to present these two estimates in an additive fashion.Dtetta (talk) 03:30, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

A kind reminder that we do not wish to end up in an edit war. Use the revert button conservatively.

I think the correct interpretation is closer to Bogazicili's than Dtetta. The NEJM study contains the WHO estimates, so should be a proper citation. The Lancet study indicates (on page 2) there is large complementarity between the two studies. The WHO focuses on childhood malnutrition, whereas the Lancet study only includes adults. Because the studies are not done in exactly the same framework, there is a chance of double counting. For instance, a child dying in the WHO study dying again in the Lancet study. The two studies also report on different periods, making the comparison more difficult. I propose the following:

• a sentence citing the half million that only refers to the adult mortality of the Lancet study due to food quality and quantity.
• A further sentence without numbers enumerating additional causes of mortality as a consequence of climate change.

This should solve the discussion about content, and the poor prose issues of having to many numbers (both years and numbers of deaths), and the issue of brevity. (Femkemilene on a wiki break; logged out).

I think that is a good suggestion.Dtetta (talk) 15:09, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Dtetta,

1) I had reverted to Femkemilene's version, not mine.

2) WHO and Lancet report looked at DIFFERENT CAUSES, so there is no overlap. WHO looked at child undernutrition. Lancet looked at adult undernutrition.

3) Even if there is an overlap, these are your speculations at the moment. It is not the job of Wikipedia editors to speculate in this manner. Find reliable sources that say there is an overlap. Until then, we stick to the secondary source (NEJM), which uses BOTH 250K and 529K numbers SEPARATELY. Even if there is an overlap, it might also be negligible.

4) Also brevity is not an appropriate argument here, as this is one of the most important paragraphs in the article. If you want brevity, shorten UNFCCC section. We do not need 2 big paragraphs for expired treaties, when we have a currently-active Paris agreement paragraph.

5) I'm willing to go to RFC or mediation for this (if we can't get enough 3rd opinions). Until then the article should be reverted to last stable version (edited by Femkemilene). I'll wait for Femkemilene to finalize their proposal, so I can add both that and my most recent one as part of RFC. Bogazicili (talk) 19:20, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Bogazicili - at this moment I would suggest we defer to Femkemilene (a skilled and experienced editor), on this, and let her attempt to craft what she thinks is appropriate language, before you escalate the issue. I believe Page 2 of the Lancet report, in which the authors compare their work with WHO's, provides the best guide for how to characterize the various mortality estimates, if it's decided that more detail is needed for the sentence(s) in question. I also think the Lancet study should be included with the NEJM and WHO reports as part of the citations for the sentence, as Page 2 of that report provides a more focused background for the reader who wants to follow this aspect in more detail (compared to the NEJM reference).Dtetta (talk) 21:29, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Dtetta, I read page 2 of Lancet report. It specifically says it is complementary to WHO report (under "Implications of all the available evidence" section). That suggests there is no overlap. In math, a complement of a set is anything not in that set (Complement (set theory)). So I really have no idea what the basis of your argument is.

I would have loved to defer to skilled and experienced editors on this topic. I do not consider this a form of leisure, especially these excessive discussions. But when I came to the article, I found several things downplayed.

People usually stick to their opinions after length discussions, so I'll give a week for everyone to cool, and then we can talk again. But I intend to escalate after that since I see no reason why those 2 numbers shouldn't be in the article.Bogazicili (talk) 15:18, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Bogazicili I am not saying those two numbers shouldn’t be in the article; I am concerned about the sentence expressing the Lancet estimate as additional deaths. Another approach you might consider is to contact one of the authors of the Lancet article via email, and get their thoughts on how the two reports should be collectively characterized. Nowhere on page 2 do they mention that what they are presenting is mortality that’s in addition to the WHO nutrition related mortality estimates. They talk about how their estimates are much larger than the WHO estimates and other ways that the two are related. So I think there is a lack of clarity on this particular point. I’ve contacted researchers in the past, identified myself as a Wikipedia editor, and found that researchers are often more than happy to help describe how they view their research results. That would be useful information for our group to know. Dtetta (talk) 16:22, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Complementarity in science means something slightly different than in mathematics. It means there is very little overlap, not necessarily none. You could indeed ask the authors whether they think there is none. I still believe we shouldn't commit any crimes against significant digits, nor include to many numbers to maintain readability. I have removed childhood stunting, because it feels like jargon to me, and I don't think it is necessary to repeat other causes as they are ready mention above.

It is estimated that reduced food quality and quantity will be responsible for around half a million adult deaths per year by mid-century. (cite NEJM & Lancet). Climate change drives additional mortality via heat exposure in elderly people, diarrheal disease, and increased risk of coastal flooding. (cite NEJM and WHO).

P.S. Dtetta, I notice that you're not quite following the (overly complicated) citation style. The short cites should cite authors, not the publisher. For some publications those two approximately coincide (for instance the WHO). Femke Nijsse (talk) 20:05, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Understand your comment on citations. Will make that adjustment in future edits. Also suggest you consider describing the disease and heat exposure risk with rough numbers, as they are included in the WHO/Nature Communications sources. I think it’s also worth briefly mentioning that (as I believe the WHO states) future mortality may vary significantly depending on adaptation measures, which may prompt the reader to continue to the adaptation section. But your call on these aspects. Dtetta (talk) 03:56, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

All these effects depend strongly on adaptation measures, and I wouldn't be against a reshuffling of the article to bring effects and adapation into one section (similar to IPCC), and have mitigation as a section on its own (with geo-engineering losing its section heading, which feels undue to me). I'm open to adding a sentence of that kind into the article as an intermediate solution. Could you propose it? Trying to dial down a bit on Wikipedia with new job draining my mental juice.

I think mentioning too many numbers would be against FA criterion 1a: its prose is engaging and of a professional standard. I'm okay to include these numbers in the footnote. Femke Nijsse (talk) 16:44, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

Yes I can do that. I think I will try to contact one of the Lancet editors first, just to get their opinion on this, unless Bogazicili posts here that he is already planning on contacting them. Once I hear back I’ll post revised proposed language here based on what you have presented, but add a short statement on adaptation effects on mortality, as well as footnotes that include the heat and disease mortality numbers from WHO/Nature Comm. Dtetta (talk) 05:21, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

Nope, please go ahead. I was going to suggest Femkemilene to do it. IMO, the onus is on you two, since you two are the ones speculating. Both numbers were used in the secondary source. I am the one suggesting following the secondary source. Also, I don't think 2 numbers in paragraph is too many. After you have your response, I'll open the RfC, I don't think anyone is going to change their opinion. We need other opinions. Bogazicili (talk) 18:43, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

Bogazicili and Femkemilene. Just heard back from the lead RS on the Lancet article. Here is what he said about the issue of complementarity between the mortality estimates: “The estimates of our paper and the other WHO assessments should be broadly addable. The only slight overlap might be with deaths attributable to undernutrition (WHO) and our estimate of underweight-related deaths. However, ours is mostly related to non-communicable diseases amongst adults, whereas theirs is more related to classical forms of undernutrition, such as wasting and stunting amongst children. So that should all be fairly complementary.”

