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Reinsert aggregated contributions figure back into drivers section?

Attribution based on NCA4 Fig 3.3 (2017) first uploaded in Feb. 2020

I believe we removed the figure that showed the relative contributions of human influence , solar/volcanic activity, and internal variability a while back, most likely due to space issues. But given the recent denial on non-EN sites that include a focus on solar variability, I’m wondering if it doesn’t make sense to re-insert data from the current figure on SPM-8 into a revised graphic. That figure clearly shows the negligible effect of solar and volcanic drivers. We have text that discounts solar effects, but I still wonder if people don’t just skim that paragraph and think “oh, solar is a source”. I realize there’s a lot of graphics already in this section, so just a suggestion to consider. —Dtetta

@Dtetta: I think you must mean the graphic at right. I think it's an uphill battle to get this graphic inserted anywhere into this article, since it resembles File:Global Temperature And Forces With Fahrenheit.svg which is in the lead. I continue to prefer the graphic at right since it meaningfully recites solar, volcanic, etc, and doesn't lump natural causes into a single trace that might seem a bit simplistic and contrived to skeptics. Maybe consensus here will change. —RCraig09 (talk) 04:58, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

RCraig09, it looks like I misremembered the past somewhat. If you go to the May 27, 2020 version of the article, you’ll see that what we had in the Physical drivers section was roughly a combination of figures (b) and (c) on SPM-7. I’m suggesting that, given what seems to be a need for emphasizing that solar variations have no significant influence on the present rate of global warming, it would be worthwhile expanding on the current graphic to include those other aspects, like we were doing back in May 2020. Admittedly it makes for a more muddled graphic, so separating them out into two separate graphics, like is done on SMP-7, would be nice, but would consume more space. As you point out, the current graphic near the top of the article, which is similar to what you show here, gets at that indirectly, but does not depict solar activity per se. Not sure what the best solution is, or if there is one. Dtetta (talk) 05:52, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Hmm. I now see the "Sun (natural change)" component has disappeared from the May 2020 Drivers graphic. Thief! Thief! My sense is that consensus here has been to state what the drivers are, and to de-emphasize what deniers might think. I've been in the minority on that issue, since I see U.S. public opinion about half of the scientific consensus, inspired by a former President whose climate strategy is "It'll get cooler again; you just watch!". I think we should be anticipating their misunderstandings. That's why I favor the graphic at right. But having a Drivers graphic in the lead is good, very good. —RCraig09 (talk) 07:33, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

I agree having that graphic that’s currently in the lead is a good thing. I think substituting it with the graphic that you’ve presented here would also be helpful. Another option would be to simply include a brief sentence in the first paragraph, just before the last two sentences on climate feedbacks. That sentence could simply state something to the effect that natural forces such as volcanoes and changes in solar strength are having a minimal affect on current warming. That might be worth pointing out, given the large percentages of the population in various countries that still think natural forces are a cause of current climate change. It’s something we highlight in the public awareness section, which you did that nice graphic for. But this may be just my overreaction given my involvement in the denial correction project that Femke started. It’d be nice to get other opinions on this. Dtetta (talk) 15:27, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

I agree with adding a sentence to the lead to proactively refute common misunderstandings about causation. —RCraig09 (talk) 16:16, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

I've always been confused about this image. It seems at odd with the IPCC findings. According to the latest report, the observed warming and human forces should be the same, whereas this graph seems to indicate that human forces would drive more warming. I'm not quite sure whether it's scientifically sound, the Figure 3.1 of the NCA doesn't seem to have this discrepancy. I like having solar/volcanic and natural separate. (and of course, we can't have a graph in those US-specific units).

I'm in favour of having a sentence added about misinformation in the public debate in the last paragraph. I'm against having a sentence that is explicitly refuting misinformation (in first paragraph, as it's repetitive and possibly defensive / not 100% NPOV). Femke (talk) 17:12, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

The possible discrepancy in this graphic has always bothered me also. My first version of the chart (13 Feb 2020) showed Observed GST directly on top of Human Forces as one would expect. However, my upload note (22 Feb) says that I moved Observed GST "down" after considering reference periods. I intend to look at the source again, now that I'm almost two years smarter! —RCraig09 (talk) 20:38, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

I've started a separate section, below, to discuss the textual sentence (distinct from the discussion re graphic). —RCraig09 (talk) 20:50, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Efbrazil - would You be willing to change the title of the “Global Temperature And Forces With Fahrenheit” svg from “Global Surface Temperature” to “Drivers of Global Warming”? Dtetta (talk) 17:09, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Dtetta - I prefer the existing title so as to be more clear as to what's being measured and that this includes real measurements, not just projections. The upper atmosphere has been getting colder, for instance. "Drivers" is already very prominent in the key, which is right below the title. I'd probably rather go in the opposite direction and have a title like "Average global surface air temperature", but I leaned into simplicity, plus that would further bury "Drivers". I tried "Global surface temperature and drivers" to see how it looks, but the fact that it says "drivers" right below the title in the key I think makes it unnecessary. I tweaked the caption in an attempt to improve things. Efbrazil (talk) 18:06, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Vertical positions of traces in graphic (subtopic)

Attribution based on NCA4 Fig 3.3 (2017) first uploaded in Feb. 2020

@Femkemilene, Dtetta, and Efbrazil: After Femke's 17:12 30 Dec comment (above),^{(Of course, I'll add a Celsius scale.)} I've been puzzling about the scientifically proper way to resolve how the "Observed gw" and "Human forces" traces should be visually aligned. My reasoning:

1. The graphic's present version ("Version D") accurately reflects what's in the source, Fig. 3.3 of the 4th National Climate Assessment, which results in Version D's apparent vertical misalignment of the gray and blue traces.

2. The various natural drivers are "absolute" and all start at 0.0 on vertical axis.

3. However, Surface Temp anomalies are "relative" because their vertical positions are determined relative to a reference period that may be chosen arbitrarily.

Question: Am I therefore correct that I, as a graphist, may simply choose the vertical position of the gray "Observed gw" trace? Thanks in advance for your concise response. —RCraig09 (talk) 20:08, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

The forcing is also relative to a reference period (the pre-forcing era), so you do have to align them. It looks fine in the NCA graph, so I'm sure what the difference is. Femke (talk) 20:27, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

@Femkemilene: Interesting idea; the NCA source is silent on ~common reference periods and so is their original source. In any event, I don't think the reference periods are the same, because (see original source PNG) GSTemp starts at -0.2 and overall Anthropogenic component starts at +0.1. Moving the GSTemp trace up by this difference (+0.3) would make a closer fit to Anthropogenic component, which is what I was expecting and what was apparently in my initial upload. Also, conceptually, I still think there is a difference between GSTemp versus individual drivers: the individual drivers must start out centered at 0.0 since they are presented as having either a -cooling or a +heating effect; they aren't arbitrarily determined by a reference period as GSTemp is. Do you see my reasoning? —RCraig09 (talk) 03:56, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

@Femkemilene: Moving the temperature trace up 0.3 °F results in the "Version E", now uploaded (also has Celsius, better shades for colorblindness). This PNG is the result of an SVG which I will upload soon. —RCraig09 (talk) 22:45, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Graphic: comparing natural vs human drivers

@RCraig09: Can you clarify what you are trying to accomplish with this graphic that is not already accomplished with the newer data that built the second image on the climate change page? I can modify that image if you find it somehow lacking. Efbrazil (talk) 18:58, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

Based on AR6 page SPM-7 (Aug 2021)

@Efbrazil: I remember a discussion here, probably in 2020, debating whether to separately graph the natural factors (solar, volcanic, El Nino) or to combine them into a single "Natural drivers" trace. 'Combining' won out, but I favored the separately graphing solar, volcanic, El Nino because it would seem less "contrived" to skeptics, and more educational as to what the natural drivers in fact are. I don't see File:Global Temperature And Forces With Fahrenheit.svg as lacking, just different. —RCraig09 (talk) 21:55, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

@RCraig09: Yeah, I think the critique is that this chart comes across as biased since it breaks apart natural influences but not the much larger issue of human influences. That makes natural influences seem even smaller than they really are. I'd rather see the natural traces grouped and then something like "volcanic eruptions" called out with markers on the graph. I could do that on the chart I built if you think it would be an improvement. Efbrazil (talk) 19:49, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm wary of WP:SYNTHESIS issues if you as editor combine subject matter in that way. —RCraig09 (talk) 20:25, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

It is annoying to me that the chart I built is limited to how IPCC AR6 chooses to group human and natural causes as one trace, then put natural influences on their own as the second trace. I mean, why not have human influence stand on its own, the same way natural influence does? I've thought about doing the math to break out human influence as a separate trace, but it would maybe be "original research" and would require sacrificing the error range information. Efbrazil (talk) 19:49, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

I appreciate the conundrum in decomposing human causes, versus decomposing natural causes, versus decomposing both, versus combining the two, etc. Without definite reliably-sourced datasets intended for comparison, I think there would be both WP:OR and WP:SYNTHESIS issues, were you as editor to break out human influences. I think your present graphic shouldn't be changed unless a better original source comes along in distinguished literature. Aside: I'm not worried at all about retaining error range information in an encyclopedia viewed by readers who generally don't necessarily understand what error ranges are (and where in any event a displayed error ranges is based on some ~chosen percentage confidence); I actually think error regions actually bewilder or confuse most non-science-guy readers. —RCraig09 (talk) 20:25, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Additional edit suggestions to lede

I'd rather see a suggestion to strengthen existing wording of the first paragraph instead of adding to the lede. One idea is to cut the second sentence: "There have been previous periods of climate change, but the current changes are more rapid than any known events in Earth's history." Earth had more dramatic changes after the asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs, so factually that sentence is just wrong. See here: https://www.livescience.com/cretaceous-extinction-darkness

We also mistakenly put too much focus on feedbacks in the first paragraph. Feedbacks are both positive and negative, and while net positive in the near term, they are a very small part of the issue so far. The fact that we spend two sentences on feedbacks and none on land use is clearly a mistake. We should be putting full weight on human activity in the first paragraph. --Efbrazil (talk) 18:50, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

The following green text can be modified until we come to consensensus, just please:

• Do not make the total paragraph longer
• Consider edits and comments that preceded what you wrote
• Explain your edits below Efbrazil (talk) 19:11, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

FIRST PHASE (now CLOSED):
Contemporary climate change includes both the global warming caused by humans, and its impacts on Earth's weather patterns. There have been previous periods of climate change, but the current changes are particularly rapid. There have been previous periods of climate change, but current changes are happening at a rate and scale unknown outside of supervolcano eruptions and asteroid collisions. Climate change is caused mainly by burning of fossil fuels to produce greenhouse gases, most commonly carbon dioxide and methane. Agriculture, steelmaking, cement production, and forest loss are additional sources. Climate change is caused by increased concentrations of greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide and methane. Burning fossil fuels for energy use creates most of these gases, with additional contributions from agriculture, steelmaking, cement production, and forest loss. Greenhouse gases are transparent to incoming sunlight but trap the heat the Earth reflects, thus warming the lower atmosphere. Greenhouse gases allow sunlight to reach the Earth and heat it, but when the Earth emits that heat as infrared radiation the gases absorb it and trap the heat near the Earth's surface. Natural phenomena, such as variations in sunlight, volcanos, and regional phenomena such as El Niño/La Niña, have effects that are minimal and short-lived. Natural phenomena are not a cause of climatic variability is much smaller than contemporary global warming.
· (some proposed changes made by —RCraig09 (talk) 21:22, 3 January 2022 (UTC))

SECOND PHASE:
Contemporary climate change includes both the global warming caused by humans, and its impacts on Earth's weather patterns. There have been previous periods of climate change, but the current changes are more rapid than any known events in Earth's history. particularly rapid and are not scientifically attributable ed to natural causes climate variability. The main cause of contemporary global warming is the growing concentration in our atmosphere of greenhouse gases, mostly carbon dioxide (CO₂) and methane. Greenhouse gases allow sunlight to reach the Earth and heat it, but when the Earth emits that heat as infrared radiation the gases absorb it, trapping the heat near the Earth's surface. Burning fossil fuels for energy use creates most of these greenhouse gas emissions. Agriculture, steelmaking, cement production, and forest loss are additional sources. Temperature rise is also affected by climate feedbacks such as the loss of sunlight-reflecting snow cover, and the release of carbon dioxide from drought-stricken forests. Collectively, these amplify global warming. (~moved GHE sentence up~)
· (some proposed changes made by —RCraig09 (talk) 02:38, 5 January 2022 (UTC)) --Efbrazil (talk) 23:55, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Changes from existing paragraph:

• Cut the factually incorrect "There have been previous periods of climate change, but the current changes are more rapid than any known events in Earth's history."
• Cut digression about feedbacks, which is a marginal and complicated issue that is best discussed later on in the article
• Add more precise and certain language about the cause of climate change, not saying things like "mostly" that leave wiggle room
• Added description of how greenhouse gases actually cause climate change, instead of just repeating over and over again that "Experts say it is so"; one thing we know about climate denial is that it is rooted in a distrust of experts

Efbrazil (talk) 22:55, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for your suggestions!

• I hadn't thought about changes that aren't caused by 'geophysical or biosphere forces', but you're right, they exist. I would hate losing the link to climate variability and change. What about There have been previous periods of climate change, but the current changes distinctly/particularly/exceptionally rapid/fast. That would allow for a shorter sentence too!

Done, feel free to tweak further. --Efbrazil (talk) 19:11, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

• I agree that we put too much emphasis on feedbacks. I'm leaning mildly against deleting it entirely from that paragraph, but we could strike the second example. A native speaker will be better than me to assess whether drought-stricken feels appropriately neutral. I'm not sure.

What do you think of removing them from the first paragraph, but as a subsequent edit we look to integrate feedbacks into the third paragraph? The third paragraph is fatty and could be trimmed way down and still have room for a mention of feedbacks. --Efbrazil (talk) 19:11, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

• Where do you see this? We now say that human GHGs are mostly CO2 and CH4..

