Talk:Climate change/Archive 76

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Featured article review

Every day I edit this article I find things that are clearly not in line with the Wikipedia:Featured article criteria. The first step in the FAR is identify and solve problems ourselves. Please add any problems you can identify as a section here.

1a) Well-written. Not a word smith at all, but even I can detect and improve some sentences.

1b) Comprehensive. It missed (misses?) newer context, and the non-physics parts of the article were lacking before that.

1c) Well-researched. I'm not entirely sure whether all claims we make are still supported by the latest research. Also, paraphrasing by non-experts has also lead to errors in using sources.

1d) Neutral: I do feel that some non-neutrality has crept it, making climate change out to be worse than it is (it's 'sufficiently' bad if we just follow the RSs).  Have removed many claims that are weakly supported by RSs

2a) The lead is somewhat too long (but we've tried solving this multiple times).  Merged last two paragraphs so we're now at 4, but we can maybe write it even more succinctly  by putting impacts in present tense instead of future, I saved quite a few words

2c) Consistent citation style: being solved now. (Please comment whether this is okay for everybody!)

4) Summary style is not always there, with unnecessary details being added regularly.


Terminology section

I think the terminology section is too long. Should part of it be moved to public opinion on climate change or history of climate change science??

Scientific discusion

Scientific discussion on climate change: the 2018 IPCC report does not belong there I feel. The report is important, but I'm not entirely sure where to put it. Maybe under mitigation. To me, with statement from 2005, it feels like it overlaps a bit with the history of climate change section. Which direction should this section go?  Have ordered the whole section, so that it fits better.

Mitigation

Mitigation: to me it isn't clear why only co-benefits are named. Surely there are some trade-offs (bio-energy vs food production for instance). Need to look up in RSs how much space to give to these two, so that we don't create a false balance if more trade-offs or more co-benefits exists.

Regional climate change

Regional climate change: only mentioning Africa and Arctic is a bit weird. IPCC WG2 SPM has identified some key risks for each region, let's have a more global perspective here.

 Not done. I've been reading how other science communication typically did this. They typically sort per impact type, so that's what I've done now as well. Examples: National Geographic, [IPCC https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg2/ (part A)], NRDC, Union of concerned scientists. Not subdividing led to a wall of text. I'm a bit worried about the fact that the subsubsections are a bit too small. Femke Nijsse (talk) 09:40, 12 May 2019 (UTC)

Attribution

A general comment on the prerequisites of attribution is not done yet. In the IPCC this is summarized as a) determining that aerosols + GHG are sufficiently strong to explain b) determining that other forcings don't play role and c) determining that internal variability doesn't play a role. Femke Nijsse (talk) 11:23, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

 Done. These sources are highly technical and many different techniques exist. I think I've distilled the main idea here, but would appreciate if somebody could check. Femke Nijsse (talk) 12:40, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

Hurricanes

Tropical cyclone (or hurricanes in US) are not mentioned yet. I think the amplification of them is the biggest visible effect of global warming people see. Femke Nijsse (talk) 11:23, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

 Done Added them to physical effects. Might add something to impact on humans as well. Femke Nijsse (talk) 12:40, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

Other small things

Tone. A lot of 10 year old research is references, whose claims now have more backing. We need to critically look at sentences like: A probably causes B, it is thought that C causes D. If they have become more certain in the mean time; make them more active.

Do we want to mention Twoney and Albrecht effect of aerosols by name? I think we can leave out the names, but we'll lose the link to the proper article. Feels too specialized to mention them.

Over the x last years/decades is an often-recurring phrase. Might need updating and rephrasing. Femke Nijsse (talk) 13:42, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

Greenhouse gases sections needs updating

This section needs updating, possibly restructuring, is possibly only 98% neutral and should focus more on non-CO2 GHGs.

1) It misses the specific fingerprint of CO2 (cooling in stratosphere). This is now mentioned under solar influence.

2) It contains sentences like: last 20 years (meaning the last 20 years before 2001)  Done

3) The subsection contains two figures, and two other figures that are now used in the overall section, actually belong here. I don't know whether a gallery of some sorts is a possibility, as I do think all these figures are important.

Moved a part of the text to mitigation, but I'm not entirely sure this is the best placement of figures. With figure size a bit reduced, this problem is less urgent.

4) The figure with the GHG emissions only contains current numbers. Within the IPCC negotiations for the SPM many developing countries objected to this in terms of neutrality. They wanted a figure like this to go hand in hand with a figure detailing historical emissions.

5) We need updating in terms of the scenarios described. The shared socio-economic pathways are the modern thing. Much has changed in terms of scenarios since 2001 (years of relative inaction + huge progress in technology/ political debate). I think that emission scenarios might have to be moved to mitigation, right?  Moved this to mitigation. With socio-economic pathways being quite new, I'll wait with this till the end of my editing spree. Femke Nijsse (talk) 07:57, 12 May 2019 (UTC)

6) More on non-CO2. I suspect clinker production (I don't even know what they are) is significantly less polluting than animals used for food).

 Removed the clinker production Cement (for which these clinkers were produced) is already mentioned separately.

7) We now have longer proxy records than 800 000 years. I think ice is a million.

 Not done Let's keep it at 800 000, that's what most sources still use.~They might have a reason for that. Femke Nijsse (talk) 07:57, 12 May 2019 (UTC)

8)

9)

... Femke Nijsse (talk) 16:56, 6 May 2019 (UTC)


Missing content

Prokaryotes commented (now under subsection general) that the article is missing climate action, how the world is approaching global warming, what is done subsequently in response to all these reports, and what it means. While these are the points that need polishing the most, I don't agree that they are missing.

  • climate action is now part of Society and Culture#Public opinion and disputes. It currently has one sentence, and could be expended a bit, but not too much as to not give it undue weight. Not sure what information should be added though.
  • how the world is approaching global warming & what is done subsequently: under mitigation and under political response. I have updated both recently. Missing now is for instance how institutions, cities and companies reply to global warming. Will add this in the mitigation section.
  • what it means: societal effects are listed under Effects#Social impact. Mitigation has a section that we're not on track to meet 2 degrees. Might add a note under political response as well: a statement like the national commitments so far are not sufficient to meet this goal (RS). Femke Nijsse (talk) 12:19, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
These article sections are sometimes too vague and context is often not sufficient. For instance the carbon tracker figure also cites 4.4C, and other estimates suggest even higher figures. It has been suggested that higher figures are more likely. And when discussing mean temperature projections, extremes should be mentioned, which are higher and longer in duration, which should be pointed out when discussing climate actions and temperature targets. Also it should be pointed out that countries lack their pledges, and that we track the worst case scenarios.
It is difficult to sort all these topics since they overlap, ie. with feedback thresholds. prokaryotes (talk) 13:11, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
I'll critically evaluate what extra context should be added again. (if you have more examples, please add!). About the carbon tracker 4.4C (the top estimate for 'current policy'). This is partially based on IEA outlook, so I'm not so sure whether to adopt it. IEA has very consistently underestimated uptake of renewables in the past (most notably solar PV). So this number might be overly pessimistic? Will have to look further into it before adding it and trying to figure out what other RSs say.
About climate sensitivity (discussed in lede with different projections and in section about sensitivities), many studies also indicate lower values are more likely. This source contains an overview of all decent studies 2000-2018, (I think included the one you cited): https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-how-scientists-estimate-climate-sensitivity. There is no trend upwards. Femke Nijsse (talk) 13:38, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
CMIP6 results https://twitter.com/theFosterlab/status/1118819461824434176 prokaryotes (talk) 15:01, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
I'm aware that many of the CMIP6 models have high climate sensitivity. I've also seen how some of these high ECS models perform over the historical period: not good. Anyway, we cannot really include any of this until proper evaluation of these models has been performed and published in RSs. I think that will be at least another year. High complexity models are just one way of estimating ECS as well. Femke Nijsse (talk) 15:46, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
I agree it's difficult to sort these topics. This is one of the reasons I'd like to go through the FAR eventually. Femke Nijsse (talk) 13:38, 22 April 2019 (UTC)


General

History of climate change science is on the history of the science, climate change is for history of climate change in a broader context. Generally the problem is the high influx of new studies each month versus updating this article, many authors usually use the larger meta study kind of publications, unless there is significant coverage. What the article is missing is the topic about climate action, how the world is approaching global warming, what is done subsequently in response to all these reports, and what it means. prokaryotes (talk) 10:41, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for replying. Could you put your comments under the right subsections and/or make clear whether they are new points or responses to previous comments? Femke Nijsse (talk) 12:19, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

IPCC urls

Just some handy IPCC urls. At some point it may be useful to replace any older urls in the citations. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:19, 7 June 2019 (UTC)

\* TAR

\* AR4: WG1 WG2 WG3 SYR

\* AR5: WG1 WG2 WG3 SYR

\* Special Report (GW @ 1.5°)

And I will note that some of the "www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/" links are 404. The preferred url for archived reports is at https://archive.ipcc.ch/.

Another reason we need to have the citations better organized: Some of the AR5 WG3 reports cited here are linked to http://report.mitigation2014.org/, a site apparently set up by the WG3 group outside of the ipcc.ch domain. That site now redirects to http://ecotality.com/, a company that went bankrupt in 2013. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:23, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

Dispute about what to do about global warming and who should do it - should it be included in the "Public opinion and disputes" section?

I realise that Climate change mitigation and Politics of global warming would be the main articles for it but should the dispute about what to do about global warming and who should do it be mentioned briefly here, perhaps in the "Public opinion and disputes" section?

For example should ............... and consequences of global warming. be changed to ................,consequences of global warming, what should be done about it, by whom and how quickly.

Perhaps the paragraph starting "By 2010 ....." could be shortened and something like the following added at the end of the section:

Disputes about what should be done about global warming include how quickly to phase out fossil fuels and whether or not to use climate engineering. Differences of opinion about who should take what actions are sometimes due to different ideas on the economics of global warming. Chidgk1 (talk) 18:11, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

I agree if you can find a reliable source. The paragraph starting with By 2010 is a bit outdated, but unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be more global polling on that scale since (20 minutes google search). The sentence that a majority of US citizens think global warming is natural is not true anymore (https://e360.yale.edu/digest/americans-who-accept-climate-change-outnumber-those-who-dont-5-to-1). Please go ahead! Femke Nijsse (talk) 10:59, 12 April 2019 (UTC)
Basically the industry uses environmentalists to put sanctions on competitors or the industry as a whole, and have scientists both private and public sector that ensure the envirment in which sustains their industries. So....... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1702:30A2:28C0:3403:B1F0:1966:ED1 (talk) 06:54, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
@Chidgk1: I saw you added it, without providing a source. I know the sentence didn't have a source before. Could you please help find a source for this statement? Femke Nijsse (talk) 06:50, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
@Femkemilene: Sorry for slow reply. My mistake - I had forgotten about this discussion and added similar when I thought of it again. Will add source or ask here again today.Chidgk1 (talk) 08:27, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
In a reply to the anonymous contributor: I don't understand your point. If you want to make concrete suggestions for improvement, please be clear what you want to have changed and provide reliable sources. Femke Nijsse (talk) 10:02, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

Tipping points clouds

I've just removed the 2019 study that predicted a tipping point in cloud cover because:

  1. It's not a secondary source, so we should be critical to start with
  2. After speaking to an expert on cloud physics today, it became clear to me that the study has assumptions that might make it not that valid to the real world. From the cited source: Some of the large-scale interactions, including how oceans exchange heat and energy with the atmosphere, were simplified or neglected, he says. This makes it hard to know the precise carbon dioxide levels at which stratocumulus clouds become unstable.
  3. The study extrapolates from one spot to a global estimate. This extrapolation is done in a simplified way and quite some experts believe that this artificially introduces a tipping point, while reality is more smooth: Discussion in Science. Femke Nijsse (talk) 7 June 2019 (UTC)

Herder-farmer conflicts

@Tobby72: you just readded a sentence about the violent herder-farmer conflicts in some parts of Africa. Thanks for trying to improve the article :). I deleted this sentence, or a similar sentence recently as I don't believe this is sufficiently important for this article and I don't think the science has been sufficiently established linking the two.

  • Importance: this conflict is typically not mentioned in review papers about the link between climate change. The two review papers cited in the previous sentence don't mention it, nor the IPCC report (I searched for it in IPCC AR5 WG2 summary for policymakers and chapter 12.
  • Accuracy: there is some research indicating climate change is NOT the major factor here. See for instance: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0022343311427343.

For now I've deleted the sentence again. If you do believe the sentence is sufficiently important and accurate, please reply to the discussion here before republishing it. Again, thanks for your help! Femke Nijsse (talk) 19:20, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

Notes and references

@J. Johnson: and @Matthiaspaul: before you two start a whole discussion about the correct headings of the sections/subsection of Notes and References, I'd like to discuss whether we can just completely merge them. Many of the shortcites under References already come with a postscript, we could rewrite the four three "notes" like this as well. Femke Nijsse (talk) 18:48, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

Yes, if they are quotes or notes connected to a specific source, we can convert them into citations (with quote= or use a postscript) and then list them under References. If, however, they are genuine notes, they should IMHO not be lumped together with normal references. Right now, it looks as if note a and b could be converted, but what about note c? I would not have a problem with a Notes section listing only one note right now.
Further, I would suggest to convert the as-of-now not very helpful citatations under "Sources" into true references to be listed under References. For as long as the citations listed under "Sources" don't make clear which statements in the article they support, they are effectively only recommendations for further reading - that's why, in my original edit, I had changed the section header to the standard name "Further reading". In the long run, I hope that most references supporting statements in the article can be moved into "References" - but given the huge amount of them, this may take a while.
I'd also like to remark that this section contains quite many embedded ELs. Per MOS, they should be converted into references (or moved into the EL section).
--Matthiaspaul (talk) 19:30, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
What are embedded ELs? In our current model, barring a few mistakes, all full citations in the sources sections should be referenced to from inline citations via short-cites in the referencing section Further reading is therefore in my view an incorrect heading. These sources are all used already. I think we can find some source that contains the information of note c as literal text as well. Femke Nijsse (talk) 19:40, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
As we are in the mids of a transfer, there are some full citations in the references section still. They will be changed into a short-cite/full citation later. Femke Nijsse (talk) 19:43, 22 June 2019 (UTC)


Femke: The "postscript" you mention is undoubtedly the use of the |ps= parameter used in the Harv templates (see ps=) for adding "quotes or additional comments" in the short-cite itself. (Incidentally, such use is deplorable, as it needlessly weights down the short-cite with content that is neither needed nor useful for the purpose of the short-cite, and can be included in a note without having to be in the short-cite.)
These are instances of "explanatory" comments associated with specific content. From Wikipedia's early days there has been an unfortunate confusion that "citation footnotes" (i.e., "references") and "explanatory footnotes" are different and must be handled separately. This is simply not true. And per [[MOS:NOTES]: "If there are both citation footnotes and explanatory footnotes, then they may be combined in a single section ..." (emphasis added) — or not. The <ref> tags generate notes ("footnotes"), which may contain citations, text, or both.
MP: with all due respect, you're talking nonsense. E.g.: what are "genuine notes", "normal references", and "true references"? Can you show us definitions of those concepts? And what do you mean by "convert them into citations" using |quote=? A citation – whether a full citation or a short-cite, and do you even understand the difference? – refers to and/or identifies a source. A quotation from a source is not part of a citation, it is what the citation links back to the source.
Your comment that "the as-of-now not very helpful citatations under "Sources" .... don't make clear which statements in the article they support" shows a substantial unfamiliarity with how full citations and short-cites work. Let us address that. A full citation contains the "full" bibliographical details of the source. Note that information about specific content in the source is not part of the full citation, although such information is often appended to a full citation. Ideally there is only one full citation per source.
Short-cites link specific content (such as quotations) in the article text to a source's full citation, and (preferably) to the specific location in the source pertinent to the content. This has several advantages, including avoiding multiple replications of a full citation. They also enable in-source specification and comments specific to the content being supported.
The use of suitable short-cites is especially necessary for citation of the IPCC reports as they have multiple layers with a lot of details. The IPCC's preferred citations include all of the details of the enclosing works, which results in voluminous repetition of redundant detail. Experience on WP shows that WP editors, on their own, often can't handle such complicated forms, or if they can, use different and inconsistent forms. This leads to various problems (such of which are still found in the current version of this article). In regard of AR reports, the approach developed here uses short-cites to link chapters to each Working Group's report (or the SYR), which are in turn linked to the AR, without repeating all higher level detail at the lower levels.
Of course the full citations (whether AR, WG, or chapter) do not show "which statements in the article they support" — that is not their function. 1) They often support multiple statements, and listing all of them, as well the their location in the source, would be quite complicated and difficult to maintain. 2) That is the function of the short-cites.
Please ask if you have any questions. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:11, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

Current citation work (June, 2019)

A small nit, but I have been wondering: Should each IPCC AR list the sections in order of WG1, WG2, WG3, SYR ("Synthesis Report"), as the IPCC does, or should we put the SYR first on the basis that might be of more interest to any readers that stroll by? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:41, 8 June 2019 (UTC)

Let's just follow the IPCC's listing and put SYR last. I find it convenient if it's listed in order of publication date. Femke Nijsse (talk) 21:12, 8 June 2019 (UTC)
Okay. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:54, 9 June 2019 (UTC)

@Izno: what's with the "should not have" |display-authors=4 when authors is three or less? (Again, a small nit, but let's sort 'em out.) As Femke says, there is no problem leaving it in. And if by chance we should want change the number it would be easier the parameter is already in. Right? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:41, 8 June 2019 (UTC)

Having a display author value which is greater than or equal to the number of authors present causes a maintenance message; see Category:CS1 maint: display-authors. At best, it is misleading, and at worst, an actual error. --Izno (talk) 21:42, 8 June 2019 (UTC)
Oh. I thought the code was smart enough to not be troubled by that, but there it is. A bug, but not one I have time to chase. Thank you for the explanation. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:02, 9 June 2019 (UTC)
The category is deliberate--your intent is not obviously communicated when display-authors >= author count. --Izno (talk) 20:40, 9 June 2019 (UTC)
Or was the thinking that addition of display-authors in such cases is indication of inattention by the editor? My thinking here is that, given that we want to display up to four authors (when available), neither more nor less, that including this in all citations makes it less likely that someone copying an existing citation to modify for a new source will be less likely to omit the parameter when it should be included. It essentially defines a default, and I don't see that a default should be left out even when it is not applicable. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:36, 9 June 2019 (UTC)
Inattention also, possibly. I personally wouldn't weight strongly this desire about default numbers of authors for the "copy" use case, seeing as this is an FA and the random passerby probably isn't going to get any added citation exactly right relative to the interest of the stewards of this page, anyway. :) --Izno (talk) 02:13, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
As one of the most visited articles on WP I think we should strive for FA quality. As to "random passerby" — we're talking about editors, right? — that's part of the problem: lots of inventive but ill-formed citations, and even outright shoddiness. Part of the reason for this re-organization is to make citation easier, particularly for the IPCC reports. Another purpose is to make problems more visible, and easier to fix. (E.g.: the IPCC's archive structure has varied over time, and one of my tasks today is to determine a consistent and stable scheme of accessing the reports.) Consistency in the number of displayed authors is one of a number small details that contribute to this effort. Editors only slightly acquainted with this article will randomly grab an existing citation as a model, and if it lacks display-authors then they won't know about it. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:01, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

Previous comment reminded me: we display up to four authors (at least for the IPCC chapters) because there are some near collisions with only three. In regards of editors: should we display up to three, or four? I think three would suffice. Four would be consistent with authors, but then perhaps a "different consistency" would be a subtle indication of editors vs. authors.