So Bogazicili is correct about the validity of describing the estimates in an additive fashion. I think if we stick to 1/2 digit estimates for the mortality numbers, the text that Bogazicili proposed on 9 Nov would be good. So here is what I propose, slightly modified from his language, with the Lancet citation and its p2 reference included:

The World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated that between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause approximately 250,000 additional deaths per year from heat exposure in elderly people, increases in diarrheal disease, malaria, dengue, coastal flooding, and childhood undernutrition. Over 500,000 additional adult deaths are projected yearly by 2050 due to reductions in food availability and quality.

Dtetta (talk) 20:46, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Forgot to add this suggested sentence at the end: “These estimates vary significantly depending on the level of adaptation that is anticipated. Dtetta (talk) 21:45, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Dtetta, thank you for the work you put into this, I appreciate it! I'm good with your suggestion, except I think we should add the following line:

"Other major health risks associated with climate change include air and water quality, and social factors.[179]"

By adding that line, and given your suggestion and other parts of that paragraph, we are covering all human related effects mentioned in NEJM article (see Figure 3 in NEJM article).Bogazicili (talk) 03:50, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

I can live with a version by Dtetta just slightly sad we needed five different numbers. The sentence with social factors is wishy-washy, I don't think it will be clear to our readers. Furthermore, it will make a very long paragraph even longer. Femke Nijsse (talk) 09:23, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

We still need to say something about air pollution/quality, since the part I previously suggested is now in mitigation section.

"Other major health risks associated with climate change include air and water quality"?

I'm ok with dropping social factors since we already mentioned migration in Humans subsection. But air pollution/quality is missing.Bogazicili (talk) 14:56, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Added the above sentence, given no response.Bogazicili (talk) 14:31, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

The recent Lancet review paper (https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0140-6736%2820%2932290-X) barely pays any attention to it. I still believe it to be undue. Most air quality impacts are via fuel-burning pollution. I'm not even sure the figure you pointed to is actually about the small changes in atmospheric chemistry due to climate change, as they just mention it as part of a figure. They now spend a lot of time on extreme weather, which we probably don't mention enough in the text (relying on figures instead). Remember, the WP:ONUS is on you to find consensus for inclusion. (I understand that the low response rate here is frustrating) Femke Nijsse (talk) 16:32, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

The Lancet article cited by Femke clearly categorizes air pollution impacts as a mitigation co-benefit, so my view is we should follow that lead and keep the discussion of climate change and air pollution in the mitigation section. If there are articles that describe how air pollution (and the resulting human health impacts) will get worse under future climate scenarios, that kind of information would merit inclusion in the Humans subsection.Dtetta (talk) 05:23, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

We do not have a mitigation benefits section though. As such, massive reductions in loss of life is "hidden" in Mitigation section, which include lots of other stuff, in the wiki page. That's one of the reasons I put that sentence into Humans subsection. The other reason is that I'd prefer each section to be complete by itself, because I doubt most readers read the entire article. So I think we should either keep that sentence (it's well sourced and a short sentence is not UNDUE) OR move the sentence about reductions in loss of life from air pollution from Mitigation section to Humans section, given that our organization is different than the Lancet article (ie: no big mitigation benefits section). Our mitigation section covers mechanics and policies etc. We can specify its a co-benefit of mitigation within humans subsection. Again, given our different organization of the page, that alternative is justified too. Bogazicili (talk) 05:15, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

References

Climate Security

We need two sentences here. Military experts are experts on security, so opinions of US military, NATO [31] etc are relevant. One sentence for that, and another from scientific or other sources such as UN [32] Bogazicili (talk) 01:15, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

the opinions of individual military experts are not relevant for this top-level article, even if they are a NATO general. If the NATO as an organisation would say something like that, I would be willing to reconsider, but my guess is that that is still more appropriate for an article such as effects of climate change. The UN piece seems to be an opinion piece, from two PIK scientists who are known for holding a slightly more extreme view than the average climate scientist. We should use review pieces that are peer reviewed for these kind of claims, as its very difficult scientific question. Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:39, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

I'll return to this later. Bogazicili (talk) 03:57, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

I think climate security issues are best dealt with as a modification to the adaptation section (which could use some general strengthening), and it would make sense to include some of the concepts in Bogazicili’s Footnote 1 in that modification, even if that specific article is not used. Whether we use DoD/millitary assessments or other sources doesn’t matter that much to me. I don’t think the idea of referencing a DoD assessment is necessarily biased; my recollection is that some of the Pentagon reports are looking at the risk of climate change from a global perspective. They may be particularly concerned about its impact on US security, but I think the risks they’re talking about are often global in nature. I don’t think the question of how much emissions are from the US military is all that relevant to this issue, I say we focus on the merits of the ideas mentioned in Footnote 1.Dtetta (talk) 22:10, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

I'd also like to say that adding views of CIA, NATO, Pentagon etc means adding more diverse viewpoints (ie: from security experts), especially given that some people easily dismiss viewpoints of scientists. See: Climate change denial. Bogazicili (talk) 04:01, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

I'll get back to this in a few weeks (do not want to get this archived). Bogazicili (talk) 14:34, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

IPCC Too Conservative

Femkemilene said "Saying that scientists have underestimated impacts may be true, but the source is from 2013." I have found later sources such as [33], ""The IPCC tends to be very cautious and conservative, which is why it had to correct itself upwards already several times," Rahmstorf said." [34] Again needs better sources. Bogazicili (talk) 01:15, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

I'll wait for you to collect better sourcing, but I would be surprised if you can convince me this is WP:DUE. Femke Nijsse (talk) 17:31, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

"However, the available evidence suggests that scientists have in fact been conservative in their projections of the impacts of climate change. In particular, we discuss recent studies showing that at least some of the key attributes of global warming from increased atmospheric greenhouse gases have been under-predicted, particularly in IPCC assessments of the physical science, by Working Group I" [35]. This is a highly cited paper, 271 citations [36].

