Talk:Effects of climate change on human health

Too many sentences as quotes

There are a bit too many sentences that are still in the form of quoted text rather than own words. Some of them were added by me last year some time, usually because I didn't have time (or brainpower) to convert the statements into my own words at that time. I'll try to improve on that and will look at them all again but if anyone can help with this, that would be great. EMsmile (talk) 22:11, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

Great to see so many improvements today! I'm not sure the quotes are too big a problem here. As it's a MEDS related article where fidelity to sources is even more important than normal, it's ok to have a fair few quotes. Take this FA as an example. The main editor is the legendary former Featured Article co-ordinator Sandy Georgia, but you can see it has a good amount of quotes. This article probably isn't a problem from a copyright perspective, as almost all quotes seem to be just one liners or fragments, and nothing above 2 lines. A really strict editor might have thought there was a bit too much quoting from the Lancet, but that should be taken care of now, I paraphrased several of those earlier this morning.

Maybe at some point it might be good if you set aside some time to focus on the readability aspect. As well as looking to simplify any remaining quotes, it might be good rewrite the lede, with simpler language & less cites. Take a look at the FA I linked to for a great example, or even the version of the lede for this article I wrote a couple of years back. But no urgency at all in addressing either the lede or quotes when it's just for "easy to read & understand" reasons. Maybe it makes sense not to worry about that aspect at all while you're making the sort of accuracy & due weight edits that the Expert suggests. Thanks again for the great work on the article. FeydHuxtable (talk) 17:10, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for this. I've seen your paraphrasing edits and I think they are great! My brain seems to have a bit of an inability to do good paraphrasing. In particular I don't know how to do this for sentences that have enumerations or content that any other textbook would also have. For example what about this sentence: Scientists have summarised the potential health outcomes related to exposure to extreme heat as follows: "acute kidney injury, heatstroke, adverse pregnancy outcomes, worsened sleep patterns, impacts on mental health, worsening of underlying cardiovascular and respiratory disease." Would could I change so that I don't need to use the quotation marks? Also, what happens if I change some few words within that listing, does it then mean it is no longer a quote.

Related to this is also the sentence a bit further down where I explain what adversie pregnangy outcomes are. Is that going into too much detail? And does it need to be marked as a quote? This sentence: "The adverse pregnancy outcomes mentioned above include spontaneous abortion, stillbirth, low birth weight and pre-term birth." It's likely to be textbook knowledge and there are only a limited number of ways to say the same thing?

With regards to readability I am 100% with you on that. I think it's very important. We have given it 20% weight in our scoring system. It usually needs several iterations of work on this; sometimes it gets easier when coming back to one's own work a few days or weeks later, or if someone else steps in and assists. E.g. User:Jonathanlynn helped me with improving the reading ease for sustainability recently in April and the months before that. EMsmile (talk) 10:52, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

As paraphrasing is such an essential skill for a content building editor, let me suggest a few different options for you. Perhaps you'll feel at least one may be helpful.

1) The quick & easy solution might be to sign up with free ChatGPT. It will paraphrase for you in a flash, and if you dont like how it rephrases, you can just ask it to try again. I'm of the view that every type of knowledge worker ought to be learning to work with AI as it can massively augment ones output. It's likely only a matter of time before everyone is using it, so the sooner folk learn how to get the best out of AI, the better it will be for them. One currently needs treat its output with a little caution, but any possible errors ought to be easy to spot with something like paraphrasing a one or two line quote.

2) The ideal solution is often a whole different editing approach, so having to paraphrase a single line doesnt even arise as an issue. I.e. , as folk like Femke have already advised, make edits that are summarising info from more than one source at once. Granted, this has it's own challenges & makes it a bit harder to avoid WP:OR & Synth issues. Still, this sort of editing would also help address the "series of one sentence summaries" complaint from the Expert review above.

3) TLDR of this suggestion is slow down & take a chill pill. But rarely helpful to be so terse with something like this. Ive seen the sort of edit summaries you write about why you're not currently feeling able to paraphrase a particular quote. And I read what you said about feeling overwhelmed on your talk. Sadly almost every working age adult likely feels overwhelmed at various points, that's probably unavoidable given the conditions of modern life. But there are things one can do not to feel like that all the time. Most especially, dont feel you have to always be doing "productive" things like improving articles. Take time out to relax, spend time in nature, put on an eye blind & listen to music, whatever works best. Having a relaxed state of mind can help improve one editing in all sorts of ways, not just with ability to paraphrase. I'd also say it's not optimal to be too conscious of the high stakes in editing in a TA like this. It's well known that beyond a certain point, too much motivation is counter productive. E.g., if I'm in a combat situation and someone slashes at my throat with a knife, I don't start thinking 'OMG!! Got to get this block right or Im dead!' -I just block the blow like I've done thousands of times in training. Likewise, if ones improving an article in the CC TA, it's not helpful to always have in mind the science-policy-society interface and the potential for article improvements to contribute to mitigation efforts and hence maybe help make the planet more liveable for generations to come. Instead, take the perspective that youre just typing out words on a website. And trying to do a good job of it as that's an intrinsically rewarding part of the hobby. If there's one thing I've learned which I'd struggle to support with top tier sources, it's that sometimes an infectious care-free smile does more good than days of intense well intentioned labour.