We now say the "main cause" is GHG emission, and they are "mostly" CO2 and CH4, which arguably could mean as little as 25% are due to CO2 and CH4. The sentence I put in above is more forceful, saying climate change "is caused by" GHG (essentially 100%), and that 80% are CO2 and CH4. --Efbrazil (talk) 19:11, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

• As a second paragraph in GHG? It's already a long section.. We may want to remove the details of the oceanic carbon pump. I think the rest of the section is essential. Femke (talk) 10:07, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for those ideas Efbrazil - plan to respond to all of your points, but wanted to start with the first item regarding the “There have been previous…” sentence. In short, I disagree - I don’t think that the sentence you are referring to is factually incorrect, in the context of this topic, and it’s a critically important point to make in the lede. It’s completely consistent with the cited reference in SR 15 p 54, and with Foster 2017 (wasn’t willing to pay $67 for the Summerhayes book). Extraterrestrial events, like Chicxulub or Manson, are not a relevant comparison. The science and reports from the IPCC are all talking about naturally occurring changes to the earths climate driven by either internal forces or external forces (Solar) that are ongoing, as opposed to rare, high impact, astroid events. I could see making a minor modification, along the lines Femke has suggested, but I think any change to that sentence should be minor. Dtetta (talk) 15:47, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

• (edit conflict)@Efbrazil: the dinosaur extinction event around 66 MYA had a large impact on life, but only short term effects on climate: the article you link is about speculation about ecosystems, not climate – "estimated that the darkness could have persisted in the Hell Creek area for up to two years .... Extended stimulations ... showed that after the darkness lifted, it took 40 years for conditions in the ecosystem to start to rebound", so barely getting to the definition of local climate. The IPCC Box 1.1 that's cited refers to various periods, including CO₂ concentration in the Pliocene, 3.3 to 3.0 Ma, and since 1970 "global-level rates of human-driven change far exceed the rates of change driven by geophysical or biosphere forces that have altered the Earth System trajectory in the past (e.g., Summerhayes, 2015; Foster et al., 2017); even abrupt geophysical events do not approach current rates of human-driven change." [emphasis added]
  While the current wording is accurate, the term "events" may misleadingly suggest short term fluctuations, but it's important to show the context of the past. Maybe better to be more direct – "Previous periods of climate change were not as rapid as current changes measured over a fifty year period". Or perhaps on a centennial scale, but the source refers to 50 years. . . dave souza, talk 16:18, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

Dave souza makes a good point as well. Maybe just change “known” to “similar”? Trying to keep it simple and readable. Dtetta (talk) 16:34, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

Regarding the rate of change issue- my complaint was mainly about the wording of the existing sentence. I think Femke's wording is good and added it above- feel free to modify further. I don't think it serves us well to make the claim that climate change impacts are more sudden than what Earth experienced from an asteroid or supervolcano eruption. Prehistoric data is very fuzzy regarding how many years it takes for climatic events to occur, and the fuzziness gets worse the further back in time you go. Efbrazil (talk) 19:11, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Regarding the proposal to add a sentence to the lede that explains the greenhouse effect, I think that is a great idea! My only suggestion would be to modify the sentence to clarify that the greenhouse physics you are describing are what causes warming. Admittedly, adding that, while keeping the overall sentence reasonably short and readable, is a challenge. So probably good to post the proposed sentence/paragraph here first. Dtetta (talk) 22:05, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

Good! I believe the sentences make clear that we are talking about warming (trapping heat near Earth's surface), but feel free to edit if you can do better. Just please don't make the whole paragraph significantly longer. Efbrazil (talk) 19:11, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Aside: My general suggestion is for someone to draft specific text inserted in a special color/font here on the Talk Page, which others by mutual consent can freely amend without long discussion. I've seen this approach, and I think it shortens the ~WP:WALLOFTEXT situation that often befalls thoughtful, thorough people. —RCraig09 (talk) 22:23, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

I edited the paragraph above to incorporate comments as best as I could and I added links / references back in (and it's green!) Feel free to modify further. I inlined most of my reasoning for what's there now. Efbrazil (talk) 19:11, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

@Dtetta, Femke, and RCraig09: I'd like to get this rolled out, but would prefer if I can get thumbs up from one of you first. Anyone have time to take a look? Efbrazil (talk) 18:52, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

References

@Efbrazil: I'm having trouble picturing the proposed final product just by reading the ~thread(s) above. It would be easier to see your implementation if you were to post a "final" version here on Talk Page and let us Boldly edit it here. —RCraig09 (talk) 19:14, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

@RCraig09: The final version is above, in green, as you asked before Efbrazil (talk) 20:22, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Efbrazil - I think (and perhaps RCraig09 is saying something similar) is that you need to be putting this in an underline/strikeout format for us to understand what you’re proposing as a change. Including coding for a grey background, which you can see directly beneath the “proposed new text (scientific consensus)” topic, is also helpful. The way you have it now, a person has to find your paragraph, then look at the article, then look at your pararaph again, in order to figure things out. Using a greyed out, underline/strikeout format is probably going to get you more responses.

I have to say, though, that I much prefer the current first paragraph to what I think you’re proposing (aside from the fact that we just did a major rewrite effort to the paragraph last November, which included a lot of rewrites and attempts to address concerns and build support). I like your idea of adding a sentence on the greenhouse effect. But other than that, I much prefer the current paragraph. My only suggestions for editing would be to change “known” to “similar” in the second sentence, perhaps remove the reference to forest loss in the sentence on climate feedbacks, and add a brief sentence about the physics of global warming (as you’ve suggested), to insert after the sentences on sources, and right before the sentence on climate feedbacks. I would suggest simpler, more readable wording such as: “These gases cause a greenhouse effect, preventing Earth’s heat from radiating back out into space, and thereby warm the atmosphere.”

My concerns with your paragraph are: 1)the “particularly rapid” phrase downplays the unprecedented nature of this warming, which the text that’s being referenced clearly states, 2)the sentence you’re proposing for the greenhouse effect is way too long in relation to the other parts of the paragraph, and 3)I disagree with eliminating the reference to climate feedbacks in the lede, as they are clearly highlighted in AR6’s SPM.

I’m also ok just leaving the paragraph as is without any edits, although I personally think that leaving out an affirmative statement about natural causes having only a minimal effect on current warming is a flaw in the paragraph, given what we know about how people view climate change, how this article currently reads. At this points it seems like only Craig shares my view on this. BUt I do like you’re suggestion of a greenhouse effect sentence. -Dtetta 21:27, 3 January 2022

@Dtetta: I'm not saying to cut feedbacks from the lede, just move them down to the third paragraph where they really belong (that edit will be next). They are not a primary cause of climate change, and that's what I think the first paragraph should be dedicated to. I compressed the greenhouse gas explanation in a merge with what Craig wrote, I hope that works for you. Regarding rate of change, I agree with your point but we must be bullet proof in what we say, and the current sentence about the rate of change is just not accurate. What's there now is Femke's wording, feel free to suggest something stronger, but please make sure it passes the supervolcano and asteroid test. Efbrazil (talk) 00:04, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Our readers.

I'm slightly against leaving in a description of feedback(s), as I think that it's extremely difficult to do a good job of describing the feedback concept and giving examples, in as brief a fashion as needs to be done for the first paragraph of the lead. (P.S. I started the underscore/strikeout process even before you, Dtetta, mentioned it!) —RCraig09 (talk) 21:42, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

@RCraig09: Thanks Craig! I tried to incorporate the spirit of your edits into a merged edit above. In detail:

* This sentence you wrote confused me: "Climate change is caused mainly by burning of fossil fuels to produce greenhouse gases, most commonly carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane." We are not burning methane and CO2, and saying "mainly" followed by "most commonly" could mean 25%. It is better to first say that climate change is caused by greenhouse gas increases, full stop (that's true to over 100%, with aerosols temporing the effects). We can then say where those gases are coming from. To help with that, I combined the fossil fuel sentence with the sentence that followed.

* I agree with wanting to compress the greenhouse gas explanation into one sentence. I tweaked things though, as I think it is incorrect to say the Earth "reflects" heat. The whole point is that sunlight passes through greenhouse gases, gets converted to heat on contacting the Earth, then greenhouse gases absorb the infrared radiation Earth emits. I took a crack at things in a way the I hope combines our efforts.

* Natural phenomena being mentioned creates problems. What you said could be easily misinterpreted, because some natural phenomena are not short lived- see the ice ages, or the major climatic changes that have occurred in pre-history. What we write needs to be bullet proof. Anything I thought of could either be misinterpreted or come off as defensive, so I just cut the sentence. --Efbrazil (talk) 23:55, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with the proposed edits to the first paragraph, for the following reasons:

1-The current paragraph was approved by several editors back in November. I think it looks good as is. Not perfect, but very good.

2-From a process standpoint, you are proposing a major rewrite again, when we just spent a good bit of time doing this in November, when all of these ideas could have been presented.

3-This particular paragraph is a significant step backward in terms of readability. The grade level has gone up from 10 to 12.5. Reading ease has gone down from 47 to 42. That’s a significant degradation in readability.

4-If you want to talk about how best to write a sentence on the greenhouse effect, let’s do that separately. I can’t support any of these other changes. The sentence I proposed is a bit complex, with an associated grade level of almost 12. But the current proposal in green for this sentence has a grade level of nearly 14. We are trying to keep this understandable, and this proposed sentence is not easily readable.

5- I disagree completely with the statement that climate feedbacks don’t belong in this paragraph, but rather the third. The third paragraph deals with impacts, mitigation, and adaptation. I don’t see the sentence on feedbacks as a good fit here at all. The first paragraph covers the causes of warming, and cumulatively, feedbacks are a cause of warming. So I think they make much more sense in the first paragraph.

6-I have no idea what is meant by the “supervolcano and astroid test”. As I mentioned earlier, the asteroid analogy is not relevant here, in my opinion (I believe dave souza had a similar opinion). I think my suggested edit, which is to just change “known” to “similar”, leaves a sentence that is a more accurate characterization of the text that’s being referenced and quoted in the citation (compared to what’s being proposed in green). There is no astroid test for this, it’s simply an issue of source/text integrity. Dtetta (talk) 02:25, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

@Dtetta: Sorry I missed November. To address your concern about churn and language, I backed out changes except those that I think are essential. I also cut the asteroid / volcano stuff, the real point of that is that our current text is simply false, and the reason why really doesn't need to be in the paragraph itself. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Toba#Major_eruption for example. The second sentence proposed above is an assemblage from Femke and Craig that I think is now succinct and correct.

Regarding feedbacks, remember that what prompted this change is that we are not being pointed enough about the cause of climate change, and that is the core issue these edits are trying to address. Feedbacks are not the cause of climate change but are instead a complicating factor that primarily impacts modeling, as in how much temperature change is there for a given change in greenhouse gas concentrations. Further, the key question is not whether feedbacks are net positive or negative, but how much they will change in a positive or negative direction going forward, which is really a tipping point issue. Further still, there are both positive and negative feedbacks that are large issues, such as a hotter Earth results in more radiation into space, and increased CO2 has resulted in increased plant growth. Feedbacks are a very complicated issue, and putting them in the first paragraph is asking for a FUD response from readers. Meanwhile, the third and fourth paragraphs have redundancies and deal in feedback type issues like tipping points, so that's a better place to cover them. Efbrazil (talk) 00:21, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

after edit conflict @Efbrazil: I'm fine with improvements to language, but I cannot see how mentioning short-lived (natural) influences—which are influences—is defensive. I'd rather work on polishing the language so it's harder to "misinterpret" rather than omit it. There are still guzillions of people who think there are "alternative" explanations of climate change: see survey results in chart at right. 02:33, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

@RCraig09: Good! We are getting there.

Regarding the last sentence, it is struggling with the same issue as this sentence was: "There have been previous periods of climate change, but the current changes are more rapid than any known events in Earth's history."

Both are trying to convey the same point, which is that natural phenomena couldn't be causing global warming because of the rate of change we are seeing. However, it is important to account for the fact that supervolcanos and asteroids have caused more dramatic climate changes in short time periods. The most recent supervolcano, Toba, produced a global temperature drop of between 3.5C and 9C, all while humans were around: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-021-00141-7

To try and address the concerns here, I have this as a suggested new sentence, replacing what Femke suggested (edit made above): "There have been previous periods of climate change, but current changes are happening at a rate and scale unknown outside of supervolcano eruptions and asteroid collisions." I think that makes it clear that what we are currently seeing is "unnatural". Efbrazil (talk) 21:43, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

I think addition of supervolcano/asteroid language is ~accurate (maybe not an exhaustive list) and on balance I support it, though some might think it's ~fear-mongering in context.

I think "Natural phenomena are not a cause of GW" states a conclusion without really explaining it, so I've changed it to refer to natural climatic variability (I'd like to add "(sunlight variability and El Nino/LaNina)" but didn't) and limited it to contemporary GW. —RCraig09 (talk) 22:33, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

@RCraig09: Thanks for sticking with this Craig. I'm sorry I wasn't involved in November edits. Is what I did is I merged the last sentence into the bit about rates of change and cut the bit about volcanos and asteroids, because it does come across as fear mongering like you say. To make the churn less and address dtetta's concerns about language, I also backed out the changes to the middle of the paragraph, as I don't think they added much. The key changes are to the second sentence and to replace the bit about feedbacks with an explanation of how greenhouse gases work. You like what's there now? Efbrazil (talk) 23:53, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

@Efbrazil: I've made changes to what is now "Second Phase" above (see my edit comments). I'll reply to Dtetta shortly. 02:38, 5 January 2022 (UTC) I'm flexible on particular details of expression, of course. —RCraig09 (talk) 02:58, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

@Dtetta: My perception has been that there are so many conscientious editors here with slightly differing viewpoints, that nothing as subtle and complex as conveying the important points of GW and CC will ever be agreed on with finality. I think everyone involved has compromised, so I do generally support ongoing discussions since the current crop of editors is informed and reasonable.