Another question: how should we do the "In: <enclosing work>"? There is a certain logic in using |title= for this, but I'm not liking the "In: <title>" with "In:" italicized as part of the title. (And possibly a metadata problem.) I'm leaning towards doing it the way I have before, appending it to the template, with or without italicization. You all have undoubtedly noticed that for the AR5 WG1 Technical Summary (here) I did it all three ways. Which should we prefer? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:00, 9 June 2019 (UTC)

As the gnome who happened to visit this page, regarding your second question, can you provide the refs of interest directly on this talk page? I am happy to give an opinion from usage perspective of the citations. --Izno (talk) 02:13, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
You mean regarding the "In:" test? Here's a partial citation with added superscripts:
  • Stocker, T. F.; Qin, D.; Plattner, G.-K.; Alexander, L. V.; et al. (2013). "Technical Summary". aIn: IPCC AR5 WG1 2013. bIn: IPCC AR5 WG1 2013; cIn: IPCC AR5 WG1 2013.
Or click on the link. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:13, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
You are right that it's weird to have In italicized. I think having the IPCC report italized is the best one. So number c). Femke Nijsse (talk) 20:23, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
Well, went back to using |title= (but without "In:") as one of the changes since I first set these up is that title is now required. "In:" will be automatically supplied if an editor is specified; I hope we don't have any problems with that. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:42, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

@Chidgk1: Regarding your recent citation of the "European Social Survey" report: you seem to be emulating how we are handling the IPCC reports, particularly regarding the use {harvid}. However, the IPCC reports are a special case. In this case the use of {harvid} is neither needed nor useful. As the ESS appears periodically, it might be more appropriate to cite it as a journal (is it peer-reviews?), using {cite journal}. If it is one of those cases that blurs the distinction I would use {{citation}} (with |mode=cs1), as it does not try to fine tune these distinctions. Either way: this report has authors; they should be listed, using the |first#= and |last#= parameters. By adding |ref=harv (which is the default for {citation}) a suitable anchor is automatically created using the last names of the first four authors and the year from the date. The corresponding in-line short-cite is created with (in this case) "{{harvnb|Poortinga|Fisher|Böhm|Steg|2018}}". I would not use the |quote= parameter, as there is no point to it, and it confuses the use of the template. If you feel a quotation (or comment) is necessary, just add it to the note as apprpriate. I do suggest adding a page number ("in-source specifier") to locate the content being cited.

Adding citations under headings for the publisher is usually done (or should be; we're still in flux here) only where there are multiple sources, especially if some of them are not credited to a specific author. Single reports are normally collated alphabetically by the lead author's last name. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:34, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

I see you fixed that citation. It looks good; thanks. I did fix your "in-source specifier" — that's the general term; the parameters for doing that with {harv} are |p=, |pp=, and |loc=. (The last is handy for specifying section numbers, esp. on web pages that don't have page numbers.) Note that these don't have to be specified in the {harv} template, it is acceptable to append them. E.g.: "{{harvnb|Smith|2001}}, p. 21." is equivalent to, and sometimes handier than, "{{harvnb|Smith|2001|p=21}}.". ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:41, 19 June 2019 (UTC) [Belated sig.]


I've just added "selected" AR4 chapters, which should cover what is currently cited here. That was +14,000 bytes. Then I replaced the in-text full citations with short-cites in just one section, and there was a reduction of 2,400 bytes. So I think we are on track for a net slimming. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:01, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

And the minimally necessary TAR citations are in. Though I haven't checked them yet. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:27, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

Climate emergency

@Matthiaspaul: you just added a sentence about climate emergencies being declared by various organizations. I've got a couple of remarks about that

  1. Could you provide an incline citation to this?
  2. Could you place it under the correct heading of political action? I don't think it has anything to do with terminology, except being an example of the new terminology being used.
  3. I wonder whether the wording is correct now. My understanding is that administration is a synonym for government that is only used in the U.S. This is what my British colleague told me the other day (I'm myself not a native speaker). If so, the entire word should be left out in favour of the more generally accepted word government. Femke Nijsse (talk) 18:49, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
ad 1) Yes, I can, if this would be really necessary. However, I didn't do it originally because there are so many sources and because there are no real statements that need to be supported - the added sentence was just meant to point interested readers to the climate emergency declaration article, which is also often just called "climate emergency". I thought that for as long as we don't discuss this in further details in this article, the sourcing would better be done in the target article.
Thanks for that. I'm still mostly worried about the year. It's quite difficult to ascertain when the first climate emergency was issued, considering the myriad of languages spoken around the world. From the second source you provided, it seems they declared a climate emergency in 2016, so 2017 seems definitely incorrect. If you can't find a RS for when the first CE was issued, please reword the sentence further. Femke Nijsse (talk) 07:58, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
ad 2) The very reason why I came here to add that sentence is only because the term "climate emergency" redirects here and is discussed in the section where I added the link to "climate emergency declaration". An alternative would have been to add a hatnote or even create a disambiguation page for the term. I didn't add a hatnote because I found it too prominent on top of a general article on global warming.
Since yesterday the climate emergency has it's own page. I'm not convinced it should have its own page, and prefer it to link to climate emergency declaration I think.. But this point is (temporarily?) not applicable. Femke Nijsse (talk) 07:58, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
ad 3) I'm not a native speaker as well, but it is true that the government is called administration in the US. However, the term is also used for other purposes, for example for the administration of a city - and this is why I used both terms. Feel free to find a better wording.
I'm open for suggestions. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 21:13, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
I'm happy with the current wording. Femke Nijsse (talk) 07:58, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
I believe that in Britain "government" tends (but not absolutely?) to refer to the top level politicians that are running the show. That's what in the States we call the "administration", with "government" referring to the whole apparatus of government. (All the way down to the "uniformed government agent" that delivers your radical newsletter to your mailbox. :-) If a source says "administration" it should be retained (we do not alter wording!). If that might be mistaken then an explanatory term can be inserted, but in brackets to show it is an editorial emendation. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:22, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

archive.ipcc

@J. Johnson, I notice that even when creating new links to the IPCC, you (sometimes?) link to their old website: archive.ipcc.ch. Just wondering if you're aware that all of the old reports can be found on the new website ipcc.ch as well. That website is optimized for speed, and works way better than the older one (and looks pretty). Is there some other reason you prefer the old website? (I'm on holiday, so might not reply back for a week) Femke Nijsse (talk) 07:33, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

Yes. Especially I don't like "pretty" (and lots of empty space) valued more than concise utility. I don't know that the new site works better than the old overall, but in some cases I have found items missing. Also, you may have seen several of my upgrades of the old (and now 404) 'www.grida.no' urls to 'archive.ipcc.ch'. Those could be further updated to the newest site, but 1) I don't fully trust it, and 2) I reckon the "newer" (than grida.no) archive is good enough for present purposes. And they might be replaced by other sources.
At some point – when the content is fairly stable, and the citations are squared away and workable – we should review all sources for more current ones. E.g., I see that SRES is mentioned several times (but not cited directly!), although it's been superseded since 2014 (?) by "Representative Concentration Pathways". But such a review pretty much requires workable citations. Updating urls to the latest could be part of that, as well as grabbing in-source specifiers. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:50, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Okay, clear. The IPCC responds well to emails if something is wrong with their website. (There was wrong link they fixed a day after I emailed them). So if you remember what was missing, I can try and contact them. For the big reports, they sometimes load maybe ten times as fast. I think an advantage of using the new website is that users can navigate to the newest reports as well, which I assume are not always on the old website?
The reason I've postponed updating SRES to RCP is a) they are slightly different in nature, with SRES detailing emissions (and economy directly) and RCP detailing concentration and b) more importantly, SRES currently being superseded by SSPs (shared socio-economic pathways?), so I'm waiting for some more mature literature on that, which I think might come in next few months. I've tagged or directly updated a lot of/most things I felt we're done with outdated literature, feel free to tag more. Sometimes old literature is still perfectly valid [Femke Nijsse]
I don't see download speed being much of a factor, and likely more constrained on my end then their end. One of the advantages of their having a new site is that those who want to make it prettier, etc., are not messing with the old site, and that is more likely to remain stable.
I'll be adding a citation for SRES, because it is cited, and might continue to be cited for historical purposes. RCPs are mentioned in the "Climate models" section, but cited only through several AR5 reports. I'm not clear on what the authoritative source is (Representative_Concentration_Pathway is a mess), so I'll leave it to you decide if anything needs to be cited there. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:48, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

What articles should be in "see also"

I think warming stripes would be fine there. Would anyone else like to comment apart from @RCraig09: and @J. Johnson:? — Chidgk1 (talk) 05:25, 4 July 2019 (UTC).

In my attempt to make this article comply with the MOS (requirement FA), I've removed quite a few links in see also. See also usually contains links to things that, had the article been complete, would be in the article's body. Therefore, only few featured articles actually have a section like this. In this light, I don't think there is place for a small topic like warming stripes. There are many equally important data visualisation methods that should then be included, making this section overly long. Femke Nijsse (talk) 10:45, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
Yes. For all that warming stripes might be a wonderful data visualization tool, it is still only a tool for presenting data, and not directly relevant to what global warming is, or what drives it, or what the effects are, or what can be done. If such a diagram were to be used here it would certainly require some explanation, and at that point a link would be warranted. But the place for that would be in the image caption, not in the "See also" section. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 18:27, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
P.S. I see a note in last week's Science that there is on-going social media campaign to boost "warming stripes". That in itself suggests the addition here was not for the benefit of this article. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:44, 7 July 2019 (UTC)
The article in Science (here, openly cited in the very first version of the Warming stripes article) did not report about a social media campaign "boosting warming stripes". The campaign, initiated by climate scientists and supported by meteorologists, was about increasing understanding of global warming among non-scientists. I understand and appreciate the comments above, on 4 July, but not the WP-conspiracy theory you described earlier this evening, or insinuations (at ANI!) that describing scientists' encouraging downloads of free visualizations of objective data, is somehow "spamming". You won. Move on. —RCraig09 (talk) 00:39, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
That article starts: "A social media campaign called #ShowYourStripes is flooding the climate science community with beautiful blue and red striped barcodelike images, ..." (highlighting added). Now perhaps such striping can "increase understanding" of GW. But I don't see that it is in fact better than other data visualization methods, nor that it has any better claim for an explicit "See also" than any other method. Or than methods of measuring temperatures, or analyzing the data. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:08, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
Warming stripes (WSs) are probably "better" at communicating with non-scientists—that's the point of them! WSs have nothing to do with "measuring temperatures", and little to do with "analyzing the data" since they're purposely intuitive. I never imagined WSs had a "better" claim to a See also link; I simply saw WS's specific relevance and undeniable utility in communicating about GW and I thought a link to the WS article would compensate for its absence in the body of the GW article. I agree it would be better to have a suitable WS in the GW article rather than a See also link, but that will take additional brainwork. —RCraig09 (talk) 23:58, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
I'm thinking at minimum climate change art needs to be represented in this article, which it doesn't seem to be currently. --valereee (talk) 01:20, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
Valeree: I agree that we can devote some space (one sentence should be sufficient) to this topic. I think it would fit under Public opinion and disputes, as this is also where other forms of public engagement (climate movement) are described. We might need a new title for this subsection. Could you add it, including a nicely formatted source? Femke Nijsse (talk) 07:57, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

Article naming

I think very strong case can be made that this article should be located at Climate change, per WP:COMMONNAME and consistency with related articles (and the existing article there, which more generally discusses every episode in geologic time, be renamed to something else). But before formally proposing such a major, major change to a very heavily viewed page via WP:RM (which would of course kick off related category, portal and other changes), I wanted to survey informally: any previous discussions that people remember, to save me looking back through 75 talkpage archive pages? Any thoughts that other editors have? UnitedStatesian (talk) 05:09, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

I've been working on a proposal of the same kind and been doing some prepatory work for that (creating the climate system page, which contains much of the information of the current climate change page). I'd like to support it and propose we also make a new page climate variability that also contains a lot of info that is now dealt with in the climate change articles. Furthermore, it would be helpful if paleoclimatology was updated. Having these three pages in place makes it easier to change internal links that now correctly point to climate change. @NewsAndEventsGuy: has also been working on a proposal. Femke Nijsse (talk) 05:30, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Excellent, for now I'll leave it your and NewsAndEventsGuy's much more capable hands, but you can expect my support and any help you request. UnitedStatesian (talk) 05:33, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
I'll definitely support a name change as well. My idea was global warming -> climate change, while climate change -> historical climate change or similar. A technical name such as Femke's suggestion of paleoclimatology might be more appropriate, since I'm by no means an expert on that aspect of the subject. But I think the bottom line is that the current situation facing the planet right now needs to have a name in line with the current mainstream conventions, so climate change it must be, and everything else just needs to be shuffled to suit, with appropriate redirects where necessary.
@UnitedStatesian: I might be stretching the definition of "support" here, but are you perhaps interested in adding your name as a supporter on the climate change project page?
Cadar (talk) 20:03, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Leave it alone and stop pointless fiddling William M. Connolley (talk) 20:05, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
@William M. Connolley: So that's no support from you, then? Cadar (talk) 20:25, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
What do you mean by "should be located at Climate change"? Do you mean a merge? That has been suggested multiple times, here and there. And before raising that issue yet again I think you should go to the trouble of searching the archives. See also "Q22" at the top of this page.
A very strong case can be made against a merge, in part because the current instance of global warming is more notable than all other instances of "mere" climate change, and fully warrants a much larger article than the more general topic of climate change. Subsuming "global warming" under "climate change" makes as little sense topically as "locating" Assassination of John F. Kennedy at 1963 murders in the United States. Though it does make sense for the purpose of diminishing the notability of the ongoing and extremely rapid onset of anthropogenically-driven global warming, by suggesting it is normal, just a passing episode. Which is exactly the point-of-view of the denial/diminish camp. Previous proposals to merge or rename this article have been rejected, mainly because it is, simply, not a good idea. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:57, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
@J. Johnson: Reading this discussion in full would have made it clear it was regarding renaming the current article to suit the current convention around the world of calling the current world crisis climate change, in keeping with WP:COMMONNAME. A merge has not been suggested, which would make no sense. In order to avoid a clash, the more general/historical article can be renamed to something else. Alternatively, but less optimally, the article on the current situation could be renamed to current climate change or similar, but that's not ideal for obvious reasons, not least of which is that anyone who reads an article current in pretty much any of the mass media right now and then tries to find an article regarding the current situation on WP will end up at the general article, not the current one. Which is the situation on the site at the moment and is less than ideal, again for obvious reasons. These issues will result in confusion and feed the tendency towards disbelief in a current crisis. Calling the article about the current crisis anthropogenic climate change is not ideal because some people who believe in the current crisis are not convinced that man is causing it, a number of scientists and influential people included. We're not in a position to make a decision about its causes, so a separate article dealing with that aspect makes sense while keeping the main article on the subject named for the current crisis. So we're back at updating the titles of the articles on WP now to reflect (a) current thinking and (b) current naming conventions in the world, which should be of primary concern.
The only other alternative which will suit all sides here and yet address the problem of a disconnect between article names and current naming, is to turn "climate change" into a portal page which briefly explains the differences between the articles and links to all of them, and so allows the user to choose what aspect of the entire subject they want to read about. Failing a lack of consensus for renaming the article, I would support that as a reasonable compromise and one which will eliminate confusion for the reader. These issues are of concern to myself and some other editors right now because we are compiling the proposal page for a new climate change WikiProject focused on the current crisis and all aspects. Some of the alternatives I've mentioned here have been discussed and reasoned through there.
Cadar (talk) 21:29, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
I notice we're having strong feelings here. Would it be fruitful to stop this discussion for now? I'm planning to make a big overview with a) reasons for having both global warming and climate change point to current article about man-made climate change b) thoughts about name of this page c) what's different now compared to discussions before and d) what should be done with information currently in climate change. I'd like to do this carefully, so this might take a few months.. hope that's okay.
@cedar: this discussion is best seen as separate from the WikiProject: the task force was called climate change, so the same can go for proposed Wikiproject. Femke Nijsse (talk) 22:18, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Cadar: I think your "some people who believe in the current crisis are not convinced that man is causing it, a number of scientists and influential people included" just gave away your POV. And your "current convention around the world of calling the current world crisis climate change, in keeping with WP:COMMONNAME" is quite curious. E.g, who has set this "common convention around the world"? Is popular opinion "around the world" trying to adhere to WP:NAMINGCRITERIA? Yes, very curious. But I begin to doubt whether you are entirely NPOV, so am disinclined to debate the matter with you. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:31, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
@Femkemilene: We seem to have stirred up a hornet's nest here. Amazing. I think you may be right, putting this discussion aside for now might be beneficial until cooler or more mature heads have prevailed. However, I do wonder if a delay of months isn't going to be detrimental to the whole situation?
@J. Johnson: The fact that you have chosen to take a perfectly polite discussion, make it personal and make POV accusations against another editor who is trying to find an optimal outcome for the situation in good faith just shows you up, not me. I'm not going to dignify your comments with a response - and your "doubts" are really of no significance to me - but I would suggest you try and get up-to-date with what is in the current media. The current naming convention on the vast majority of media outlets is "climate change", although admittedly that might be about to change, since The Guardian is at the forefront of a movement to move the phrase describing the situation onto "climate crisis." It has already moved on from "global warming", as would be clear to anyone who kept abreast of current media regarding the subject. I see many articles on the subject from multiple outlets in various countries around the world every day, and I have seen perhaps two or three instances of the phrase "global warming", usually in connection with the historical aspects of the current situation, in the last few months. But every article on every site every day uses "climate change", even the ones mentioning "global warming." This is not my imagination. I'm not making it up. I'm not the only editor who has noticed it, as reading the discussion in full would have revealed. Please do try to keep up.
I'm going to step away from this discussion now, since I have my hands full with the previously mentioned project amongst other things, and this discussion has become somewhat puerile. We can revisit the discussion later and try for a consensus then. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cadar (talk • contribs)
We should not care about what those who are "not convinced that man is causing it" think. That would be pandering to the fringe. We should instead look at which term the science community uses, and for what. --Hob Gadling (talk) 16:31, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
Yes. We go by the science. Which is not reckoned by popular opinion.
Something else: I see that Wallace Smith Broecker, who is credited with first introducing the term "global warming" in 1975, died earlier this year. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:04, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
Just wanted to say I'm interested in this, but am not editing (except in user space) pending resolution of an issue at ANI. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 22:49, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
I oppose any change to this article's name because discussion would suck up too much editor's time, with some also likely arguing it should be renamed to "global heating" or "climate crisis" or some such. Chidgk1 (talk) 08:50, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

Chidg1: I'd like to request you to suspend your judgement untill our proposal is posted (again, this could take a while). One of the aims of the proposal of pointing global warming and climate change both to the current article (whatever name it will have) is to decrease maintenance time for editors by removing duplicate information and not having to correct all the internal links from climate change to global warming. Bear with us! The discussion about global heating and climate crisis can be summarized in one word: NPOV, so shouldn't take too long :p. Femke Nijsse (talk) 09:20, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

There have been various suggestions to rename or merge this article, all rejected. Perhaps yet another round of discussion might hit on some convincing argument, but prior experience suggests otherwise. And I suspect that most of the long-time editors will simply lurk until the issue comes up for a vote, then vote against. It's not that they won't participate in a discussion, but that they already have. A more interesting discussion might be: why does this question keep bouncing back? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:04, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
I am aware of four previous discussions (the last one in 2010) and the reasons people gave to oppose a merge of the two articles. The most important ones are:
* There must be information about climate change in general on Wikipedia.
Of course. Most text books about GW/CC describe general changes in the climate system under the heading of climate system, so I've recently made a new article on this topic at NEAG's suggestion. I'm also planning to make an article called climate variability that deals with changes on timescales up to a couple of decades, contrasting this with climate changes in general.
* Global warming is used more to refer to current climate change than climate change.
Not true anymore. There has been a shift in the use of climate change to refer to the current heating of the climate system (see Google trend). More importantly, both these terms refer to the current warming in common parlance and in the scientific literature. It therefore leads to a lot of discussion and confusion on the CC page, for instance judged by looking at the CC's what links here.
A further reason it has bounced back, is that the proposals in general have been made by newer users who don't take into account the broader context of the overall article structure. A thing NEAG and me have been working on for the last half year or so..
About the long-term editors: merges aren't determined on votes I assume, but on consensus? So if we have a lot of long-term lurkers that don't engage with the discussion in the new context (with other articles changed and usage of terminology changed) but simply say no, would their vote be weighted as much as voters that have engaged in the discussion?
J. Johnson, as an experienced editor, I could use your help a bit here. Do you think I've missed any major reasons for the, in my eyes arbitrary, distinction between CC and GW? Are there more things I should take into consideration to get the support or help of veteran users here? Femke Nijsse (talk) 07:43, 5 July 2019 (UTC)
Femke Nijsse The point I seldom see made, is simply: global warming causes climate change. GW can be represented as a (simple) series of average-temperature numbers, but CC encompasses the many (complex) effects in the physical world. —RCraig09 (talk) 14:23, 5 July 2019 (UTC)
I must have formulated my previous comment unclearly. With the arbitrary distinction I did not mean the ACTUAL distinction between GW and CC (as a PhD candidate in climate science I should know), but the arbitrary distinction made on Wikipedia between the two. In the scientific literature, both terms are used mostly to refer to the current heating, and both terms are also infrequently used for periods of global warming & climate change in the past. It is arbitrary that we here say CC is the general term, and GW refers to the present. Femke Nijsse (talk) 07:27, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
It's been so long since I've kept up with the discussions here I would I need to do some extensive reviewing before I could answer your question. Sorry. As a point of curiosity: what do you see as the "ACTUAL distinction between GW and CC"? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:03, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
I think that the terms areo ften or mostly used as synonyms in casual use, even by scientists. In more precise language, global warming is a more restricted term, dealing only with the warming of the climate system or (not entirely sure about this) warming of the lower atmosphere. In this more precise language, climate change is a better discription of the current article. I'm not too fussed about the eventual name of the article, but feel strongly about getting rid of Wikipedia's arbitrary distinction between the two terms. Femke Nijsse (talk) 07:14, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

The definition of "climate change" in IPCC AR5 WG1 Glossary is:

Climate change refers to a change in the state of the climate that can be identifed (e.g., by using statistical tests) by changes in the mean and/or the variability of its properties, and that persists for an extended period, typically decades or longer. Climate change may be due to natural internal processes or external forcings such as modulations of the solar cycles, volcanic eruptions and persistent anthropogenic changes in the composition of the atmosphere or in land use. Note that the Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), in its Article 1, defnes climate change as: 'a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods'. The UNFCCC thus makes a distinction between climate change attributable to human activities altering the atmospheric composition, and climate variability attributable to natural causes.