4) If none of the above suit, another approach you could try is to translate the sentence into your native language, write it down somewhere without a record of the original English and leave it overnight. Then the next day, translate it back into English.

Regarding the specific "exposure to extreme heat" sentence you'd like help to paraphrase, I'd say that in this case it's easier to paraphrase with no risk of copyright issues if we split it up into different sentences. That could also help from the readability aspect. I'll demonstrate on main as that's far easier than explaining.

Regarding the detailed sentence on adverse pregnancies, I have no strong opinion, but yes it might be going into too much detail. It may not be due weight to include, as that sort of detail only seems to form a tiny fraction of the coverage for the overall TA in the top tier WP:RS. Generally I'm against too much understating of threats - there are already enough corporate shills & other denialists trying to introduce that sort of distortion. But sometimes it's good to avoid mentioning especially alarming or emotive detail, especially if there's already a question about due weight on purely objective grounds. I tend to agree with your removal of suicide for the same reason. FeydHuxtable (talk) 10:33, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

(just about the adverse pregnancy sentences: I've now condensed that info a bit to give it less weight; agree with you on finding the right balance between understating and overstating of threats - not easy) EMsmile (talk) 12:26, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

Thanks! I'll try out your options. Very helpful, thank you! Option 1 seems great to me. :-) The option of translating to another language is also interesting, hadn't thought of that. I had actually used Chat GPT directly when it came out and found it great. But then it often said "too busy" when I tried to log in again later so I had already given up on it. Will start using it again now if they have built up their capacities. Another tool like that is Quillbot. - Having said that, time and time again I see paraphrasing go wrong though, especially when it comes to content from IPCC reports. Here is an example from the effects of climate change I've written about it here:

• The prediction is that by 2050 more than 75% of humanity will live in drought conditions. What precisely is meant with "drought conditions"? An actual drought taking place? High risk of drought? When do we start speaking about a drought?
  • I've also just stumbled over this. Seems wrong to me. Also can't find it in the ref provided (https://www.unccd.int/sites/default/files/2022-06/Drought%20in%20Numbers%20%28English%29.pdf); I'll delete this sentence for now. EMsmile (talk) 13:35, 24 April 2023 (UTC)Reply
  • Actually I've found the original statement now, it said "Currently, forecasts estimate that by 2050, droughts may affect over three-quarters of the world’s population". This is not the same as "live in". A typical example of what can happen when an editor tries to paraphrase. Overall, that source does not seem overly nuanced to me, so I still think this sentence should be deleted. EMsmile (talk) 13:38, 24 April 2023 (UTC)Reply

So in general I actually hesitate to paraphrase more than necessary and like to stick closer to the source. But yes, I am aware of the different aspects, reasons for paraphrasing, risks and so forth. - I think a team approach can also work well if the other team member is good at copy editing and enjoys working together like that. I did that with User:Jonathanlynn at sustainability, although there was a bit of a time delay between his work and mine. EMsmile (talk)

Great to know you found this helpful! I hear you on paraphrasing - there's likely countless examples where the desire to fully paraphrase has led to sources being misrepresented. I'd feel remiss though if I didn't point out that the opinion of a non-admin like myself doesnt matter much on this issue. Several times I've checked up on valued veteran editors who I'd no longer notice about - only to see their last few edits were trying to justify their close paraphrasing. Unfortunately, admins tend to view that sort of argument as doubling down. That said, like you suggest you could always fall back on the "1-2 line quote" / team work approach if none of the paraphrasing options work for you. FeydHuxtable (talk) 16:49, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

Removed a text block about conflict

I've removed this text block about conflict which had been added by students last year.- I felt it was digressing too much from the main topic at hand. This is more about "well-being". Note the 2022 Lancet annual report doesn't include conflict and migration prominently. The IPCC AR 6 WG 2 Chapter 7 report does include info on conflict but the chapter is called "Health, Wellbeing and the Changing Structure of Communities" so more than just health. I think there are so many clear health impacts from climate change that we can list and describe; we don't need to go beyond that and talk about those indirect impacts which often have more to do with other injustices in the world.

