Talk:Climate change in Australia/Archive 1

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Archive 1

Fact tags

The last couple of paragraphs have assertions that simply cannot stand as they are - they need citations SatuSuro 10:22, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Agree relast couple of paras re attitudes of Austrlians so reworked the section. Left one para which needs support. dinghy (talk) 14:42, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Not only a political issue

Foreign policy - Kyoto protocol, an international treaty
Business - See ask Citigroup for their presentation from about 10 businesses released in late May 2008. Brokers are already picking winners and losers
Economic - Stern and Garnaut and CSIRO have all released reports indicating that the economy is likely to be worse of without mitigation
Environmental - CSIRO says the World heritage listed Great Barrier Reef will be largely bleached every year with 2 degrees warming
Scientific - the CSIRO has been doing research for years
It has become a political issue only because the overwhelming (it has convinced 178 states to sign and ratify the Kyoto protocol) scientific evidence is that there will be major changes to climate that will have dramatic effects.
dinghy (talk) 08:29, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Article has massive POV and sourcing issues

I am going to put some work into this article to straighten it out. The later part contains massive issues with WP:NPOV, WP:SYN, WP:OR, WP:VER, WP:RS, and several broken links. The first half lacks sourcing for alot of its statements and relies in some cases on sources of dubious reliability.

There are many instances of sources being used to support material that they are not related to.

Some specific issues:

Lead

P1 sentence two contains a claim that is contested (#1 per capita emissions or #9?). On this talk page a user indicates it should be #9. Appears someone read that talk and changed the other article instead, sourcing it from an advocacy website (!). I will try and find a WP:RS.

P1 sentence two contains a red-flag claim that is not sourced (academic studies have clearly shown the influence of fossil fuel and light metal (aluminium and titanium) industry lobby groups on the country's political system to be both strongly established and highly extensivee.))

P2 sentence one is inaccurate. All fed + state goverments have accepted the IPCC report, which states with a 90% confidence that >50% is anthropogenically driven. The wording will be updated appropriately. Perhaps The Australian Federal goverment and all Australian state governments have explicitly accepted the scientific consensus on climate change as defined by the IPCC. Sourcing for such a claim would be useful. The lead does not require sourcing, but only if it is a summary of material sourced in the body of the article.

The rest of P2 is pretty rubbishy.

P3 should name and quote from the source. The second half of the line is rubbish and will be removed.

Sourcing

  • 23 this could easily be balanced by reporting the facts - as per the Flannery effect (where when TF makes a disaster prediction the opposite occurs) Perth's water stores have since increased
  • 24 these "examples" almost certainly do not support the WP:SYN they are cited against. Notably, one is from 1945!
  • 25 by its name, almost certainly does not support the WP:SYN it is cited against
  • 26 does not support what it is cited against
  • 27 is a link to advocates talking about a poll without details about the poll itself and is used to support an extravagant claim
  • 28 is a broken link and patently wrong (Workchoices >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> other issues re Kevin 07)
  • 29 does not meet WP:RS - advocacy website
  • 30 is an op-ed from a not-notable source and has little in common with the WP:SYN it is cited to support
  • 31 broken link cited to synthetically "support" absolute rubbish.
  • 32 the WP:WEIGHT in article space given to this - "and there continues to be sceptics" - is distinctly out of proportion given entire paragraphs are being synthesised from sources such as 30
  • 33 is unsupported by any other sourcing in its primary article, while in this article is used to support a statement of fact where it is only a report of a claim made by a single person

Also re 32, it is notable that no other attempts have been made to find "sceptical" media reports and write this article to be WP:NPOV. Jaimaster (talk) 01:11, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Proposed replacement for source 27 - http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24455802-12377,00.html Jaimaster (talk) 22:31, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree with all of that, and have added a few others, particularly the use of weasel words. Ethel Aardvark (talk) 10:19, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Have not forgotten this, just scratching for the time. Will still be attempting a fix at some point. Jaimaster (talk) 03:20, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
Source 1 supports an otherwise factual claim, but is an otherwise terrible source for that section of the article. Looks like someone googled and grabbed the first thing that was vaguely related. Will attempt to find a better source. Jaimaster (talk) 07:03, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Just on polls. Lets say I want to apply upward pressure on the results shown by the abc quoted poll. I ask similar questions, but instruct my demographer to source responses from enviromentalist groups.