Today, I think that:

— The short, concise explanation of the greenhouse effect is now ~excellent (as of the instant of this comment!) and should stay.

— Unless we can provide a short, concise explanation of the feedback concept and support with understandable examples, I think it should be moved out of the first paragraph.

I'm flexible on particular details of expression, of course. —RCraig09 (talk) 02:58, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm very much unconvinced these are improvements. The second sentence needs to be clarified, but I agree particularly is too weak a word. Distinctly is probably best.

The readability is quite a bit worse. The highly difficult word contemporary is used twice (I needed a dictionary to confirm it was used correctly). It's used even before the word global warming (which almost always refers to the current warming episode, so redundant). I needed to read the greenhouse gas explanation twice.

I associate the words 'climate variability' mostly with internal variability. A significant minority of definitions of 'climate variability' focus mostly on internal variability. So this doesn't necessarily say what some of you want it to say: solar is not responsible. Femke (talk) 17:10, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

@Femkemiline: Yeah, Craig kind of went to town on the paragraph, which I opened the door to originally and probably shouldn't have. Given the objections and churn here, I think we should pull the plug on this approach and try to take things on in isolation. I'll make a proposal to correct the second sentence, then make a separate proposal to replace the feedbacks part with a description of how greenhouse gases work. Efbrazil (talk) 18:18, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm not "insisting" on particular language, and I do think the present language is quite readable. The important question is what processes to include (GHEffect, feedbacks, ...). Maybe the solution is to make a bold edit to the actual article and we can work out wording details through ordinary editing and edit commentaries without a WP:WALLOFTEXT. —RCraig09 (talk) 21:35, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Example: "Contemporary" (in the article since FeaturedArticle time, if I remember correctly) could be: current, present, present-day, modern, modern-day, recent, ongoing, etc. I prefer but don't insist on "Contemporary". —RCraig09 (talk) 15:56, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

@RCraig09: Yeah, I think everyone is being flexible, it's just that we weren't getting to a final state because we had bitten off more than we could chew. Hopefully converting this into bite size chunks will work. My plan is to just incorporate feedback directly into the suggested text at the top of each section. Efbrazil (talk) 22:12, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Sorry for my lack of response to all this. I had a medical emergency late Monday Jan 3, and I have been out of commission for the past week. Probably start editing again in a week or so. Dtetta (talk) 15:03, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Is it compositing work to update the chart on surface temp to match latest NASA numbers?

The current chart (shown on the right) is based on AR6 WG1 SPM.1b. NASA just released new current numbers here for 2021: https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v4/#

I would update the image to include 2021 data but don't want to be accused of compositing an image. And of course the drivers will get increasingly out of date over time, unless somebody knows how to get refreshed versions of those (they only seem to appear when there's a new report that's released). Thoughts? Efbrazil (talk) 21:53, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

Regrets, I don't know where to get annually updated 'driver' data. My most recent version is NCA4 (2017). But since the thrust of your chart is long-term correlation and not short-term trends, I don't think annual updates of either trace are crucial. (If you were to update 'Temps' and not the 'Drivers', it would look incongruous.) —RCraig09 (talk) 22:15, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

There is nothing wrong with regenerating this or a similar image from a reliable data source. But I don't think we have a good data source for all the graphs, and just updating one would indeed be problematic. Also, since the AR6 has just been released, this is pretty up-to-date data. I don't think a single year makes a difference. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 23:11, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

In this case, we would only be able to update the black line, right? Probably wouldn't make the graph much better.

(As a minor comment, could you remove the label '2020', it's a convention to not have tick labels at different distances). Femke (talk) 17:07, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, only the black line could update. I guess I'll just leave it as is based on this discussion, although next year we'll have to revisit this issue. The 2020 label I do not want to remove as it clearly shows the end point in the graph, and there's no way to show 20 year increments across the board without reducing fonts or going diagonal or something weird. When I update the data I'll explore axis options, but for now I think the takeaway is to do nothing until next year. Efbrazil (talk) 22:34, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

first sentence.... when why was "and its related effects" deleted?

Hello folks long time no speak for me. Good to see many familiar names still hard at work here. I've gone in a new direction and won't be sticking around for followup discussion here. I just wanted to say I noticed that in the great work that has been happening, the lead first sentence seems to have hyperfocused on the narrow definition of "climate" (long term weather avgs) instead of the broader definition, "statistical changes in the state of the climate system". For example, see the definitions of "climate" and "climate change" in this IPCC special report. It includes both a "narrow" and a "More broadly" definition of "climate". Alas the definition of "climate change" says its a change in the longterm stats of "climate" but does not explicitly shed light on whether they mean the narrow or broad definition of "climate".

Meanwhile, I salute the effort to write in very simple English. At a USA-NOAA news page I found this simple statement, "...climate change includes warming and the “side effects” of warming..." In the brief list of examples they included extreme weather, but they ALSO included "melting glaciers" as an example of "climate change". Obviously, a melting glacier is not a meteorological thing, but according to that NOAA page the melting glacier is "climate change" rather than merely being an effect of it. How is this possible?

Making sense of this, and speaking from my personal understanding, I think the plain English writing on the social/political/economic/existential issue of "climate change" usually uses the broad definition of climate and climate change, and so includes the significant aspects of the climate system beyond just weather. And the fine print in technical writing usually uses the narrow definition, and dilineates between longterm weather and impacts of it. Further complicating things is the occassional use of both meanings in the same piece of writing.

So what I wanted to float, for those trying to make this comprehensible at an 8th grade level (or whatever target audience has been agreed) is this..... in my view, the title and scope should reflect the broad definition and whatever words we use "and its related effects" should be restored to the first sentence. Secondly, any other time we write "climate change" we should use wording to explicitly say whether we're talking about IPCCs narrow or broad definition ((changing weather avgs only, or including impacts of them)

So there you go, thanks for reading and considering and for your continued work here. I'll go back to the other work I'm doing in the world. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 16:14, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

I like the Met Office definition of climate change (which is used as the basis for this sentence). It makes the article just a bit more manageable. Don't object much to broadening it again. Femke (talk) 11:05, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Another informal Request for Comment: Climate change in the United States

I'm requesting climate change-knowledgeable editors to resolve a wall-of-words conflict between myself (focusing on WP:NEUTRAL and WP:Minority viewpoints and WP:RELEVANT-to-climate-change-adaptation issues) versus two nearly-single-purpose accounts promoting Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) in a specific "Adaptation" section of the CC in the US article. The most concisely stated question at this point is which one of the following two TEK sections are acceptable for Wikipedia:

1. The 9 Jan version (reflecting my edits), or
2. The current version, Climate change in the United States#Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) (mostly Larataguera's work)

Go to this section at WikiProject Climate Change for more background. Thanks in advance. —RCraig09 (talk) 22:25, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Thank you, RCraig09, for asking for input from other editors on this page. I would like to just state, though, that my account is hardly "Single-Purpose" in nature (see here edits to, among other pages, The Great Gatsby and The Last of the Mohicans). Such wording in the original RFC seems unnecessary. --Hobomok (talk) 17:15, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

I based my statement not only on your User page but from your Top edited pages of which The Great Gatsby is <2.5% of your <1100 total edits and The Last of the Mohicans is not off-topic. Strictly speaking, though, you are correct on this sub-issue. —RCraig09 (talk) 17:40, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

(for future reference, make sure to write such requests as neutral as possible. It can be or have the appearance of Wikipedia:Canvassing if you write these statements from your viewpoint. Try to write it as if it could have come from any of the involved editors). Femke (talk) 17:30, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Thank you, Femke. —RCraig09 (talk) 17:40, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

• A concise Request for Comment has been submitted at Talk:Climate change in the United States#Jan2022rfc. —RCraig09 (talk) 19:56, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Describing how greenhouse gases work in the lede and moving feedbacks down

The current first paragraph has two sentences on feedbacks that I think we should replace with a description of how greenhouse gases work. The two sentences highlighted in context:

Contemporary climate change includes both the global warming caused by humans, and its impacts on Earth's weather patterns. There have been previous periods of climate change, but the current changes are more rapid than any known events in Earth's history. The main cause is the emission of greenhouse gases, mostly carbon dioxide (CO₂) and methane. Burning fossil fuels for energy use creates most of these emissions. Agriculture, steelmaking, cement production, and forest loss are additional sources. Temperature rise is also affected by climate feedbacks such as the loss of sunlight-reflecting snow cover, and the release of carbon dioxide from drought-stricken forests. Collectively, these amplify global warming.

I would like to see that feedback content replaced with this description of how greenhouse gases work:

Greenhouse gases are transparent to sunlight, allowing it to heat the Earth's surface. When the Earth emits that heat as infrared radiation the gases absorb it, trapping the heat near the Earth's surface.

Reasoning is that the first paragraph needs to be squarely about the cause of climate change. Saying what the mechanism is works better than just repeating over and over again that "Experts say it is so"; one thing we know about climate denial is that it is rooted in a distrust of experts.

Feedbacks will move down to the third or fourth paragraph in the lede. Feedbacks are not a cause of climate change, but are rather a complicating factor that impacts mitigation and modelling, as in how much temperature change is there for a given intervention or change in greenhouse gas concentrations. Further, the key question is not whether feedbacks are net positive or negative, but how much they will change in a positive or negative direction going forward. This plays into estimates of how much emissions will result in how much temperature change, and feeds into the tipping point issues with regards to particular feedbacks. Further still, there are both positive and negative feedbacks that are large issues and we need to address, such as on the negative side a hotter Earth results in more radiation into space, and increased CO₂ has resulted in increased plant growth. Feedbacks are an extremely complicated issue, and putting them in the first paragraph is asking for a FUD response from readers. Meanwhile, the third and fourth paragraphs have redundancies and deal in feedback type issues like tipping points and temperature targets, so that's a better place to touch on them.

I'll start another section on how to restructure the third and fourth paragraphs to eliminate redundancis and incorporate feedbacks. Please focus comments here on the new sentence and making this change overall. Efbrazil (talk) 19:30, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

I find the sentence difficult to read. It has five clauses? I'd like to see simple sentences with max 2 clauses. Scrapping the sun bit would probably work.

I'd also like to see a proposal of where to put the feedbacks, as I don't see them fit well into the third or fourth paragraph. On a technical note, the Planck response (more radiation of hotter Earth) is not a feedback, even though it has the same units, and is described as a feedback in less scientific sources. Femke (talk) 19:47, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

@Femkemilene: See next section for the feedbacks suggestion.

Regarding the sentence, most descriptions of the greenhouse effect specifically mention sunlight passing through greenhouse gases- that they are transparent to visible light but not infrared radiation. For instance, here is another variant adapted from the oxford dictionary: "Greenhouse gases trap the sun's energy in Earth's lower atmosphere, due to greenhouse gases being transparent to visible radiation from the sun while absorbing infrared radiation emitted from the planet's surface." I think I prefer what I suggested above though as it's more sequential. Please suggest a better version if you have one in mind. Efbrazil (talk) 21:59, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

I agree with EFB. I count three clauses. Automated grammatical complexity rating tools penalize longer sentences, but don't seem to recognize that commas separating phrases are as good as periods separating sentences. The present version is about the best summary of GHE I've read anywhere. It is indeed sequential and clear, unifying all concepts involved. (I'd prefer omitting as infrared radiation but don't insist.) —RCraig09 (talk) 03:45, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

It's not the automatic tools that say it's difficult. I needed to read the sentence multiple times, which means that non-experts are more likely to struggle. No brains for improving this tricky sentence. It's not needed per se, so let's wait till we have an agreement. If we can't explain it succuntly, we should just leave it out. Femke (talk) 17:12, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

@Femkemilene: How about if we just break it into 2 sentences: "Greenhouse gases are transparent to sunlight, allowing it to heat the Earth's surface. When the Earth emits that heat as infrared radiation the gases absorb it, trapping the heat near the Earth's surface." Efbrazil (talk) 19:14, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Changed proposal (highlighted at top) to 2 sentence version to satisfy femke concern about long sentence.Efbrazil (talk) 20:14, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

References

FYI: there has been some recent activity at the Greenhouse effect article (and its Talk Page) that may simplify, or complicate, things here. I'm standing back on this one. —RCraig09 (talk) 20:32, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

How does it look with feedbacks + explanation GHG together

Plus one more proposal, that I think Efbrazil hinted at elsewhere

Contemporary climate change includes both global warming and its impacts on Earth's weather patterns. There have been previous periods of climate change, but the current changes are distinctly rapid and are not due to natural causes. Instead, they are caused by the emission of greenhouse gases, mostly carbon dioxide (CO₂) and methane. Burning fossil fuels for energy use creates most of these emissions. Agriculture, steelmaking, cement production, and forest loss are additional sources. Greenhouse gases are transparent to sunlight, allowing them to heat the Earth's surface. When the Earth emits that heat as infrared radiation the gases absorb it, trapping the heat near the Earth's surface. Temperature rise is amplified by the collective action of climate feedbacks such as the loss of sunlight-reflecting snow cover.As the planet heats up it causes changes like the loss of sunlight-reflecting snow cover, amplifying climate change. Reading score: 57 (was 52)

There is consensus on adding an explanation of the greenhouse effect. I think the above paragraph shows that this fits in the first paragraph, without moving the feedbacks. I'm not wild yet about the flow of the second sentence, but please add it while I try to formulate a better sentence (which may be never..). Femke (talk) 11:00, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

@Femkemiline: Thanks for taking the time on this. I changed "Instead. it is" to "Instead, they are" and "allowing it to heat" I changed to "allowing them to heat". Those were just grammatical fixes that I think are obvious so I didn't do strikethrough / underline. Efbrazil (talk) 19:27, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

I think there is consensus to leave feedbacks here in this paragraph only. The sentence on it I had problems with though, as it didn't seem to connect to what came before, and the wording was difficult. Starting with "collective action of climate feedbacks" is really hard to digest unless you are familiar with the concept already. The key point is feedbacks just change temperature sensitivity to greenhouse gases, they aren't a "cause" of climate change. I reworked the feedbacks sentence to hopefully be simpler and connect better to the previous idea. I tried but couldn't keep the jargony word "feedback" without complicating the sentence, so but I think it is OK to mention the idea hear without using the word. Let me know what you think. Efbrazil (talk) 20:19, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

If we remove the word 'further' before amplifying (which is either incorrect or redundant), I'm happy. Maybe changes like can link to feedbacks, but that might be too much of an Wikipedia:EGG.