This is the text block in question:

Armed conflicts induced by climate hazards

Climate change may have influence on the risk of violent conflict, including organized armed conflict. Evidence shows links between armed conflict and variations in temperature: conflict incidence substantially increases during warmer periods. Climate change is predicted to diminish natural resource availability. Water scarcity, food shortages, and decreased livelihoods may lead to an increase in desperate populations, enhancing the risk of intra and interstate conflicts. Climate hazards are a driving force of involuntary migration with a growing impact and a potentially important contributor to violent conflicts even though the importance is small compared to other factors such as culture, politics, and economy. Climate hazards are associated with increased violence against vulnerable groups and the mitigation could potentially exacerbate violent conflicts. Future increases in violent-conflict-related deaths induced by climate change have been estimated at conflict-prone regions.

References

EMsmile (talk) 12:01, 28 April 2023 (UTC) EMsmile (talk) 12:01, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

Hi again. I tend to agree with the other trimming you've done recently. But as someone who's long been interested in such things (e.g. I created an article on global conflict reduction 12 years back) , my view is this section warrants inclusion. There are almost three hundred mentions of 'conflict' in AR6, WG2, Chp7 alone. So WP:RSs certainly see Conflict as a significant channel for climate change impact. I'd agree that much of the impacts via say the Economic or Psychological channels can reasonably be classed as welfare rather than health. E.g. , while over one billion seem to have experienced anxiety related to the CC threat, there's no evidence that has led to a clinical Mental Health diagnoses except in a tiny minority of cases, so it could be seen as mostly a welfare matter. But with the heat > Conflict channel, only a small fraction of the RS coverage seems to be about internet hotheads & the risk of more online scrapping. Unfortunately, its more about physical violence, where the outcomes are fatalities and grievous bodily injuries. Accordingly, I'd tend to see it more as a heath concern. If you're agreeable to this section being returned to the article, I could improve it with some AR6 cites? FeydHuxtable (talk) 10:52, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

Yes, it's difficult to decide on this one. Perhaps a shortened version could be put back in but I just feel that this article could blow out if we add to many of the very indirect effects on health. Would it perhaps fit more at effects of climate change on mental health? Do we need an article on effects of climate change on well-being? I guess it depends on how narrow or broad we see "health". For this article here, I'd like to take a more narrow approach. But yes, if you are willing/able to rewrite some of this content With AR6 cites and not making it too long that would be great. (Wondering if the connection between heat and violent behaviour is already somewhere else on Wikipedia in another article as you get the heat + violence connection also without climate change - CC just makes is worse / more common.) EMsmile (talk) 08:26, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, it's a challenging area. I might have been clearer that Heat > Conflict is really just one of 3 broad sub channels by which CC impacts on health via Conflict. There is also Migration & Resource scarcity. Huh, one could subdivide the channels even more. For example, AR6, WG2, Chp7 mentions Another secondary health effect [of climate change] is an increase in human–animal conflicts It goes on to list various heavy combat situations humans can find themselves in with things like Elephants, Bears & Tigers.. Regarding the Heat sub channel, I'd more class the propensity for humans to become more irritable when hot as regular psychology, not a mental health condition as such. I'd not say any well-being article is needed for Conflict, as AR6 clearly identifies the Conflict channel as being a matter of Health. To answer your question in the wider sense, yes a 'CC effects on well-being' article could be most interesting. I'd not personally make it a priority to create one though – some might see it as a sort of 'middle management' type article, which not everyone in the CC project likes. Anyway, I've added back a condensed version of the Section. If you're still not happy with it, I've no strong objection to you further trimming it or even deleting it again. FeydHuxtable (talk) 16:44, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

Hi FeydHuxtable, regarding the armed conflict risk para that you have put back in now: I think it's much better than before, thanks. I am missing a sentence that states what all this has to do with health. Perhaps it's a "no brainer" but it might be good to be explicit about it: I guess the implication is that it would be via injuries and deaths but this needs to be spelled out, don't you think? Has any study tried to quantify the numbers on additional injuries and deaths expected maybe for certain countries or regions?

Also, User:Femke has pointed out to me in the past (and I agree with her now, after initially being surprised) that we should usually avoid mentioning IPCC reports explicitly and rather state its content as facts. See here. I would also not introduce the abbreviation AR 6 to our readers. EMsmile (talk) 08:19, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

Hi EMsmile. AR6, WG2, Chp7 goes into great detail on some of the conflicts, eg. is specifies that above mentioned human–elephant conflict occurs in Namibia, with competition due to plant food scarcity being the immediate cause. But they never spell out why they consider the conflict caused by CC to be a matter of health. But no reason why we can't do so per WP:SKYISBLUE . It's possible some readers understanding of armed conflict may rely only on watching the The A-Team and similar, so might lack a realistic view of the matter.

Regarding studies quantifying fatalities - yes there have been a few, but as Chp7 points out, they've been criticised and IPPC dont seem to have even medium level confidence about the likely numbers, so I'd say it's best not to mention them.