  • Do you believe humans have played some role in the recent climate change?
  • Coal fire plants release nearly half of Australia's total GHG emissions. Would you support phasing them out by 2020?

Lets say I wanted to apply downward pressure on the response numbers from 85% and 77%. I ask the below questions, sourcing responses from employees of the automotive and related industries:

  • Do you believe that humans have caused at least half of the warming shown over the last century?
  • Coal fire power plants are the backbone of Australia's power generation. Without them or a nuclear replacement, brownouts and blackouts are garunteed, especially on days of peak power demand, probably leading to hundreds, perhaps thousands of deaths from heat stroke and freezing, especially prevalent amoung the elderly. Would you support phasing out coal fired power plants and replacing them with intermittant, unreliable wind and solar sources by 2020?

Polls are worthless unless you know the questions asked and how the participants were sourced. Jaimaster (talk) 00:03, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Let's not get too negative about polls. There are quite a few reliable polls that discuss climate change and their sampling approach etc. eg., [1] -- McTavish 2 (talk) 05:23, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
That is a far better source than a link to abc hosts talking about a poll... ill make an edit with intent to replace at some point. Does 80% of Australia really prefer Obama to McCain? That makes McCain nearly as unpopular here as Brendon Nelson :s Jaimaster (talk) 05:34, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Off-topic

There is no need to list detailed climate change organisations activities on this page. If the organisation is notable they should have their own page where that information should be placed, leaving a short summary on this article. I will try to fix this as I remove the excess ext. links and improve the referencing. - Shiftchange (talk) 00:18, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Discover (magazine) resource

In the USA version of December 2011 issue, article Going to Extremes: From floods to cyclones to fires of unimaginable ferocity, climate change has unleaded a host of plagues on Australia. But catastrophe has spawned a national rebirth. on page 56 to 63 by Linda Marsa. 97.87.29.188 (talk) 00:19, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

There would be more authoritative sources than than particular magazine. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 00:49, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Inappropriate, or at least unexplained, image

I've removed an unexplained image that seems to have been stuck into the article. --TS 04:40, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Contradiction: First or Ninth Highest Emitter?

The article Climate Change in Australia states that Australia is the world's ninth highest emitter of greenhouse gasses, while the article Effects of global warming on Australia states that Australia is the highest emitter. Which of these is correct?Sstr (talk) 01:07, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Ninth overall and highest of the Annexe 1 countries to the Kyoto Protocol (the list of "developed" countries dinghy (talk) 08:14, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.37.51.132 (talk) 08:04, 18 September 2012 (UTC)


Bot report : Found duplicate references !

In the last revision I edited, I found duplicate named references, i.e. references sharing the same name, but not having the same content. Please check them, as I am not able to fix them automatically :)

  • "abc1" :
    • 1
    • http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/earth/stories/s530052.htm accessed 15 May 08

DumZiBoT (talk) 09:52, 13 August 2008 (UTC)


Carlos hat nur 1 ei — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.37.51.132 (talk) 08:07, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Greenhouse gas emissions

"At the same time, Australia continues to have the highest per capita greenhouse gas emissions." Is this still true? Ashton 29 (talk) 07:26, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

On ABC TV - climate change hoax

Yes, on ABC TV (Australia) - "Global warming is the biggest con ever."

I never thought I'd hear it on the national broadcaster - even if it was just reading a viewer's comment. At about 7:56am today (Friday) on ABC "News Breakfast" the comment referred to "not being brainwashed ... Global warming is the biggest con ever."

Nothing could be truer. https://itsnotco2.wordpress.com — Preceding unsigned comment added by 101.191.69.127 (talk) 21:17, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

All you need to know about the science

Greenhouse "science" is fraudulent, fictitious fiddled "fissics."

You cannot add back radiation to solar radiation and use the total in Stefan Boltzmann calculations to explain the mean surface temperature.

The 324W/m^2 of back radiation is overstated because the wrong emissivity value of the atmosphere has been used in calculating that back radiation from measurements. On Venus, using emissivity of 0.19 for carbon dioxide, the atmosphere would have to be over 350 degrees hotter than the surface for its radiation to support the surface temperature.

Even if you use the 324 figure (as is implied in the energy diagrams which show 168+324-102 = 390W/m^2 into the surface) that 390 figure (being a mean of variable flux) gives you a mean temperature close to zero C, not 15C.

So it's all totally wrong and the whole radiative forcing greenhouse conjecture fails to explain reality.