Secondary source:

"However, some climate science experts regard the IPCC’s data as too conservative. Some note the potential impact of self-reinforcing feedback loops, or tipping points, such as the loss of reflective white sea ice allowing the ocean to absorb more heat, 7 or the potential release of large amounts of methane – a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 – from melting surface permafrost on land 8 and the Arctic seabed." [37]

I've provided multiple studies, newspaper articles (with quotes from scientists), and a secondary source. I don't think it's UNDUE. Bogazicili (talk) 03:56, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

Currently, the article states: The physical realism of models is tested by examining their ability to simulate contemporary or past climates. Past models have underestimated the rate of Arctic shrinkage and underestimated the rate of precipitation increase. Sea level rise since 1990 was underestimated in older models, but now agrees well with observations. The 2017 United States-published National Climate Assessment notes that "climate models may still be underestimating or missing relevant feedback processes".. So the physical aspects are well covered already in the article.

Criticism of the IPCC specifically feels out of place to me, as were citing a broader scope of literature. For instance, for sea level we cite not only the IPCC, but also study which finds more sea level rise. We are ready talk about self reinforcing feedbacks and tipping points.. I feel the article will start to feel biased if we were to emphasise models underestimating more. There also aspects where models have overestimated effects, such as the high climate sensitivity in the latest generation of models. Femke Nijsse (talk) 20:25, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

It's not covered in humans section though. We need something short saying that there might have been an underestimate in this area as well. Your quotes from rest of the article show there is a reasonable case why there might have been underestimates in terms of human impacts of climate change. A lot of the things discussed in this subsection is also older than the latest generation of models. I also see you are the lead author of the article you quoted that was recently published, congrats! Bogazicili (talk) 00:32, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

For the human impacts their are also reasons why results are sometimes overstated instead of understated. The main point is that social scientists have often misinterpreted the RCP 8.5 scenario, interpreting it as a business as usual scenario, instead of a worst-case scenario. The sources you provide so far are not convincing that there is a systematic understatement of results for the social impacts. Convincing literature is high quality secondary literature that reviews high quality peer-reviewed primary research. It is a very strong statement, and therefore requires extraordinary evidence. Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:25, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

Some of the highly cited papers I quoted is quite recent (eg: 2018, 2019). The review studies will be coming out in 2025 or something. Also some of the overestimates may not matter in the overall conclusion. Eg:

"we find that a majority of models underestimate the extremeness of impacts in important sectors such as agriculture, terrestrial ecosystems, and heat-related human mortality, while impacts on water resources and hydropower are overestimated in some river basins; and the spread across models is often large. This has important implications for economic assessments of climate change impacts that rely on these models. It also means that societal risks from future extreme events may be greater than previously thought." 2019 study

"We show how to account for this second source of uncertainty in a physically well-founded and tractable way, and we demonstrate that even modest variability implies trillions of dollars of previously unaccounted for economic damages" October 2020

Perhaps, instead of referencing IPCC, we can just say many effects of climate change with respect to humans (health, economy etc) have been underestimated. Bogazicili (talk) 08:41, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

You cited the same study twice per accident (the one specific to Europe, and specific to extreme events). Is the other one more general? The next IPCC report is only 9 months away, so I'd say we wait for that. Femke Nijsse (talk) 09:16, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

This is the October 2020 study [38]

Also, I had already cited a secondary source before that said economic effects were underestimated.

"Economic assessments of the potential future risks of climate change have been omitting or grossly underestimating many of the most serious consequences for lives and livelihoods because these risks are difficult to quantify precisely and lie outside of human experience" [39] Bogazicili (talk) 17:29, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

We have already added text to the economics section, and your previous comments seem to suggest that you want to and general comments about that human impacts have been underestimated. You have not provided any general source, and I doubt you will find one which has broad support from the scientific community.

While I like criticising current integrated assessment modelling, I don't see a way to include that 2020 study into our article. It is criticising information that we don't even include in our article because it is too detailed. The article is my opinion probably even too specialised for a sub article: effects of climate change. Femke Nijsse (talk) 17:08, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

I wasn't suggesting adding that into the article, I was just citing recent articles for the purposes of this discussion.

I'll add that economic impacts have been underestimated into the article (per the source I just cited and the IMF paper, both of which are secondary sources).

I will come back to this once I find more secondary sources for the more general statement that I thought was missing and/or once the new IPCC comes out. I think this is an important topic, since some people assume a lot of the potential impacts predicted are alarmist. On the contrary, some have been underestimated. Bogazicili (talk) 11:31, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

I can live with the addition that economic impacts have been underestimated for now. I do worry about that were using WP: Wikivoice where we shouldn't. Are we sure most economists believe that economic impacts have been underestimated? If others want to revert, I'm okay with that as well. Femke Nijsse (talk) 12:03, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

This is what IMF paper says:

"The climate risks in central banks’ collateral frameworks and asset portfolios could be more adequately assessed and reflected. As discussed above, financial markets, including credit rating agencies, tend to underestimate climate risk, generating biases in capital allocation toward carbon-intensive activities."

"Financial markets" is very broad, and justifies the current wording I think, especially combined with the source from 3 institutes previously cited. Bogazicili (talk) 12:23, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

References

RfC about a photo in the Scientific Consensus section

Currently, there is no image in this section. On the right is the image suggested.

It comes from this peer-reviewed secondary source [40], which NASA also uses on their Climate Change facts pages [41]. The image does not contain the 3 lower percentages in the study, for agreement among "Sub-sample of publishing climatologists" (see table 1): 83.5% (2008), 88.5% (2005), 89% (2012).