Most interesting to know that about explicit IPPC mentions. With the possible exception of the policy interface, I'd always be inclined to follow Femke's guidance to the letter regarding CC articles. I'm not sure she meant that as a firm rule to follow 100% however. Before integration the AR6 cite into this article, I checked how it was handled in our Sea level rise article, which is one of Femke's GA's, and it's explicitly mentioned there. I'm not inclined to ping Femke here as I'd guess she's quite busy. But let me mention why WP:WIKIVOICE argument may not always apply to IPPC. Sure, in scientific contexts, the IPPC take is fully accepted by many experts. But not so much in policy making circles, where I'm sorry to say that most IPPC scientists are seen more as "experts" rather than experts. There are exceptions of course, e.g. the late Will Steffen was considered trustworthy. Here's a good source that show's why even in relatively climate skeptic countries, the IPPC estimates are distrusted by policy makers as massive underestimates of the CC threat. Trusted government scientists sometimes making predictions that threats are > 100% as big as in IPPC reports. With relevance to this section, I's say the Migration thing is as much a political matter as it is a scientific question. Few if anyone in policy making circles would take the IPPC seriously when they say there's no evidence that international migration sparks conflict. AR6, WG2, Chp7 justifies that stance partly by stating unjust racial logics may generate spurious links between climate migration and security. Ironically enough, it's policy makers in the global south who are most dismissive of that line of argument, I've heard them dismiss such thinking as "childish". All that said, it's a matter of opinion, and I'd certainly agree with the 'unwieldy' / 'too long sentence line' of argument. So I'm going to make the change exactly as you've requested. Thanks for putting so much of your time into improving this article! FeydHuxtable (talk) 10:12, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

Hi FeydHuxtable, I am learning so much from our interactions here, thank you! I think the conflict section is now really good, thanks for your work on that (I've made a few more readability edits today). Regarding IPCC this is really interesting. Let's add this info also to the IPCC article (which was recently overhauled as part of our project, too). We could e.g. add something along the lines of this from the 2019 paper that you linked to: "This problem persists, notably in the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), whose Assessment Reports exhibit a one-sided reliance on general climate models, which incorporate important climate processes, but do not include all of the processes that can contribute to system feedbacks, compound extreme events, and abrupt and/or irreversible changes." Do you agree, and feel like adding it to there?

Based on that criticism of the IPCC work, to you think it's better or not better to mention IPCC explicitly in Wikipedia articles on CC science topics? Maybe we should bring this old conversation back out of the archive and continue the discussion on the talk page there?: here I think it's an important discussion to be had, and we could perhaps provide examples where it's justified to mention IPCC explicitly and where it's not justified. E.g. Yesterday, I mentioned IPCC explicitly in the definitions section of sea surface temperature. That should be OK? And do you think it's justified how I've added a 2-sentence quote from their glossary there? EMsmile (talk) 08:09, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

Youre very welcome EMsmile, and Im learning too. I'm not sure about adding the source to the IPPC page. It already reflects the perspective that the org can be overly conservative, adding more on those lines may not be due weight. Regarding explicit mentions of IPPC, now you've made me aware of Femke's argument, I'd be in favour of non explicit mentions in the vast majority of cases. For almost all CC related wiki purposes, AR6 is the best possible summation of mainstream science. ( There was a reason I brought up the criticism, but things have kicked of a bit for me at work, so I now dont have time to pursue that for a while.) Yep definitions are one of the exceptions where it's useful to explicitly mention IPPC, and a two sentence quote should be fine, at least in the case of the SST article. This said, please be aware I'm far from an expert in copyright related matters. I've tried to help out with some advice where I thought it was within my competence, but I'm not the best one to ask for the trickier questions. PS I've seen the image changes you've made to this article, I think that's an excellent improvement. Sorry not to be able to help out more at this time. FeydHuxtable (talk) 06:59, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. I've written about it on the talk page of IPCC now and pinged you. Let's see if there are any reactions there. I think the publication from 2019 that you pointed out would be useful to add there as the existing two publications mentioned in that section are a bit old by now: 2007 and 2012. EMsmile (talk) 07:51, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

Images for this article

I've just added some images for this article, mostly taken from the relevant sub-articles. I was surprised to find so few images for heat illnesses or heat stroke in Wikimedia Commons. Does anyone have time to add a few more? And for the lead, I am wondering if we should have a 2 x 2 image collage like we have for climate change adaptation? It could be one image for heat stroke, one for being hot in a hot city, one with wildfire smoke and one with a mosquito that is spreading disease (for example). With a good mixture between Global North and Global South images. Is anyone keen to work on this together? EMsmile (talk) 08:43, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

Reworked the ozone section

OK, so I have now reworked the ozone section (thanks for your feedback above, FeydHuxtable). It was prompted by the expert reviewer saying "This should be updated to the WGI assessment and chapter 7 of the WGII report. " and "WGI concluded, based on new research, that ozone is not likely to increase. This should be removed to be consistent with WGI." I looked through WG I and didn't find the statement in that certainty but it did explain that it may go up or down depending on various factors. So it's complicated. I've tried to reflect that in the new wording.