For future reference, never edit other people's post without their prior permission per WP:TPO. From here onwards, you have my permission to correct obvious typos and obvious grammatical errors, but not to adjust a proposal I've made like you did above. Just copy, and make your changes. Among other reasons, it makes it really difficult for others to follow the discussion. Femke (talk) 17:26, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

The "further" was meant to say that feedbacks are both currently positive and also will become more positive in time, which is what the IPCC says. Having said that, I removed "further" from above, as I don't think it's important. I'll roll out the edit tomorrow unless there's follow up comments.

As for editing proposals on talk pages, Craig suggested making edits inline to avoid the wall of text problem, so I was continuing that way. I'm fine changing back to rewriting proposals if there's substantial changes, but I don't think there's a clear rule around the issue. Efbrazil (talk) 19:40, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

I rolled out the change with a few wikilinks added. Efbrazil (talk) 17:08, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

It's sunlight that initially heats the Earth's surface, not "them", for clarification have changed the relevant sentence to "transparent to sunlight, allowing it through to heat the Earth's surface." Not enthusiastic about "trapping heat" as the heat spreads and circulates, raising the temperature, am still thinking over the best way to cover this simply. . . dave souza, talk 17:59, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, I have no idea how my brain managed to screw that up. Something to do with staring at the text one too many times probably. Efbrazil (talk) 20:47, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Compressing last two paragraphs of lede and incorporating feedbacks there

This section is based on removing feedbacks from the first paragraph and inserting it here. The basic structural change:

• The third paragraph is compressed and is now dedicated to mitigation, feedbacks, and reversing emissions.
• The fourth paragraph begins with paris and then ends by talking about adaptation, using the existing text moved down from the previous paragraph
• The overall length is comparable to what is there now

Here is the current text with removals as strikeouts and additions in bold. I'll update this text as per discussion that follows:

Many of these impacts are already felt at the current level of warming, which is about 1.2 °C (2 °F). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projects even greatermore impacts as warming continues to 1.5 °C and beyond. Additional warming also increases the risk of triggeringcan also trigger tipping points, such as the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. Responding to these changes involves taking actions to limit the amount of warming, and adapting to them. Future warming can be reduced (mitigated) by lowering greenhouse gas emissions and removing them from the atmosphere. This will involve changes like using more wind and solar energy, phasing out coal, and increasing energy efficiency. Switching to electric vehicles, and to heat pumps for homes and commercial buildings, will further limit emissions, and switching to electric vehicles. Prevention of deforestation and enhancing forests, reforestation, and managing forests to withstand climate change impacts can help absorb CO₂. Temperature rise is also affected by climate feedbacks such as the loss of sunlight-reflecting snow cover, and the release of carbon dioxide from drought-stricken forests. Collectively, these amplify global warming.Damage to forests and loss of sunlight-reflecting snow cover are examples of climate change feedbacks, which are projected to increasingly amplify global warming.

Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, nations collectively agreed to keep warming "well under 2 °C" through mitigation efforts. However, with pledges made under the Agreement, global warming would still reach about 2.7 °C by the end of the century. Limiting warming to 1.5 °C would require halving emissions by 2030 and achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. Some communities mayInternational agreements also try to increase the ability of all to adapt to climate change through betterby supporting efforts like coastline protection, disaster management, and development of more resistant crops. By themselves, these efforts to adapt cannot avert the risk of severe, widespread and permanent impacts.

References

Here's the rationale for changes:

• Removed the sentence introducing mitigation and adaptation, as I don't believe it is necessary
• Heat pumps are cut and it is made clear that the list of mitigations presented is only partial- previously this was 2 sentences
• The idea of reversing emissions is now made explicit and paired with feedbacks, as both sentences discuss forest impacts
• Adaptation fits better as a conclusion to the final paragraph, after the mitigation content is wrapped up- before, it was sort of stuffed in the middle

Efbrazil (talk) 21:30, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

I hate that I don't have the energy to fully engage. The way I see it, is that the third paragraph deals with mitigation and adaptation, and the fourth with politics and society (that sentence about disinformation which still needs to be added). But I do see that we've only talked about the politics of mitigation, and not, for instance, about financing. I'm weakly leaning against that shift.

• Agree Agree sentence introducing adaptation and mitigation is unnecessary. It's just there to introduce difficult words. The word mitigation is appropriately introduced in the next sentence, and the word adaptation is self-explanatory.
• Could be cut, but I weakly prefer mentioning the three big sectors (heat, transport, power)
• I don't see the logic in putting feedbacks there
• Not sure I think we could move adaptation, and maybe add the 100 billion of funding part too? So that we have politics for both mitigation and adaptation in there? Femke (talk) 17:10, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

@Femkemiline: No rush, let's give this change a couple days to marinate, as it's not as obvious as the tweak to the second sentence of the lede. Thanks very much for helping here, I know it can be exhausting.

• Good!
• I didn't want scope creep and the list seems tolerable, so all I did was trim. I think with a "for instance" list it is OK to be specific (solar panels) rather than general (energy sector).
• Feedbacks and GHG drawdown are both complicating factors that follow the simpler idea of just not adding as many GHG to the atomosphere in the first place (mitigation). They are often paired- for instance a lot of drawdown strategies are about influencing feedbacks like plant growth and reflecting sunlight. Since both issues use forest growth to discuss their topics, I thought that connection was clear. Persuaded, or should I try a rewrite to make that connection clearer, or something else?
• Adding a political bridge makes sense to me, although talking cash is iffy since we don't discuss the money side of mitigation or impacts, plus money values are always changing and fungible (projected impacts vs commitments vs reality). Maybe change this:

Some communities may adapt to climate change through better coastline protection, disaster management, and development of more resistant crops.

to this:

International agreements also try to increase the ability of all to adapt to climate change by supporting efforts like coastline protection, disaster management, and development of more resistant crops.

Efbrazil (talk) 19:57, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

@Femkemiline: I took a crack at better fitting in feedbacks up above by redoing the feedback text but keeping all the ideas and links. I also improved things by clarifying that the IPCC projects feedbacks will be increasingly positive as temperatures increase (updated reference). Look good now?

I also changed the bold text as I had suggested above. Efbrazil (talk) 21:31, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

(I think I should have an account rename into Femke, with the all the misfired pings).

• The word also in the tipping point sentence needs to be omitted; the IPCC covers that topic as well.
• It implies that feedbacks haven't been net positive in the past, which is false. Still don't like feedbacks there, would prefer a shortening of the description in the first paragraph instead. It's not really an impact.
• Not sure the sentence on adapatation is an improvement. I would guess 90% of adaptation is done outside of international agreements. Why not just talk about the $100 billion for climate finance? Or leave it out. I think this may give an impression of a more benevolent Global North than there is in reality..

For in the future, can we go back to grey? This is a bit too brigth for me. Femke (talk) 17:29, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Combined forest sentences and better attached them to source wording. Efbrazil (talk) 17:51, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

I looked above in the talk section and bold was used previously to show additions, so I switched highlights to bold text and made the text grey overall to show impacted area (edit removed the grey- it made my eyes bleed). Efbrazil (talk) 17:58, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

@Efbrazil: there was certainly not consensus for all these changes. We even falsely imply feedbacks are not net positive now! Femke (talk) 17:00, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

@Femke: Regarding feedbacks, the important piece of information is how they will change going forward. Change going forward is what determines how much GHG budget we have for a given amount of warming in the future. A static positive or negative feedback doesn't change that. Having said that, we can change the text if you like. Would you prefer something like "increasingly amplify global warming going forward"?

Regarding rolling the change out now, this change has been worked on for 2 weeks now and feedbacks here had settled down to the point that I think the new text was clearly better in aggregate. Just because the change is live doesn't mean it can't be tweaked further in discussion here, then changes rolled out. Efbrazil (talk) 17:54, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

A lot of the changes had reached a explicit or tacit agreement, but some (like moving the feedbacks) I feel had reached consensus against. In a less visible space, being bold like that works, but here not. Especially if there are things that could be misinterpreted / could be wrong.

increasingly amplify and "going forward" have overlapping meanings, so that is not great prose. Just increasingly amplify is okay. Except I still find it a very illogical place. Femke (talk) 18:09, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

@Femke: I'm fine with the increasingly amplify text change, added that above into the proposal.

Regarding placement of feedbacks- Remember that the issue that catalyzed all these changes was making the cause of climate change more clear. The mechanism to do that is to have the first paragraph dedicated to clarifying the primary cause of climate change, then have mitigation of that primary cause, then finally to introduce complicating factors like carbon drawdown, adaptation, and feedbacks.

The placement I chose is therefor about presenting the topics in priority order for people to understand. Forest management is a strong area of overlap between the idea of feedbacks and carbon drawdown, so I think the bridge there works well. Leading with feedbacks can be satisfying because it triggers doomsday visions of runaway greenhouse gas emissions, but the real impact on readers is FUD (a mix of "it's hopeless" and "it's complicted"). Put another way, if GHG effects were stronger but feedbacks were net negative right now, would you want feedbacks mentioned in the first paragraph? How much does it matter that a casual viewer understands feedbacks? Efbrazil (talk) 19:37, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

@Femke: Backing out an edit and then not engaging on the substance of it violates WP:NEGOTIATION and WP:DR. Efbrazil (talk) 17:17, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm very sorry, should have responded earlier. Lungs are just not helping, and there is a flurry of activity on an other article which needed my attention. (I've asked others to help there, so create time for this)

I do not see a strong relationship between feedbacks and a feeling of FUD. If we frame it as 'increasing feedbacks', this may be come across as more worrisome. To first order, the feedback strength remains the same, so it's not per se necessary to mention amplification. I've just reread the climate feedback subsection, and it seems we're in violation of WP:LEAD. Our lead sections contains statements that are not covered by the body of the article.

As a way forward, I think you should implement all changes for which there are no objections and if not supersmall at least one support. I think that covers about half of your propopals. Ideally in small edits, so that it's easier to keep most of it if other editors disagree. Femke (talk) 17:26, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

@Femke: The reason I did this as a block edit instead of limited edits is because adding a description of how greenhouse gases work requires moving feedbacks out to make room and provide focus to the first paragraph, and then moving feedbacks requires slimming the third paragraph and moving adaptation to the fourth paragraph. In other words, each change requires another change, so a partial edit that results in a partial rollback could be the worst outcome of all. It would really be most helpful if we could try to come to consensus on the text as a whole so I could make the edit as a whole. Efbrazil (talk) 18:06, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

@RCraig09: Craig, I think fresh eyes on the change above would be helpful, as the text has changed a few times and dtetta is taking a break. Are you able to look at the edits above in this section and the previous section and either endorse them as a whole or reject them for cause? If you read the discussion above, I think the only pushback that hasn't been resolved through subsequent edits is whether feedbacks should move. I've made several edits to try to address that concern and to explain the rationale (see comment at 19:37, 11 January 2022 in particular). Efbrazil (talk) 18:06, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

@Efbrazil: Frankly, I've not followed the above discussion, but if you say the unresolved issue is placement of content on feedbacks: I favor keeping feedbacks out of the first paragraph simply because the abstract concept is hard to describe briefly, additionally requiring concrete examples that a general audience can readily understand. Such content, no doubt several sentences, would provide too much prominence for a less influential driver. Since subsequent paragraphs already exceed the "one concept per paragraph" rule I learned in eighth grade, 'feedback' content should would not be a burden there. —RCraig09 (talk) 18:41, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

Keeping my involvement in this to a minimum for health reasons. But want to emphasize that I think this whole sections is a really bad idea. At a minimum, whoever wants this, I would suggest you outline the themes you are trying to cover in your proposal, and then clearly state why this is an improvement over what’s currently in the paragraphs you are replacing. I think that’s a minimum bar that any proposed edit should have to pass. The outline helps people understand your logic. And please think about readability. Dtetta (talk) 19:40, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

@Dtetta: The outline for every edit is detailed in the comments above, after the proposal is made. And the overall goal is improved readability, which I believe the new text delivers on. I'm really not sure what you're asking for dtetta that isn't already here. Efbrazil (talk) 20:04, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

Sorry - but I don’t see any clear outline above - I find this whole section pretty hard to follow. And if the issue is that the climate feedback language in the first paragraph is too complex, I would suggest: ”The changes in climate that global warming is causing are, on the whole, also provoking further warming. The loss of arctic ice cover is one example of these climate feedbacks.“ I think you could also just delete the reference to forest cover and simplify the sentence that way. I con’t see how putting it further down in the lead solves anything. Checking out for a while. Dtetta (talk) 20:14, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

@Dtetta: I hope you feel better, but it is frustrating to have you offer opposition without basis and not respond to the detailed rationale in the comment above dated 19:37, 11 January 2022 (UTC). The issue has nothing to do with the feedback description being too complex, it has to do with placement. Please review that comment and respond if you are able. Efbrazil (talk) 21:22, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

@Femke: I have no idea what changes above you consider approved vs not approved. The only real opposition I see is dtetta to moving feedbacks, and they're not feeling healthy enough to engage on the issue. How about you say what edits should move forward and which shouldn't, saving us both the frustration of you backing out edits I make that you don't like. Efbrazil (talk) 22:37, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

It was both me and Dtetta that objected to moving feedbacks (as most sources discuss them with the rest of the causes).

It'll be a lot of work to assess consensus, with my brain fog and the lenght of discussion, but I'll give it a try.