Should we use this image, or another image, or edit this image (only contain cited studies newer than 2010 or all studies), or use no image? Bogazicili (talk) 19:02, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

Also note that the consensus reaches 100% as of 2019 [42], maybe that can also added into the image. Bogazicili (talk) 19:12, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

• Strongly agree with Bogazicili. On the principle that a picture is worth a thousand words, an image is essential to the critical concept of scientific consensus. Including a sentence or two in the text an 8980-word article is not sufficient to convey the overwhelming nature of scientific consensus to Wikipedia's lay audience. The pictured image is a good start. RCraig09 (talk) 19:25, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

• Comment I believe this request to be a bit premature. You're proposing both possible improvements to this figure, ánd a request to include this figure into the article. It would be better if you first work on improving the figure; making sure it's readable on phone for older eyes for instance as Efbrazil commented. Femke Nijsse (talk) 19:27, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

Suggesting improvements to the image is premature, given that you 2 are proposing no image. I'm wondering what people think about this image or a similar image first. If there is a consensus on an image like this, then we can work on the final version. Bogazicili (talk) 19:35, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

• Agree after text is make legible (just makign clear that my preference is a figure, just willing to compromise on none). Femke Nijsse (talk) 19:45, 15 November 2020 (UTC)
• I have made a new SVG with larger text for names. On my system I see a slight font rendering problem for the top title line (shifted too far right); if you see it also, maybe we should just use an updated JPG: File:Cook et al. (2016) Studies consensus.jpg? This is a pesky, apparently inescapable problem with SVG font renderings. RCraig09 (talk) 06:57, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

• Strongly oppose. Using an image with a bunch of near 100% pie charts to emphasize a point that is already in the text without adding any substantive visual information comes across as pure bias. The image could just as well be a bunch of text that was enlarged and in bold and red and blinking and it would have the same effect- e.g. "get it through your thick skulls that there is scientific agreement!!!". There are already too many graphics in the article according to femke, let's not make the article worse by cluttering it with a collection of 100% pie charts. For more information on why this is a bad idea, see Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. Efbrazil (talk) 17:57, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Do you have any recent review studies with lower numbers? If so, cite it. Bogazicili (talk) 03:56, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

That is not what Efbrazil implied. He says it's unnecessary, and to much 'in the face'; not that's inaccurate. Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:17, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Usually, drawings communicate much more effectively than text in a super-long article. The fact that large swaths of the U.S. population^{(who are ~readers of English-language Wikipedia)} still doubt the science, indicates a need to present reliably-sourced scientific consensus prominently, much more appropriately than the existing picture of a protest for example. (My assertion concerns reliability, not politics, incidentally.) To relegate scientific consensus to a non-illustrated two-paragraph section—dwarfed by a "Political response" section preceding and an illustrated "The public" section following—is backwards. —RCraig09 (talk) 18:01, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Separately: Wikipedia:Neutral point of view concerns relative presentation of competing viewpoints, and is not on point here. —RCraig09 (talk) 18:01, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

A common critique of climate science is that people in the field get their jobs and job security by exaggerating impacts. So long as Fox News can find a credentialed climate denier to interview, people that want to believe there is controversy will believe it. Those not persuaded by climate science are not going to be persuaded by a collection of 90%+ pie charts that say "ALL THE ELITES SAY IT IS SO YOU CRETIN, ACCEPT THE TRUTH". The only impact those charts will have is to get people to dismiss the science as group think instead of physical facts.

The way to be persuasive is to walk people through how the science works- show, don't tell. For instance, we really need a clearer diagram on how radiative imbalance works- we need people to see climate change as a simple equation of inputs and outputs, not a matter of "he said, she said". Measurements of the physical world and putting those measurements in historical context is also persuasive, but I think we are doing OK there already. Efbrazil (talk) 19:52, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

. It's a question to what extent 'convincing readers' should be any of our concern. If we do try to take it into account, we should do it with facts in hand, not intuition. Scientific consensus communication has been shown effective to convince people climate change is real and action is needed, see for instance: Femke Nijsse (talk) 20:06, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

References

If you don't see "convincing readers" to be a core goal, then the graphic really loses all validity. The pie charts simply say "7 studies between 2004 and 2015 found an average of 97% scientific consensus that humans are causing recent global warming". Or is there something I'm supposed to take away from the fact that in 2004 there was 100% agreement, and in 2014 it dropped to 91%? The only reason the graphic exists is as an advertisement to convince people to read that sentence. To go to your point, we are trying to present information here, not produce an advertisement. Efbrazil (talk) 20:38, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

I was a bit afraid that people might interpret the different studies as being exactly same: in reality there was no drop; the differences in numbers mostly stem from a different definition of expertise. If you only asked people that study attribution, your number would be hundred percent. If you're ask social sciences whose research is slightly related to climate change, that number drops significantly. I'm still supportive of a figure about consensus, but considering this easy misunderstanding, we might need define an easier one.

Even if we wouldn't see convincing readers to be a core goal, a figure like this might still be valid as were just trying to summarise how other people communicate about climate change. Consensus communication is widespread . Femke Nijsse (talk) 20:57, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Actually, the goal isn't "convincing people"; that would be ~political. Rather, the goal is to clearly summarize what this (important) section is about: scientific consensus. In any event, "walking through the science" of radiative forcing will not work with all but the most assiduous readers, whether there's a good diagram of it or whether it's buried in a ~9000 word article. 21:05[] Placing the image in the "Scientific consensus" section gives the image context, so it is not perceived as a sales pitch. 21:07[] Writing an appropriate image caption can place the image itself in better context. —RCraig09 (talk) 21:15, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Our goal is not to "convince readers", but to accurately describe the actual situation. That's why I asked if you have any source with lower percentages. The point of the image is to summarize that section, or to highlight a main point visually. The main point in Scientific Consensus section is, unsurprisingly, the scientific consensus, which the image captures in visual form. Bogazicili (talk) 15:00, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Do we belabor the point that flouride is good for you by showing a bunch of 90%+ pie charts of studies of dentists saying flouride is good for you? No, because that would be very stupid, just like this graphic is very stupid. Your point that it summarizes the section is perhaps a good one, and it points out that the section itself is perhaps a mistake. If we were being accurate instead of biased, we'd be presenting areas of both agreement and areas of disagreement. Efbrazil (talk) 18:29, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

No, that's not how Wikipedia works. We follow RSs in their treatment of the topic. They talk about scientific consensus a lot, and in that context don't mention disagreement. Your comparison with fluoride is vaceous; RSs on that topic don't talk about consensus, nor is there a big denial machine to make that necessary.

Content sections have words with different grades of certainty (likely, probably, possibly), which is the proper way to talk about disagreement in an overview topic. Femke Nijsse (talk) 18:40, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Definitely, the conflict between public perception and scientific consensus is not merely notable—it's notorious in both scientific articles and the popular press. Again: the goal isn't "convincing people" about the underlying scientific conclusion; the goal is to clearly summarize what this (important) section is about: scientific consensus. —RCraig09 (talk) 18:53, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Well, I guess I'm a minority of one here, but I maintain that this is a terrible graphic. There's no rationale for showing 7 pie charts instead of one. There's no rationale for showing all the dates of the studies or even all the studies separately. The only reason this graphic is there is as an attempt to bludgeon idiots. Again, there are areas of scientific disagreement, not regarding whether climate change is human caused, but about the timeline of outcomes and about tipping points and about how the carbon cycle and water cycles are going to respond going forward. We could turn this section and graphic into something interesting, but instead we are clumsily trying to bludgeon idiots into submission. Efbrazil (talk) 23:35, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

1) Possibly, the disagreement hinges on a confusion between purpose (conceiving beforehand) and effect (occurring afterwards). Here, the purpose of the graphic is simply to reliably represent different studies of the title of the section, namely, scientific consensus. One of many effects may in fact be to convince doubters, though the effects are out of our hands as Wikipedia editors.