Note also that we have the articles on ozone and ground-level ozone. I took a bit of inspiration from there but overall we should not add too much content here so that we don't overlap too much with those. Our main emphasis should be to explain: does climate change lead to more surface level ozone or not. It seems to me that the air pollution aspect is probably more significant than the ambient temperature aspect.

With regard to the statement in the WG II Chapter 7 report that you (FeydHuxtable) pointed out: rates of adverse health impacts from ozone air pollution exposure have increased (very high confidence). I tried to integrate or paraphrase this statement but I found it rather vague. So perhaps not worth using (?). Also in that section it talks about ozone-related deaths but the figures are really quite small in the scheme of things so again I am not sure if they are worth including here.

Overall, I don't think this ozone issue necessarily deserves a mention in the lead. Or perhaps if we add it to the lead then the sentence should at least explain some of the complexity, like "Increased ambient temperatures in conjunction with high levels of air pollution in cities can cause surface ozone concentrations to rise to levels that can cause health risks."? Still, I haven't found a definite good source that would substantiate such a general statement. This one by Diem et al. from 2017 is good (and compatibly licenced) but it doesn't make such a general statement either. So it's probably not that straight forward (?). EMsmile (talk) 11:37, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

Expert review

I'm making edits to this article in collaboration with an expert, Prof Reza Zamani, as part of a Wikimedian in Residence Program (see here for more info). Welcome to post here to discuss any of the edits! TatjanaClimate (talk) 20:53, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

That's great! As you can see from the revision history and from the talk page, I have also worked on this article with experts on and off over the last year or so. So I am curious what the overall impression of your expert was about this article? Quite good or still pretty bad? Which are the areas they had the most comments on? Which university are they from (just curious, you don't have to say if the experts prefers not to). Did they also send you their comments in a marked-up Word document? (our experts preferred that route rather than editing themselves) EMsmile (talk) 09:00, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

The more the merrier! Generally, the expert thought it was very good. I did find some spelling mistakes & opportunities to simplify language or improve readibility. There was also a strange paragraph under the section on Sports and exercise that I removed - see edit history. Something that is also bugging me is the classification of the three categories of health effects in the lead. I looked at the source and it depicts things a bit differently: i) direct effects and ii) indirect effects, which are further influenced by climate change's ecological, economic and social effects. I'm considering changing this, so would be keen to hear thoughts.

Expert was from University of Exeter and their comments via a Word doc. TatjanaClimate (talk) 16:54, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I agree totally: the more the merrier. About the section on sports and exercise, I had a lengthy discussion with User:FeydHuxtable about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Effects_of_climate_change_on_human_health#Content_about_physical_activity . We figured out that the English "physical activity" can either refer to working outdoors or sports outdoors. I am not sure about your deletion of the paragraph. Your justification was "Deleted a paragraph here that was confusing to read and at worst suggests that there is disagreement between two subsequent studies when in fact the second reports agreeing results, with an improvement of the indicator in order to track more detailed results" Maybe it's better to rather clarify the wording as perhaps it's something that people should be aware of? I copy below the text that you had deleted:

+++++++ However, the evidence on hours of outdoor exercise is still weak: A review in 2021 reported data on the increase of hours per year during which temperatures were too high for safe outdoor exercise (Indicator 1.1.3). But the follow-up review in the following year did not report the same kind of data but reported an increase in "hours of moderate risk of heat stress during light outdoor physical activity". +++++++

I thought it was doing an OK job to explain that there is not full certainty about it yet. Perhaps it could be reworded and condensed. Or indeed left out - I don't feel super strongly about it. Regarding your suggestion about the three categories, I will start a separate section about it below. EMsmile (talk) 06:22, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Hiya, thanks for your comment! Source 1 (pg 396) estimates the # of hours of physical activity potentially lost due to hotter weather (indicator = loss in the number of hours available for safe physical activity per day) while Source 2 (pg 1625) estimates the # of hours during which physical activity would entail heat stress risk. As you'd expect, with increasing temperatures over time, the # of hours available for safe physical activity decreases (as Source 1 shows) while the # of hours when physical activity entails heat stress risk increases (as Source 2 shows).