• Nobody has reacted to your 'managing forests to withstand climate change'. I agree that the previous wording was a bit vague for a general audience ("How does one enhance a forest"). Your wording is unsupported by the body of the article. The previous wording is mostly supported, but a strict reading of WP:LEAD may lead us to remove that example as well. We focus a bit too much on forests, in comparison to other ecosystems. Which is understandable, as the others are more difficult to explain. Femke (talk) 09:22, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Repeating proposals in quote boxes (changes + final separately)

Many of these impacts are already felt at the current level of warming, which is about 1.2 °C (2 °F). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projects even greatermore impacts as warming continues to 1.5 °C and beyond. Additional warming also increases the risk of triggeringcan also trigger tipping points, such as the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. Responding to these changes involves taking actions to limit the amount of warming, and adapting to them. Future warming can be reduced (mitigated) by lowering greenhouse gas emissions and removing them from the atmosphere. This will involve changes like using more wind and solar energy, phasing out coal, and increasing energy efficiency. Switching to electric vehicles, and to heat pumps for homes and commercial buildings, will further limit emissions, and switching to electric vehicles. Prevention of deforestation and enhancing forests can help absorb CO₂.Carbon can also be removed from the atmosphere through efforts like increasing forest cover.

Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, nations collectively agreed to keep warming "well under 2 °C" through mitigation efforts. However, with pledges made under the Agreement, global warming would still reach about 2.7 °C by the end of the century. Limiting warming to 1.5 °C would require halving emissions by 2030 and achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. Communities maycan also adapt to climate change through better coastline protection, disaster management, and development of more resistant crops. By themselves, these efforts to adapt cannot avert the risk of severe, widespread and permanent impacts.

Reading score: 50

Which would become:

Many of these impacts are already felt at the current level of warming, which is about 1.2 °C (2 °F). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projects more impacts as warming continues to 1.5 °C and beyond. Additional warming can also trigger tipping points, such as the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. Future warming can be reduced (mitigated) by lowering greenhouse gas emissions and removing them from the atmosphere. This will involve changes like using more wind and solar energy, phasing out coal, increasing energy efficiency, and switching to electric vehicles. Carbon can also be removed from the atmosphere through efforts like increasing forest cover.

Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, nations collectively agreed to keep warming "well under 2 °C". However, with pledges made under the Agreement, global warming would still reach about 2.7 °C by the end of the century. Limiting warming to 1.5 °C would require halving emissions by 2030 and achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. Communities can also adapt to climate change through better coastline protection, disaster management, and development of more resistant crops. By themselves, these efforts to adapt cannot avert the risk of severe, widespread and permanent impacts.

Reading score: 46

I've repeated your suggestions in the old format. The changes are wrt to some intermediate suggestion, which has disappeared again. Ideally, changes should be given wrt the last consensus version.

• I think there is a large problem with the third paragraph: it contains overflow from the second paragraph, and is too long. There is probably consensus to remove the introductory sentence of mitigation and adaptation (I do recall some objections to that in a previous discussion, so make sure it's in a separate edit, so that it can be easily subject to BRD if necessary)
• I don't mind the changes to the second paragraph overflow (current warming, more impacts, tipping points). They are small, and I think they can be implemented without explicit consent. I don't notice any objections. If time permits, I'd like to propose wording to fold this back into the second paragraph after this discussion is finished.
• There were some objections to condensing mitigation options. A tweak in your direction may be "heat pumps to warm buildings" (not necessary to specify homes + commercial).
• More feedback is needed on the move of adaptation to the last paragraph. I would like to treat it together with mitigation, but must admit your solution makes as much sense as the current structure. Femke (talk) 11:17, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

@Femkemilene: Much thanks for taking the time to do this.

I'm fine adding heat pumps if you want to, although I don't think it's necessary. Heat pumps are arguably energy efficiency if you compare them to electric heaters / ac units (as opposed to comparing them to gas furnaces, in which case it's a fuel switching). Your call either way.

I am giving up on removing feedbacks from the first paragraph, I don't think we'll get to consensus otherwise. As a result, I just cut all mention of feedbacks completely from here, including the strikeout text (since it's a withdrawn proposal).

The forests text was meant to be an example showing crossover between carbon sequestration and feedback impacts. The sentence that is live now also has the problem of mentioning forests first, rather than mentioning carbon sequestration and then saying forest cover and health is one mechanism. I tried to resolve this issue with new text and a link to Carbon sequestration.

In terms of "Reading score", how do you calculate that? I couldn't find it. Efbrazil (talk) 20:34, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

@Femkemilene: I plan to roll this out tomorrow unless you (or someone else) proposes further changes or process. Efbrazil (talk) 17:11, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

There are still problems:

• the problem with the withstanding climate change is not solved yet. It's not in the body. Also not sure if it warrants a mention that prominently (can be convinced by a good overview source)
• Were overusing the word effort. lets get rid of "through mitigation efforts" at least.
• The sentence about adaptation is now unsupported by the body. How do we know international agreements fund this specifically? Most adaptation is done locally. Femke (talk) 17:44, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

@Femkemilene: Thanks for continuing with this! I'm going to continue making edits in the text above for now, let me know if you prefer a different mechanism. Taking the bullet points in order...

* I went through the SPM searching on "forest". The connection between climate degradation and forest management is made in SPM B.5, which says "Sustainable land management, including sustainable forest management, can prevent and reduce land degradation, maintain land productivity, and sometimes reverse the adverse impacts of climate change on land degradation (very high confidence)" However, our article says nothing about "forest management" at all, much less "sustainable forest management". That might be an oversight as "sustainable forest management" is all over the place in the SPM and we have an entire wiki article on it. Anyhow, for now I simply cut forest management from the lede. The reason it was in the text in the first place was to try and keep the existing idea of "enhancing" forests and to attach it to feedbacks.

* I cut "through mitigation efforts" in the text above.

* The paris agreement goal around adaptation is this: "to enhance adaptive capacity and resilience; to reduce vulnerability, with a view to contributing to sustainable development;" That's what I swiped the gist of the text from, and COP26 doubled the funding supports. [Here's the UN page on the topic]. I figured saying "try" was weaselly enough to be safe ground to stand on. The real point of the sentence is to act as a bridge between international agreements and talking about adaptation. Would adding a reference to that UN page on adaptation be enough, or do you think more changes are needed? Efbrazil (talk) 21:44, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

We're getting there!

• The forest text in the body needs revising, also because it's readability is really low (btw, you can compute a number for this using various websites, such as one specific to wikipedia (the whole-page score is buggy) or readable.com). Maybe we can reinsert something like this later. Not committing to doing this work on the short term.
• What is needed for all statements in the lede is a corresponding statement in the body (where it is cited, with the citation optionally repeated in the lede). You're translation something abstract (fancy paris agreement) to something concrete yourself now, which, while probably factually correct, not supported by the source. the UN page may be closer to supporting your sentence, but I'm not smart enough to integrate it into the body.
  • I think if the overflow of paragraph 2 into paragraph 3 is fixed (I have some ideas how, but too tired to propose something coherent), the problem you identified is partially fixed, with the third paragraph having a consistent theme (responses to climate change) Femke (talk) 18:44, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

@Femkemilene: Good!

• I pulled the bridging text between Paris and adaptation by reverting that text change up above. I changed "may" to "can also" as I think it's less awkward. Like I said, the Paris mention was more about paragraph flow than anything, and it's technically correct, but I don't think it's worth extra work to get it in. My real concern was getting adaptation moved to the fourth paragraph so the third wouldn't be overloaded, plus I think it works well to have adaptation fully follow mitigation. Let me know if you're happy with how things read now.
• The overflow issue from paragraph 2 to 3 I don't think I understand what you mean. The second paragraph enumerates impacts and is not one we're touching with these edits at all. The third paragraph talks about warming levels and mitigation, which naturally follows from impacts. The fourth paragraph talks about setting limits on warming levels and adaptation. I'm not wedded to that sequencing, but I like that the paragraphs are now evenly weighted, and I don't see a better sequencing. Maybe you could be more specific about the problem you see? Efbrazil (talk) 00:34, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

• I don't quite know why, but I feel like your proposal juxtaposes adaptation and climate policy. I don't think that was your intention. As that juxtaposition is used within climate denial discourse, I'm hesitant to insert it. I prefer to put adaptation next to mitigation instead.
• In my view the third paragraph is a summary of section 6, whereas the fourth paragraph would summarise paragraph 7 and 8 (currently has a meager summary of 7, nothing of how climate denial has impacted the public debate, protest, lawsuits and so forth). The overflow:
  • Many of these impacts are already felt at the current level of warming, which is about 1.2 °C (2 °F) This is a bridge sentence, but would be better as the bridge between the first paragraph (1.2C is almost definitional) and the second paragraph (impact). It has no mitigation aspect.
  • The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projects even greater impacts as warming continues to 1.5 °C and beyond. This is again impacts, and has the political 1.5C goal, but attributes it to the IPCC (reality shows a smooth detoriation, rather than something that happens more abruptly at 1.5C). The 1.5C report was requested by policymakers, and wasn't the IPCC's idea.
  • Additional warming also increases the risk of triggering tipping points, such as the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. Purely impact Femke (talk) 20:51, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

Proposal with shorter paragraphs

@Femkemilene: With these points in mind:

• I'd rather not touch the second paragraph- it's pretty good as is, and keeping the paragraph sizes balanced is important, and this change is already complicated enough
• Tipping points fit well with setting temperature targets, less well with mitigation
• Adapatation should go with mitigation instead of climate policy, but we want to have balanced paragraph sizes and good flow

I made these changes:

• Most consequentially, I pulled the political response up to the third paragraph and moved mitigation adaptation to the end. This maintains paragraph balance and flow, all while pairing of adaptation with mitigation like you want.
• I condensed adaptation to one sentence to better highlight that it isn't a fix all, and also to make it clear that your list wasn't exhaustive
• I reduced the 1.2 C emphasis to an aside
• I cut the 1.5 C sentence where we talk about the IPCC to address your concern about highlighting that number too much (we still mention it once, just not twice now)- I don't know if the IPCC must be mentioned in the intro, that's the main loss in that cut

I looked at the readable scoring site but didn't think it was useful, as it really just looks at word and sentence length. A sentence can be long and readable or short and full of jargon.

Since it's a lot of changes, here's the new cut:

Many of these impacts are already felt at the current level of warming, which is about 1.2 °C (2 °F)(1.2 °C). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projects even greater impacts as warming continues to 1.5 °C and beyond.Additional warming also increases the risk of triggeringwill increase these impacts and risks triggering tipping points, such as the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, nations collectively agreed to keep warming "well under 2 °C" through mitigation efforts. However, with pledges made under the Agreement, global warming would still reach about 2.7 °C by the end of the century. Limiting warming to 1.5 °C would require halving emissions by 2030 and achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.

Responding to these changes involves taking actions to limit the amount of warming, and adapting to them. Future warming can be reduced (mitigated) by lowering greenhouse gas emissions and removing them from the atmosphere. This will involveReducing emissions will involve changes like using more wind and solar energy, phasing out coal, and increasing energy efficiency. Switching to electric vehicles, and to heat pumps for homes and commercial buildings, will further limit emissions, and switching to electric vehicles. Prevention of deforestation and enhancing forests can help absorb CO₂.Carbon can also be removed from the atmosphere through efforts like increasing forest cover. Communities may adapt to climate change through better coastline protection, disaster management, and development of more resistant crops. By themselves, these efforts to adapt cannot avert the risk of severe, widespread and permanent impacts.While communities may adapt to climate change through efforts like better coastline protection and disaster management, they cannot avert the risk of severe, widespread, and permanent impacts.

Which would become:

Many of these impacts are already felt at the current level of warming (1.2 °C). Additional warming will increase these impacts and can also trigger tipping points, such as the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, nations collectively agreed to keep warming "well under 2 °C". However, with pledges made under the Agreement, global warming would still reach about 2.7 °C by the end of the century. Limiting warming to 1.5 °C would require halving emissions by 2030 and achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.

Reducing emissions will involve changes like using more wind and solar energy, phasing out coal, increasing energy efficiency, and switching to electric vehicles. Carbon can also be removed from the atmosphere, for instance by increasing forest cover. While communities may adapt to climate change through efforts like better coastline protection and disaster management, they cannot avert the risk of severe, widespread, and permanent impacts.

Efbrazil (talk) 20:42, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

My initial reaction: I love it. Shorter paragraphs are an important part of readability that's not included in this readability score. Only one content comment

• The they seems to refer to communities, rather than the efforts. Should be a this, right? The readability score is 42, which is a bit on the low side. I can tweak it up to 45 (see below, not married to any of them).

Many of these impacts are already felt at the current level of warming (1.2 °C). Additional warming will increase these impacts and can alsomay trigger tipping points, such as the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, nations collectively agreed to keep warming "well under 2 °C". However, with pledges made under the Agreement, global warming would still reach about 2.7 °C by the end of the century. Limiting warming to 1.5 °C would require halving emissions by 2030 and achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.

Reducing emissions will involve using changes like more wind and solar energy, phasing out coal, increasing energy efficiency, and switching to electric vehicles. Carbon can also be removed from the atmosphere, for instance by increasing forest cover. Communities may adapt to climate change by better coastline protection and disaster management. Yet, such efforts cannot avertrule out the risk of severe, widespread, and permanent impacts.

This is quite a big change, and our core team hasn't engaged much. So pinging them. @Dtetta, EMsmile, Clayoquot, RCraig09, Chidgk1, Sadads, and NewsAndEventsGuy: what do you think? Femke (talk) 17:25, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

• I both applaud Efbrazil's 20:42, 24 Jan proposal and agree with Femke's 17:25, 25 Jan trimming of words. Definitely, we should not sacrifice substantive content to formal limitations like number-of-paragraphs-in-the-lede. The main problematic issue I have had was the apparent impossibility in adequately explaining tipping points briefly enough to fit into the lede; I think we'll have to settle for Efbrazil's link to Tipping points in the climate system and simply hope readers will click to investigate. Summary: Thumbs up! —RCraig09 (talk) 18:00, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Great! Regarding edits from @Femkemiline:

• I'm fine with "can also" --> "may"
• I'm fine with changing "avert the risk of" to "rule out"
• I would rather not cut "changes like", because if you don't say that then you are implying the mitigation list is exhaustive.
• I would rather keep the last two sentences as one. Adaptation is one idea, and presenting it in terms of being inadequate is the correct framing I think. Also, the split into two sentences reads more awkwardly I think, as I'm not a fan of concluding the lede with a sentence that begins "Yet, ..."
• My guess is that your goal in splitting adaptation is to compress the content for readability. To do that, I'd suggest cutting " and disaster management", so that coastline protection would be our one example of adaptation (disaster management is more vague and apocalyptic sounding). As with the mitigation list, I would keep the qualification that the adaptation list is not exhaustive by keeping "efforts like". Efbrazil (talk) 22:03, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm in awe of the painstakingness of this work. It looks really good.