2) Separately: you've correctly noted that there is scientific disagreement as to outcomes and tipping points—in other words, a lack of consensus... a lack that indicates what should not be in this section. —RCraig09 (talk) 20:24, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

The intro already has all the content of this section- "That human activity has caused climate change is not disputed by any scientific body of national or international standing." The rest of this section is just endlessly belaboring that point. Like I said, it's targeted at bludgeoning idiots, and I'd be in favor of cutting it entirely, and certainly not adding a graphic that is nothing more than an advertisement for a point that we are already endlessly belaboring. --Efbrazil (talk) 18:53, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

The intro can only summarize points actually made in body of the article, so that is an argument in favour of including this information. Your point is made clear, but you don't seem to get support on this point. I suggest you find a compromise elsewhere: removing those warmings to humanity; moving it to another location, or developing a more 'belaboring' image, which has f.i. only one pie chart. I may be bold and summarize those warnings myself, as no objections have been raised when I first mentioned this. Femke Nijsse (talk) 15:06, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

1) The "Scientific consensus" section validly contains content beyond the bare "humans-cause-GW+CC"... such as 'actions', 'warnings to humanity' etc.

2) The multi-pie-chart graphic conveys the important point that there have been a variety of consensus studies but that their results are very similar. If anything, we should add pie chart(s) rather than oversimplify to a single pie chart. —RCraig09 (talk) 18:12, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

I'm a 100% sure that these warnings to humanity are getting UNDUE attention. They're barely getting mention in overview sources (like short introduction to climate change). One sentence, which is what I'm proposing, is more than enough. I think it is important to keep the other aspects of going beyond humans-cause-CC. Femke Nijsse (talk) 18:20, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Femke Nijsse I agree with your 18:20, 25 Nov comment. My main concern is with preserving a robust "Scientific consensus" section (because it's so important, and notable), preferably with a graphic. —RCraig09 (talk) 18:24, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

P.S. I'm not sure which consensus studies could/should be added to the existing seven pie charts. Do you (Femke Nijsse or others) have specific consensus studies that are accepted as reliable? —RCraig09 (talk) 18:48, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

• Agree. The reasoning "read Wikipedia:Neutral point of view" does not seem to hold water. That page does not say anything about having pictures with facts in them or not. In my experience, it is linked more often in support of things it does not say than in support of things it does. The paragraph is about the consensus, and the pictures (BTW, why would one call them "photos"?) illustrate it. Reasoning on how to convince people is neither here nor there, since that is not what the article is for, but I have not seen any research that says you can convince people of something by not talking about it. --Hob Gadling (talk) 15:20, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

The issue with regards to neutral point of view is belaboring the point, ie. due and undue weighting. It is as if we added a section to the article on evolution talking about how biologists generally believe in the science of evolution, then added a graphic with 7 pie charts all showing the same thing, that evolutionary scientists do not believe in creationism. Of course they don't, it's antithetical to the science of evolution, and the article on evolution is far better for showing how it works instead of trying to bludgeon creationists with an obvious fact. Efbrazil (talk) 18:53, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

You are repeating yourself again, again, again and again. Pretty ironic, since you ar talking about bludgeoning. --Hob Gadling (talk) 16:00, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

• Agree that this not about convincing people, but presenting facts. The image, if referenced from an appropriate secondary source can be included, and this is notwithstanding any contentions regarding the overload of this article with graphics. I would recommend using the image. MaxwellianDaemon (talk) 19:54, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
• Agree be Hob Gadling and MaxwellianDaemon. --HurricaneTracker495 (talk) 20:59, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Comment I think consensus is clear. Any objections to closing this RfC? I hope my condensing of the section at least addressed a small fraction of Efbrazil's concern. Femke Nijsse (talk) 10:14, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

• I've removed the RfC tag after two days of no objection to close. It's clear there is consensus to add. Femke Nijsse (talk) 09:27, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

@Femkemilene: I agree with your conclusion. I remain willing to add more pie charts to the graphic, if a subject matter expert will choose which additional consensus survey(s) are adequately reliable. -RCraig09 (talk) 18:07, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

I think we should only include academic studies after 2010 cited in the review article (so we would exclude PEW). That would be more consistent and rigorous. So we should drop Oreskes and Doran. We currently have Q3 from Verheggen 2014, we can also include Q1 results. Either Q3 or Q1, or both of them, I have no preference. I also have no preference adding numbers from newer studies. But this 2016 review study is cited by many sources, so we might want to stick to it. We just need to make the graphic more consistent as some pre-2010 studies cited in the review article are not included. Bogazicili (talk) 14:28, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

@Bogazicili: I don't know what you mean by "PEW" or "Q1" or "Q3" or "the review article". —RCraig09 (talk) 17:13, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

As long as there is no cherry picking, I'm happy. Because the numbers aren't very comparable (different definitions of experts), there is not much worth in having the older studies in there: there is no trend one can discern from these studies. I don't understand Q and Q3 either. The review article is the 2016 article that reviewed different studies of consensus, and whose selection we followed in displaying the results if I'm not mistaken. Femke Nijsse (talk) 18:43, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

@RCraig09:, the review article is the source we are talking about [43]. For other questions, see table 1 in the source. PEW is the polling company. Verheggen 2014 has 2 numbers. 91% agreement on Question 3 (which is in the graphic). 89% agreement on Question 1 (which is not). Bogazicili (talk) 08:30, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Bottomline: As I understand it, you think only the following should be included:

• 97% Anderegg 2010
• 97% Cook 2013
• 89% Verheggen 2014A
• 91% Verheggen 2014B
• 93% Stenhouse 2014
• 97% Carlton 2015}}
• 100% Powell (new; pay wall) 2019 — include? (discovered in Scientific consensus on climate change

Anyone, especially Bogazicili and Femke Nijsse: Please be specific if you (dis)agree with including these studies in the graphic. —RCraig09 (talk) 06:31, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

I don't mind. Less is more if possible. Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:28, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