The sources are measuring different things (in a way the variables are two sides of the same coin) and are not in disagreement, so I'm not getting any uncertainty from this. Just because its not the same kind of data doesn't mean they refute each other. TatjanaClimate (talk) 14:01, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Hmmm yes, then I would say perhaps put a truncated/condensed version of it back in rather than deleting the whole paragraph? Or maybe it is not that important and not worth mentioning at all. Overall, it's all relative: people in e.g. Australia area already used to exercising in hot conditions in summer where someone from Sweden would say "it's too hot to go out and exercise"... (but I don't have a ref for this observation). EMsmile (talk) 17:11, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

I think If you're keen to include something on this from these sources I'd suggest:

'Hotter weather will likely result in less hours per day during which exercise can be safely done, without the risk of heat stress.'

However, I think the last sentence in the paragraph ("Therefore, an increase in hot days due to climate change could indirectly affect health due to people exercising less") says the most important thing, so I'll leave this up to what you think :)

The point re: relativity sounds really interesting! Sounds like it would be a nice addition if there is a good source. TatjanaClimate (talk) 10:56, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes, we could write it like this. I don't feel strongly about it though so will leave it to someone else to put this and the ref back in if they want. I think you (User:FeydHuxtable) felt strongly about the impacts of heat on physical exercise; do you want to put it back in? EMsmile (talk) 15:18, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

References

Grouping into three categories / pathways

You (TatjanaClimate) wrote above: "Something that is also bugging me is the classification of the three categories of health effects in the lead. I looked at the source and it depicts things a bit differently: i) direct effects and ii) indirect effects, which are further influenced by climate change's ecological, economic and social effects." It's been a while since I worked on that section of the article, so I've just refreshed my memory now: The explanation of the three pathways is based on Figure 2 of the publication in the Lancet of 2015: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(15)60854-6/fulltext (it's free to view the publication but one needs to register with the Lancet). I have just made changes to the first paragraph of the lead to stay closer to how the source explains it. Is that what you had in mind or were you talking about a different source for this? There might well be differing ways to categorise this which we could explain in the section on "Types of pathways affecting health". (It might be better to consistently talk about pathways for this, rather than categories). EMsmile (talk) 06:46, 22 June 2023 (UTC) (adding a ping (User:TatjanaClimate) in case you didn't see this). EMsmile (talk) 11:57, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for your message and edits. I took another look at the source and it is quite difficult to understand their 'categories' exactly. I think there's a bit of confusion between the effects vs the pathways vs mechanisms. The way I understand it is that there are 2 'categories' of effect - indirect and direct...

- on pg 1864 they say, "The direct effects of climate change include increased heat stress, floods, drought, and increased frequency of intense storms, with the indirect threatening population health through adverse changes in air pollution, the spread of disease vectors, food insecurity and under-nutrition, displacement, and mental ill health".

...and that the occurance/intensity etc. of these two 'categories' are affected by social and economic aspects - these interactions are the 'pathways' (direct and indirect also influence each other).

Just above Figure 2 (I assume you meant 2 instead of 3 and the paper from 2015 not 1995?) (edit by EMsmile: yes, sorry, I have corrected that now above) on pg 1867 they say:

"The principal pathways linking climate change with health outcomes are shown in Figure 2, categorised as direct and indirect mechanisms that interact with social dynamics to produce health outcomes. All these risks have social and geographical dimensions, are unevenly distributed across the world, and are influenced by social and economic development, technology, and health service provision."

Based on this I'd suggest the following text for the article: "They can be (i) direct effects (for example due to heat waves, extreme weather events) or (ii) indirect effects through changes in the biosphere (for example due to changes in water and air quality, food security and displacement). Social and economic aspects (for example, public health infrastructure and provision) influence health risks. Health risks are unevenly distributed across the world." - something like that. (ref: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(15)60854-6/fulltext)

I may be nitpicking a bit, but just trying to reflect the material accurately. What are your thoughts? TatjanaClimate (talk) 12:31, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Hi Tatjana & EMsmile. I'll just chime in as presenting a suitable top level division for causal pathways is something that seems an important foundation for helping a reader looking for a deep understanding of the topic. It's something I gave a lot of thought to a few years back. Basic logic would suggest a simple two way division into direct & indirect is the way to go. But in the case of Psychological impact of climate change which I created from scratch, I first read what seemed to be the top 10 most high tier "overview" sources on the topic (E.g. review level articles in top journals etc.) As I remember it, only 2 of those sources presented a two way division, whereas five gave a 3 way division (and three didnt really offer a top level classification of causal pathways.). Anyway, that's why the Pysche impact article has a three fold divsion.