So the IPCC (as far as AR5 goes) apparently does not distinguish natural and anthropogenic "climate change", while the UNFCCC distinguishes anthropogenic "climate change" from natural "climate variability". I think these are not well done, particularly "variability". The OED defines it as "the quality or fact of being variable (= likely to change often)". (Another definition: "lack of consistency or fixed pattern; liability to vary or change".) The implication (which the fossil fuel lobby has pushed) is that the current change is just "normal variability", glossing over a key point that normal climate variability plays out over periods of thousands and tens of thousands of years. The "crisis" of the current change is that it is happening faster than the environment (and apparently even humans) can respond.

"Climate change" is the better term for any change of climate, regardless of cause or character. That being said, the current and unprecedented global-scale change of climate is undeniably warming. It is not merely a "change", it is particularly warming. And it is a cheat on the public (and our readers) if it is called anything less. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 18:58, 10 July 2019 (UTC)


It might be interesting to research at which point in the US electoral cycle this renaming gets brought up each time. Maybe it's about US political focus group researchers and trend engineers trying to re-position their pitch for a fresh new audience? I certainly won't buy into any claims of NPOV if the points of view in question include 'it may not be human caused,' 'there have been lots of cycles in the past and this is just one of them,' or 'we may be heading for an ice age!' --Nigelj (talk) 08:09, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

I completely agree we should not focus on a fringe discussion that takes place mainly in a single country. I understand that many experienced editors will shy away from the naming and merging discussion because in the past climate contrarians often derailed those with claims about natural cycles and what not. I hope that we can completely skip that part of the argument, as it has been discussed too often and consensus has been reached over and over again. Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:41, 5 July 2019 (UTC)
@Nigelj: let's try to assume good faith on my part? I see no previous requested move, at this time in the cycle or otherwise. UnitedStatesian (talk) 14:40, 5 July 2019 (UTC)
While the quibbling over nomenclature does seem to originate from one country, it does have international aspects. E.g., I believe (though it's so far back I no longer recall the details) the naming of the IPCC was a political compromise. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:15, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
I've also thought of proposing this change, for the same reasons the proposer gives. And I don't think it's at all a trivial issue. "Global warming" might in the past have been the most common name for the relatively-recent trend that this article describes. For the past few years, "climate change" has been the most common term for this trend. People searching for "climate change" should come to an article that describes the relatively-recent (i.e. post Industrial Revolution) trend, not a description of the Earth's geologic history. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 00:46, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

extended history section

to somebody who is not really into this topic, like me, a less complex structure would make both, reading and contributing, easier. i looked at other language articles, and especially like the structure and conciseness of the netherlands version. i like that there are short lead, measurement, cause, effect, prediction sections. reflecting what made it difficult to read this article and especially add content revealed that i could not make out when what happened, over time. despite reading it multiple times now, i am still unsure about it. say from 1980-2000, 2000-2010, 2010-2020 where such research, for and against arguments could easy go in without classifying it further. would it be an idea to merge the current "history" and "terminology" section into a history section, with year numbers, as a start? or any other way to somehow order it time based to make it easier for the reader to segregate when what happened? --ThurnerRupert (talk) 10:10, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

Tentative citation model

It is proposed to establish the citation model for this article, with a tentative specification (subject to further determination and modifications) in the following box. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:02, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

First draft

(Moving on to the next draft)
Citation model (tentative, and in flux)
  • a: Every source cited in this article to have exactly one full citation with complete bibliographic details.
  • b: Full citations to be collected in the "Sources" section (not in the text, not in <ref> tags).
  • c: Full citations to be templated.
  • d: CS1 formatting style preferred: use {{cite xxx}} templates, or {{citation}} with |mode=cs1.
  • d': {Cite} templates to include |ref=harv to enable linking from short-cites.
  • e: Special arrangements (TBD) to be made for citing IPCC reports.
  • f: In-line citation of content to be done with short-cites (such as done with {{Harv}} templates or similar).
  • g: All notes, including {{Reflist}}, to be in the "Notes" section.
  • h: In-line citations to show location (e.g., page or section number) of material within a source.
  • i: Use of {{rp}} template rejected.
  • j: Initialization, or not, of author's personal names per source.
  • k: Use of "named-refs" to "re-use" full citations not allowed.
  • k': Use of "named-refs" to "re-use" short-cites: TBD.
  • l: Incomplete citations moved to Talk until verified? Default template to be made.
  • m: Sort sources by author. If not available use publisher's name (NASA/The New York Times).

(tentative, and in flux)

Last changed: Femke Nijsse (talk) 14:42, 12 May 2019 (UTC)


Discussion:

Thanks for giving the discussion structure!

  • Yes to every source have one full citation.
  • Yes to sources section. Sources section to be subdivided into reports(/books if we have any) and online sources? The reports section can either be subdivided again in report and report chapters OR have a list of cited chapters (their full citation) 'hanging' from the full citation of the report.
  • Yes. I think IPCC and NCA reports are probably very similar in how they should be cited.
  • Yes, all notes in notes section
  • I propose initialization as full names are not always available.
  • Incomplete citation: just tag them in the text if that's possible? That will probably lead to faster resolution. Femke Nijsse (talk) 11:08, 15 April 2019 (UTC)


I have augmented the model, and added labels for convenient reference. A particular addition: are "named-refs" to be allowed? Use with a full citation is always (in my experience) an attempt to "re-use" it where a short-cite is preferable, and use with short-cites is over-zealousness in suppressing supposed "duplicate citations". (More high-level work needed.)
I don't see any reason to subdivide sources.
Citation of the IPCC Assessm (tentative, and in flux)ent Reports (AR) is (as you have noticed) hierarchial. Each AR includes a report from each of the three Working Groups (WG). Each WG report has multiple Chapters that are separately authored and (in the printed form) paginated. The Chapters are the basic citable source. Each Chapter's full citation is cited as "In" the WG report, with a short-cite to the WG report. Similarly, each WG reported is cited as "In" the AR, with short-cite to the appropriate AR. (Other IPCC reports are similar.) Multiple "references" (citations) to the three WG reports, and in turn to the AR, are thereby done without duplicating the full citation.
I am okay with initializing the names of scientific authors generally (because that is very common in the scientific literature, and personal names are not always readily found), but in the non-scientific literature the full names of the authors are generally more recognizable. (E.g.: not C. Mooney or S. Weart, or even M. Mann and J. Hansen.) I could see not insisting on consistency in this regard (being the hobgoblin of small minds?), perhaps sticking with names as seen in each source.
I am quite disenchanted with the notion of "if you don't have the full citation just stick it in anyway and someone else will fix it" because, first, they rarely get fixed. And second, if someone can't be troubled to get a proper citation, or simply can't do so (for whatever reason), then it is most likely that any assessment of suitability is likewise inadequate. If someone wants to suggest something for inclusion, the Talk is the proper venue. If they want to actually include something in one of our premier articles then any indication of not doing the necessary work should be a basis for non-inclusion. It's not that we care about an imperfect citation per se, but that it's a "tailight" issue. (Old joke: "the tail light be dammed, my wife was in the trailer.") ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:50, 16 April 2019 (UTC)
(k) I would say yes to named-refs for short-cites (no for full citation). I think it is beneficial for an article to be succinct when possible. Also, when editing, it's easier to copy a short-cite, than to introduce a new one. We shouldn't make life to difficult for ourselves.
(j) Okay with sticking with names as seen in each source
(l) About improper citations: you've convinced me. My work in the last weeks has proven your point to be often true. I do think this policy should be executed with caution, as this might be scary to newer editors. I'd very much like to engage more (tentative, and in flux)editors in this topic, and hope we can have a friendly environment for people to learn. So when we do this, maybe have some nice message ready for talk pages encouraging them to improve.
(h)/(i) Agree
I can see multiple reasons to subdivide sources. 1) To avoid having a wall of text. When we move all full citations to the sources section, it will be huge. This will look intimidating. Subsection titles will make it more pleasing to the eye. 2) For general sense of reliability: I think readers would want to know on what type of sources this article is based. When we subdivide between reports, scientific articles and online sources, readers get a feel for the types of sources used in one glance. 3) Updatability: this point is quite subjective, but for me, subdividing might help with keeping a better overview for what type of sources need updating.
Additionally, do we want to sort the sources section/(subsections) on year or on last name? I'm tempted to go for year as this works well when you want to check if sources might need updating and some of our sources have last names, while others have editors+organization names. [from Femkemilene 08:11, 17 April 2019]
j: Yes. The more I think about doing the names per the source (instead of coercing them to a WP consistency) the more I like it.
k: I agree that we shouldn't make WP more difficult than necessary. That is exactly why I am opposed to any named-refs. Short-cites are generally easier to add (don't require checking to see if a "duplicate" already exists), and won't break if someone deletes a section somewhere else. What very little gain there might be in succinctness is lost in increased difficulty of maintenance.
l: I agree that idea is sufficiciently novel to require some advance preparation. E.g., we could specify an arrangement where content not adquately cited is moved to the talk page with a standard (i.e., templated) message explaining the problem and suggesting how to proceed. If the deficiencues are made up then it can go back. However, it might be better to try this out as pilot project before incorporating it into the citation model.
As for subdiving sources: I don't think "wall of text" is a valid objection here. Sources are available for examination, but the Sources section is not intended as narrative that we're trying to get people to read. There is something to be said for separating technical and scientific reports from sources intended for a general audience, though that distinction is often vague and even arbitrary. Note that though journals tend to be technical, and "news" and "web" sources not, segregating "cite journal" and "cite news" citations is not reliably useful. As to tracking what may need updating: I don't see how that is aided by having subdivisions. Any scientific report could "need updating" if new results are reported (which may have little to no correlation with age), and I don't see that any "types of sources" that need more overview than any others.
At Hock (tentative, and in flux)ey stick controversy we put the sources into chronological order because the nature of the controversy was that it evolved over time, and the sources need a chronological context. I don't know if that would be entirely useful here. Are we documenting the current understanding of global warming, or the evolution of that understanding? While I think we should provide some of the historical development, I also think the article is (should be) mainly on the current understanding of the topic. At any rate, collating sources by author (whether personal or organizational) is generally more useful than by year. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:01, 18 April 2019 (UTC)
I think you make valid points on all counts, so I've incorporated most of your suggestions in the tentative template. I'm okay with their being no subdivision as well. One more thing: do we have to have absolute consistency with named refs? I can imagine if named-refs are obligatory, it's going to be a pain to maintain, but if you're just allowed to copy your previous ref, life for me at least would be easier. I find that short-cites are not easy in VE, and that is my preferred way of editing wikipedia. Also, named refs don't break in VE as far as I'm aware when sections are deleted. Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:17, 19 April 2019 (UTC)
With all the years I have spent working out some of these issues, I should hope my ideas have some validity!
I point out that splitting the Sources into "general" and "technical" might be good. Rather than resolving that now, perhaps we should simply allow it as a possibility. (By the way, I am substituting your signature/timestamp in the box, as you are the last one to edit it.)
I am a little pained (ouch!) that you would even contemplate obligatory named-refs. (No!!!!!) I think we are agreed they should be disallowed for notes with full citations, and the question is whether they should be allowed for notes with short-cites. I am disinclined to allow them at all, it being easier to maintain, and less likely to confuse someone looking to see "how it is done", to have a total ban than a partial ban. But then I forgot that VE makes short-cites hard. (And it makes {sfn} easy, which uses named-refs. Sigh.) Well, that is a long-term issue that needs to be worked.
I think we should recognize that bringing the article into accord with the citation model is going to be an extended process, likely done in stages. Also, while it may be unhandy at times to allow named-refs for short-cites, it doesn't seriously break anything, and could be tolerated. I'll ponder on this tonight. At any rate, I think we should not expect to fix everything in the first pass. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:55, 19 April 2019 (UTC)
I was thinking (again!) that I could start splitting named-refs into individual short-cites (there's only sixty or so!), but two problems. First: someone comes along with Citation_bot and merges all the "duplicate citations". So we probably need to explicitly disallow that as not being "in keeping with the existing citation style" here. (And more long-term work.)
Second: the links won't work until {cite xxx} is replaced with {citation}, or augmented with |mode=cs2. As discussed above (21:10 14 April in the previous section), I don't know if that fixes the other problems with CS1. If everyone is fine with switching to CS2 ("{citation}"), then fine. Otherwise, I need to do some experimenting on what might be possible.
Is it too early to query if everyone would agree to CS2? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:58, 19 April 2019 (UTC)
Okay to resolving splitting sources later.
Obligatory named-refs: I thought you were implying that I was implying that already before :P. My head is too sleepy for sentences like this. My preference is to tolerate named-refs for short-cites indefinitely, but my preference is weak, so please override me if you think otherwise is better.
I think choosing CS1 or CS2 with short-cite/full citation system is equally annoying with visual editor. CS1 makes you add |mode=cs2, while CS2 makes you change the cite web/cite book into citation using the source editor. So I don't mind eitherway. Maybe we can (again?) ask the technicians to open up a smoother way for the short-cite/full citation system. Femke Nijsse (talk) 18:58, 20 April 2019 (UTC)
(I hope the there is only sixty or so was sarcastic. If not, I admire your spirit. That seems daunting to me!). Femke Nijsse (talk) 18:58, 20 April 2019 (UTC)
Putting full citations into a named-ref is definitely bad practice, and should be rejected. I would like to reject named-refs totally (allowing it in some places, not in others, is confusing), but VE is a confounding factor. I am still chewing on this, but it may have to be left unresolved for now. VE is definitely an impediment, but getting that fixed is going to be a lengthy effort.
If (big "if") everyone (nearly?) was agreed to using CS2 the wiki-editor's search and replace function could change all instances of {cite xxx} to {citation}. And I think it would work, but I don't know what little problems might crop up. As to using citation with |mode=cs1: that might suppress the very options for which citation is preferred. It looks like I need to do a bunch of experiments.
I wish we could get far enough on the model to start moving full citations out of the text. But that requires the linking ability, which requires either CS2, or the adjustments which I have not yet figured out. With an allusion to "maybe the horse will sing", I am wondering if we should ask if everyone would be fine with CS2.
I counted 61, but could have been off a little bit. And no great challenge. It's like hammering nails: you keep hammering, and eventually you're done. The hard part is trying to figure out where they should be hammered. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:46, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

We're putting all full citation in a separate section. Hence, even to new editors to this article, making full citation named-refs will not be a mistake easily done. As you say, leaving it unresolved for now is not that bad, because we've got bigger fish to fry.

Do any of the following contributors (selected by having posted on talk recently & not on wiki-break) have any objections to the use of CS2? User:Chidgk1, User:zazpot, User:William M. Connolley, User:dave souza? Femke Nijsse (talk) 18:11, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, but hold off a bit. I think I have worked out a rationale why we should go with the {cite xxx} family of templates: that accommodates a future {cite ipcc} template easier and better than trying to modify {citaton} for the same functionality, and is more in accord with the {cite} philosophy of specialized templates. This implies CS1 display style, as that is the default for {cite}. (The {citation} template may be used, but should include |mode=cs1 for display consistency.) The |ref=harv parameter will need to be included to enable linking from the short-cites (pending a future conversion of the {cite} templates to default to that behavior). This also approach minimizes changes to current practice. Unless some problem or objection is found I now definitely favor using {cite} templates. Which does not require CS1 style, but the main reason for favoring CS2 style was based on the use of {citation}. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 18:46, 21 April 2019 (UTC)
Sorry for being a bit too enthusiastic here. Another question: is there a way to easily figure out full citations are still being used (i.e. linked to from a short-cite) in the article? I assume it is desirable to check whether full citations without a short-cite linked to it are actually still used for the material of the article. As sources are sometimes used to determine structure and scope of an article, some full citations are useful even when not linked of course. Femke Nijsse (talk) 17:20, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
Quite okay, no harm done. As to sources not explicitly cited: good question. I don't believe we have any handy tools for that. After contemplating this for a good hour or so, I will say that the answer to your question is: no, not easily. Perhaps some day someone will create a script for this.
In the hope I am not getting too far ahead of possible discussion I am going update "the box" to indicate where we seem to be going with this. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:42, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
Femke Nijsse, Do any of the following contributors ... have any objections to the use of CS2? ... zazpot I do not object. Thank you for asking :-) Zazpot (talk) 23:58, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

Something else that came to mind: while I think acronyms (such as "IPCC") should be used in the full citations, should they be sorted (collated) by the acronym, or the spelled out name? (I'll try to check with my style guides tonight.) Also, I think every article from a newspaper should be listed in chronological order (regardless of authorship) under the entry for the newspaper. (As seen at 2014 Oso mudslide#References.)