If you genuinely want to hear explained what really happens in the equivalent of a 43 minute live presentation, watch the full video https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-TXYe4rJp0xmbBh51AD8jptu34LAJc-b — Preceding unsigned comment added by 101.191.139.89 (talk) 23:42, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

Minor edits

I have just done some minor copy-edits to the first section. The edits were largely, if not entirely, changing present-tense phrasing to past-tense as the events described are now ... well, past. I have also attempted to tame some of the larger weasels.

Please note that I have not added, removed or altered (beyond the weasel taming) any of the assertions made in the article.

If anyone thinks I have gone too far feel free to revert it, or discuss it with me and I will revert it. If any admins feel I have crossed such lines I'd be happy to receive that feedback, and then revert it.

If nobody raises serious complaints I'll go on to do more of the same in the later sections, some time in the near future.

Wayne 13:45, 4 October 2016 (UTC)


Pleased to see that I haven't unleashed any protests, and on that basis I will continue. I've just done another couple of minor edits, along the same lines as described above.

I have concerns about the final sentence in that section:

"The per-capita carbon footprint in Australia was rated 12th in the world by PNAS in 2011, considerably large given the small population of the country.[27]"

I haven't changed it yet, but I think there are two problems ... the latter half of the statement, "considerably large ..." is opinion and a wee bit weasely, but more troublesome, the citation provided (an article in The Guardian) seems to be a 'live' document, and no longer depicts the source data from PNAS, as stated, though I have no doubt it was originally. I accept that the per-capita ranking is relevant and worth mention, but a new source is needed. I'll have a look later and try to update it in a separate edit. (unless someone else does it first ... that'd be cool too, you know?)
Wayne 04:22, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

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Australia’s Politics May Be Changing With Its Climate

Items below appears relevant, once I get around paywall speedbump:

  • Somini Sengupta (May 7, 2019). "Australia's Politics May Be Changing With Its Climate". NYTimes.com. X1\ (talk) 22:39, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

Per capita carbon footprint best in the world?

Found this sentence "The per capita carbon footprint in Australia was rated 12th best in the world by PNAS in 2011." What is that supposed to mean? It seems to be either vandalism or a very unclear statement. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tandrasz (talk • contribs) 11:59, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

It's likely that this edit was vandalism, since the article did not describe it as "12th best." Jarble (talk) 22:41, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

Merger proposal

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
As no other comments were made in over a month the result of this discussion was merge. Chidgk1 (talk) 17:56, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

As far as I can see they are the same subject.

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

More order

I made a little more order in the article divided the current effects from projections.

--Alexander Sauda/אלכסנדר סעודה (talk) 08:56, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

Poor layout of article

It appears that a long series of edits and reactions have made this article difficult to follow. Overall it does not seem encyclopedic, with political points mixed freely with studies and Advocacy-and the overall subject is poorly defined. Many claims are only supported by a single source, and as many claims are controversial I belive editors need to put more effort into citing sources.

I would propose the article be segmented in a more conventional fashion-following the template of a less controversial article if consensus proves elusive.

Eg. Summary, historical climate Change, recent climate changes, research, political responses/advocacy, controversy.

I make no comment on the content of the article, simply its fragmented layout and limited citations. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.14.103.37 (talk) 20:03, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

General edits / reordering

Same as previous post. This article is more a serious of reactions than a scholarly contribution. I am aiming to clean up format and remove most of the opinion from this article as it appears otherwise unloved I am being bold about it. Nilch111111 (talk) 23:51, 26 June 2020 (UTC)


The section below is about global effects of greenhouse gas emissions and is not really relevant to this article which is attempting to be specifically about Australia. Hence I am going to remove it and replace it with a link to that mother article. Leaving the text here if anyone would like to dispute as it is otherwise well written / researched.

″Projected large-scale singularities from climate change There are a number of issues that could cause a range of direct and indirect consequences to many regions of the world, including Australia. These include large-scale singularities – sudden, potentially disastrous changes in ecosystems brought on gradual changes.[99] The collapse of regional, or even global, coral reef ecosystems is possibly the most significant potential large-scale singularity to Australia. Coral reef ecosystems have a narrow temperature range, meaning that they can rapidly change from being a healthy system to being stressed, bleached, or at worst, eradicated.[100]

Ecosystem changes in other parts of the world could also have serious consequences for climate change for the Australian continent. Evidence from carbon cycle modeling suggests that the deaths of forests in tropical regions might increase the net concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, by converting the terrestrial biosphere from a carbon sink to a source of CO 2.[101]