In the case of this article, I didnt review the high tier sources anywhere near as thoroughly, as I've never seen myself as the primary editor here. But it did seem to me that in the case of this topic, the quality sources most often make a simple two fold division into direct & indirect. Hence I'd changed the lede accordingly, when I last re-wrote it for this article. So I guess I agree with a two fold division. On the other hand, I've always seen EMsmile as the primary editor here, as for years she's done a great job stewarding this article, and updating it with the latest sources. So I'd only agree with making a relatively major change like this if EMsmile was happy with it. I hope this is of some help. FeydHuxtable (talk) 08:51, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for your kind words FeydHuxtable! Hi TatjanaClimate, yes I guess the main sentence for me here was the one above Figure 2 in the 2015 Lancet paper: "The principal pathways linking climate change with health outcomes are shown in figure 2, categorised as direct and indirect mechanisms that interact with social dynamics to produce health outcomes." So whether that "interaction with social dynamics to produce health outcomes" is regarded as a third category or whether it's a cross-cutting theme is open to interpretation, I guess. When I worked on the article last year with Ian Hamilton and Nick Watts we came up with the 3-category model and the expert whom I worked with this year, Kristie L. Ebi, also seemed to be OK with it. I would normally go back and ask them again but I am waiting for an e-mail response on another matter already so I hesitate to ask them again. Also, for the purposes of the Wikipedia article perhaps it is indeed better to just talk about direct and indirect effects plus explain the issue about the social dynamics as something that affects both.

Also, interestingly, this categorisation only appears in the lead and in the section "Types of pathways affecting health" (I have just demoted that section from Main Level Heading to Level 1 heading) but does not really re-appear in the rest of the article's content and structure that follows. The current article structure is:

Root causes
Overview of health impacts
Impacts caused by heat
Impacts caused by weather and climate events other than heat
Health risks due to climate-sensitive infectious diseases
Health risks from food and water insecurity
Other health risks influenced by climate change
Potential health benefits
Global estimates
Society and culture

So yes, in summary, I am fine with your proposed change of making it two categories instead of three. Please ensure the cross-cutting aspect of the social dynamics issue comes out clearly / doesn't get lost. EMsmile (talk) 08:31, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for your insights @FeydHuxtable @EMsmile!

@FeydHuxtable absolutely agree, I think that whichever option remains faithful to the core content of the sources and also aids a reader to understand the issues is the best option. I haven't reviewed any other sources to see how they frame these pathways, but as you say, I'm sure @EMsmile would know if there was other relevant literature here.

@EMsmile you make a good point re: the article structure, and I think the lead does a nice job of introducing the key aspects that are discussed in each of the sections.

Based on your feedback, I've made the edits I suggested to the lead: i) direct, ii) indirect influenced by social and economic factors. I also moved the sentence about geographical and demographic groups being affected differently up to the first paragraph of the lead to follow this before some of the effects are discussed in more detail. Please do take a moment to review and amend as you see fit. Thank you! TatjanaClimate (talk) 14:43, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes, that's good. I've done some further tweaking to clarify further. I think the social dynamics interact also with the direct effects (e.g. old people more exposed to heat in care homes), not just the indirect effects. I am basing this on this statement in the Lancet publication: "categorised as direct and indirect mechanisms that interact with social dynamics to produce health outcomes". I've also made some edits to reflect changes made in the lead also in the main text (see the section called "Types of pathways affecting health"), please check. I am not sure if the three bullet points work like this or if it would be better as prose?" EMsmile (talk) 15:17, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Article appears too large and unwieldy to be usable

To me, this article seems to combine information on far too many topics that often have no connection with each other besides climate change. Much of the article's content is also already covered better in sub-articles, and excerpts tend to look particularly awkward here (i.e. the 6-paragraph block from the infectious diseases article). The main exception is the information on heat mortality, which really deserves to be standalone, as there is an ever-growing number of studies attempting to project lethal heatwave thresholds under climate change, often with wildly varying metrics, and it's impossible to even mention all those studies, let alone discuss them properly, within the limited space this article devotes to the topic.

I propose reworking the "Impact caused by heat" section into a standalone article like Effects of climate change on heat stress, then redirecting this to a "Health" sub-section of Effects of climate change, which would then excerpt the mental health and infectious diseases articles as needed, while the content on extreme weather events and their health implications is already present in that article. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 05:43, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

I can see your point but I'd be hesitant to give up the article title Effects of climate change on human health completely. It seems to be up an coming as a theme. See those reports by the Lancet which I've cited in the article. I guess the hope is to trigger people into action once they realise in how many different ways climate change can impact on their health (not just through heat stress). But yes, excerpts could be shortened and any repetition removed.