Earlier you said the VE did not break named-refs if the master named-ref gets taken out. I wonder, especially as most of the named refs currently in the article are typically clustered in a single section. And while it would not be hard to properly manage this when within the scope of an edit, I am doubtful that if VE deleted a master named-ref in one section it would promote a dependent named-ref in a section outside the scope the edit. So let's test this. I have added the master named-ref "Bourbaki" at the end of the Global warming#Terminology section. Go there, and use VE to edit that section and remove "Bourbaki". Save, then go to Global warming#Climate engineering and see if the dependent (slave) named-ref there still works. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:58, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

I did as you said, and it seems to be working fine :). Femke Nijsse (talk) 11:27, 27 April 2019 (UTC)
So just to be certain: in this edit, using VE, you hit the [edit] tab on the "Terminology" section and removed the Bourbaki named-ref. And finding the dependent named-ref in the other section and transferring the {cite} there was done by VE. Correct? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:38, 27 April 2019 (UTC)
Correct. I feel that there is no or very little difference in the VE between editing a section or the whole article. Femke Nijsse (talk) 22:01, 27 April 2019 (UTC)
Which can lead to other problems, but not our concern here. Okay, thanks for the verification. So what do you think about collating by acronym versus spelled out? (I am still trying to get to my style guides.) ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:17, 27 April 2019 (UTC)
Don't have strong opinion on it, but to me collating by acronym is a bit more logical, because a lot of the institutions are better known by acronym than by full name. If the style guide disagrees with me, of course follow them. Femke Nijsse (talk) 14:43, 28 April 2019 (UTC)
Small nit: If "IPCC" were an acronym it would be pronounced "ipses". I think it is pronounced "i pee see see", so it is an abbreviation. But I never heard it pronounced - maybe I am wrong? --Hob Gadling (talk) 06:31, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

So you and I have worked out items a through k (but not k') into a tentative form. What do think of putting those forward as the second draft, hatting this phase of the discussion, and then inviting a broader discussion of the second draft? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:12, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

@Hob Gadling: you are right. It is pronounced i pee see see.
@Johnson, sounds good! Femke Nijsse (talk) 07:42, 29 April 2019 (UTC)
Yes, and I stand corrected: acronyms are (essentially) abbreviations accepted (and pronounced) as words, and my question is really whether abbreviations should be collated as if they were spelled out. Perhaps not (and I still haven't got to my style books). Nor can I think of any cases, so I think we ignore that until there is a need to deal with it.
While you two are peeing away I'll wrap up this phase of the discussion as "First draft", and see to ginning up the second draft. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:22, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

Second draft

We have worked up the following draft of a Citation Model, and are inviting comments and discussion. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:44, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

Draft Citation Model, for discussion
  • a: Every source cited in this article to have exactly one full citation with complete bibliographic details.
  • a': "Full bibiliographic details" requires attribution of authorship, data, and title.
  • b: Full citations to be collected in the "Sources" section (not in the text, not in <ref> tags).
  • c: Full citations to be templated.
  • d: CS1 formatting style preferred: use {{cite xxx}} templates, or {{citation}} with |mode=cs1.
  • d': {Cite} templates to include |ref=harv (or similar) to enable linking from short-cites.
  • e: Special arrangements (TBD) to be made for citing IPCC reports.
  • f: In-line citation of content to be done with short-cites (such as done with {{Harv}} templates or similar).
  • g: All notes, including {{Reflist}}, to be in the "Notes" section.
  • h: In-line citations to show location (e.g., page or section number) of material within a source.
  • i: Use of {{rp}} template rejected.
  • j: Initialization, or not, of authors' personal names per source.
  • k: Use of "named-refs" to "re-use" full citations not allowed.
  • l: Dates in DMY format
  • m: Multiple authors: only the first five need be listed. If more than four add "|display-authors=4".
  • n: For human authors and editors, use |last= and |first= or equivalent separate name parameters, not |author= or |editor=. For institutional authors, use |last= only.
  • ??

Last changed: – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:14, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

Discussion

1) What do you think of the current way I'm citing the IPCC reports in the sources section? That should do, right?

2) How long do we want to wait for input? Femke Nijsse (talk) 10:52, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

I want ping a number of current and recent editors for comment or implied acceptance, but I have been a wee bit rather busy of late. I'll try to get to this in a few days. And take a look at your work. (That should be a pleasant change of pace for me.) ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:17, 8 May 2019 (UTC)
I think you're referring to sub-listing the WG reports under each AR? An interesting idea; I'll have to think about it. In my rather sketchy notion of how some of this works out I reckon that each "IPCC AR[X] WG[1,2,3]" would naturally immediately follow each "IPCC AR[X]". So perhaps (as far as the WG reports go) the difference with what you have done is merely indentation. I'll have to think about it. But! as the chapters in each WG report are not cited as "IPCC AR[X] WG[*] Chapter #" (and presumably arranged in numerical order), but by author(s), and authors are sorted alphabetically, there is a significant inconsistency. I don't think that is going to work. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:48, 10 May 2019 (UTC)
So, we could order alphabetically under each report? I was mostly referring to the fact that readers now have to hover over the citation twice. The first one leads them to the chapter and the second one leads them to the full report. Is that okay? And if we split sources into technical and non-technical, we'll probably want to move the summary for policymakers to non-technical, which simultaneously solves a potential problem of the SPM not having the same format. Femke Nijsse (talk) 15:10, 11 May 2019 (UTC)
FN: when you add to or modify the draft text, please add your signature after "Last changed".
The "IPCC AR4/IPCC AR4 SR/IPCC AR4 WG1/IPCC AR4 WG2/..." ordering is convenient for collecting the full citations of the major componenets of each AR directly following the citation of the AR. This happens naturally if we sort by the acronyms (which were arranged with this in mind).
I think what you are suggesting is to arrange the chapters in a similar way under each WG report, like a table of contents. But that would not make sense unless the chapters were sorted numerically, ignoring the authors, and that implies that the short-cites in the text would be by chapter number/title instead of author. And while that could be done (and is an intriguing prospect), that would require more CITEREF magic then I think we could get even experienced authors to do. If we just collect the chapters under each WG (collated by author) then we have a rather confusing situation of nested levels of alphabetization. As long as the IPCC chapters are cited by authors (with the "In IPCC AR4 WG1" tags) I think we should stick with just one span of alphabetization, across the entire list of sources. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk)
While this is not my preferred route, I completely see the sense in your arguments and don't want to spend more time than necessary on this discussion. I'll concede and do it alphabetically from now on. Femke Nijsse (talk) 09:44, 13 May 2019 (UTC)
Perhaps you could tell me more about your preferred format?
In looking through the code I was reminded how frequently |author= and |editor= have been used in lieu of |first= and |last=. At some point we should go through and split those up properly. And I wonder if the citation model should have a reminder that individual ("person") authors should use first/last, and that "author=" and "editor=" are for "non-personal" authors, such as "IPCC WG1".
I am also wondering if we should say anything about preferred formatting of full citations. E.g., something like "preferred formatting is generally vertical, with major items on separate lines, but some related items (like an author's first and last name and author link) on the same line."
I was looking at some of the shortened urls for the IPCC reports. I think that is mainly the difference between a complete url that downloads the indicated report directly, versus a url that goes to the page where one may select which report to download. I think I favor the latter, but perhaps that should be reviewed. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:17, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
Naahh, not going to tell you about my vague idea preferred format. Yours probably makes more sense and I'd rather move quickly to editing content.
While it is a bit weird to put the correct use of author and editor in the citation model, people do seem to forget, so I don't object. I used to think it was a valid way of being lazy in writing down the citation.
I don't think we should write something about formatting. The more we add, the more likely people give up altoghether on following it and even if they try, they might gloss over items if there are too many. Less is more. (Which is also the mantra I try to use while editing the article).
About pdfs. I don't really care one way or another. The reason I often go for the webpage instead of the pdf is load time. Many of the IPCC reports are quite big, so leading people to the webpage might prevent people from opening huge files if they don't want to. Typing this, my reasoning seems flimsy, so please feel free to insert PDFs. I'll do this as well from now on. Femke Nijsse (talk) 09:11, 15 May 2019 (UTC)
Right: large, lengthy downloads. That's why (I'd forgotten!) it's better to go to the place (webpage) where the reader has the option of downloading (usually with a little more information) than to automatically download. Okay, lets stick with that as preferable, and thanks for reminding me.
Strictly speaking, the correct use of "author=" and "editor=" should not have to be specified at this level (it's a higher-level matter), nor am I suggesting that we should specify that here. But given the prevalence of incorrect usage, I think we should have a reminder of the correct usage. We might structure this as "here are the standards for this article, which might differ from other articles", and "by the way, here are some other points to remember". Alternately, we could just fix'em as they show up, but I think it would better to have a statement somewhere. Maybe having some place in the MOS we can point to would suffice.
I would like to have something in about formatting, because 1) it does make a difference in clarity, and therefore facilitates error-checking, and 2) there are editors and bots that don't respect anyone else's formatting. Something to work out later? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 18:59, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

Attention significant editors William M. Connolley, Curly Turkey, Dave souza, Dmcq, EMsmile, Jonesey95, NewsAndEventsGuy, Ed Poor, Prokaryotes, and Stephan Schulz:

As you may have noticed, Femkemilene is doing some major work on this article. As part of that we are working out a consistent and preferred way of doing citation, per the draft shown above. If you have any objections, comments, etc. now is the time to speak up. If you are fine with where we are going with this we still need your approbation to establish consensus with this. (And to avoid future bickering.) One way or the other, please give us a shout. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:18, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

I applaud the attempt to make citations more consistent, but I can't really become enthusiastic about any particular style. I always tell my students that the primary purpose of a reference is to enable the reader to find the source with minimal fuss, to include the important bibliographical data, and to to be as consistent as possible. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 22:38, 10 May 2019 (UTC)
You are correct about consistency, which is why this discussion is happening. Unfortunately, attempts to establish a consistent reference format in highly trafficked articles have sometimes resulted in unproductive controversy; this formal discussion is an attempt to prevent that controversy.
I like the proposed formatting suggestions. We still need to choose a consistent date format. I propose DMY, since it is the most internationally understood format and also the most common date format used in the article at this time. – Jonesey95 (talk) 07:40, 11 May 2019 (UTC)
Let me add a point. I think it's a good idea to have a suggested style. I think it's commendable if people follow the suggestion, and laudable if incomplete or inconsistent references are improved. But neither should we require new references in any given format, nor should users be berated if they add a less-then-perfectly formatted reference. That just scares away new contributors. We have plenty of rules one can run afoul of - let's not add more. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 08:12, 11 May 2019 (UTC)
I agree with DMY.
As for a consistent citation style: this is a requirement for being a featured article. I think global warming currently doesn't meet the requirements for featured articles, and this is one of the things we need to fix. I fully agree with you that this should never be used as some sort of stick to ward off new users. So if new users add information, we should treat them kindly. Femke Nijsse (talk) 13:34, 11 May 2019 (UTC)
I like the Harvard way of doing things. I think it encourages extra cites with the page number given. People do not seem to like giving a big long cite a second time just to put in a different page number. Of course somebody putting in a cite wrong is not a reason to remove a constructive edit and I think there are enough good style gnomes around the place to cope. Dmcq (talk) 16:45, 11 May 2019 (UTC)
Jonesey has it hit the essence of the matter right on the head. We do need (or even merely should have) consistency of citation, and it is better to dance this out before someone comes along and nails their foot to the floor. (Or roof, but that's a different story.) As to Stephan's concern: there is quite a difference between good-faith edits by well-meaning but inexperienced editors (newbies), and citation warriors or bot drivers who insist on doing it their way on the basis of "there's no rule against it". For the latter we do need "rules", or at least standards, and particularly to establish that whatever standard gets worked out is consenual. For newbies (or least innocents) I am quite in accord with Femke: "we should treat them kindly." And that should include clear communication of any expectations and standards. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:24, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

So: notice having been given and several editors having responded, I think it is a fair summarization that there are no objections to, and consensus for, where Femke Nijsse and I are going with this work. Thank you all, and feel free to comment as we proceed. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:05, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

Date format specification

Specifying DMY dates happens at the article level (and this article is already tagged with {use dmy dates}). Application to citation follows from MOS:DATEUNIFY: "Publication dates in an article's citations should all use the same format". Which may be "the format used in the article body text". Personally, for citation dates I'd rather use the same format as in the source (sometimes it makes searching a little easier). But, short of a strong case for going against MOS:DATEUNIFY, I think should go with "the date format specified for the article", without re-specifying it in the citation model. Can anyone think of any reason why we might want the date format in the citations to be different from that of the article text? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:37, 12 May 2019 (UTC)

I might not fully understand your question, so I hope my response makes sense. I propose we add DMY to our citation model with the note that it is already specified at the article level. I assume that if you specify the date format in a single citation, it overwrites the article settings. So, we do want to prevent people from adding this information wrongly in the citation. I cannot think of a reason to have a different date format in citations.
On a side note, once we agree on the citation model, I'd like to rewrite it so that it's easier to understand for newer editors. Femke Nijsse (talk) 09:20, 13 May 2019 (UTC)
My thinking is that the model specify that publication dates should be in the same format specified for the article. Which (because some editors might not be able to figure what that is?) can be followed with by an explanatory blurb "which currently is DMY format". But even without that explication, just specifying "same format" I think would be sufficient, and reformatting done as needed.
For sure the results here should be cast into a suitable form, perhaps rearranged. But keep some kind of indexing so specific points can be referred to explicitly. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:57, 13 May 2019 (UTC)
Having just waded through the first two batches of citations as ugly as I have ever seen (this article was once FA???)(more on this under "Current work") I am convinced that PROPER FORMATING MUST BE MANDATED. There is just too much sloppyiness and outright incorrect usage, too much cutting of corners, which is thoroughly obfuscated by the haphazard tossing together of what ever parameters an editor thinks of. However, the details don't have to be in the model; they can be specified in a user tutorial that includes sample templates. But we do need to mandate a proper format. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:38, 21 May 2019 (UTC)

Use of et al.

Just added a source with about 50 authors, which I was a bit too lazy to add. Do we want to establish a default for the use of et al? Femke Nijsse (talk) 19:13, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

Yes. But I'll have do a quick review before I can say anything sensible. :-o ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:34, 15 May 2019 (UTC)
Yes, I think we need not, and probably even should not, be that obsessive. So the question is: how many authors should we list, that is sufficient to adequately identify an article/chapter by author (and year)? At least four, as that is how many Harv will handle to distinguish sources. (If more are needed, special steps are taken.) That's the question: how many authors should we cite? But also: is it necessarily the same in all cases?
Another question is whether it is useful to specify authors that are not displayed. Perhaps for generating COinS data, but otherwise I don't know.
Which takes us to how to generate the "et al." required when a list of authors is truncated. I think (now) that explicitly adding "et al." in any author parameter is wrong; we should use |display-authors=. (I must ask for forgiveness: when I devised the IPCC citations I didn't know about 'display-authors'. That will need revision.) 'Display-authors' takes either "etal", or a number. In the first case, all authors are listed, with "et al." appended. That would be a nicely flexible arrangement, except I don't know how it handles just two or three authors. (Needs to be tested.) Otherwise we just set an arbitrary number – 4? –, and any case where that is not appropriate gets adjusted. I am slightly in favor of "etal" (depending on how it handles two and three authors, and the answer to the previous question). But a number would probably work, and either way it probably would not be much trouble to switch if a problem was discovered in the future.
So what do you think? [Besides that the other editors should be really impressed that we are taking such care to get all these details "right", or least "right enough". :-) ] ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:45, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

IPCC Chapter links

@Femkemilene, Jonesey95, and Izno and anyone else: Up to now IPCC AR chapters that list authors have been linked using the Harv default of the first four authors and year, while other IPCC elements use the acronym form (e.g.: "IPCC AR5 WG1 TS" for that Technical Summary, etc.). In working with these 1) I have found chapters that are not distinguished in the first five authors, 2) am feeling that chapter numbers are more significant to readers than the authors' names, and that 3) it would be clearer and more consistent to use acronyms (such as "Ch1") instead authors. An added benefit is that non-conforming links are plainly seen as such, thus self-identifying as needing attention. Any objections to doing this? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:47, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

It might be that my mind is used to much to scientific notation in citations, but I don't find it that nice to have three 'abbreviations' as the short-cite name and prefer the full names of the authors. We could still use this methods of citation for the non-chapters (Summary for policymakers, technical summary). I assume the non-uniqueness is only found for these sources? If you would like to make these non-chapter sections (SPM/TS) consistent as well, we could opt for notation with 2013a/2013b, which is how it is done in scientific sources. Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:42, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
A preliminary comment: I don't see the SPM and TS as "non-chapters", but "unnumbered chapters", with "numbered chapters" being a subset of chapters. (Though I allow that the IPCC seems more aligned with your view.) Initially I was using (e.g.) "IPCC AR5 WG1 SPM" and "IPCC AR5 WG1 TS", but as those are bit too cryptic for most readers and practically call out for "Technical Summary" (etc.) I started spelling them out as "IPCC AR5 Technical Summary". Note that this isn't just descriptive; as part of the CITEREF it has to correspond exactly to what is used with the "ref". (I.e., "IPCC AR5 Technical summary" would fail, because of the "s".) As these are short titles used the same way across all of the AR reports I think they are workable. [More explanation later.]
As to using the author's names for the numbered ("authored"?) chapters: yes, that would be standard, and what I went with years back. But experience has raised several difficulties. First is the potential non-uniqueness of three (and even four) author names for a given year. Yes, that can be handled with year suffixes. But! First, that is more appropriate for a fixed (such as printed) result, where someone can scan the whole for conflicts and adjust as necessary. We have a more dynamic situation, where a duplicate short-cite is added subsequently, and then we have an ambiguous situation: is the subsequent editor expected to properly suffix all of the original cites? My experience here says: that's too much to expect. Alternately, we could say only the subsequent cites get the suffix, so we have "Jones, Smith, and Brown, 2014", and "Jones, Smith, and Brown, 2014a". Even if the subsequent editor checks that there is a conflict (not to be counted on!), the result carries a whiff of error.
Second: I am trying to develop canonical forms that can be used across multiple articles. I'd prefer not having to explain "by the way, in some articles this source can be cited this way, but in other articles, depending on what other sources are used, it should be cited this way."
What tilted me to using the "IPCC AR5 Ch1" form for numbered chapters (instead of authors) is the realization of just how much trouble editors have with the authors. (I have seen confusion regarding 'particles', compound names, and non-English characters. And in some cases the impetus to use names is supplied by using editors instead of authors.) Any way, it seems to me that for most readers, and even most editors, the authors are very non-signifying, and that "IPCC AR5 Ch11 2014" is more meaningful, carries more information, than "Bindoff, Stott, AchutaRao, Allen, et al. 2014". (If you are writing up some material from that chapter, which form of short-cite would you prefer?) In addition, using an acronym for chapters makes the citation of IPCC reports entirely consistent. Which also means that when someone uses one of these sources without reading the (someday to be!) instructions, the use of "authors" is a flag that attention is required. Anyway, I have to leave right now, so perhaps more tomorrow. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:01, 17 June 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for your superlong answer. I'm convinced. But, could we also write out the word Chapter in full? This makes it consistent with Summary for Policymakers and prevents the look of having 3 abbreviations next to each other. Femke Nijsse (talk) 06:22, 17 June 2019 (UTC)
It would have been slightly fuller but I ran out of time. :-0
We could. The question is: should we? I lean towards "ChX" as being adequate enough for readers to understand (whereas "SPM" and "TS", being less familiar, wanted explication). It is also more succinct, but perhaps "Chapter" softens the perception of a string of codes? On the other hand, with "Chapter" the number gets separated with another space, so we are actually making the "string of codes" even longer, and the value for "Chapter" kind of floats off on its own as an independent and apparently equal element. To illustrate, compare (e.g.) "IPCC AR5 WG3 Chapter 7 2014" with "IPCC AR 5 WG 3 Chapter 7 2014". I think "IPCC AR5 WG3 Ch7 2014" is clearer, easier to read. Well, give it a good chewing, then let me know what you think.
In my next batch of citations I'll probably go with "Ch", but they can be changed if we go the other way. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:15, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

You're right that AR 5 WG 3 Chapter 7 2014 would look ridiculous, especially the two numbers at the end. let's go with your proposal. Femke Nijsse (talk) 20:29, 19 June 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. Such a tiny little bit, but I find it an interesting intersection of information theory and the aesthetics of human perception. And perhaps someday I'll come up with handy response to Hamlet's comment of "thinking over precisely"? In the meanwhile I'll turn out some more citations. :-) ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:54, 19 June 2019 (UTC)

Working to final version

Should be the same as second draft proposal in terms of content, but explained for so that less experienced Wikipedians can understand too. The differences that go a bit further than textual:

1. I've now specified what we do with IPCC reports. I think this was the conclusion from a previous discussion, but correct me if I'm wrong

2. I've changed the {{harv}} into {{harvnb}}, which is the template we've been using so far

3. I've removed the k: Use of "named-refs" to "re-use" full citations not allowed. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you can't use named-ref for full citation anyway now that they're in the sources section, right? For sake of brevity, I'd like to not mention this.