• I suggest replacing Reducing emissions will involve changes like using more wind and solar energy, phasing out coal, increasing energy efficiency, and switching to electric vehicles. with: "The literature on reducing emissions describes pathways in which the world rapidly phases out coal-fired power plants, produces more electricity from clean sources such as wind and solar, shifts towards using electricity instead of fuels in sectors such as transport and heating buildings, and takes measures to conserve energy."
  • These are all parts of an interconnected strategy for which there is strong consensus in the literature - you make electricity clean and much more abundant and you electrify as many fuel-burning things as you can.
  • "Energy efficiency" is a subset of energy conservation, and the literature calls for increased conservation, not just efficiency, if we are to meet our targets.
  • Phasing out all use of coal would require many types of changes that we don't really know how to do. If you're making a list of changes that would be involved in reducing emissions, I think it makes more sense to say phasing out coal-fired electricity plants.
• I think removed from the atmosphere should link to carbon dioxide removal not carbon sequestration.
• Forest protection is a bit of a surprising link target for the words "forest cover". I can't suggest an alternative so it might be better not to link it. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 06:11, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

• Support Excellent work Chidgk1 (talk) 06:33, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

  @Efbrazil: all okay

  @Clayoquot: I support the change to 'conserve energy' and the better wikilinks.

  Did you realise your sentence is 49 words long? The average easy-to-read sentence is about 12, and the max for easy-to-read is probably around 25. I think mentioning literature is academic. Many non-academics might associate the word with novels rather than scientific literature. Pathways is also very much the framing in terms of modelling, rather than concrete steps countries may take. I think the switch to electricity is also quite abstract, where people may understand a switch to an EV much better. Femke (talk) 19:23, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

  Good points. There seems to be a robust discussion on prose so I'm sure others can improve on what I've written. To throw out one more iteration from my end, I can suggest "Making deep cuts in emissions would require transformation of the energy system. In an energy system compatible with climate goals, abundant electricity is generated through low-emission methods and electricity is used as much as possible instead of burning fuels for energy. This transformation involves many changes such as phasing out coal-fired power plants, dramatically increasing production of clean electricity from sources such as wind and solar, adopting electric vehicles, and measures to conserve energy." These sentences are shorter but I'm not sure if they're more readable. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 16:00, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

  One of the main bits of advise for easy writing: minimise words with 3 or more syllables. Compatible with -> in line with. The word abundant is difficult, and not necessary. I like the "making deep cuts" rather then mitigation, but I know some people here prefer to keep that word in.

  Making deep cuts in emissions would require a transformation of the energy system. In an energy system compatiblein line with climate goals, abundant electricity is generated with low-emissions methodslow-carbon sources and it is used as much as possible instead of burning fuels for energy. This transformation involves many changes such as phasing out coal-fired power plants, dramatically increasing production of clean electricity from sources such as wind and solar, adopting electric vehicles, and measures to conserve energy."

  There is still a bit of repetition with clean electricity, not sure how to solve (and not sure how to converge discussion here). Femke (talk) 18:31, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

  The second "clean" could be dropped, i.e. "increasing production of electricity from sources such as wind and solar". There's perhaps a small difference between electricity from low-carbon sources and electricity generated with low-emissions methods - I think natural gas with CCS is in the latter category but not the former - but I'm OK with losing a tiny bit of accuracy for the sake of comprehensibility. Thanks for the tip on minimising words with 3 or more syllables. Procedurally, I don't want to be a bottleneck for anything. Cheers, Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 02:59, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

  I like the idea of introducing mitigation more clearly and as a full switch. Maybe just two sentences though, where the first is definitional, and the second is examples. I also tweaked the example sentence a bit to hopefully be more readable: Making deep cuts in emissions will require switching away from burning fossil fuels and towards using electricity generated from low-carbon sources. This includes phasing out coal-fired power plants, dramatically increasing use of wind and solar power, switching to electric vehicles, and taking measures to conserve energy. Efbrazil (talk) 00:11, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

  That works for me :) Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 15:52, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

  Great! Added into the proposal down below, but with one tweak, and that is changing "dramatically" to "vastly". To me, dramatically is too emotional a word for this. Also, vastly is shorter. Rapidly could work too, but doesn't fit the context as well. Efbrazil (talk) 20:42, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

Some comments from someone with a fresh pair of eyes (and only because I have been pinged). I feel honored to have been pinged (and no problem if you don't want to take these suggestions on board; I am coming to the party late):

1. Is it correct to have a space before the small circle of the degree celsius?
2. I noticed that we only once convert the celsius to fahrenheit. Is that on purpose? I'd be happy to not even have it once but perhaps the policy is to convert it each time? Doing it only once is good, I think.
3. This made me stumble: "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projects even greater impacts" the word "projects" is used as a verb here but when first reading it, I thought it was a noun. Could we replace it with an easier verb like "predicts" or "has calculated"?
4. I find the readability of this construction difficult: "Responding to these changes involves". It's fancy English but could it be said simpler? Like "In order to respond to these changes...".
5. I don't find this a great example: "Switching to electric vehicles, and to heat pumps for homes and commercial buildings, will further limit emissions". To me, this is very Northern biased. What about all the people who don't even own vehicles or who live in countries that don't require heating? Also if the electricity for the electric vehicles come from non-renewable sources then it won't reduce emissions. Also "limit emissions" is misleading, how about "has the potential to reduce emissions". But I think I would delete this sentence or come up with more broadly applicable examples, like "increasing energy efficiency" or how about something about a less meat based diet? This would be applicable to everyone in the world (well, except for poor people who can't even afford meat once a month...).
6. The wording of this sentence is not ideal: " Prevention of deforestation and enhancing forests can help absorb CO2". It's unclear what "enhancing forests" means and whether it's not almost the same as "prevention of deforestation". Could we find a hyperlink for it?
7. Perhaps add a "however" to the start of this sentence?: "By themselves, these efforts"
8. Could we be more precise here "nations collectively agreed". Can we perhaps say how many nations? Or the majority of nations? Or some nations?
9. Again I am finding this kind of wording difficult for non academics and non English native speakers: "Limiting warming to 1.5 °C would require halving emissions by 2030". Consider replacing with slightly longer but easier to read sentence, such as: "Emissions would have to be halved by the year 2030 if humanity wants to limit the warming of Earth to 1.5 deg C.". Or: "in order to limit global warming to XX, the global community would have to halve their emissions by 2030". EMsmile (talk) 22:51, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

In response to EMsmile: 1. Yes, there must a non-breaking space. 2. It's on purpose, policy allows us to omit it (scientific articles), but it's also policy-compliant to repeat it each time. 3. The proposal is to completely omit this sentence. Project is the term that is scientifically most precise, but predict also works. IPCC summarises, and doesn't do calculations themselves. 4. Better in the proposed text? 5. Most emissions are by rich people, so I think it's okay to focus on their reductions. Even when you switch to an EV powered by fossil fuels, emissions are almost always reduced. Okay to mention less meat after it's added to the body with a HQRS (it's quite the omission that our article does not mention this) 6. Agree, Efbrazil's propsed text solves this 7. My proposed text has 'yet'. 8. It's virtually all nations, not sure how to say this nicely. 9. No problem for me, but your second suggestion also words. Femke (talk) 17:24, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

I agree we should be mentioning meat consumption in the article. We can't mention it in the lede without it being there first (with sourcing). Regarding item 9, I'm personally happy with existing wording (which is the same as proposed wording- no changes), but maybe that's because I'm a native English speaker. I also think it's important to mention the net zero emissions by 2050 part of it. Certainly the 2030 thing isn't going to happen, but the longer term target is something people can get their head more wrapped around. Efbrazil (talk) 20:58, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Opposed for the following reasons:

• The paragraphs are shorter, as Femke has pointed out. But otherwise there’s no improvement in readability on either the readable.com site or the Hemingway app site. It’s not worse in terms of readability, there’s just no improvement, other than that the paragraphs are shorter, which isn’t necessarily an advantage. The current two paragraphs score is 11.6 grade level on readable.com, with a reading ease score of 42, and grade level of 11 on the Hemingway app site. This proposal also has a grade level of 11.5 on readable.com, with a reading ease score of 42.5 - a slight improvement, and a grade level of 13 on the Hemingway editor. Not sure why this is so much higher.
• I think a basic threshold for doing a major edit like this is that there is some sort of an improvement. In the intro to this section the changes are described, but there is no mention of how these are in an improvement. Maybe it’s somewhere else but I don’t easily see it.
• I find the phrasing somewhat curt and harder to follow, and don’t understand the logic behind how the paragraphs are constructed. The flow of ideas amongst the two paragraphs seems to me to be diminished compared to what’s currently in the lead. We talk about mitigation, and then all of a sudden switch to a qualitative type sentence on adaption, to me this is an example of several disconnects within the current structure of these two paragraphs. An outline of the logic for these paragraphs would be very helpful for me, and I’d love to see an explanation of how this arrangement of ideas is an improvement on the current structure of the paragraphs. I truly don’t understand the structure of what’s being proposed. I can read sentences, but they just don’t seem to hang together to me. If the goal is to shorten the length of the two paragraphs, there are better ways, IMO.
• The word “like” is used a couple of times. Although plain spoken and kind of folksy, it makes some of these ideas seem vague.
• I don’t see where the SRCCL SPM supports the claims in the second sentence of the second paragraph as currently worded. And I think the idea of simply increasing forest cover is easily conflated with treeplanting, which still has serious credibility problems in terms of its long term effectiveness. The way the sentence is written placed in the paragraph seems to put increased forest cover on equal terms with other kinds of mitigation techniques, which I don’t think is accurate as currently phrased. The current text expressed this in a more nuanced, qualified way, reflecting the wording on that page of the SPM. Dtetta (talk) 02:16, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

• Re proceeding: It seems that many issues are stylistic or linguistic, not deeply substantive. Rather than generating large amounts of words on this Talk Page—discussions don't seem to be converging—it might be best for someone to simply insert the replacement into the article now. Individual incremental changes can be made with good edit comments; our current crop of active editors seems respectful enough as to avoid edit wars. —RCraig09 (talk) 04:19, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

I was trying to be diplomatic, but I guess I am not being clear enough. I don’t think this is a stylistic issue. IMO, there are two main problems here; 1)The basic sequence of statements in these two paragraphs is not well done, and 2)Aside from shortening the text, there is no info that I can see that even explains the reasons for why these significant changes are being made, and how they improve on the text that is there now, which is a basic threshold for making an edit in Wikipedia. That said, I don’t plan to get into an edit war over this. It’s just very disappointing. Dtetta (talk) 06:29, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Here's my attempt at bringing together rationale as per dtetta's critique:

1- Readability. My free trial of readable is gone, but in my experience the score mostly just looks at word and sentence length. In the end, I think the best way to assess readability is to read out loud and imagine you're a middle schooler. When I do that, the new text seems clearly better.

Disagree. Back in October/November I had a series of email exchanges with Professor Bruine de Bruin at USC. Who has done some leading work on how people understand descriptions of climate change. I posted the gist of this on October 27. She specifically recommended readability apps, along with some basic techniques that I mentioned in my post. What you’re claiming is subjective, although in the end I think you do need to double check what you’ve written even if the readability apps show a certain score. But it doesn’t seem more readable to me even though it’s shorter. The last sentence for instance, is a dismissal of adaptation efforts while at the same time mentioning one example. To me that’s much less clear (and more misleading) than the more detailed explanation in the current paragraph.Dtetta (talk) 17:02, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

Agree to disagree. If there is a good, open source app (not readability.com) please point us towards it. Efbrazil (talk) 20:37, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

https://hemingwayapp.com/. Which EMsmie mentioned back in October Dtetta (talk) 18:07, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

2- The new text cuts more than 1/3rd of the old text length, from 225 words to 149 words. Our current third paragraph is 169 words, which is long by any measure. As Wikipedia guidance says regarding ledes, "Editors should avoid lengthy paragraphs": Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Lead_section. Some content in there really wasn't necessary, like introducing mitigation and adaptation separately from talking about what they are, or saying "through mitigation efforts" in talking about limiting warming.

Fair enough. But we could accomplish that in a more direct fashion, without the significant rewrite that you’ve done. Why don’t we focus on simply doing that, making the current third paragraph a little shorter.Dtetta (talk) 17:02, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

3- We should not be mixing tipping points into mitigation / adaptation. It's a better fit with trying to set temperature targets and immediately after impacts (which tipping points also pair with).

I agree that tipping points pair well with impacts. Which is the way it is written in the current paragraph. I think talking about impacts, and then talking about ways of minimizing those impacts in a single paragraph is perfectly reasonable, which is again how the current paragraph is written. When I ask people what they’re most interested in reading about the wikipedia climate change article, it’s: 1)what are the causes and impacts, and 2)what can be done about it. So to me it makes more sense to connect the impacts with mitigation and adaptation in the same paragraph. In your first paragraph you go directly from impact/tipping points to international policy statements. This makes much less sense to me, based on the conversations I’ve had where I’ve tried to get feedback on the article.Dtetta (talk) 17:02, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

If you look at current structure, the first half of the mitigation / adapation paragraph is spillover from the impacts paragraph, resulting in a bloated and unfocused paragraph. This was an insight from femke. The new structure correctly puts mitigation / adapation on their own. There is strong support behind moving forward with the changes, so please consider improvements to the new text that address specific concerns. Efbrazil (talk) 20:37, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

4- We should not be talking about impacts in terms of 1.5 C as we do now. As Femke said about the 1.5C number: "This is again impacts, and has the political 1.5C goal, but attributes it to the IPCC (reality shows a smooth detoriation, rather than something that happens more abruptly at 1.5C). The 1.5C report was requested by policymakers, and wasn't the IPCC's idea."