RCraig09, thanks for putting this together. I'm open to newer sources, but I don't think putting 100% number from the 2019 source is systematic. For example, there might be other review articles between 2016 review article and 2019 review article, but we haven't looked. So merging two sources like this feels a bit arbitrary to me. I'm open to newer numbers if someone would want to do something more systematic and consistent. But, for now, I'd suggest the following numbers:

• 97% Anderegg 2010
• 97% Cook 2013
• 89% Verheggen 2014A
• 91% Verheggen 2014B
• 93% Stenhouse 2014
• 97% Carlton 2015

The title for the above for the graphic would be "Academic studies of scientific agreement on human-caused global warming among climate experts (2010 or newer)" and the source would be Cook et al 2016. That's precise and rigorous and consistent, so we wouldn't deal with questions such as why did you include X but not Y, etc. 2016 source is also cited by many other sources such as NASA, so it's a good one to use. 100% number from the 2019 article is already in the body of the article too. Bogazicili (talk) 04:05, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Version uploaded 9 December 2020

Let me know if this graphic renders properly on your display. (There are ongoing font rendering problems for SVG files.) If there are no problems, I will insert into article. —RCraig09 (talk) 08:00, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Renders fine on mine and happy to see the image a bit smaller ;). Femke Nijsse (talk) 14:23, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Upon reading Verheggen 2014, and Cook 2016, I don't think we can justify putting both questions in from Verheggen. Verheggen indicate they believe Q3 to be more accurate. According to Cook, they biased their sample "with particular effort expended to include signatories of public statements critical of mainstream climate science". As such, their double inclusion would cause low bias in our figure. (my prior is that all studies that show consensus under 99% must have done something weird, never encountered somebody believing this...). Femke Nijsse (talk) 14:36, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Yup, that sounds reasonable to me. I hadn't looked at Verheggen 2014. I didn't even read the entire Cook 2016 article, I was just looking at the table. So I'm ok with dropping 89% Verheggen 2014A. Optional suggestion: we just might want to add a footnote or something there with the explanation above or something, so anyone reading the article can know why it was dropped without having to find the talk page discussions. Bogazicili (talk) 15:19, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

I should have read the articles earlier, sorry. We should put the selection criteria in the figure discription on Commons. Don't think it's necessary to put it in our CC article though. Femke Nijsse (talk) 15:37, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Version 2 uploaded (purposefully omits Verheggen 2014A per above discussion). Explanation for the omission is on Wikimedia Commons file description page. I will post this graphic to this CC article soon. —RCraig09 (talk) 17:48, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Looks great! Bogazicili (talk) 05:05, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Option to make figure smaller

The size of the figure in the article is larger than was proposed in the RfC, for consistency with other images in the article. This gives the figure too much prominence imo and according to CMD in the FAR. Furthermore, the text size is now larger than most of the other images.

RCraig09, would it be an option to put the five pie charts next to each other horizontally? If that doesn't work, could we have four next to each other? The other from Verheggen may be removed (for they specifically sought out climate contrarians, leading to low consensus). Simply displaying the figure smaller wouldn't work, as the caption would be spread over more lines. Femke Nijsse (talk) 12:03, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

I think the image would be too long and narrow with all pie charts horizontally. However, you can try 2 + 2 + 1, instead of current 2 + 3 configuration. Bogazicili (talk) 15:08, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

That would make the problem worse. We have have a default width for most of our images, that we would like to keep for consistency. 2 + 2 + 1 would make the image smaller rather than wider, displaying the pie charts even larger. Maybe 5 on one row is too much, but four should solve the problem of having very big pie charts. Whether the aspect ratio gets ugly is a matter of taste. I trust our image gurus Efbrazil and RCraig to comment on that. Furthermore, a more vertical picture would push the caption to be longer. We already infringe into the next section, and with more lines of caption, that problem is also made worse. Femke Nijsse (talk) 15:52, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

Femkemilene With an upright=1.25 declaration, I'm not understanding how the pie chart image is bigger than preceding images declaring upright=1.35. The images look consistent on my desktop, at least. I disfavor removing Verheggen because the Cook et al "Consensus on Consensus" reference included them and to omit Verheggen seems cherry-picking-ish. A creative option is to move away from pie charts to another form of data visualization, but at first glance I think pie charts are the most appropriate for the concept being conveyed. In Inkscape, I can move the elements closer together vertically, which would reduce "spillage" into the next section (a small amount); that approach may be best. —RCraig09 (talk) 17:18, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

It's the same size as other images, which is a problem because there is less information in the image. To me, this comes over as shouty, and isn't what we agreed to. While moving the elements closer together would solve the spillage, it doesn't quite solve the issue of having very large text compared to other images.

I respect that you do not want to cherry pick. However I do feel that were now giving a biased display of the consensus. We are omitting the current consensus of a hundred percent in favour of a study that explicitly invited more contrarians. Femke Nijsse (talk) 17:31, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

Or, less radical solution. Can you stagger them in 3 + 2 formation? So move the 3 pie charts in the bottom row further apart, and use that space to bring down the pie charts in the top row up quite significantly. Would be good if we could reduce text size and heigth by 30%. Femke Nijsse (talk) 23:15, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

I've been researching and puzzling on something better than pie charts, but I haven't thought of a better data visualization graphic type, so I think we're stuck with pie charts. . . . Yes, I can see the percentages "97%" etc are large. I will experiment with making everything more compact, probably uploading within 24 hours. —RCraig09 (talk) 23:41, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

First uploaded 3 Jan 2021, red-->gray change 3 Jan: occupies less vertical space than pie chart diagram, uses dots instead of pie charts to visually convey consensus percentages, avoids oversize text, includes Powell 2019 survey, and embeds text that cites references.

Update: I had trouble making a still image visually convey consensus percentages but also include citations, and still have it look decent. So I made a GIF, using dot arrays to be more space-efficient than multiple pie charts and provide basic citations intermittently to add credibility. See comments under image itself.--> I think it's an improvement in a number of ways, but let me know your impressions. —RCraig09 (talk) 07:58, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

I had hoped to get a more inconspicuous image. I opened this discussion as I agree with our FAR reviewer that consensus getting too much attention. The biggest disadvantage I see with the current visualisation is that it implies that the 3% (or whatever other percentage) does not support the consensus at all. I know from the Cook et al. study that only 2% of papers which express an opinion rejects consensus, with another 1% being unsure. I prefer visualisation that is 'neutral' on the remaining percentage (white instead of red). Femke Nijsse (talk) 10:33, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

Compressed vertically on 3 Jan 2021.