4. I've changed n in response to Johnson's comments: institutional authors should use |author=.

To make it easy to verify sources, we keep a consistent citation style in this article. This consists of the following:
  • a: Every source cited in this article has exactly one full citation with complete bibliographic details.
  • a': "Full bibliographic details" requires attribution of authorship, date, and title.
  • b: Those full citations are put in the "Sources" section (not in the text, not in <ref> tags).
  • c: For consistent formatting, templates are used for full citations.
  • d: There are two systems of formatting in Wikipedia: Citation Style 1 and 2 (CS1 and CS2). CS1 formatting style is preferred here: use {{cite xxx}} templates, or {{citation}} with |mode=cs1.
  • d': {Cite} templates to include |ref=harv (or similar) to enable linking from short-cites (see f).
  • e: Reports with different authors/editors for the chapters and full report (such as the IPCC) can be cited using a separate full citation for the chapter and the full report.
  • f: In-line citation of content to be done with short-cites (such as done with {{harvnb}} templates or similar).
  • g: All notes, including {{Reflist}}, to be in the "Notes" section.
  • h: In-line citations to show location (e.g., page or section number) of material within a source.
  • i: This means we don't use the template {{rp}}, which shows the page number not in the note, but in the main text.
  • j: Initialization, or not, of authors' personal names per source.
  • l: Dates in DMY format
  • m: Multiple authors: only the first five need be listed. If more than four add "|display-authors=4".
  • n: For human authors and editors, use |last= and |first= or equivalent separate name parameters, not |author= or |editor=. Use |author= for group or institutional authors.

If you agree, I'll put this on the top of the page. I was also wondering whether we can put a pointer towards this in the editing screen. Now it's only giving a warning of discretionary sanctions. I assume there are rules about what can be placed there, but I have no idea where to find such rules. Femke Nijsse (talk) 19:19, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

Several details.
1) "e" needs revision: Citing material from the IPCC AR reports is a special case, as it involves three levels of "work": AR, WG, and chapter; this is handled differently than the usual case of a chapter within a book. The details need to be mentioned; I'll try to get to that sometime. Until then I would just say that material from the IPCC Assessment Reports takes special handling, to be explained.
2) While we generally use {{harvnb}} ("no braces"), other variants (e.g., {{harvtxt}} and {{harvs}}) are also useful. "Harv" is used as the generic name for the entire family.
3) Possibly I don't understand what you mean by "you can't use named-ref for full citation ...", but I would say that is not correct. Note that named-refs can also be used to replicate any note, and is often used to replicate short-cites. Considering how contentious many WP editors are ("it doesn't say we can't use them!" :-)) I think it needs to be mentioned. Perhaps just say "no named-refs", to make it simpler.
4) I tweaked the "authors" bit.
5) The basic statement of the model should be on what it is; why can follow.
6) We should note that these are still subject to change as we work them out.

I think this should not be at the top of the Talk page, but in its own subpage, with links at the top of the talk page and the edit window. We need to come up with a good name. I think something a little broader than "Citation model". (Besides stating the "model", I think we will need some explanatory text, perhaps a recommended skeleton template, perhaps reminders of basic citation practices.) "Citation details"? Perhaps inspiration will strike tonight. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:37, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

Thanks!
1) For the IPCC reports, I think it is safe to just refer to them as four different 'books' right? (or should we use cite report, I wasn't sure, so I think I used both..): AR1, AR2, AR3 and SYR. And for the NCA: the physical basis and the impact (impact is mainly focussed on one country, so less relevant here).
2) Okay
3) I think we should allow named-refs for short-cites. Makes life a bit easier. If you really feel strongly about this, I'll concede, because I don't think it's worth our time to continue discussing this.
4) Thanks
5) I think it might be wise to include why a bit in the model to make sure people don't get contrary when reading this
6) Okay.

If we put in on a separate page, I would like to transclude it into the talk page. Expanding a box on the top page is just a bit more enticing than going to a new page. I'm okay with Citation details, but not fuzzy at all about the name. Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:07, 25 May 2019 (UTC)

Perhaps "Citation standards"? Transclusion is usually done where it is desired to have something appear in multiple places (sort of like named-refs), though it can be useful for protecting text from drive-by editing. However, no matter how it is implemented, nor how succinctly expressed, I think that is too much detail for the top of the Talk page. I think we should have a box that warns editors that (e.g.) "This article has an established citation "style" and standards, with which, per WP:CITEVAR, editors are expected to comply. See xxxxxx for details." Of course, that could be an expandable box (with [Show details]), which may be what you have in mind. And the normally collapsed part could be transcluded from the subpage. We could try that out, see how we like it. But the text of the model/standards/explanations should not be on the Talk page itself, but on a subpage. I may create that, so we can play around with it. (And don't worry about the name: it can be moved.) Another advantage of a subpage is that it can have its own Talk page, which is very nice for collecting future discussions of it, rather than having the relevant discussions spread all across the main Talk page archives.
Re the IPCC reports: it's a bit more complicated. The principal IPCC reports are the periodic "Assessment Reports" (AR), such as the "First Assessment Review" (FAR), "Fifth Assessment Report" (AR5), etc. Each of these has a volume from each of the three Working Groups (WG1, WG2, WG3), and ancillary volumes such as the "Synthesis Report" (SYR); these are what get printed as separate "books". This is similar to the structure of a multi-volume encyclopedia, but a big difference regarding the "volumes": whereas an encyclopedia's volume is merely a convenient partitioning of the total content, the IPCC "volumes" are separate and independent reports, with separate editorship. So what we cite are "Chapter X (with full citation!) In WGX In IPCC ARX". What has been developed here is streamlined way of doing that ("In IPCC AR5 WG1 2013") that does a home-run without skipping any bases. (And I do need to write that up.)
I do feel strongly about named-refs (lots of bad experiences), and absolutely we shouldn't use them for full citations. I'd rather not have them for short-cites either, but that's an issue for another day.
And don't mis-take me: absolutely we should have some explanation of "why". But there should be a clear and concise statement of the model, then explanations, etc., can follow.
I think I'll create a subpage for you.(!) Perhaps Talk:Global_warming/Citation standards? It can be re-named if you prefer something else. And we can play around with how that gets tied into the Talk page. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:55, 25 May 2019 (UTC)
Done! ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:18, 25 May 2019 (UTC)


@Femkemilene: were you going to write up a final version? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:35, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

Yes, I was waiting for you to finish the IPCC citation style. I've got another work trip/holiday coming up, so won't be able to do it soon. Feel free to do it instead of me. Femke Nijsse (talk) 07:51, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
I think all we need to say here about IPCC citation style is something like: "Citation of IPCC reports should be done as recommended at WP:IPCC citation." This to replace the current wording of item "e". And I'll keep hammering out more citations. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 18:22, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
I've finalized the citation style and added yet another tmbox to the mess on top of this page. Femke Nijsse (talk) 19:49, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
I moved the message box up so that is more likely to be noticed by editors. When we get it polished up a bit more I'll see about having essentially the same message displayed in the edit box. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:39, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

FYI, JJ and some of us went 'round on this a few years ago. In general, the Harv concept is - I assume - wonderful. But can dim-witted editors like myself get a drop down menu that holds our hand while we do those a-n steps? If not, then I'd have to study and puzzle and think and ponder and internalize a-n steps. That goes against my nature, so I assume it goes against the nature of at least some other eds too. I like the drop down templates where you just fill in fields. Does the Harv (whatever that is) method allow for dummy templates for eds like me? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 19:55, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

Seconded! Cadar (talk) 22:24, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
IDEA... if it doesn't exist, I wonder if the wizards among us could pool resources to produce a great help video, that explains the differences, shows how they work, and why it helps? I might finally "get it" if the info were presented that way, and such a help vid might help at many other pages also. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 19:58, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
I'll add two examples to the citation standards to start with. If we pool resources, might it not be better to write and support a request to our tech czars to include it in the visual editor? Femke Nijsse (talk) 20:13, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
Oh no, not VE! It is a deplorable hack as it is, and trying to get it to make IPCC citations "easy" would just make a big mess.
NAEG and all: what I have been working is to provide not "dummy templates", but fully prepared templates that can be simply copied in. Not drop-down, but presumably easy enough. It's still a work in progress, but see WP:IPCC citation/AR5 for a preview. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:03, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
Random thoughts if useful... See gadget Wikipedia:ProveIt (which I love) and WP:JAVASCRIPT (which I know nothing about). The big challenge is doing something that (A) captures the attention and (B) guides the actions of newcomers to this article, after we have all moved on. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 23:38, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
@JJ: I'm not suggesting we make the IPCC possible with the VE. Instead, I would like to have the default short refs made easier.
@ NEAG Are the two examples sufficiently clear for now? Or should I add more info? Femke Nijsse (talk) 06:14, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
Oh yes, I would love that, too. But there is deep-seated mis-comprehension and apprehension, leading to resistance. Just having "ref=harv" the default in {cite} (as it is in {citation}) is still opposed. And of course, VE was designed and built by people who think named-refs are the only way to go. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:42, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

Copying IPCC sources to other language articles

I see lots of work is being done on improving the citations, especially by @J. Johnson:. So I have taken advantage of that and copied the IPCC AR5 source list to the Turkish article. I guess such copies might be useful for other languages too, for example even though the German article is exzellent some of its cites have decayed (for example cite 256).

I have a small question. In Turkish Wikipedia there is no "ISBNT" template (see redlink here). I have not yet been able to find out what "ISBNT" means. Does anyone know? If not I will ask at the helpdesk.Chidgk1 (talk) 07:12, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

When they are complete, it might indeed be good to notify other language communities that they exist. Good to know that not all templates are immediately the same across languages. ISBNT is for showing the ISNB number of the book, without showing the string ISBN. Femke Nijsse (talk) 11:43, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
Ah I see now it is described here as useful for tables (hence "T"). As it also does not exist in many other major languages, such as French, does anyone have any objections if I change this article to use the ISBN template instead? I am guessing that "pb." means that the book was originally published under one ISBN but now resides under a different one?Chidgk1 (talk) 13:15, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
The hardback and paperback editions are usually published simultaneously (and sometimes with multiple ISBNs); both are valid. I would prefer not replacing ISBNT as that would result in redundant "ISBN" labels. Preferable would be adding {{ISBNT}} to the other wikis. The template itself is quite small, but it invokes a Lua module. I don't know what would be involved getting installed (perhaps it already is?). You might make a list of the modules this article currently uses (listed below the edit window) and see what others you might need, then consult with your technical people. What you could in the interim is create your own version of ISBNT that simply calls the regular ISBN. That way you don't have to change any of the article code (nor change it back when you get a proper ISBNT installed). Ask if you need help on that.
While I do hope to have something that would be useful across all wikis, we should hold off on the copying until the dust has settled. Some of the existing IPCC citations in this article vary from the canonical versions I am building, and there are urls that need to be checked (and possibly fixed). ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:09, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
A possibly better stop-gap for ISBNT: just added a redirect to ISBN. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:33, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

Task force? WikiProject? ...... FYI Discussions underway about using one of these toolsets

FYI There is a long inactive climate change task force which exists as a sub-unit of Project:Environment. Until recently the task force has seen no action for many years. Our help pages have guidelines for converting task forces into a standalone wikiproject, and recently some eds have proposed we do that for the WP:CCTF too. It's great to see this surge of enthusiasm! The discussion started at the task force and has mostly migrated to the talk page for a project proposal. Please consider adding your thoughts to the project proposal talkpage. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 11:13, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

Cities projections

@ThurnerRupert: I moved your recent contribution to one of the subpages of global warming as I don't think it was appropriate here.

  • On this page, we (strongly) prefer not to use single studies, but instead review articles and reports.
  • Also, we like to keep the content balanced. Global warming is a big topic, and it doesn't do to insert an entire list of city changes if we can't also address a full history of climate change action per country/continent and other major details.
  • The fragment didn't include one bit of basic information: how much warming (medium emission scenario was the answer).
  • Please be aware of Talk:Global_warming/Citation_standards for citation standards. One of the FA criteria is to have a consistent citation style, and this is what we chose.
  • Detail 1: The text wasn't wikified; no internal links were found to the cities
  • Detail 2: There was a space between the different notes. This is typically not done on any page.

If you feel strongly that this article should be included, please do it in an appropriate form (summarized & keeping with citation style. Ask for help if the latter is too difficult). Femke Nijsse (talk) 06:43, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

I've gone over the content and cleaned it up, plus added Wikilinks. There were a lot of spelling and other problems. It occurs to me that I should probably add all the pages to my copy edit to-do list and do a general tidy-up across the board. @Femkemilene: if you're in agreement, then I'll start a new section with just a general notification to all editors so that my copy edits don't just get reversed.
Cadar (talk) 08:32, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for that! I don't think it's necessary to start a new section. Copy-edits are usually not reversed. Just be bold and only start a discussion when you're not sure about something :). Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:41, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

I think I should start a section anyway, so that there's no excuse. I've been attacked for good faith copy edits on other pages, and since this page seems to be a particularly sensitive one and people are quick to get riled up, I think it's a good idea to be up front about it. I don't want to end up with all the work being arbitrarily reversed, or dragged into an edit war.
Cadar (talk) 09:26, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
thanks @Femkemilene: for this and the hints, very helpful! to be honest, i found it challenging to place the study results somewhere into the article respective article set. of course i got it wrong :) allow me to start a new section "extend history section" below. --ThurnerRupert (talk) 10:10, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
Cadar: the nature of "copy-editing" is to not change the sense of the copy. I.e., the changes are neutral. That copy-editing is done "in good-faith" is not sufficient justification, it must also be neutral. I suspect that most of the controversies that arise out of "ce" are due to different views of what is neutral. If there might be any question about that it is best to work in small increments, so as to not get very far ahead of what other editors will accept. Changes of sense, or substantial changes of structure (such as the citation work we are dong here), can also be controversial, so it is good to discuss them on the Talk page before getting heavily invested. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:56, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

Recent study from Finland says no evidence of anthropogenic climate change

I know what Q21 in the FAQ says but I thought I'd post this anyway. Link. Terrorist96 (talk) 16:59, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

Not sure what they're smoking in Finland, but they're barking up the wrong tree. They try to blur the lines between anthropogenic climate change and climate change in general - and then effectively deny the existence of either while blaming the rise in global temperatures on "low cloud cover". Clouds have a high albedo. High albedo means high reflectivity, meaning that cloud cover reduces temperatures by reflecting radiation back out into space before it can be absorbed by the Earth. This is basic stuff, if these guys were scientists in the field they ought to know it. Certainly this is not worth adding to the article. It's way out on the fringe even for the fringe.
Cadar (talk) 17:15, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
This paper is another example of how anyone, even university people, can WP:SELFPUB papers online so let's not go down the WP:FORUM rabbit hole very far in holding a general discussion at this time. If they have indeed "proved" what they say they have proved, we can take it up when the global accolades and duplication of results from earth science professionals come pouring in. Meanwhile, if you ARE interested in a general discussion of this self-published piece, you can join the party at RealClimate's forum. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 18:29, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
Concur with both of you. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:24, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
In case anyone needs further critique of the theory that "low clouds" are the main control knob for global temperature, see: "Tucker Carlson goes full-on climate denier, hypes debunked document that blames global warming on clouds". (archive). —RCraig09 (talk) 17:06, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

Featured article review - let's go?

Since my proposal to go through WP:Featured Article Review a couple of months ago, we've seen a lot of improvements to this article imo. However, I still think it lacks in some aspects and a thorough paragraph-by-paragraph review of the article would be beneficial. I hope to achieve a couple of things with the FAR

  • Identify whether I've inserted mistakes into the article in my attempt to get them all out.
  • Check whether non-experts can understand the article in its entirety (no accidental jargon)
  • Request help from WP:Guild of Copyeditors somewhere in the process to improve readability (when?)
  • Have an explicit validation of quality to show in a WP:Today's Featured Article request. They are rightfully wary of old articles. It's the 25th COP in December, so that might be a good opportunity to showcase our work.

I think the article is now close to current-day featured quality, so I don't think we'll get to the Featured Article Removal Candidate stage of the featured article review. If we do end up there, I'll do my utmost best to make sure this article's status is preserved.

Any objections to me requesting a FAR next week? Femke Nijsse (talk) 15:33, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

I think a FAR is a good idea, although I think doing the copy edit first might be a good plan. I can do it in my capacity as a GCE member, or it can be requested at the Guild page, although there's usually around a three-week turn-around on requests there.
Cadar (talk) 15:56, 20 July 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for your offer :). I think however it will be beneficial to have a more experienced copy-editor that has worked with Wikipedia MoS through and through. The instructions for copy-editors for featured article nominations states at the GCE request page, states that this is desirable. Also: copy-editors that are not involved in climate change articles might be better at spotting unnecessary jargon. One of the advantages of doing the FAR first, is that copy-editors will actually edit the final text, instead of near-final. Femke Nijsse (talk) 16:37, 20 July 2019 (UTC)
I've requested some advice on the FAR talk page about the proper order of things. Femke Nijsse (talk) 06:52, 21 July 2019 (UTC)
Might be a good idea, rather than wasting someone else's time with a review which is almost certain to be rejected if copy edits still need to be done, then still need to request a second review in order to get the FA status.
Cadar (talk) 10:19, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

I've been advised by the FAR experts that a peer review is probably the better tool, as FAR is a last resort. I'm now adding the article to the GCE waiting list. Any objections to adding the article to peer review as well? I think these two processes can be done simultaneously, as they have different time scales. Femke Nijsse (talk) 11:06, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

I have no objection to peer-review, but could we push all this back a bit? There's still a fair amount of work to do with the citations (and perhaps copy editing?), and I'd like to have the bulk of that cleaned up before we get another layer of work going. At least two weeks, perhaps three. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 17:51, 21 July 2019 (UTC)
Okay :). So our timeline will be:
1. Work on citations for next 2-3 weeks
2. Have copy-edit done by those lovely GCE experts in 3-4 weeks (which is length of waiting list)
3. Sign up for peer-review directly after copyedit.
4. After about month of peer review, see whether we can sign it up for December TFA (during COP25?). Femke Nijsse (talk) 18:18, 21 July 2019 (UTC)
That should be workable. ("... and the creeks don't rise", etc.) ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:54, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

I wonder about FAR when there is a long simmering dispute between this page and climate change as to article title and scope. It might make the best sense to take it one step below FAR and keep working on the bigger issue, then do FAR after we're over that hump.NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 14:58, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

I think that there is no discussion over the fact there should be an article (I'm not too fussed about the name) that covers climate change with the same scope as the IPCC. That is this article. I think having this article completely in order might make the discussion what to do with the other ill-defined article (climate change) easier. That's also why I've made the climate system before our proposal to do away with a separate article about general climatic changes. Femke Nijsse (talk) 19:05, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

Current citation work (July, 2019)

Femke: Check out WP:IPCC_citation/AR5. Heavily revised from what you saw a couple of months ago. Does that look clearer, easier to use? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:56, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

Looks good! I think the most important step of making it easier to use, was to have an example. Which we now have in the global warming article. Small detail: the first url does not seem to work Femke Nijsse (talk) 13:28, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
And if you're happy, I'm happy! :-) As to the small detail: that would be the url for the full volume? Yes, there may be something funny there; I need to check. I was wondering if each citation should be rendered, in part for checking, but am thinking that might be too much displayed. What do you think? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:01, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
I think a reference to the current page should suffice. With foldable sections, I'm not to worried about there being too much displayed. Femke Nijsse (talk) 19:23, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