By the way, I was disappointed to see how weak the medical article on heat illness is so far. I even wrote about it on the talk page of WikiProject Medicine a year ago (but didn't have time to take it any further): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine/Archive_165#Heat-related_morbidity_and_mortality EMsmile (talk) 21:56, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

P.S. The article is not excessively long at the moment: 29 kB (4475 words) "readable prose size" (the content of excerpts is not counted in this). EMsmile (talk) 21:59, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

The article is only 4,467 words [1]. That is certainly not "too large and unwieldy to be usable". See Wikipedia:Article_size Bogazicili (talk) 22:28, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

I don't believe that discounting the excerpts is helpful when it comes to establishing what our readers will actually see. Regardless, my point was less about the length itself, and more about its lack of focus. Considerable parts of the article are either barely related to climate change (much of the ozone section) or human health, like the introductory excerpt, or much of the "food and water insecurity" section and its complete failure to describe malnutrition in medical terms.

I've condensed some of those sections that were digressing into other areas. I think the content on droughts, floods and alike should be very short as their health impacts are better covered in drought, flood, wildfire etc.. But I didn't change the ozone section yet. I thought it was closely related. But perhaps some of it could be moved to the ozone article (or maybe it's already there). Not sure. EMsmile (talk) 10:35, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Many other sections are full of sentences that are the kind of impersonal academy-speak we are consistently encouraged to avoid in the WikiProject discussions - i.e. There are certain predictors of health patterns that determine the social vulnerability of the individuals. These can be grouped into "demographic, socioeconomic, housing, health (such as pre-existing health conditions), neighbourhood, and geographical factors". or The direct, indirect and social dynamic effects of climate change on health and wellbeing produce the following health effects: cardiovascular diseases, respiratory diseases, infectious diseases, undernutrition, mental illness, allergies, injuries and poisoning.

Agreed. I've quickly modified those two sentences but there are many more that light up in read in the readability tool. Would be great if someone had time to give it a thorough overhaul for readability.EMsmile (talk) 10:35, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Who is this meant to be for? Med/sociology students writing essays? I don't see how this helps us convince anyone who is "on the fence" about the severity of the issue. This is exactly the kind of jargon which certain personalities regularly mock in front of cameras and earn a lot of money by that. For those who don't need convincing, I don't see this providing much actionable information either.

It may well be that the hope is to trigger people into action once they realise in how many different ways climate change can impact on their health, but I feel that its current structure does the exact opposite and risks trivializing many issues. Currently, our readers have to make it through:

• six paragraphs of the lead (below 500-word "optimum", sure, but again far too vague given the article's aims)
• three paragraphs of the "effects" excerpt
• two short paragraphs of the "vulnerability" section
• two paragraphs and four dotpoints of "Types of pathways"
• an excerpted paragraph from the "mental health" article

before they see the section on extreme heat.

I have reworked the structure so that the content on heat takes more of a center spot, and some of the other things are now either condensed or moved further down under "other". EMsmile (talk) 10:35, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

And once they do, not only is the section itself not that great, but the way the article is structured in its subsequent sections risks suggesting that "rupture of pollen by osmotic shock after thunderstorms" and "people falling through ice in lakes during winter" are just as or only a little less important than wet bulb temperatures and human niches (however defined). If you want to cite The Lancet reports like the 2022 Countdown as a justification for keeping this article, then it's worth noting that they were all documents edited from top-down rather than ground-up, as here, and they exclude up to about half the sections editors chose to list here - from the aforementioned ones, to ozone, violence & conflicts, etc. This is why I am unconvinced this article needs to be retained. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 07:04, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

I'm seeing 6159 words in Microsoft Word. Again, that is certainly not "too large and unwieldy to be usable". Bogazicili (talk) 09:39, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

I see a lot of potential to improve the article, and many of your suggestions, User:I2K, would be fairly easy to implement in an incremental manner (e.g. re-ordering sections, giving more weight to some, less weight to other sections). But the article title and what it's trying to do (looking at all aspects, not just heat mortality) is still valid, I would say. Pinging User:FeydHuxtable to the discussion who was also heavily involved in this article in the past. - Other than that, I would say go ahead with making improvements but I disagree that the article is "too large and unwieldy to be usable". EMsmile (talk) 11:54, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

I've now addressed some of your criticism, User:InformationToKnowledge. I've added some comments in line above behind your comments. Overall, the article would benefit from an overhaul for readability: the readability tool lights up many sentences in dark red. Needs copy editing. EMsmile (talk) 10:35, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping EMsmile. Recent comments seem on point so little to add. The article's not strictly speaking too large per yourself and Bogazicili. There's been studies going back years finding the public can be especially responsive to health related analyses compared to other CC impact topics. So would be good to keep a decent sized article on this interesting intersection. On the other hand, it would be great if I2K has time to improve readability with some trimming & copy edits. And it would be most welcome if they go ahead and create a dedicated article on CC & heat stress. FeydHuxtable (talk) 20:43, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Population Health Capstone

This article is currently the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 15 January 2024 and 20 May 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Srevisu (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Srevisu (talk) 13:42, 14 March 2024 (UTC)