That’s fine with me, but again that could be corrected within the existing structure of the current paragraphs.Dtetta (talk) 17:02, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

5- When we listed examples of categories like mitigation and adaptation we previously did not specify that the examples were incomplete, but now we do. That makes it clear that the examples are meant to be illustrative and not exhaustive or definitional (as in "mitigation means these things: X, Y, and Z").

Disagree. We do not make it clear that these examples are incomplete, it may be something that we imply, but we don’t make it clear. I think what we’re trying to do in this paragraph is summarize what’s in the body of the article. That should be the focus.Dtetta (talk) 17:02, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

6- We currently talk about preventing deforestation and "enhancing forests" (?) while ignoring afforestation. The new text just mentions increasing forest cover overall.

Disagree. As I mentioned I think the average person would equate simply increasing forest cover with tree planting. I think at a minimum force preservation/preventing deforestation needs to be mentioned, as it is in the current paragraph.Dtetta (talk) 17:02, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

We already explicitly mention deforestation in the first paragraph. Increasing forest cover does include prevention of deforestation, it just doesn't explicitly call that out (or afforestation or managing forest health). If deforestation wasn't mentioned in the first paragraph, I'd agree with an explicit mention here. Efbrazil (talk) 20:37, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

By that logic we shouldn’t talk about emmission reductions, since we already talk about emissions in the first paragraph. Your current text is a overly simplified, misleading summary of what’s actually in the reference you cite.That page makes it clear that this is a nuanced issue, which is what the earlier text tried to capture. Forest preservation is a key element, one of the more unequivocal ideas on that page, and should be reinstated. Dtetta (talk)

7- Stretching the list of mitigations across 2 sentences was very awkward, so we cut "heat pumps for residential and commercial buildings" (what about industrial? why enumerate building types at all?). Heat pumps are just a form of energy efficiency if you compare them to electric heaters / ac units (as opposed to comparing them to gas furnaces, in which case it's a fuel switching). That brings the mitigation example list down to single sentence size.

Disagree. Heat pumps are most definitely not simply a matter of energy efficiency. They are a major way of decarbonizing energy used in buildings. That’s why they’re in the current paragraph. Please do some research on this, or at least read the article before you try to write the lead. It’s in the clean energy subsection.Dtetta (talk) 17:02, 30 January 2022 (UTC

I know all about heat pumps, please don't make assumptions, I've written a lot of the text on heat pumps in several articles. I added them back into the proposal as I think their inclusion could go either way, and I want you on board with these changes. Objections to including heat pumps included that they reflected a northern country bias, that they can be considered efficiency, and that their description was poorly done. The new text puts them in with what is hopefully better wording. Efbrazil (talk) 20:37, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

I made that assumption because you gave the justification that it was largely an energy efficiency issue, seemingly disregarding what’s in the current text of the article. Heat pumps have a northern hemisphere bias, but they are going to be an important mitigation technique, so it deserves to be mentioned IMO, Glad you at least kept it in the edit you made. Dtetta (talk) 18:07, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

8 We similarly condensed adaptation to one sentence, to avoid awkwardness in wording and to correctly frame it as insufficient.

I think the way you’ve condensed adaptation is confusing and somewhat misleading in that yhe overall sentence is a dismissal of adaptation while recognizing that there are certain categories of it.Dtetta (talk) 17:02, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

As adaptation is the concluding sentence of the lede, it also needs to be summative, and we wanted to be clear that we can't just "adapt" our way our of climate change impacts. Arguing just for adaptation is a very common form of climate denial. The amount of words we dedicate to each topic is a good way to establish their importance, which is why expanding on mitigation made sense (as per clayoquat/femke thread up above). Efbrazil (talk) 20:37, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

The new paragraph is poorly organized. In your attempt to create a segue with the previous paragraph, the lead sentence now doesn’t even mention adaptation, although it’s one of the ideas included in the paragraph. And your dismissive description of adaptation in the last sentence, with only a passing mention of coastline protection as the only technique, borders on being disingenuous. Adaptation is covered at length in its own section in the article. Adaptation techniques will be an important feature of nations’ climate change responses over the next 30 years. They deserve a better mention than what you have given them. Dtetta (talk) 18:07, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

Here's my attempt at new consensus text. Changes from the proposal above are shown through strikeout / underline (I'll integrate more changes here as they come in):

Many of these impacts are already felt at the current level of warming (1.2 °C). Additional warming will increase these impacts and can alsomay trigger tipping points, such as the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, nations collectively agreed to keep warming "well under 2 °C". However, with pledges made under the Agreement, global warming would still reach about 2.7 °C by the end of the century. Limiting warming to 1.5 °C wouldwill require halving emissions by 2030 and achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.

Making deep cuts in emissions will require switching away from burning fossil fuels and towards using electricity generated from low-carbon sources. This includes phasing out coal-fired power plants, vastly increasing use of wind and solar power, switching to electric vehicles, switching to heat pumps in buildings, and taking measures to conserve energy. Carbon can also be removed from the atmosphere, for instance by increasing forest cover. While communities may adapt to climate change through efforts like better coastline protection and disaster management, they cannot avert the risk of severe, widespread, and permanent impacts.

I edited the above for these changes:

• Added lead sentence introducing mitigation and added "dramatically" to increase of wind and solar, as per chat with clayoquat / femke above
• Added heat pumps back in as a mitigation example as per dtetta

Efbrazil (talk) 20:37, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

One change I made from discussion above is I kept the existing wording of "avert the risk of" instead of going with "rule out". "Rule out" suggests that adaptation should be able to avoid the risk of "severe, widespread, and permanent impacts", but they still may occur. "Avert the risk of" makes it clear that adaptation on its own is insufficient. Efbrazil (talk) 20:38, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Dtetta Pinging you in case you missed the rationale above. Does that help the changes makes sense? Is there a specific change or changes to the new text you'd like to see? Efbrazil (talk) 23:24, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

Efbrazil -Above I’ve summarized my responses to each of your points directly below each one. Apologies for messing up your numbering by doing it this way. Again my main point is that, although this version is shorter, it’s no more readable, it has significant problems with it. IMO it’s not an improvement to what’s there, and that’s what should be the basic criteria that we use when making any edit.Dtetta (talk) 17:02, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

I think a better approach would be to focus on shortening the third paragraph, if that’s what the main concern is. Dtetta (talk) 17:11, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

At this point, I think there is strong support behind the rewrite. Is what I'd suggest is you look for ways to contribute to it, instead of trying to block it. Several of the points above were ones I took from others who have contributed to the rewrite, not myself. Efbrazil (talk) 20:37, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

To avoid adding length to Talk Page discussions, I've participated minimally, but: since I largely support the newly-posted lede paragraphs, I think a more fruitful way to proceed is to possibly make minor incremental changes to the lede text (for everyone to see how it would read), which I think is preferable over pursuing longer discourses here. I think our current crop of editors is rational, thoughtful and respectful enough for that approach to succeed. —RCraig09 (talk) 18:22, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

Click at right to show/hide reference listing
References

Shouldn't we be covering climate change exaggeration and misattribution to go along with all our climate denial content?

Our section on "Scientific consensus and society" comes across as biased. We exclusively cover climate denial, but ignore the content out there that plays up climate change using unrealistic scenarios, like Waterworld or Day after Tomorrow, or when every bad weather incident is attributed to climate change (remember how the recent, bad hurricane season was heavily featured in "an inconvenient truth"?) The activist movement sets false numbers or dates for change as a means to gain traction, saying that if society doesn't do as told then an apocalypse will occur. Just as some people benefit from denial, others benefit from exaggeration to sell books, movies, or clicks.

I think the section needs a rewrite to account for this. For instance, we absurdly say that there is "An echo chamber of climate-denying blogs and media" as though it is exclusively a right wing phenomena. A nod to the exaggerations on the left is appropriate given how much real estate we are allocating to denial in this article. Efbrazil (talk) 18:09, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

There are of course quite a few differences there (massive corporate lobby paying politicians vs bunch of school children). Climate exaggeration is newer, so I'm not sure how much high-quality sourcing is available for it. Day after tomorrow was amusingly bad fiction, so I don't think criticism of it is that relevant. They didn't pretend to be accurate. What sources were you thinking of? Femke (talk) 18:17, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

I don't see a need for a rewrite. Adding a sentence or two about official or notably influential climate exaggeration would make the section properly WP:BALANCED. PS - For anyone interested, I ran across this 2006 article]—still cited in Global warming controversy. After my work on the Climate crisis article, I think that that historically "extreme" characterizations of climate change impacts have since become increasingly appropriate. —RCraig09 (talk) 18:53, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, rewrite is overstating it, but we need a bit of balance. It's not just "corporate lobby" vs "school children".

A good recent example is the fawning reception that "the uninhabitable earth" New York Magazine article received, despite a lot of bunk science in it. Femke also raised the issue of how the 1.5 C report was politically motivated, not driven by scientists, as there's no abrupt drop off above that number.

I don't know if there have been published articles on the topic, so I'm hoping one of you that researched this area could speak to the topic. If not, I'll take a crack at the research. Mostly, I'm just aware of movies and articles hyping doomsday scenarios for clicks, and it seems we are conspicuously ignoring that issue. Efbrazil (talk) 21:29, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

I did a bit of a search on Scholar, but couldn't find good sources with "activist" + "misinformation" (found results about Republican activists instead). Nor about "doomer" + "misinformation", or "alamist" + "misinformation. I suspect we'll conclude it's undue for this particular article based on my search so far. For instance, this 2020 article says it's understudied and and that the comparison is difficult between the two types of misinformation due to the power imbalance

What makes this difficult for us, is that a lot of things that get called out as alarmist misinformation, isn't really. It's a common label by deniers. For instance, many scientists would say that extreme weather attribution is now finally done well, rather than ignored because the science is tricky.

From my own experience. In the cross-wiki climate denial review, I removed about 100x less alarmist misinformation compared to climate denial. Two (/143) articles said climate change is uncontrollable, and a few stated we would get more (rather than stronger & rainier) tropical cyclones. Some had the outdated clathrate gun hypothesis. Femke (talk) 21:55, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

(after edit conflict) Hmmm... searching "climate change exaggeration" ("CCE") on scholar.google.com (here) I see that the most recent meaningful hits are a 2014 book that obliquely mentions CCE and a 2013 article that's behind a pay wall. Everyman's Google news hits (here) for the CCE term are slightly more plentiful but don't seem generally accusatory. Afterthought: not only are dire prophecies coming closer to realization, but also, the further into the future one looks, the more dire the impacts the planet will see. You may be chasing an offense that's becoming less and less relevant, like horse theft or cattle rustling. —RCraig09 (talk) 21:58, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Best recent source on climate change exaggeration is probably Chapter 8 of Mann's The New Climate War (2021) , which is all about the topic and had over 150 references (though few are to high tier WP:RS). Most of the CCE examples Mann highlights are from 2017 & later (e.g "The uninhabitable earth" as Efbrazil mentions, or Deep Adaptation ). I'm not sure it's correct to dismiss even those as "bunk science" - but several mainstream scientists take that position & feel overly alarmist presentations are politically counter productive, so perhaps a line could be added reflecting the perspective. FeydHuxtable (talk) 01:04, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

The main issue behind this supposed "climate change alarmism" is that it's equivalent to saying to someone who is trying to escape a sinking ship that there's also an angry polar bear on board that escaped. That person might be incorrect about the bear, but what does it really matter when the ship is sinking? At worst, it will make the person more wary about getting off as soon as possible. In terms of measurable negative effects about "alarmism", I doubt there are many, if any, besides slightly more anxiety for an already cataclysmic event, while denialism is currently causing devastating consequences and will do so in the future. Therefore I disagree that giving more weight to denialism is biased in some way. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 10:39, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

Not quite. First of all: we shouldn't let sympathy with a certain group decide whether to include it or not. It's the weight RSs put on it (which I think is too little to warrant inclusion).

Secondly: there is evidence that exaggerating dangers may lead to paralysis. Especially if it is combined with a a nihilist myths that nothing can be done about it (we've passed "the" tipping point, so hope in avoiding climate catastrophe). Femke (talk) 17:07, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

Inaccurate description of greenhouse effect

During extensive discussion at Talk:Greenhouse effect, the wording here was raised: "Greenhouse gases are transparent to sunlight, allowing it through to heat the Earth's surface. When the Earth emits that heat as infrared radiation the gases absorb it, trapping the heat near the Earth's surface." My comment was that ""the heat" isn't [all] trapped, indeed about as much [heat] energy goes out as comes in from the Sun, and increased heat goes all the way up to "an altitude of roughly 5-6 kilometers [where] the concentration of greenhouse gases in the overlying atmosphere is so small that heat can radiate freely to space."[1]" Having reached an agreed introductory paragraph there, I've Boldly edited that part of the lead here, it was reverted. Do please discuss and find accurate wording. . . dave souza, talk 17:28, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

I don't mind the simplification here and I don't think it's wrong. NASA describes it as "The greenhouse effect is the way in which heat is trapped close to Earth's surface by “greenhouse gases." The new wording made a technical description even more technical. I imagine a good chunk of our readers (say 30%) would have no clue about the frequency of radiation. Femke (talk) 17:35, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

I also think the existing wording is accurate. Note that in the upper atmosphere temperatures are cooling as a result of climate change, which is a key indicator for the greenhouse effect- more heat is "trapped" in the lower atmosphere and can't escape to the upper atmosphere and then to space. That results in radiative imbalance, which underlies climate change. Efbrazil (talk) 17:46, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

Fair enough, have been trying to cover the effect when it's in balance. . dave souza, talk 19:12, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

A couple wording tweaks to the second paragraph

There are a couple awkward sentences in the second paragraph I would like to change. The first is this tongue twister:

In places such as coral reefs, mountains, and the Arctic, many species are forced to relocate or become extinct, as their environment changes.