I don't know what the FAR reviewer's background is, but scientific consensus is still critically important in English-language Wikipedia in 2121 given U.S. Trumpian/Republican opposition and Australian recalcitrance etc.; further, I'm still wary of "outsiders" like FAR reviewers governing substantive content in articles. I'll change red to gray, since gray is neutral and different from the white background (and I'll also make the GIF smaller, to reduce file size). —RCraig09 (talk) 17:09, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

The reviewer seem to know what they're talking about. I've been impressed by their expertise. We did some tallying, and most sources give less attention to the topic. US-centric sources give more attention to it than the rest of the globe. With 40% US readership, I will begrudgingly accept a bit of a US bias, but I agree the article would improve if we make it more global, and less defensive. Having a gif instead of a still draws a lot of attention to the topic, and I would rather not. Also, white makes it quiet, and the screen-filling is also something that draws attention to the topic. Could you try out my suggestion of staggering? Femke Nijsse (talk) 18:47, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

New pie-chart version uploaded (see right): it is compressed vertically. I hope this is what you meant by 'staggering'. I agree re global balance, of course. Re 'defensiveness': I think scientific consensus is the baseline, and it is denialists who are 'defensive'—so presenting scientific consensus, especially this low in the article, does not come across to me as 'defensive'. I'm thinking the dot-array image is appropriate in some subsidiary articles even if not in this main CC article. —RCraig09 (talk) 20:02, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

I like the 5 pacman's :) Bogazicili (talk) 12:04, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

Agriculture

Think we need another sentence or may be even two about mitigation in agriculture. The recent restructuring exposed that we don't talk about this a lot. Femke Nijsse (talk) 09:19, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

FA with accessibility problem?

on a table its shows all

Should fix the slideshow of images for basic accessibility concerns especially for an FA article. Its using a portal template that is broken.... as of now it does not work for over 60% of our readers and causes problems for may others as seen by the image. It's either hidden from view or displays all images at one time. It's why its not used in mainspace 'anywhere see Template:Random slideshow for more information. Best try and make information accessible to all and not just a pretty box for desktop view.--Moxy 🍁 04:58, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

on desktop with Firefox, the box doesn't show any images about ten percent of the time, which is a second reason not to use it. Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:34, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

Should have been fixed during FA review ...odd it was missed.--Moxy 🍁 08:44, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

Agree with prioritizing accessibility. Bogazicili (talk) 10:44, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

60in TV - all the images are being shown stacked ...thus most of the article is now sandwiched between images. FIX ME!!!!

Thanks for starting a discussion here, I'd like to address concerns instead of just hastily deleting the gallery. There was an extensive review of all this back in May, when we came to consensus that the gallery was a great improvement, as you can see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Climate_change/Archive_81#Adding_effects_to_the_summary_at_the_beginning_of_the_article

The reason to include it is that it surfaces impacts in the intro on desktop. We wanted to surface impacts visually in the intro instead of burying that information visually way down in the article. There's no way to summarize impacts in a single image, hence the gallery. We did not want the gallery in mobile view because it would be too much content for an intro, but on desktop view it works well as an accent.

Regarding mobile view: Deleting the gallery has zero impact on mobile view (it's not visible either way). This gallery is just an accent that enhances desktop view by better surfacing important information up front for the users, for those that don't read the full article. Desktop and mobile view have lots of differences in their rendering, this is just another example of a difference. This issue was raised and dismissed in the initial review based on that reasoning.

Regarding accessibility: This gallery has no impact on accessibility that I'm aware of. For mobile view, you simply see the images later on in the article. There's no issues here around screen readers or voice command or color blindness or any other accessibility issues. Please clarify the accessibility concern.

Regarding Firefox, can you clarify the problem case? I have not seen it and it has not surfaced previously. Firefox is used by less than 4% of users and not showing images 10% of the time means 0.4% of desktop users are impacted. If the page is badly busted that's obviously a problem, but if the issue is just a firefox glitch in image loading then I think it's OK- firefox users are used to having a buggy browser, as they are the only users with a non-standard rendering engine (gecko) at this point (all other browsers are on webkit forks). Efbrazil (talk) 18:33, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

I echo Efbrazil's 18:33, 4 Jan opinions. I think there was a strong consensus to give Effects high prominence in the Lead. Further, on my desktop Firefox version 78.6.0esr (64-bit) for iMac OS X version 10.13.6 (17G14042) the slideshow displays properly. The absence of the slideshow on small devices renders the issue moot for those users—no need to delete something they don't see. RCraig09 (talk) 18:53, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

FWIW I'm using Firefox 84.0 (64 bit) on Windows 10 and it works fine for me too. SmartSE (talk) 19:41, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

Can't believe there even a discussion needed for a template that is not to be used in mainspace because of all the problems it causes. Local conncesus should never outweigh accsibility concerns. Swap it out for something that works for all....don't go out of your way to discriminate against a subset of readers and deter other readers. Do right by our readers and the people that worked on bring this to FA level and bring this up to basic accessibility standards. Template:Random slideshow It is intended for use in portals.-- Moxy 🍁 21:45, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

do you know of a solution that has somewhat similar results without accessibility problems? What I'm understanding is that this template works horribly on tablets, right? Femke Nijsse (talk) 22:23, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

Somewhat a solution....different image everyday. All have access no matter what device or how old. Your just regurgitating the galleries' right?--Moxy 🍁 22:46, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

Arctic warming. Permafrost thaws undermine infrastructure and release methane in a self-reinforcing feedback loop.