Recently, scientists have expressed concern about the potential for climate change to destabilize the Greenland ice sheet and West Antarctic Ice Sheet.[102] An increase in global temperatures as well as the melting of glaciers and ice sheets (which causes an increase in the volume of freshwater flowing into the ocean), could threaten the balance of the global ocean thermohaline circulation (THC). Such deterioration could cause significant environmental and economic consequences through regional climate shifts in Australia and elsewhere, resulting from change in the global ocean circulation.[103][104] Melting of glaciers and ice sheets also contributes to sea-level rise. Immense quantities of ice are held in the ice sheets of West Antarctica and Greenland, jointly containing the equivalent of approximately 12 meters of sea-level rise. Deterioration or breakdown of these ice sheets would lead to irreversible sea-level rise and coastal inundation across the globe.

The CSIRO predicts that additional singularities caused by a temperature rise of between 2 and 3 degrees Celsius will be:

Beginning of effects on thermohaline circulation (THC).[105] Considerable decrease in THC.[106] 20–25% decrease in THC.[107] 5% possibility of significant change in THC.[104] Threshold surpassed for breakdown of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.[102][108] Projections for Australia's changing climate include:[109] Nilch111111 (talk) 23:56, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Increasingly regular droughts, especially in the southwest, Higher evaporation rates, specifically in the north and east, Intensifying high-fire-danger weather in the southeast, Continually rising sea levels."″

Not yet linked from main article about Australia?

I am shocked to find out that the words "climate change" or "warming" are not yet mentioned in the main article on Australia once! And this article is not linked from the main article. That's quite disappointing. I will change that now. Just wondering if anyone has tried to do this recently and was knocked back? I searched the talk page archive and found a discussion from 2014 where they decided it's not worth mentioning climate change on the main article. I would hope that things have changed... Wish me luck! EMsmile (talk) 13:53, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

@Mrfebruary:, @Nilch111111:, @Alan Liefting:, @Chidgk1:, @Chipmunkdavis: Pinging some editors who were involved in expanding this article, please take a look at my question above? Please join in the discussion here if you haven't done so yet. EMsmile (talk) 10:06, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
Updated the Australia article per the discussion on Talk:Australia. CMD (talk) 10:14, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
Thanks, User:Chipmunkdavis.EMsmile (talk) 05:37, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

Impact on Aboriginal people

Perhaps I have missed it (I have just skimmed the article) but I couldn't at first glance see much about the impact of climate change on Aboriginal people in Australia? I am asking because I see in this article: Climate change and indigenous peoples quite a lot of information about climate change impacts on Aboriginal people. I am wondering if the bulk of that content should actually be moved to here? What do you think? Or if not, then a better linkage should be included, not just under "see also" where I've just put it now. EMsmile (talk) 07:44, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

I have now made those edits that I had proposed on 27 November. There is now a dedicated section about it in the article and I have also added a paragraph in the lead about how climate change affects the Aboriginal people in Australia (the situation is actually really dire).EMsmile (talk) 07:35, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

Removed the "further reading" section

Here is what I removed from the "further reading" section. Rather add as inline citation if important:

  • Burton, Paul 2014, Responding to Climate Change, CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne, ISBN 9780643108615.
  • Goldie, Jenny & Betts, Katharine 2014, Sustainable Futures, CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne, ISBN 9781486301898. EMsmile (talk) 02:55, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

Merger proposal 2

I suggest to merge the article Adaptation to global warming in Australia into this one. I have done the same today for the two articles on Bangladesh climate change (adaptation). There is too much overlap otherwise. What do you all think? If someone agrees please add the merge template. EMsmile (talk) 08:18, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

This article already has 52kB of prose. The adaptation article is small at the moment, and might fit here, but there is a need to work out some sort of sub-article structure that would allow for expansion. CMD (talk) 09:02, 12 December 2020 (UTC)
Yea, need to think about it further. I also just realised that there is another separate article called Mitigation of global warming in Australia. Again the question is how much overlap is there. It's quite long so we probably wouldn't want to merge it but ensure it is well linked and any overlap is reduced. I recently spoke to a Wikipedian/academic at Uppsala University (User:Olle Terenius (UU) and it turns out that his PhD students as part of their training like to create or expand these sub-sub-articles. They sometimes forget though to look at the parent article and integrate it better, meaning that their sub-sub-articles stay with only low view rates and are often not easy to find from the parent article(s). Femkemilene. EMsmile (talk) 05:33, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