@NewsAndEventsGuy: check out the new diagram and other revisions at WP:IPCC_citation/AR5. Is it clearer now? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:22, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Jeez, even I might be able to do that. Thanks for holding my hand.... speaking of which..... I remain confused about having two cites where usually one will do. In terms of my main confusion, we might call this the short and the long of it, yuk-yuk. It would help tremendously to see draft text executing the protocol, with wikicode above, and the display as look beow. It's great to have some cut and paste (thank you thank you thank you thank you) but I would really benefit from seeing some nice pictures of all these things in practice so I can cut and paste them the right way. Sorry to ask you do more work, but this might put it over the top, at least for me. Gee, it's only taken five or six years for my brain to crack open enough for your ideas to sink in. Thanks for the patient persistence. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 00:13, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
Whereas I seem to recall some complaints (in my youth) about the ideas leaking out of my head.
So: I believe your confusion "about having two cites where usually one will do is about having a "full" citation for the chapters, and another full citation at the next higher level (the Working Group reports). (Right?) Usually there is only single higher-level containing work. Where a source (such as a separately "authored" chapter or contribution) is contained in a larger work, the details of the latter are incorporated into a single citation, where the source is described as being "in" the containing work. In most cases where this comes up there is only single instance (maybe two or three), so replication of the "in" details is not a big problem.
But here we have the independently created chapters "in" a Working Group report (or the SYR), which in turn is "in" one of several Assessment Reports. Strictly speaking we could have a chapter "in" a volume "in" a report. But not only would that confuse many (most?) editors, the templates can't handle it. Even if they could: the IPCC sources tend to have long lists of authors and editors, and (in the climate articles) we cite many chapters (over 50 in this article), so all the redundant info just buries the distinguishing details. By linking to, instead of incorporating, the higher level details the chapter citations can be kept small and manageable. Clear enough?
In terms of being able to copy and paste (I hope that is what you meant!) "right away" — do you not see how that is already available? (Well, for AR5 WG1. I'm working on WG2 now, others to follow.) Just go to the line for chapter of interest, and click on "Show". I'm not clear on what kind of "nice pictures" you would find useful. Does the diagram not adequately show the relation of the in-line citations (short-cites) to the full citations? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:27, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
Tip, if you're dealing with a guy with a relentless mental block, four paragraphs of text won't help. HOWEVER! One of my mentors once said, "A teacher is someone lucky enough to say something in just the way a student is able to hear... and so GREAT teachers master the skill of flexiblity so they can say the same thing in a lot of different ways, hoping to get lucky." So let's try pretty pictures.
In my user space, I have created a mock article, using Template:Cite report. I'm comfortable with that approach. Please edit that mock article to convert the citation. Just save it with the same name. Later, I'll try to combine the code and displayed text side by side in one document.
Thanks for bearing with me, maybe you'll be that lucky teacher with this approach.NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 23:03, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
And done. Step through the changes with your history. My computer is about to die, so further comments deferred. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:01, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
Thanks and that's just as well, since text isn't doing any good anyway. I should be packing for another trip. If I haven't really answered by the end of the month please remind me. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 00:24, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
If I understand correctly, the cite templates we've been using are a variant of the Vancouver system and the goal is to switch to Parenthetical referencing also known as "author-date" or "harv". If that's true, please don't load me with more to read here. I'll need time to study those two help guides first. Meanwhile, thanks JJ for helping create the sample docs in my userspace. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 16:58, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
No! First. we are NOT using parenthetical referencing here, let alone the more specific "Harvard referencing" version. Parenthetical style mandates putting the short-cites within parentheses, and embedded in the text. (Which many editors detest, and I sympathize.) That the best way of creating short-cites on WP is a template named "Harv" (which suggests "Harvard" and "Harvard referencing") is most unfortuante, as harvnb and harvid are quite excellent. The "style" we have here has elements in common with many systems of citation, includiing "parenthetical", but does NOT mandate putting "citations" in parentheses, and therefore it is not "parenthetical".
Second: putting citations into notes (a.k.a. "footnotes", "endnotes"), instead of parentheses, does not make a citation system "Vancouver". That is a system used mainly by medical journals (to cram citations into as little space as possible), which many medically oriented editors here like to use.
Your confusion here undoubtedly comes from the statement at parenthetical referencing that it "can be used in lieu of footnote citations (the Vancouver system). That's crappy writing (in a crappy article), that results from confusion of several concepts, and has made a lot of editors confused. Ignore it. Wipe off your feet (brain?) before you track that crap all over, then read WP:BCC. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:34, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
OK that's super confusing. Its proposed we use Template:harvnb. The documentation at that page says "This template allows you to link inline citation using Harvard citations (a form of short citations using parenthetical references) to their corresponding full bibliographic citations" If I hear you correctly that is not true and despite the template name and documentation it isn't really harv or parenthetical referencing but something else. As I understand it, there are variants of these systems. Are you CERTAIN you are not proposing a harv/parenthetical variant? If yes, then why on earth are we using something called "Template:harvnb"? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 16:12, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
The problem here is in the use of "parenthetical", implying a certain style citation style that requires use of parentheses, and the (false!) inference that because "harv" implies "Harvard", which implies parenthetical referencing, this family of templates is good only for parenthetical referencing. Absolutely false!
We use {{harvnb}} (no parentheses!) and {{harvid}} templates – instances of the "Harv" family of tempaltes – because they generate short-cites that conveniently link to full citations. While the documentation you quote is correct as far as it goes, it is also very misleading in implying that is all it can do. In fact (and as amply demonstrated) harvnb can link inline "short citations" (short-cites) that are 'not "parenthetical references".
In brief: we are using {{harvnb}} because it does something well (linking short-cites to full citations). Don't be mislead by the name, or the poor documentation. The citation model proposed here, as well as the IPCC citations, is not "parenthetical" because it does not require the use of parentheses. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:49, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

With JJ's help I can now play with

But wouldn't you know it? JJ did all that great work converting the citation example to the harv system, then another joker (me) added a new citation template! Now what? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 17:45, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

Report to the woodshed before supper? :-)
The {{harv}} family of templates are useful, but let's not call this the "harv system". ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:45, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
Sorry, I refuse. I'm going to rely on our articles about these referencing systems to teach me, and to teach myself and others about our WP:LOCALCONSENSUS for referencing. I mean, if some new ed comes along and sees template harvnb but it isn't really harv 'cause JJ says that article sucks.... well, you can kiss longterm simply maintainability goodbye. So if you don't like the article templates names or the referencing articles contents, please fix them first, and then we can use that perfected work product to overcome both my own confusion and the certain future learning curve of others who arrive here. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 23:56, 24 July 2019 (UTC) PS the other way forward is for you to make peace with whatever you disagree about on those pages, and accept that harvnb is a variant of the harv system, and let us use that language as we teach both me and future harv newbies alike. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 23:57, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

Edit request: please correct terminology re physical/statistical computer modelling

In the section "Physical drivers of climate change" please replace this sentence 

So a key approach is to use physical models of the climate system to determine unique fingerprints for all potential external forcings.

with this sentence 

So a key approach is to use physically or statistically-based computer modelling of the climate system to determine unique fingerprints for all potential external forcings.

The current sentence is not supported by the cited source,[1] which instead states: In a multi-step attribution study, the attributable change in a variable such as large-scale surface temperature is estimated with a single-step procedure, along with its associated uncertainty, and the implications of this change are then explored in a further (physically or statistically based) modelling step.

Thank you in advance. 86.161.228.30 (talk) 06:04, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

For simplification, I left it out initially, but am okay with adding it in. Femke Nijsse (talk) 06:40, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
Great!. You sound like an expert, so may I follow up: is it really the case that global warming is based only on computer modelling? I am no climatologist, but I remember that in the 1980s and 1990s scientists compared the effects of current volcanic eruptions (sulphur-rich eruptions vs sulphur-poor eruptions, dust-rich vs dust-poor eruptions, etc) and thus "experimentally" verified how different components affected climate. I also remember a scientific study evaluating the effect of the flight ban imposed in the wake of the New York World Trade Center attacks in Sep 2001 - the absence of condensation trails by aeroplanes caused a noticeable change in albedo and temperature. Do you know of citable sources for this Wikipedia article which encompass such experimental insights? 86.161.228.30 (talk) 07:58, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
I'm indeed an actively publishing climate scientist :). While climate modelling plays an important role in different aspects of climate science, it's definitely not the only method. The effect of volcanic eruptions is still a very active field of research for instance. Not only the current ones, but also the ones over the last few millennia, where we gain better and better information on the temperature (see new paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1401-2, which I might introduce into the article later if no major flaws are discovered in near future) and the volcanic sulphur (still found in ice cores). I think I remember there being a (peer-reviewed??) study on the flight ban, but it later being refuted because a few days is definitely not enough information. Further experimental research is done by studying micro-processes that take place in laboratories (for instance important for cloud formation). For the carbon cycle, Free-air concentration enrichment are cool experiments. Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:36, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
Sounds good. I encourage you to implement the material when you have time. Perhaps as a Methodology section. Until now, the reader has no clue that computer simulations are used, much less lab experimentation or volcanoes. It is outside my field so alas I will not be able to assist you. Go for it.86.161.228.30 (talk) 08:54, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
At most, we might need to tweak a sentence under the section discussing the physical drivers. We already have an entire section devoted to the use of computer Climate models. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 11:18, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
At the risk of extending a general discussiong...... @Fem (is that an ok nickname, Fem?)..... here is a good BBC blog about the --NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 11:13, 25 July 2019 (UTC)maybe/maybe not research of the post 9/11 flight banhttps://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/climatechange/2009/05/911_contrails_study_challenged.html impact on climate. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 11:13, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Edit request: please correct "millions" as millennia

In the lead, please replace this sentence 

Many of the observed changes in climate since the 1950s are unprecedented in the instrumental temperature record, and in historical and paleoclimate proxy records of climate change over thousands to millions of years.[8].

with this sentence 

Many of the observed changes in climate since the 1950s are unprecedented in the instrumental temperature record, and in historical and paleoclimate proxy records of climate change over decades to thousands of years.[8].

The current sentence is not supported by the cited source,[2] which instead states: many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. Evidently a Wikipedia editor has confused "millennia" with "millions".

Thank you in advance.86.161.228.30 (talk) 08:29, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

You seem correct that the source doesn't specify it. I'll add a tag that additional sources are needed (blocked editing on my work, because it's too much of a distraction, so later). I do believe the sentence is correct, so will be searching for a better source! Thanks for your scrutiny. Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:39, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
In the Attribution article, there is a reference for CO2 levels 2-3 million years ago. Perhaps that is useful. Implementing that would require a wholesale rewriting of the article, so as a quick fix I suggest just make the requested change now, and then do the further research/rewriting when you have time. For now, it is important that the lead is impeccable.86.161.228.30 (talk) 08:46, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
Until a different source is provided, I agree with the IP.
  • The original was added after extensive discussion about the entire paragraph, over a series of threads, culminating in this thread.
  • The sentence was again discussed in this archived thread after which @Dave souza: added the bit about paleoclimate records to the sentence. Since paleoclimate records aren't mentioned in the cited source (at least in that subection) it isn't clear why you did that, Dave. In the thread you said you agreed with TimOsborn but Tim's comment didn't say anything about paleoclimate records.
  • Noting his own knowledge of paleoclimate records in the edit summary, Prokaryotes changed thousands to millions in Aug 2018 in this edit
Until some supportive sourcing for "millions" is added, I've changed and reworded the text so it is hopefully more clear and comports with the SPM we cite. The new version I'm trying out reads Many observed changes since 1950 have been unprecedented compared to the available records, some of which cover thousands of years.[2]
NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 11:05, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
@86.161.228.30: thanks for calling our attention to this. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 11:05, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
Having done some Google Scholar searches, it seems that the millions is supported for CO2 concentration and ocean acidification (both not really climate) and maybe for rate of change of climate (I see quite a few sources stating this without referring to the exact time scale). I'm okay with this change, but will be looking out for sources about the rate of change. Citing own knowledge is definitely a red flag, well spotted! Femke Nijsse (talk) 12:23, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
Any scholar willing to admit a mistake rises in my esteem. I sincerely wish Wikipedia had more people like you - edit wars would not exist. 86.161.228.30 (talk) 12:59, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Removal of line about polar vortex

I've removed the line about the polar vortex from the lede, most importantly because there is still quite a lot of scientific debate about it and the lede is already bloated. A very good article on this came out about half a year ago on Carbonbrief: https://www.carbonbrief.org/qa-how-is-arctic-warming-linked-to-polar-vortext-other-extreme-weather. Please read this before continuing.

The line was also weirdly focussing on North America. If this hypothesis proofs true, it will be a phenomenon around the entire jet stream, not only on one continent. Lastly, please do read our citation standards. They are quite new, so please tell us when you don't understand. Femke Nijsse (talk) 19:03, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

FYI - Climate crisis article

FYI, "Climate crisis" used to be a redir pointing at Global warming but today I took a first crack at an article about the phrase, and efforts to reframe the issue that way. Since others may make further changes, I'll just link you to the version history for "climate crisis". If you can make it better, please do. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 18:33, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

Please share your thoughts about how we describe consensus

Please see Talk:Effects of global warming#Consensus problems and add any thoughts there. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 01:03, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

With the task force, probably soon to be Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Proposals/Climate_Change, I think that is now the appropriate location for these notifications to keep this talk page a bit more manageable. I've copied your request there. Femke Nijsse (talk) 07:55, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
I appreciate you're doing that; however experience suggests that the current de facto task force is still right here. Since the strongest consensus follows casting of the widest appropriate net, what's best for now is probably doing both! NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 10:35, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Citation of NASA: vital signs of the planet

NASA has a set of webpages in the Vital Signs of the Planet collection. None of them are dated. I was wondering whether the following would be a good way to cite them. Using one full citation for the web collection and specifying the location (specific web page) in the short-cite. Not specifying location in short-cite means that we can't create unique short-cites for this page. Some statement.[1]<ref>{{harvnb|NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab|n.d.}}</ref> 

--- Notes ---

  1. ^ NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab n.d.

--- Sources ---

NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab (n.d.). Callery, Susan; Shaftel, Holly (eds.). "NASA Global Climate Change and Global Warming: Vital Signs of the Planet". 

{{cite web|    ref={{harv|NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab|n.d.}}
 |title = NASA Global Climate Change and Global Warming: Vital Signs of the Planet
 |date = n.d.
 |author = NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab
 |editor-last1 = Callery  |editor-first1 = Susan
 |editor-last2 = Shaftel  |editor-first2 = Holly
 |url = https://climate.nasa.gov/
 }}

The difficulty here is that the different parts of the website are updated at different times. They website only shows an overall date for which is was last updated (now July 12). A second difficulty is that the editors are likely to change over the course of say a decade, so that we might want to omit them altogether.

Currently, we cite the page 5 times, of which one has incorrectly been placed under the peer-reviewed sources. Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:32, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

No date? Neither author, nor definite attribution of authorship responsibility? Not even a definite form, other than someone else has archived it? These are indications of an ephemeral source. While the NASA/JPL news webpage might be considered a "newsblog", NASA/JPL is not a news organization (see WP:NEWSBLOG); I would not consider it any more reliable than the webpage of any other organization.
As an encyclopedia we are supposedly summarizing bits of definitely established human knowledge. While we might cite an ephemeral source to establish that some statement was made by someone (?) at a certain time (?!) and place, any statement of substantive fact should have an authoritative source. By which I mean peer-reviewed, or at least an expert encyclopedia; not an interview. E.g., the mention of the effects of aerosols: why isn't this cited to an IPCC source? (I'm sure that very point is covered somewhere.)
I think the answer to your question is: wrong question, we should not be citing these sources. It seems to me that every use of climate.nasa.gov/news is a soft spot that should be replaced with a solid source. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:51, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
I think you are completely misreading the reliability of this source. The website is maintained by one of the leading scientific organizations on climate change, has a named editorial team and a huge scientific advisory team of world-leading scientist. It gets updated whenever new science comes out. They don't provide a citation template for nothing.
The website has been cited for some uncontroversial basic physics statements. We can definitely find them somewhere else as well. My preference is that all basic physics questions have a link to a non-technical source as well as a technical source and this is the best non-technical source out there. Better than news organizations that do have a single author for an article.
I agree that the interview (in contrast to the pages under Facts) warrants a better source. The use of climate.nasa.gov/news section of the website is a bit of a soft spot, but more reliable than for instance The Guardian articles. For uncontroversial statements, these high-quality non-peer reviewed RSs are good enough. Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:14, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
Agree with Femkemilene as to the basic reliability of the NASA blog page. For starters, we seem to agree that this is not a WP:NEWSBLOG, but even if it were, the criteria for determing NewBlog reliability could be applied to this site and appears to be satisfied. The site itself says "NASA’s Global Climate Change website hosts an extensive collection of global warming resources for media, educators, weathercasters and public speakers" and "This website is produced by the Earth Science Communications Team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and About Us - MISSION - The mission of “Global Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet” is to provide the public with accurate and timely news and information about Earth’s changing climate, along with current data and visualizations, presented from the unique perspective of NASA, one of the world’s leading climate research agencies.. Note that this is a JPL site, which means its produced and maintained by CalTech, however, according to the site, the site and the rest of their JPL publications "are sponsored by NASA under Contract NAS7-030010." I think we're good on the basic question of reliablity. FAQ How to cite this website that question is on the FAQ page but at the moment none of the links on that page are working. I emailed them about this problem, maybe it will come back to life and shed light on F's original question about citation NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 14:55, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
Being more reliable than The Guardian is not a very high bar, and not the criterion here for reliability.
This "huge scientific advisory team of world-leading scientists" that NASA "has" – what does that mean? Are they contributors? Peer-reviewers? (I very much doubt that anything at www.climate.gov is peer-reviewd.) Or do they occasionally advise the editors that the Earth is still getting warmer? I might be impressed if they were constantly monitoring the latest developments and advising us of their significance, but, first, I see no sign of that, and, second, I have more confidence of getting that from the scientific journalists at Science that have been following this for years than from journalistic scientists who likely have their noses too close to the work to give us a broad view of the scene. For all that "NASA" had some staffer get some off-the-cuff remarks from a not-famous "scientist": The Guardian can do as well. And I do NOT want to have to explain (argue) to anyone why this is acceptable in one case but not the other.
For basic physics and such, I don't believe we need, or should, go to the kind of fluffy "non-technical" sources commonly found on the web. The IPCC has done a good job of explaining the key stuff, and before using any newsblogs or such I would want a good reason why the IPCC, or a peer-reviewed article, expert encyclopedia, or good undergraduate-level textbook, does not suffice.
My quick response to NAEG's comment: the issue is not whether certain assertions are correct ("truth"), but who takes responsibility for asserting they are correct. The lack of specific authorship and the overall diffusion of ownership (is it NASA? JPL? or CalTech?) makes any attempt at attributing this material an exercise in hand-waving. If we are going to cite any "NASA" information we need to pick it off before it is whipped into a frothy newsblog. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:32, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
Your assertion that the website is a newsblog is incorrect: it contains a newsblog (which I'm not that convinced by), and an overview of basic physics (all the pages under Facts), with proper referencing to secondary and sometimes primary sources, which is constantly being updated whenever new science comes in. It's the latter I argue we should keep included into our article. No off-the-cuff remarks, no reliance on a single scientist, just a proper tertiary source. This part of the website does contain a broad view of the science, so I'm not sure where that comment came from..
Furthermore, your assertion there is nobody responsible also doesn't make sense: there is a set of editors that are responsible. Femke Nijsse (talk) 20:09, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
Agree with Femkemilene again. JJ's last post is well-summarized with his edit summary "Why should any newsblog be used instead of an authoritative source?" First, its not a newsblog. Second, whatever it is, why SHOULDN'T it be cited. What I hear in this debate boils down to ILIKEIT/IDONTLIKEIT, and I do not hear any solid argument questioning its basic reliability. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 20:22, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

As to the original question in this thread, the website itself has something to say. Please see their FAQ page under "How do I cite your website?", which provides examples in MLA, Chicago, and APA formats. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 20:35, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

Interesting. Of course we don't specifically follow any of those formats, but perhaps you could run up a standard full citation form using our CS1 templates that approximates those forms? Perhaps two, as the "news" items (and their lack of specific dates and authors) are more of a challenge than the rest of that site. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:52, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
Per the lead at WP:Citing sources, we cite articles so that anyone reading the article can find it and verify it. Section WP:Citing sources#What information to include says Listed below is the information that a typical inline citation or general reference will provide, though other details may be added as necessary. This information is included in order to identify the source, assist readers in finding it, and (in the case of inline citations) indicate the place in the source where the information is to be found. The key thing here is to avoid nooses around our necks by over fixation on form and picky details. If a reader can find it, then mission accomplished and if there are picky details that aren't to a fastidious reference librarians satisfaction they can fix it or we can agree to WP:IAR and call it good. A military relative is fond of saying "Perfection is the enemy of good enough".. And this all brings me to WP:Citing sources#Web pages which further says,
"Citations for World Wide Web pages typically include
  • URL of the specific web page where the referenced content can be found
  • name of the author(s)
  • title of the article
  • title or domain name of the website
  • publisher, if known
  • date of publication
  • page number(s) (if applicable)
  • the date you retrieved (or accessed) the web page (required if the publication date is unknown).