{{#switch: {{#expr: {{CURRENTDAYOFYEAR}} mod 8}} |0=[[File:Bleachedcoral.jpg|thumb|Underwater photograph of branching coral that is bleached white|[[Ecological collapse]]. Bleaching has damaged the [[Great Barrier Reef]] and threatens reefs worldwide]] |1=[[File:Orroral Valley Fire viewed from Tuggeranong January 2020.jpg|thumb|Photograph of evening in a valley settlement. The skyline in the hills beyond is lit up red from the fires.|[[Extreme weather]]. Drought and high temperatures worsened the [[2019–20 Australian bushfire season#Climate change|2020 bushfires in Australia]].]] |2=[[File:National Park Service Thawing permafrost (27759123542).jpg|thumb|The green landscape is interrupted by a huge muddy scar where the ground has subsided.|[[Climate change in the Arctic|Arctic warming]]. [[Permafrost#Climate change effects|Permafrost thaws]] undermine infrastructure and [[Arctic methane emissions|release methane]] in a [[Climate change feedback|self-reinforcing feedback loop]].]] |3=[[File:Endangered arctic - starving polar bear edit.jpg|thumb|An emaciated polar bear stands atop the remains of a melting ice floe.|[[Habitat destruction]]. Many arctic animals rely on sea ice, which has been disappearing in a warming Arctic.]] |4=[[File:Mountain Pine Beetle damage in the Fraser Experimental Forest 2007.jpg|thumb|Photograph of a large area of forest. The green trees are interspersed with large patches of damaged or dead trees turning purple-brown and light red.|[[Climate change and invasive species|Pest propagation]]. Mild winters allow more [[mountain pine beetle|pine beetles]] to survive to kill large swaths of forest.]] |5=[[File:Corn shows the affect of drought.jpg|thumb|[[Climate change and agriculture|Agricultural changes]]. Droughts, rising temperatures, and extreme weather negatively impact agriculture. Shown: Texas, USA..]] |6=[[File:Acqua alta in Piazza San Marco-original.jpg|thumb|[[Tidal flooding]]. [[Sea level rise|Sea-level rise]] increases flooding in low-lying coastal regions. Shown: [[Venice#Flooding|Venice, Italy]]]] |7=[[File:US Navy 071120-M-8966H-005 An aerial view over southern Bangladesh reveals extensive flooding as a result of Cyclone Sidr.jpg|thumb |[[Tropical cyclones and climate change|Storm intensification]]. Bangladesh after [[Cyclone Sidr]] is an example of catastrophic flooding from increased rainfall.]] |8=[[File:The heat is on ESA19461898.jpeg|thumb|[[Heat wave|Heat wave intensification]]. Events like the [[June 2019 European heat wave]] are becoming more common.]] }}

1. I'm still not hearing a concise answer to Femke's essential question: for whom, exactly, does the slideshow cause problems?
2. Moxy's image-a-day proposal is creative, but obviously readers will miss most of the intended content each day. Accordingly...
3. If accessibility is a genuinely a problem, I reluctantly suggest an animated GIF with very brief 'captions' embedded in the image itself, though I'm still not seeing the fatal flaw of the slideshow that's been here for half a year. —RCraig09 (talk) 00:20, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Access problems include )sandwiching of text )screen reader will read every image). Does the below code work for everyone? Has purge option to change on the fly.--Moxy 🍁 03:50, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Pest propagation. Mild winters allow more pine beetles to survive to kill large swaths of forest.

{{random item|1=[[File:Orroral Valley Fire viewed from Tuggeranong January 2020.jpg|thumb|[[Extreme weather]]. Drought and high temperatures worsened the [[2019–20 Australian bushfire season#Climate change|2020 bushfires in Australia]].<br><small>{{Purge|Another example}}</small>]] |2=[[File:National Park Service Thawing permafrost (27759123542).jpg|thumb|[[Climate change in the Arctic|Arctic warming]]. [[Permafrost#Climate change effects|Permafrost thaws]] undermine infrastructure and [[Arctic methane emissions|release methane]] in a [[Climate change feedback|self-reinforcing feedback loop]].<br><small>{{Purge|Another example}}</small>]] |3=[[File:Endangered arctic - starving polar bear edit.jpg|thumb|[[Habitat destruction]]. Many arctic animals rely on sea ice, which has been disappearing in a warming Arctic.<br><small>{{Purge|Another example}}</small>]] |4=[[File:Mountain Pine Beetle damage in the Fraser Experimental Forest 2007.jpg|thumb|[[Climate change and invasive species|Pest propagation]]. Mild winters allow more [[mountain pine beetle|pine beetles]] to survive to kill large swaths of forest.<br><small>{{Purge|Another example}}</small>]] |5=[[File:Corn shows the affect of drought.jpg|thumb|[[Climate change and agriculture|Agricultural changes]]. Droughts, rising temperatures, and extreme weather negatively impact agriculture. Shown: Texas, USA.<br><small>{{Purge|Another example}}</small>]] |6=[[File:Acqua alta in Piazza San Marco-original.jpg|thumb|[[Tidal flooding]]. [[Sea level rise|Sea-level rise]] increases flooding in low-lying coastal regions. Shown: [[Venice#Flooding|Venice, Italy]]<br><small>{{Purge|Another example}}</small>]] |7=[[File:US Navy 071120-M-8966H-005 An aerial view over southern Bangladesh reveals extensive flooding as a result of Cyclone Sidr.jpg|thumb |[[Tropical cyclones and climate change|Storm intensification]]. Bangladesh after [[Cyclone Sidr]] is an example of catastrophic flooding from increased rainfall.<br><small>{{Purge|Another example}}</small>]] |8=[[File:The heat is on ESA19461898.jpeg|thumb|[[Heat wave|Heat wave intensification]]. Events like the [[June 2019 European heat wave]] are becoming more common.<br><small>{{Purge|Another example}}</small>]]}}

On iPhone7 and on desktop iMac Chrome, I get a solid "Storm intensification..." image. —RCraig09 (talk) 04:36, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Wait... when I refresh (sometimes) and when I return to the page, I get different images. No slideshow. —RCraig09 (talk) 04:38, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Correct not a slideshow. ...needs a purge to change. I am trying. 😦.--Moxy 🍁 04:47, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

I like it, especially with the 'another example'! Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:31, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

It sounds like a great concept but: when I click 'another example' it takes me to a page: "Purge this page / Clear the cache of this page?" rather than just taking me to another example. (iMac OS X 10.13 Chrome). When I click "Yes" it doesn't return me to where I was. ~Sad~ —RCraig09 (talk) 15:44, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

I'm still not hearing a significant accessibility concern with the existing solution. Note that the existing solution also has the advantage of auto-sizing to "upright=1.35", which is what all the other images in the page are at and is responsive to user preferences and accessibility preferences on image sizing, so please make sure than any replacement solution also has that advantage. On the plus side with Moxy's solution, I think it would be an improvement if the gallery appeared as a gallery in mobile view- as a navigation gallery that is, not as 10 stacked images, which is the default behavior (which is why the existing behavior of hiding is preferable). In terms of design, having "Another example" is less elegant than having arrows to go backwards and forward through the gallery. There's also something to be said for not duplicating all the text of the galleries- if we switch to where Moxy is going, then if someone wants to change a gallery reference or text or image they have to duplicate the effort in 2 places or else they get out of sync. Having said all that, my main priority is keeping the gallery in place, so I think the right approach is for Moxy to keep working on a solution they prefer and then for all of us to discuss whether the end result is an improvement or not. Efbrazil (talk) 18:36, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Is disappointing to see that WP:Sandwich is not considers an accessibility problem here.--Moxy 🍁 18:16, 8 January 2021 (UTC)