I support this merge. See also Talk:Greenhouse_gas_emissions_by_Australia#Merger_proposal Chidgk1 (talk) 17:56, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

I supported that, but now strongly oppose a merge here. With the addition of the Indigenous Australians section this article is now 57kB of prose (not including bulleted lists). The topic is large and significant enough to merit further sub-articles. We should have a summary of adaptation here, but also need to look at where this article can be condensed and how the wider topic can be organised. CMD (talk) 03:21, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
I have shortened this article by moving mitigation to Greenhouse_gas_emissions_by_Australia - hope that helps - but am now removing them from my watchlist Chidgk1 (talk) 15:34, 12 January 2021 (UTC)
Chipmunkdavis I have now also shortened Adaptation to global warming in Australia - perhaps you could take another look? Chidgk1 (talk) 13:27, 13 January 2021 (UTC)
Certainly a summary should be merged into this page. The article is shorter now, and if it is strongly felt that the entire article should move here at the moment, I am not going to go out of my way contest that. However, I do feel it will add work to someone in the future who expands on the topic and has to split information out again. (There will be a lot more adaptation taking place over the coming years.) That depends I suppose on how some articles might eventually be structured, but this seems a good topic to go into more detail on. CMD (talk) 14:04, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
I've now merged the article Adaptation to global warming in Australia into this one. It wasn't actually very much content because there was a fair but of fluff and excessive detail which I condensed. EMsmile (talk) 04:37, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

Planned changes to headings and structure

I plan to change the headings and structure of this article to be in line with the template that has been proposed here for all articles of the nature "Climate change in Country X": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Climate_change/Style_guide (see also discussion on that page's talk page). Anyone has any objections? I think after the restructuring has been done it will become clearer which of the above merger proposals would be most useful. @User:PlanetCare, @User:Chipmunkdavis. EMsmile (talk) 02:00, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

The sections that stick out are the current "Pre-instrumental climate change" and "Future effects of climate change on Australia". I imagine the Future effects section can be redistributed between the two Impacts section, but don't see where the Pre-instrumental section would fit. CMD (talk) 02:08, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
I agree. Very true. I think once we apply the standard template to several articles we might also discover some flaws in the template. E.g. perhaps we need to add a "background" or "other" section to the template where "miscellaneous things" can go...? EMsmile (talk) 02:17, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
It would be unlikely a single template would work everywhere, so if something is unusually unique to a country, one might expect a unique section that deviates from the standard. That said, perhaps a separate section on "Climate records" as on this page would be good for all the articles to show how the climate is changing. I was looking at the Future section and found it hard to split between environment and human impacts. Would "Impacts of people" be better names "Impacts on society"? That better matches the current coverage on this article, and lessens the implication that eg. sea level rise doesn't affect people. Outside of this the emissions section matches, current effects and indigenous are clear analogues to the two impact sections, and the template shows there is a clear gap in mitigation on this article. CMD (talk) 03:14, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
I have done some of the planned restructuring now. Most of it was quite straight forward. I moved the content of Adaptation to global warming in Australia to here and shortened that content because a lot was actually just general information, not specific about Australia. However, I got a bit stuck now when I realised that recently User:Chidgk1 moved a lot of the policy content to Greenhouse gas emissions by Australia. I think it happened when it was decided that all the content under "mitigation" should be moved to there. However, I think it would be an artificial split to have policy and civil society action across two articles. I think the article Greenhouse gas emissions by Australia should be regarded as a sub-article to Climate change in Australia. That means all the hard detailed facts about tons of emissions goes there, also mitigation figures in terms of technologies and alike. But I think the policy and civil society aspects should stay here in the "main" article (with good linkages across in both directions). Currently the article Greenhouse gas emissions by Australia is quite a mess. I think we can ultimately reach a really neat solution if we agree that Climate change in Australia is the main article where we want people to come first to get an overview, and then branch off into sub-article(s). Policy and activism around climate change action (climate change mitigation) does belong more in this article in my opinion, not in the sub-article. EMsmile (talk) 04:06, 8 February 2021 (UTC)
Also, I have now created a section called "Historical aspects" where I moved the information on climate records that are pre-industrial times. I think that works. We could mention that in the standard template as an optional heading. There could be several optional headings. The template is not meant to be restrictive but helpful. EMsmile (talk) 04:47, 8 February 2021 (UTC)
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