If I were adding such a citation, I might do it like this. Examples of greenhouse gases include H2O, CH4, N2O, and CO2.[1] Note that the guidelines emphasize the data that is typically included, but the key thing is letting readers find the info we cite. This does that. In addition, if we're not entirely sure of the date of the text (and I'm not) our guideline explicitly notes such situations and says we can deal with them by providing the date we accessed the info. This does that, too. I would not attempt to create a Harvnb template as you editors are doing because I still don't understand all that and the conversation where I'm trying to learn is still pending. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 23:44, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ Shaftel, Holly (ed.). "Global Climate Change: Causes". NASA Global Climate Change and Global Warming: Vital Signs of the Planet. Jet Propulsion Laboratory / National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Retrieved 24 July 2019.
Don't sweat the short-cite ("Harv"); the essential item is the full citation, and (generally) the short-cite can be adapted is needed. The "harv" problem Femke raised derives from a basic insufficiency of the full citation.
I think it needs to be emphasized that our principal criterion ("key thing") here is not "findable sources", but "reliable sources". Yes, sources need to be "findable" in some sense (though not necessarily on the web), but that is only a prerequisite for accomplishing our key principle of verifiability. But findable junk defeats the purpose of the exercise; in the end, sources MUST be reliable. Long established bibliographic practice is that reliability is vitally dependent on knowing who said something (or takes responsibility for authorship), and when. My core objection ("DONTLIKE") to www.climate.gov/news is its weakness regarding both of those aspects.
Your sample full citation is probably as good as can be done in this case. But the weak attribution and lack of a definite date — a "retrieved" date is mostly useless unless a version of that source as of that date is archived in some way — makes that content ephemeral. That is, "findable" now, but not necessarily in the future.
Which is another reason I strongly prefer getting our basic physics and such from sources such as the IPCC: very findable now, and in the future. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:59, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
Simple then... add a second RS! We have highschoolers and working professionals both trying to read our stuff and follow our sources, so why not provide the website/lay-public source along with a harder-core science source? I have no objection if you or anyone wants to add a second one. Problem solved, I think. Femke? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 21:27, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
Let's be clear that (in regard of scientifically based content) expert sources should not be added to the content. Rather, content should be based on (derived from) expert sources. If those are too "hard-core" for some readers, then softer, simpler sources can be added for elucidation. But expert sources should always be foremost.
Even allowing for such augmentation, let's not forget that some of the material at www.climate.gov is extremely squishy (poor attribution and dating), to the point that in some cases (given, say, identical interviews), The Guardian is likely the better source to cite. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:44, 26 July 2019 (UTC)
I don't understand your first paragraph in general. Also, when eds use the word "should" they "should" always say whether it's based on personal opinion or in the WP:P&G somewhere. This "should" is based on TPG and consensus guidelines, about concisely providing reasons for one's opinions. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 20:56, 26 July 2019 (UTC)
Sorry, I don't have black-letter policy at hand that writing should follow the sources, not the other way around. (Perhaps at WP:NPOV?) But I have always taken this to be a pretty clear "sky is blue" kind of thing: Writing content first, based on one's own views, and then searching for sources to support that content ("cherrypicking"), is following one's own views, not any expert or mainstream view. It's one thing to interpret an expert view, or to reconcile variant expert views. But, to use expert sources to gild what is essentially one's own view is misuse of the sources, and amounts to intellectual fraud. Not only should we not do that, I would expect we should not need a policy to tell us not to do that. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:06, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
None of which is really on point as to how we deal with the JPL/NASA publications. I think this thread is a wrap. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 22:28, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Edit request: change 1900 (unreferenced) to 1950 (referenced)

(I am the same IP editor as yesterday, working from a different connection)

In the lead please modify this passage 

Global warming is a long-term rise in the average temperature of the Earth's climate system; an aspect of climate change shown by temperature measurements and by multiple effects of the warming.[2][3] Though earlier geological periods also experienced episodes of warming,[4] the term commonly refers to the observed and continuing increase in average air and ocean temperatures since 1900 caused mainly by emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the modern industrial economy.[5]

as follows 

Global warming is a long-term rise in the average temperature of the Earth's climate system; an aspect of climate change shown by temperature measurements and by multiple effects of the warming.[3] Though earlier geological periods also experienced episodes of warming,[4] the term commonly refers to the observed and continuing increase in average air and ocean temperatures since 1950[2] caused mainly by emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the modern industrial economy.[5]

The "1900" start of global warming is not supported by the cited reference. Presumably a Wikipedia editor has confused the beginning of reliable global records (1880-1919, see page 18 of reference 2) with the beginning of global warming. In fact, reference 2 dates the start of global warming to 1950, and therefore my edit request shifts reference 2 into the appropriate position. Incidentally, reference 2 seems out of place in the first sentence, so my proposal kills two birds with one stone.86.134.18.24 (talk) 12:32, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks again! Really wish we had more people like you.
To me, both dates seem a bit weird. Before 1950, GHG also influenced the climate. 1900 is also oddly specific. The IPCC 1.5 glossary has the following definition of global warming:
Global warming An increase in global mean surface temperature (GMST) averaged over a 30-year period, relative to 1850-1900 unless otherwise specified. For periods shorter than 30 years, global warming refers to the estimated average temperature over the 30 years centred on that shorter period, accounting for the impact of any temperature fluctuations or trend within those 30 years
The Fourth national assessment doesn't provide a definition in their glossary, but states in their texts:
We  find  no  convincing  evidence  that  natural variability can account for the amount of global warming observed over the industrial era.

There are some recent papers that show global warming in the 19th century was nonzero as well: https://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/08/24/climate-change-now-has-a-start-date/

It seems that our most reliable source (IPCC) does not have a fixed begin date... I'd like to find a good source stating global warming is the warming since pre-industrial. That statement does not suffer from being overly specific. Femke Nijsse (talk) 13:46, 26 July 2019 (UTC)
This language was part of a change championed by Dave souza a year or two ago. Dave? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 13:54, 26 July 2019 (UTC)
You have highlighted:
Global warming An increase in global mean surface temperature (GMST) averaged over a 30-year period, relative to 1850-1900 unless otherwise specified.
Do we agree that in the cited source, "1850-1900" is a reference period (a benchmark), not the beginning of global warming? Just like sea level is a reference altitude, not the beginning of Mount Everest? If so, the cited source 2 is explicit in placing 1950 as the beginning of global warming. If you find a better source backdating global warming, by all means implement it. But meanwhile we need to correct the citation error "1900" as 1950. 86.134.18.24 (talk) 14:07, 26 July 2019 (UTC)
Dave is an excellent editor and he's around here somewhere. Let's see if we can rope him in too. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 14:14, 26 July 2019 (UTC)
As you wish. But meanwhile please also read references 2 and 3, and you will see the problem, even without Dave. If you are pressed for time, at least perform, in these two references and in the Wiki article itself, a quick word search for "1900" and "century", which will convince you of the discrepancy.86.134.18.24 (talk) 14:19, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

My apologies 86, and especially to Dave.... this is what I get for relying on memory. It's true Dave updated the paragraph after a long talk thread. When I pulled up the diff, it seems the objectionable bit about the years wasn't part of the change Dave added. (Sorry Dave). It seems there was an undiscussed change to these two sentences on March 31 (in this edit series). I don't see any reason to clutter up the lead of this top article with excessive details, and so I have reverted the March 31 changes. I hope I didn't break anything (such as the excellent recent work cleaning up citations!) IP 86... please review the text this way, how's it look now? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 14:55, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the Barnstar! No, your reversion will not work, because reference 4 is a dead link. It would be much easier to replace "1900" with the sourced 1950.86.134.18.24 (talk) 15:06, 26 July 2019 (UTC)
The dead link is fixed now, and I'm not persuaded that adding the detail as to year makes an improvement here. Down in the body, sure. The WP:LEAD is supposed to be a very high WP:SUMMARY, and this is a top article of a huge topic, which means there is a lot to be summarized, so not much room for detail. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 15:59, 26 July 2019 (UTC)
Thanks everyone! Glad to see you've got it all sorted out by the time I could have a look.
Minor suggestion, to avoid over-precision of dating have changed the fourth sentence re "Many observed changes" from "since 1950" to "since mid 20th century" – means the same, but looks more general. Please reword it if another version preferred. . . dave souza, talk 16:52, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

Timescale of warming (arbitrary section break

Hi NewsAndEventsGuy (and welcome Dave Souza!), I disagree and think that the timescale of recent global warming is essential information, as well as its probable anthropogenic cause (greenhouse gas). However, that is not my point - my point is the discrepancy between Wikipedia claims and cited sources. And the cited source 4 does not support the Wikipedia lead statement "The term commonly refers to the mainly human-caused observed warming since pre-industrial times and its projected continuation". Try a word search and you will see that the time statement is not in source 4, anywhere. 86.134.18.24 (talk) 17:09, 26 July 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for your comments IP. Dave, please recall I was not in favor of tweaking the language last fall. What we had was fine. Can you field this ball? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 19:49, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

Source 4: Global warming refers to the gradual increase, observed or projected, in global surface temperature, as one of the consequences of radiative forcing caused by anthropogenic emissions.
The timescale depends on what you're looking at; SPM C. Drivers of Climate Change has "The largest contribution to total radiative forcing is caused by the increase in the atmospheric concentration of CO2 since 1750." Source 4 under "Industrial Revolution" has "In this report the terms pre-industrial and industrial refer, somewhat arbitrarily, to the periods before and after 1750, respectively."
For surface temperatures, SPM B1 has "Each of the last three decades has been successively warmer at the Earth’s surface than any preceding decade since 1850 (see Figure SPM.1). In the Northern Hemisphere, 1983–2012 was likely the warmest 30-year period of the last 1400 years (medium confidence)." So, reasonable to say robust long term warming since pre-industrial, better data so higher confidence since 1850, the caveats below note the longest period when calculation of regional trends is sufficiently complete as being 1901 to 2012, and comment on short term variability. . . dave souza, talk 20:25, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for respondng in detail, Dave. I think you are blithely presuming that the increase in CO2 since 1750 has led to global warming starting in 1750. The sources you cite say that CO2 increased from 1750 onwards, but those sources do not say that global warming started in 1750. Have I understood this correctly? If so, the simplest fix is to delete the three words since pre-industrial times from the current lead.86.134.18.24 (talk) 20:57, 26 July 2019 (UTC)
I think one of the difficulties here is that none of the sources say global warming started since year X. Even source two, which IP read as saying global warming started in 1950 does not state this.
IPCC SMP 2013:
Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes  are  unprecedented  over  decades  to  millennia.  The  atmosphere  and  ocean  have  warmed,  the  amounts  of  snow  and  ice  have  diminished,  sea  level  has  risen,  and  the  concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased (see Figures SPM.1, SPM.2, SPM.3 and SPM.4). {2.2, 2.4, 3.2, 3.7, 4.2–4.7, 5.2, 5.3, 5.5–5.6, 6.2, 13.2
As you see, it's only since 1950 that the changes have become so big as to be unprecedented. That does not mean there weren't any changes before. To be accurate to the sources we can say a) Global warming consequence of human interference b) we started interfering mostly after preindustrial. Femke Nijsse (talk) 07:32, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
I agree with you Femkemiline that the 1950 date is problematic. But before opening up that can of worms, can we please deal with the immediate problem at hand, which is to delete Dave's well-intentioned but unsourced original research (since pre-industrial times). To galvanise you into action, look at the sea level graph - it shows a minimum around AD1860, not earlier. So in this sense, Dave's original research in the lead is contradicting the Wikipedia article. 86.134.18.24 (talk) 08:14, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Last sentence lead paragraph

The last sentence of the lead is now implying we don't have records that go back more than thousands of years. That is nonsense and not in line with the cited source. If I have time I'll change it now, if not could somebody please revert it soon as this is quite a grave error. Femke Nijsse (talk) 07:32, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Good point, a minor clarification: think "records from decades to thousands of years" doesn't quite work, and it's better phrased as "Many observed changes since mid 20th century have been unprecedented compared to records over decades to thousands of years." That's closer to the source, so have changed it. . . dave souza, talk 11:13, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

Attribution

(I have started a new section for this unrelated topic.)

This discussion follows the change in longstanding text last fall that I didn't really support. QUESTION... why must this tip-top article specify a date, and all the weedy nerdy this-esses and that-esses that goes along with nailing attribution down with such specificity? This should be a SUMMARY article, and in my view this is a really worthy discussion that would be better held at Attribution of climate change. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 15:41, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

As a layman, I am interested in global warming - when did it start, how many degrees warmer is it compared to previous warm and cold phases, which greenhouse gases are responsible. These three points form the basics of an article on recent global warming, in my view. Then the next level of requirement is to explain to the reader how global warming is measured (direct and indirect methods) and how it is attributed - attribution should be briefly touched upon here in one paragraph (key points: climate models, computer simulation) and then linked to the main attribution article. 86.162.84.228 (talk) 16:11, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
As a layman, I think you're trying to get too much precision into an area which is vague due to natural variability – this is the Observed temperature changes section. When it started, for purposes of this article, is following on from the industrial revolution. These sources show the defining period for pre-industrial temperatures, which is the standard baseline, and an indication of when warming becomes discernible in the paleo record. Method of measuring temperature change is covered in linked articles. Attribution is in the Physical drivers of recent climate change section. . . dave souza, talk 17:17, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
I am sure there is natural variability in climate, but the Wikipedia article's vagueness is largely anthropogenic. Joking aside, what precisely it is that is too precise from your point of view?86.162.84.228 (talk) 17:50, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
It is the inherent nature of climate — "usually defined as the average weather" — where the per annum change of climate is swamped by annual and decadal variations of weather, and where regional changes are not in sync (sometimes not even in the same direction), with the random volcanic perturbation (all the "natural variability" David alludes to), that global climate change cannot be measured on a yearly basis. It's like trying to measure the precise time a hurricane starts, or the sea level started to rise.
So what's too precise here? "AD1830 as start of global warming". Also all of those detailed qualificaitons. As NAEG said, this should be a SUMMARY article. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:55, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
Thanks John, but you are too late - I had already replaced AD1830 with "mid-19th century" as requested by Dave, see my modified draft above. Let us close this outdated discussion and concentrate on the task at hand - the Edit Request above.86.162.84.228 (talk) 06:14, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

Protection level

Yesterday, this page showed a lot of nonsense for half an hour, by a user that had only edited their own user pages. I don't want this page to be protected better because of a single incident, but if this continues this might be something we have to think about. Femke Nijsse (talk) 08:39, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

Don't be shy, it's been awhile but its happened before. Personally, I think all articles under DS should be placed under semi-protection for as long as DS remains in effect. IP comments on article talk are welcome, and most will be nonsense, but will be easily addressed without vandalism to articles themselves. That leaves room for constructive IP comments, such as this page has enjoyed just the last few days. (Thanks IP! The project doors are still open if you change your mind) NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 09:48, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
I'm not sure whether this page falls under the requirements for full protections. Preferred is always to have individual blocks and (current) semi-protection. Femke Nijsse (talk) 14:25, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
I hate full protection, but like semi. In the climate pages generally, ARBCC has often been our friend. I try not to bother with ANI, far too unwieldly. AE is expeditious when there is a real problem. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 15:06, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
I agree full protection is too severe at the moment. The page has been semi-protected for ages. I think with the elections in the US coming up and climate possibly becoming one of the major talking points, we might be seeing this type of vandalism more often and then full protection is something to consider. Also, if it gets accepted for TFA in December, we will probably want to have it fully protected on those four days (TFA + three days of recently featured on front page). Femke Nijsse (talk) 09:10, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

New radiative forcing figure

Housekeeping note for the archives - At the time of this thread, the "current" image appeared in this section of this version of the article and was the Dec 2018 version of this image NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 20:56, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

Radiative forcing of a different contributors to climate change.

The current radiative forcing figure contained data from 2005 and estimates of uncertainty from 2005. I've made an updated version of that figure. Simplifying it in some locations, making it more detailed in others. Any feedback before I put it online? (This figure cost me an embarrassingly long time to make, so please be kind :P).

Code is still very ugly, but I plan to make it quite flexible, so that it can easily be translated & updated when AR6 is out. Femke Nijsse (talk) 16:04, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

The total forcing should perhaps also be added in. Count Iblis (talk) 20:47, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
Very cool, thanks! NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 20:56, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
@Count Ibis: Wasn't sure whether to total forcing would be missed and wanted to go minimalist. But since this is the first thing you noticed, I've got my answer and will add it in the next version. Femke Nijsse (talk) 06:52, 5 August 2019 (UTC)
Is this better and sufficiently good to be included on the page? Femke Nijsse (talk) 16:16, 6 August 2019 (UTC)
In the caption "a different" ----> "different", but otherwise it looks good to me! Count Iblis (talk) 18:26, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

Montreal protocol

Just spouting from my own head (no RSs in front of me), the protocol is both an example of climate change mitigation in its own right, but its also an example of successful international politics and cooperation to wrestle with complex environmental problems... which in turn has made it a model and a messaging tool for shaping public opinion and lobbying. So.... aspects of the protocol could go in many places, assuming what I just said is backed up by RSs, of course. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 14:25, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

It could go in many places indeed. Reason I put in in physical drivers is so that I can talk about tropospheric and stratospheric ozone in one place, but don't mind it much. We cannot put it in multiple places, as it's mainly a protocol against ozone depletion. I think it was only later discovered that these chemicals are also powerful greenhouse gases. Femke Nijsse (talk) 16:14, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
To avoid redundancy we should only tell what it is in one place, but we can refer to it in many..... can't we? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 16:47, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
Maybe, but I don't think it's sufficiently prominent for that. Let's see whether it's mentioned in ipcc SPMs, NCA, State of the climate report, NASA and Met office websites.. (not me, I'm off to Scotland on a holiday :)). Femke Nijsse (talk) 17:35, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
Enjoy! You've missed an exceptionally hot sultry spell, lots of events today cancelled due to threat of thunderstorms and heavy rain (could it be global warming?) but the Met Office and BBC forecasts this morning look much more benign. Still plenty of showers about, so hope you get lots of sunny spells. . . . dave souza, talk 08:06, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

Edit request: change section title "Physical Drivers" > "Natural & Anthropogenic Causes"

(This request follows my fulfilled request on computer modeling where NewsGuy suggested tweaking the Physical Drivers section)

In the section "Physical drivers of climate change" please replace this section title 

Physical drivers of climate change

with this new title 

Natural and anthropogenic causes of climate change

The current title does not signal to the interested reader that this section explains how and why scientists conclude that climate change can be caused by humans. Other tweaks might be necessary as suggested by NewsGuy, but let us start with the title. 86.161.228.30 (talk) 12:16, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks again IP... the entire prelude to this section was a combination of outdated text combined with what is (in my view) too much detail about how attribution is done. In my view that detail is premature. First we need to tell our high school audience what the forcings are in general. I have just floated a big overhaul of the intro to this section. Note that I also deleted the large section on ruling out solar forcing. We don't have sections ruling out any other things. I'm sure that crept in back in the days when the deniers were hammering away at "Its the sun!" If this "sticks", I'll copy that text from the version history over to talk page at Attribution of recent climate change. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 13:24, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
Although I agree with you the section was overloaded, I am sorry to see the methodological aspects thrown out of the article. Suggestion: Can you retrieve some of the deleted material and put it together into a new Methodology section, which comes just before (or introduces) the Climate Modelling section?86.161.228.30 (talk) 13:51, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
Great minds think alike.. at first I wanted to see a new heading "Attribution..." and put climate models under it. But now I would rather see the computer modeling section exported to Attribution of climate change, and that section replaced with a single paragraph in very broad WP:SUMMARY fashion introduce the basics of attributional studies and direct people over there. I'm a big beleiver in using article heirarchies to minimize redundancy and overlap. But so far, it's just us. Maybe others won't like the changes I've made so let's give it some time for others to catch up and review this thread and the edits I boldly floated. Meanwhile, please consider getting a log in not required, but makes it easier for me to remember who you are and joining the Climate change wikiproject! NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 14:52, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
I agree completely with your long-term strategy, but for the moment the article is worse than it was before. Regarding signing up: I am not a climatologist and therefore have nothing to contribute to the field. (If I were an expert, I would not be searching for the methodology of climatology on Wikipedia...) If I may, a general criticism of this article: there is always the danger of dumbing things down too much. People like me see a media report written in layman's terms, and then we are motivated to look up details on Wikipedia. If Wikipedia then offers no deeper insights than the media article did, one feels disappointed. Farewell, signing off for today.86.161.228.30 (talk) 15:12, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
When you return... for sure, I agree that details are needed! This is a top article. Details that would make a highschool kids head spin should be split off to sub articles, and but our text here should be so punchy that readers like you will understand what link to follow to get what you need.NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 15:45, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

A lot of things being discussed at the same time here. Let me reply to the various points. 1) I think it is vital attribution studies are part of the article. I've tried to dumb it down so that at least A-level students should understand, and for some part of the article, higher secondary school is definitely the public we want to serve 2) I think it is also vital to discuss solar aspects. In any attribution study on climate change (see for instance the new ones from yesterday), this is always still researched. I've made it less prominent by merging solar cycles and solar fluctuations into one section, and I wouldn't mind it being more succinct still, but removing it is premature. 3) I feel that climate models as a separate section might indeed by out of place. The reason it's still there, is that I wasn't sure where to put stuff. A section of Methods sounds too much like a scientific paper to me, and I wonder whether people know what to look for. Climate change science covers such a broad range of disciplines that this would be an impossible section to write. 4) Lovely bold move, but I think I'd rather you copy your new text to talk page, revert them and work on this more incremental? Our would you rather we start from your stuff and move a bit back in the old direction with new sources? Femke Nijsse (talk) 16:24, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Please revert what you like and we'll go from there. When folks are using AGF and the talk page BRD is a great way to proceed. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 16:44, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
I've made a mixture of our two versions for the intro of the text and put back two of the three paragraphs for the sun. The third one was indeed irrelevant and out of proportion compared to the rest of the section. It needs some polishing, but I do think that we need to explain the basics of attribution and also how we know it's not the sun. Femke Nijsse (talk) 19:37, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
 Not done: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit semi-protected}} template. - FlightTime (open channel) 18:57, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 26 July 2019

Can someone please load a graph of global solar radiation, if possible, or energy received by the earth since as far back as possible, so that the increase in temperature graph can be compared to intercepted radiation levels on a similar time axis. This will shed some light on the debate on whether incoming energy from the sun is increasing, and if it is having an effect on temperature, or if increases in temperature are not being affected by radiation reaching the earth. If the amount of radiation emitted by the sun and intercepted by the earth has not changed, over the last 100 or 30 years, this will show that solar affects have nothing to do with climate change as some are debating. Can we get some evidence. 41.162.85.82 (talk) 10:10, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

Whether the sun causes climate change is a fringe debate. It's mostly discussed on blogs on the internet made by hobbyists, instead of expert scientists. Wikipedia has some guidelines how to deal with these: Wikipedia:Fringe theories. Currently, we discuss the mainstream methodology of how we know it's not the sun, with references to the data. I don't think expanding that by adding a graph is this top-level article is warranted. The appropriate article for expanding on this is Attribution of recent climate change, which does contain a graph detailing solar energy over the satellite era. It's a bit old (2009), so I've added it to the to-do list of Wikipedia:WikiProject Environment/Climate change/Figures and art. (other editors, please close if you agree with my assessment). Femke Nijsse (talk) 11:16, 26 July 2019 (UTC)
@41.162.85.82... please refrain from echoing denialosphere themes here, as you did when you framed the question to predetermine what it means if the graph you request shows wiggles (which they do, as any casual google search reveals). This page is for discussing article improvements based on WP:Reliable sources, anything else is collapsible as being a general WP:FORUM. Trolling and disruption are simply removable. See the WP:Talk page guidelines. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 11:45, 26 July 2019 (UTC)
If I understand it correctly, all Figures on NASA's website are in the public domain. I'm planning to upload https://climate.nasa.gov/internal_resources/1802/ and replace the current figure on Attribution of recent climate change. Femke Nijsse (talk) 12:24, 26 July 2019 (UTC)
information Note: Closing out old request as  Not done, per the above. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 14:14, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

Edit request: please insert AD1830 as start of global warming

In the Observed temperature changes section please add to the beginning: 

Multiple independently produced datasets confirm that between 1880 and 2012, the global average (land and ocean) surface temperature increased

this new sentence 

Post-AD1500 palaeoclimate records show that sustained industrial-era warming commenced around AD1830.[3] Multiple independently produced datasets confirm that between 1880 and 2012, the global average (land and ocean) surface temperature increased

Thank you in advance, my courteous procrastinators...86.134.18.24 (talk)

Just thinking out loud here.... "warming" is somewhat non-specific. It might mean detectable changes in a particular instrument temp record at a particular sampling point... or averages of instrument temp record from multiple sampling points of a particular part of the climate system (e.g., the abstract mentions "tropical oceans" and doesn't mention if that means surface temps but from my own head it probably doesn't mean the entire water column). "Warming" of the climate system can be absorbed and manifested by changes in the system's components and interactions that are below the detectable range of temperature instrumentation. So that's an interesting looking WP:PRIMARY source and I'm not opposed to mentioning some of its results in some appropriate way. For a big-picture statement such as when post-industrial warming started I'd rather see us use a mega literature review or other high caliber WP:SECONDARY or WP:TERTIARY source. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 12:59, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Your wish is my command. Here is my new edit request including a secondary reference citing the first.

In the Observed temperature changes section please add to the beginning: 

Multiple independently produced datasets confirm that between 1880 and 2012, the global average (land and ocean) surface temperature increased

this new sentence 

Post-AD1500 palaeoclimate records show that sustained industrial-era warming commenced around AD1830.[4] Nevertheless, due to volcanic forcing from 1883, the 1850–1900 period was only about 0.05C warmer than 1720–1800, and thus the officially used 1850-1900 reference period is a reasonable surrogate for 18th-century global mean temperature.[5] Multiple independently produced datasets confirm that between 1880 and 2012, the global average (land and ocean) surface temperature increased

(The new addition is taken from the paper's Conclusion section, point 2). Your move.86.134.18.24 (talk) 13:39, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Interesting papers, if we can take them as typifying the big picture then the point they make isn't setting a precise starting date, but useful context:
 Palaeoclimate proxy records of global temperatures after 1500 show little initial change from pre-industrial global mean surface temperature (1720–1800 reference period).(Hawkins et al.) Sustained industrial-era warming commenced by the mid 19th century,(Abram et al.) but volcanic forcing from 1883 resulted in the 1850–1900 period (used for reference in AR5) being only about 0.05C warmer than pre-industrial temperatures.(Hawkins et al.) Multiple independently produced datasets of the instrumental temperature record confirm that between 1880 and 2012, the global average (land and ocean) surface temperature increased
Note that the 1830 date doesn't appear in the abstract of Abram et al. (Pages 2k) which merely states that "that sustained industrial-era warming of the tropical oceans first developed during the mid-nineteenth century" – too much natural variability to tie it down to a year or even a decade. . . dave souza, talk 15:21, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
I am willing to compromise on "mid-19th century" for AD1830 because that is the phrase used in the secondary reference. But I find your syntactical reshuffle now makes the text unintelligible: "Little initial change" means nothing. "By" the mid-19th century is an uninformative phrase, and we should systematically avoid the term "pre-industrial" because it is inconsistently defined (the Neolithic Age in 5000BC was pre-industrial too, as was the Jurassic, as was Shakespeare's time) and in fact the term "pre-industrial" was intentionally dropped by the IPCC in 2014. So how about this:
Post-AD1500 palaeoclimate records show that sustained industrial-era warming commenced in the mid-19th century.[6][7] Nevertheless, due to volcanic activity from 1883, the 1850–1900 period was only about 0.05C warmer than 1720–1800, and thus the officially used 1850-1900 reference period is a reasonable surrogate for 18th-century global mean temperature.[8] Multiple independently produced datasets confirm that between 1880 and 2012, the global average (land and ocean) surface temperature increased

All right like this?86.162.84.228 (talk) 16:11, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

Too technical for an overview, and doesn't take account of a newer secondary source. {{Harvnb|IPCC SR15|2018|p=24}} Box SPM.1: Core Concepts Central to this Special Report gives concise definitions, including Pre-industrial: The multi-century period prior to the onset of large-scale industrial activity around 1750. The reference period 1850–1900 is used to approximate pre-industrial GMST. {1.2.1.2}. This summarises {{Harvnb|IPCC SR15|2018|pp=56–59}} which cites both of the sources you've proposed; Abram et al., 2016, and Hawkins et al., 2017. While simply outlining the SPM definition of pre-industrial would give useful context to the information, a little more explanation will be helpful, avoiding going into excessive detail. . . dave souza, talk 09:44, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
I agree that our previous drafts are too technical as an introductory sentence for the Observed Temperatures section, so let us simply discard the "pre-inudstrial" terminology discussion and just add this:
Post-AD1500 palaeoclimate records show that sustained industrial-era warming commenced in the mid-19th century.[9][10] Multiple independently produced datasets confirm that between 1880 and 2012, the global average (land and ocean) surface temperature increased
Later we/you can decide where and how best to deal with the confused "pre-industrial" terminology.86.167.181.36 (talk) 10:37, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
Since its hard to prove a negative, I have trouble with wikivoice declaration of when it ..... by god....... commenced. Instead, what if we said Post-AD1500 palaeoclimate records show that sustained industrial-era warming commenced inwas underway by the mid-19th century? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 11:41, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
Since we're citing a PAGES 2k paper, here's {{harvnb|PAGES 2k Consortium|2013}} overlaid on Mann, Bradley & Hughes 1999, with a red red curve of measured global mean temperature based on HadCRUT4 data from 1850 to 2013. dave souza, talk 12:18, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
"Post-AD1500" is rather specific for no evident reason, and since this is a more detailed section than the lead it can be more informative. subject to checking against sources, suggest:
Long term palaeoclimate records show a gradual decline which levelled out in the 18th century. Sustained industrial-era warming was underway by mid-19th century, but temperatures were set back by natural events (volcanic eruptions) so the reference period 1850–1900 provides a close approximation to the pre-industrial temperatures conventionally used as a baseline. Multiple independently produced instrumental datasets confirm that between 1880 and 2012, the global average (land and ocean) surface temperature increased by...
Think that's all in the above sources. . . dave souza, talk 12:07, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
"Post-AD1500" is precisely what the authors say. That is the time period covered by their analysis. Your alternative suggestion of substituting "Post-1500" with "Long term palaeoclmate rcords" is misleading to the general reader as "palaeo" normally refers to prehistory in other disciplines. Similarly, NewsGuy's suggestion "was underway by" is also uninformative, as it is open-ended towards the past (all the way back to the Jurassic and beyond).
NPA removed by NAEG NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 13:06, 31 July 2019 (UTC)...(the) mindset where the world was created in about 1800, and anything before that is .... thrown into some multi-purpose "palaeo" or "pre-industrial" bin.... is counterintuitive to the general population, and will impede people from understanding the article. .... I am signing off now. Good luck.86.167.181.36 (talk) 13:10, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
'Bye IP NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 13:24, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
information Note: Closing this since the discussion seems to have fizzled out. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 14:28, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

Uncited sources

I started using a user script that sniffs out likely harv errors. It's pretty cool... (thanks @Ucucha:!!) It looks like the following full citations are fluff, but rather than just delete them I thought I'd park them here for future reference.

Peer reviewed but not IPCC AR4/AR5
* {{Cite book |year= 2009 |title= World Energy Outlook 2009 |publisher= International Energy Agency (IEA) |location= Paris |author= IEA |isbn= 978-92-64-06130-9 |url= http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/media/weowebsite/2009/WEO2009.pdf |ref= harv |access-date= 21 November 2012 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20120717115100/http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/media/weowebsite/2009/WEO2009.pdf |archive-date= 17 July 2012 |dead-url= no |df= dmy-all }}
* {{Cite book | year = 1996 | author = IPCC SAR WG3 | title = Climate Change 1995: Economic and Social Dimensions of Climate Change | series = Contribution of Working Group III to the [[IPCC Second Assessment Report|Second Assessment Report]] of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change | editor = Bruce|editor1-first= J. P. |editor2= Lee|editor2-first= H. |editor3= Haites|editor3-first= E. F. | publisher = Cambridge University Press | url = | isbn = 0-521-56051-9 | ref = harv }} (pb: {{ISBNT|0-521-56854-4}}) [https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/ipcc_sar_wg_III_full_report.pdf pdf] {{Webarchive|url= https://web.archive.org/web/20181223030149/https://archive.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/sar/wg_III/ipcc_sar_wg_III_full_report.pdf |date= 23 December 2018 }}.
* {{Cite book |author = National Research Council |publisher= The National Academies Press |isbn= 978-0-309-14588-6 |title= Advancing the Science of Climate Change |location= Washington, DC |year= 2010 |url= http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12782 |ref= harv |deadurl= yes |archiveurl= https://web.archive.org/web/20140529161102/http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12782 |archivedate= 29 May 2014 |df= |doi= 10.17226/12782 }}
* {{citation | mode=cs1 |last1 = Zeebe |first1= R. E. |ref = {{harvid|Zeebe|2012}} |date = May 2012 |title = History of Seawater Carbonate Chemistry, Atmospheric CO<sub>2</sub>, and Ocean Acidification |url = http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/oceanography/faculty/zeebe_files/Publications/ZeebeAR12.pdf |journal = Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences |volume = 40 |issue = 1 |doi = 10.1146/annurev-earth-042711-105521 |bibcode = 2012AREPS..40..141Z |pages = 141–165 |access-date = 15 September 2013 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20121023044322/http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/oceanography/faculty/zeebe_files/Publications/ZeebeAR12.pdf |archive-date = 23 October 2012 |dead-url = no |df = dmy-all }}

Non-technical
{{cite news |ref= harv |first= Alex |last= Kirby |publisher= BBC News |date= 17 May 2001 |title= Science academies back Kyoto |accessdate= 27 July 2011 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20070217165141/http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1335872.stm |url= http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1335872.stm |archive-date= 17 February 2007 |dead-url= no |df= dmy-all }}
*{{cite news |ref={{harvid|The Guardian, 26 April|2018}} |last1=Barkham |first1=Patrick |title='We're doomed': Mayer Hillman on the climate reality no one else will dare mention |date=26 April 2018 |accessdate=24 May 2019 |work=The Guardian |url=https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/26/were-doomed-mayer-hillman-on-the-climate-reality-no-one-else-will-dare-mention?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other }}
NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 19:34, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

THANK YOU. So many IPCC sources that are uncited... We'll be able to clean the page quite a bit :). I've added a link to the script in the citation standards page, so that future editors will be able to find it as well. (My first script that I installed. Feel so proud now). Femke Nijsse (talk) 21:03, 5 August 2019 (UTC)
Better than importing the single command line to always import it fresh, consider grabbing a copy of the current code and pasting that instead. You'll be stuck with the static version unless you think to update it manually, but you'll also be immune to any future corruption/hacking at the source. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 22:13, 5 August 2019 (UTC)
But let's not pull out any unlinked ("unused") full citations until we have checked that there is nothing in the text that should link to them. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:28, 5 August 2019 (UTC)
Personally, I think that's backwards. We don't scatter RS's inside <ref> tags on the off chance we'll find a place to put them where they belong. Just move the full cites here, and then...... assuming someone takes the time to do the labor you suggest... that person can easily move them back. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 00:10, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

This shouldn't affect the excellent list under Sources at #IPCC reports, that provides harv cites which will ideally be substituted for more direct citations to IPCC in the body text. One point; the SR15 sections / chapters all have the same link – it's a bit fiddly getting the pdf links, but necessary to see the page numbers. . . dave souza, talk 07:59, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

I confess I haven't studied this. Are you saying there are AR4 or AR5 cites that are still not in harvnb format? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 10:58, 6 August 2019 (UTC)
Just that there were two instances in the lead, which I've now put in harvnb format: [11] [12] – don't see any others in the lead. . dave souza, talk 18:08, 6 August 2019 (UTC)
I've just read through the notes, and all AR4 and AR5 cites are in harvnb format as far as I can see. I'm going to move TAR and AR4 unlinked citations here now, as that should be uncontroversial. We don't want to link those in the future either, as they are possibly outdated. I agree with NEAG that also for AR5, unlinked citations should not remain in the article space. JJ has made a lovely page to put those chapters back if needed. Femke Nijsse (talk) 14:35, 6 August 2019 (UTC)
Fair enough, there are cases when discussing history of CC science where citations to older reports are required, but as far as I can see that doesn't apply to this article. . . dave souza, talk 18:08, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

Don't know what these templated citations are doing here, but don't think they need screen space. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:07, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

[Gone!]

And I just deleted these citations that have been purged from the article as not needed here.

Femke: I just happened to notice the question you put in your edit summary, about whether to collect (save) the citations you're pulling out of the article. No, nothing of that sort needs to be done, as we can always recover such material from the old versions of the article. And any future need of these citations should be fulfilled from WP:IPCC citation. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:23, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Propose we expand main body section 1 to include multiple lines of evidence

Since before I got here in 2011, the main body has started with a long complex discussion of temperature. That's all great, but I'd rather see an intro level description of the "multiple lines of evidence", of which temp is one (or maybe two), and for that section to direct readers to sub articles that go into more detail. As one RS and graphic for this section I would propose using this, and write a short SUMMARY of each of the ten indicators, linking to more detailed sub articles. I'm not sure where the temperature detail we now have would best be exported, updated, and merged, but that's part of this idea too. And so the outline would go from

A Intro
B Observed temperature changes
C Physical drivers of recent climate change
D .... and so on.....

to

1. Intro
2. Evidence of recent climate system warming
3. Physical drivers of recent climate change
D .... and so on.....

The main change is under B (or 2), where the current temp-only details would be exported/merged/updated to a subarticle and replaced by summary text of multiple lines of evidence, of which temp is just one.

As with most proposals, I suppose the devil's in the details, but what do you think so far? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 17:06, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Let me think about a bit more (quite tired) before yes. I'm at first glance not negative. The second paragraph of the current section is basically already detailing other changes. The subsections do have vital information, that might be condensable, but I do think I'd like to see most of it kept in the article. Arctic amplification f.i. is super important. I'm not entirely sure whether regional trends convey the content/importance of that subsection properly. Femke Nijsse (talk) 19:46, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
Sounds good, not in a hurry. If memory serves the current section expanded at the same time as all the denialist hiatus messaging a few years ago. It's human nature that that sort of response creeps into our articles, I suppose, but its really time consuming to deal with. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 21:31, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
Still haven't had time for proper examination of outlines in RSs, but one of the things we have to think about is the line between (physical) effects and observed temperature/evidence sections. I think some overlap, like there is currently, is inevitable. Femke Nijsse (talk) 11:20, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
I am afraid I am not convinced by your proposal of using the word "evidence" - it sounds like climatologists stand accused in court. The appropriate wording would I think be "direct temperature measurements/data" vs "indirect temperature measurements/estimates". Other scientific disciplines do not use "evidence". Medicine uses "symptoms", archaeology uses "traces", biological sciences use "findings", etc. Only the speculative discipline of astrobiology uses "evidence" (in the context of seeking evidence for life on Mars, on the moons of Jupiter, on extrasolar plants). I find the "evidential" and defensive mindset of the article slightly irritating, but it is not a priority for me to fix this. As stated before, my priority is the inclusion of a methodology section and of the palaeoclimate record as a prelude to the modern data. Presentational polishing (replacing "evidence" etc with more confident vocabulary) can follow. Just my tuppenceworth - this is not a topic I want to spend time on. Please ignore me if my view does not find support.86.134.18.24 (talk) 12:52, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
RS from both IPCC and NOAA use "evidence" so the IP's personal opinion doesn't mach the sources here. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 12:18, 23 August 2019 (UTC)
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