I think this wording is more natural, accurate, and succinct:

Rapid environmental changes in coral reefs, mountains, and the Arctic are forcing many species to relocate or become extinct.

Secondly, the second sentence here implies that human migration is not related to all the threats we list out in the first sentence:

Climate change threatens people with food and water scarcity, increased flooding, extreme heat, more disease, and economic loss. It can also drive human migration.

I'd like to see us follow the train of thought and also mention human conflict, like this (only the second sentence is tweaked):

Climate change threatens people with food and water scarcity, increased flooding, extreme heat, more disease, and economic loss. Human migration and conflict can be a result.

These are fairly minor tweaks, so hopefully not controversial? Efbrazil (talk) 23:07, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

The second one is the tiniest SYNTH. Our text doesn't connect these specific changes to both migration and conflict. Femke (talk) 17:43, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

@Femkemiline: Yeah, I'd say so tiny as to be non-existent. Saying "can be a result" isn't making a direct claim from one impact or even all listed impacts, it's connecting back to the sentence about climate change impacts on people as a whole. Isn't it more "wrong" to present impacts on people, then present human migration as a completely separate thing that's not related to those impacts, like we do now? Anyhow, let me know if you're OK with the text change, prefer as is, or want to suggest alternate wording. Efbrazil (talk) 16:48, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

The wording is nice, and connecting bits is also important. I'm okay if a third person says thumbs up.. Femke (talk) 17:36, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

PS. No need to (mis)ping me. I have this article watchlisted. Femke (talk) 17:37, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

@RCraig09: Craig- Femke would like a second opinion on the second minor tweak above (the first change is already live). Can you chime in? Efbrazil (talk) 16:55, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

I interpret 'second tweak' to refer to the 'migration, conflict' content. I think that the underlying proposition, that CC causes migration and conflict, is unquestionable at this time. More subtly, migration definitely occurs already, whereas conflict is presented in our article body as being predicted ("Livelihoods" subsection). The flexible phrasing "can result" broadly covers both characterizations, so I favor the revised language in the lede. —RCraig09 (talk) 17:32, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Thanks Craig! Edit done. --Efbrazil (talk) 18:49, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

"Tail-risk events"

Hello. I don't think linking to Taleb's black swan theory in the "Livelihoods" section is appropriate, as the discussion of Taleb's theory (e.g. hindsight and psychology) is not particularly relevant and unlikely to be found in sources about climate change. What we mean here is just A rare and hard-to-predict event with major consequences, without the baggage of the rest of the theory.

Without a note or link to explain it, like tail risk (which is only discussing financial risk), the term is probably too technical to be helpful, so I think it may be better to remove it in place of something simpler like "chance of disastrous effects". I would make that change myself, but given this is a featured article I thought I would make a post on the talk page instead. Endwise (talk) 03:39, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

Adaptation in the lead

Suggest change "avert" to "completely avert" to read:

"While communities may adapt to climate change through efforts like better coastline protection, they cannot completely avert the risk of severe, widespread, and permanent impacts."

Chidgk1 (talk) 18:53, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Oppose, climate change will still produce severe, widespread, and permanent impacts whether we adapt or not. Efbrazil (talk) 19:47, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

AR6WGII Findings that may warrant edits

Impacts/Risks

Below are my observations on the elements of the AR6WGII SPM that merit looking at in terms of strengthening the Effects portion of the article. These appear to me to be either new findings, or findings that expand on or help focus current text in the document.

I found it striking to see the extent to which vulnerability is mentioned in this document, the treatment of this topic is significantly stronger in this document compared to its AR five counterpart. I also found extent to which adaptation is recognized as an important complements to Mitigation to be significantly stronger than in the AR5 report. What I conclude from this is that 1)we might want to retitle the adaptation section to be vulnerability and adaptation, and interweave vulnerability concepts into the text on adaptation, and 2)we should strengthen the language on adaptation in terms of its potential effectiveness to address climate change. At a minimum we should certainly provide a stronger sentence in the flawed fourth paragraph of the lead that better recognizes the role that the IPCC is placing on adaptation. I did not include any of the specific adaptation findings in this post, these recommendations are based strictly on my reading of the effects/impacts section of the SPM (i.e I did not include any of the findings in SPM.C) I was also struck by the extent to which the report repeatedly points out the disproportionate impacts on more vulnerable populations. In a discussion on the adaptation section last year, I believe there was strong opposition to over emphasizing this in that section. Based on the findings of this report, I think this decision should be revisited.

Some other issues: Do we only include high confidence findings? In particular, many of the findings in the section B.4 (mid to long term risks) have a medium confidence associated with them, which seems natural given that they are predictions further into the future.

Here are what seem to me to be significant SPM findings for the purposes of edits to the article. I added headings to sections where they seemed focused on a specific topic. SOme of these may be more suited to the Effects of Climate Change article, but I think they are at least worth considering.

B1

• Some development and adaptation efforts have reduced vulnerability.
• Across sectors and regions the most vulnerable people and systems are observed to be disproportionately affected.
• The rise in weather and climate extremes has led to some irreversible impacts as natural and human systems are pushed beyond their ability to adapt.

B1.1

• Widespread, pervasive impacts to ecosystems, people, settlements, and infrastructure have resulted…these include increased heat-related human mortality, warm-water coral bleaching and mortality, and increased drought related tree mortality.
• Observed increases in areas burned by wildfires have been attributed to human-induced climate change in some regions.
• Adverse impacts from tropical cyclones, with related losses and damages, have increased due to sea level rise and the increase in heavy precipitation.

B.1.2 - Ecosystems

• Climate change has caused substantial damages, and increasingly irreversible losses, in terrestrial, freshwater and coastal and open ocean marine ecosystems.
• The extent and magnitude of climate change impacts are larger than estimated in previous assessments.
• Approximately half of the species assessed globally have shifted polewards or, on land, also to higher elevations.
• Hundreds of local losses of species have been driven by increases in the magnitude of heat extremes, as well as mass mortality events on land and in the ocean and loss of kelp forests.
• Some losses are already irreversible, such as the first species extinctions driven by climate change.
• Other impacts are approaching irreversibility such as the impacts of hydrological changes resulting from the retreat of glaciers, or the changes in some mountain and Arctic ecosystems driven by permafrost thaw

B.1.3 - Food and Water Security

• Although overall agricultural productivity has increased, climate change has slowed this growth over the past 50 years globally.
• Ocean warming and ocean acidification have adversely affected food production from shellfish aquaculture and fisheries in some oceanic regions. Increasing weather and climate extreme events have exposed millions of people to acute food insecurity and reduced water security, with the largest impacts observed in many locations and/or communities in Africa, Asia, Central and South America, Small Islands and the Arctic.
• Jointly, sudden losses of food production and access to food compounded by decreased diet diversity have increased malnutrition in many communities, especially for Indigenous Peoples, small-scale food producers and low-income households, with children, elderly people and pregnant women particularly impacted.
• Roughly half of the world's population currently experience severe water scarcity for at least some part of the year due to climatic and non-climatic drivers

B.1.4 - Human Health

• In assessed regions, some mental health challenges are associated with increasing temperatures, trauma from weather and climate extreme events, and loss of livelihoods and culture.
• Increased exposure to wildfire smoke, atmospheric dust, and aero allergens have been associated with climate-sensitive cardiovascular and respiratory distress.

B.1.5 - Urban Impacts

• In urban settings, observed climate change has caused impacts on human health, livelihoods and key infrastructure.
• Multiple climate and non-climate hazards impact cities, settlements and infrastructure and sometimes coincide, magnifying damage.

B.1.6 - Economic Impacts

• Economic damages from climate change have been detected in climate-exposed sectors, with regional effects to agriculture, forestry, fishery, energy, and tourism, and through outdoor labour productivity.
• Individual livelihoods have been affected through changes in agricultural productivity, impacts on human health and food security, destruction of homes and infrastructure, and loss of property and income, with adverse effects on gender and social equity

B.1.7 - Humanitarian Issues

• Climate change is contributing to humanitarian crises where climate hazards interact with high vulnerability.
• Climate and weather extremes are increasingly driving displacement in all regions, with small island states disproportionately affected. Flood and drought-related acute food insecurity and malnutrition have increased in Africa and Central and South America.

B.2. - Vulnerability

• Approximately 3.3 to 3.6 billion people live in contexts that are highly vulnerable to climate change

B.2.1

• Since AR5 there is increasing evidence that degradation and destruction of ecosystems by humans increases the vulnerability of people.
• Unsustainable land-use and land cover change, unsustainable use of natural resources, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, pollution, and their interactions, adversely affect the capacities of ecosystems, societies, communities and individuals to adapt to climate change.

B.2.3 - Ecosystems

• Projected climate change, combined with non-climatic drivers, will cause loss and degradation of much of the world's forests, coral reefs and low-lying coastal wetlands.

B.2.5 - Human Vulnerability

• Global hotspots of high human vulnerability are found particularly in West-, Central- and East Africa, South Asia, Central and South America, Small Island Developing States and the Arctic.
• Vulnerability is higher in locations with poverty, governance challenges and limited access to basic services and resources, violent conflict and high levels of climate-sensitive livelihoods (e.g., smallholder farmers, pastoralists, fishing communities).
• Between 2010-2020, human mortality from floods, droughts and storms was 15 times higher in highly vulnerable regions, compared to regions with very low vulnerability

B.2.6 - Future Human Vulnerability

• Future human vulnerability will continue to concentrate where the capacities of local, municipal and national governments, communities and the private sector are least able to provide infrastructures and basic services.
• Under the global trend of urbanization, human vulnerability will also concentrate in informal settlements and rapidly growing smaller settlements. In rural areas vulnerability will be heightened by compounding processes including high emigration, reduced habitability and high reliance on climate-sensitive livelihoods

Figure SPM2 - This would be nice to summarize, but it’s detailed, nuanced and that might be difficult.

Risks in the near term (2021-2040)

B.3.2

• In the near term, climate-associated risks to natural and human systems depend more strongly on changes in their vulnerability and exposure than on differences in climate hazards between emissions scenarios.
• Regional differences exist, and risks are highest where species and people exist close to their upper thermal limits, along coastlines, in close association with ice or seasonal rivers.
• Risks are also high where multiple non-climate drivers persist or where vulnerability is otherwise elevated.
• Many of these risks are unavoidable in the near-term, irrespective of emission scenario.
• Several risks can be moderated with adaptation.

B3.3

• Levels of risk for all Reasons for Concern (RFC) are assessed to become high to very high at lower global warming levels than in AR5.
• Between 1.2°C and 4.5°C global warming level very high risks emerge in all five RFCs compared to just two RFCs in AR5.
• Two of these transitions from high to very high risk are associated with near-term warming: risks to unique and threatened systems at a median value of 1.5°C °C and risks associated with extreme weather events at a median value of 2°C.

Mid to Long-term Risks (2041–2100)

B.4.1 - Ecosystems/biodiversity

• In terrestrial ecosystems, 3 to 14% of species assessed will likely face very high risk of extinction34 at global warming levels of 1.5°C, increasing up to 3 to 18% at 2°C, 3 to 29% at 3°C, 3 to 39% at 4°C, and 3 to 48% at 5°C.
• Very high extinction risk for endemic species in biodiversity hotspots is projected to at least double from 2% between 1.5°C and 2°C global warming levels and to increase at least tenfold if warming rises from 1.5°C to 3°C.

B.4.2 - Water Availability

• At approximately 2°C global warming, snowmelt water availability for irrigation is projected to decline in some snowmelt dependent river basins by up to 20%, and global glacier mass loss of 18 ± 13% is projected to diminish water availability for agriculture, hydropower, and human settlements in the mid- to long-term, with these changes projected to double with 4°C global warming.
• In small islands, groundwater availability is threatened by climate change. Changes to streamflow magnitude, timing and associated extremes are projected to adversely impact freshwater ecosystems in many watersheds by the mid- to long-term across all assessed scenarios.
• Projected increases in direct flood damages are higher by 1.4 to 2 times at 2°C and 2.5 to 3.9 times at 3°C compared to 1.5°C global warming without adaptation. At global warming of 4°C, approximately 10% of the global land area is projected to face increases in both extreme high and low river flows in the same location, with implications for planning for all water use sectors

B.4.3 - Food Security

• At 2°C or higher global warming level in the mid-term, food security risks due to climate change will be more severe, leading to malnutrition and micro-nutrient deficiencies, concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Central and South America and Small Islands.
• Global warming will progressively weaken soil health and ecosystem services such as pollination, increase pressure from pests and diseases, and reduce marine animal biomass, undermining food productivity in many regions on land and in the ocean.

B.4.4 - Human Health

• In particular, dengue risk will increase with longer seasons and a wider geographic distribution in Asia, Europe, Central and South America and sub-Saharan Africa, potentially putting additional billions of people at risk by the end of the century.
• Mental health challenges, including anxiety and stress, are expected to increase under further global warming in all assessed regions, particularly for children, adolescents, elderly, and those with underlying health conditions

B.4.5 - Cities/settlements/infrastructure

• Globally, population change in low-lying cities and settlements will lead to approximately a billion people projected to be at risk from coastal-specific climate hazards in the mid-term under all scenarios, including in Small Islands. The population potentially exposed to a 100-year coastal flood is projected to increase by about 20% if global mean sea level rises by 0.15 m relative to 2020 levels; this exposed population doubles at a 0.75 m rise in mean sea level and triples at 1.4 m without population change and additional adaptation.
• Sea level rise poses an existential threat for some Small Islands and some low-lying coasts.
• By 2100 the value of global assets within the future 1-in-100 year coastal floodplains is projected to be between US$7.9 and US$12.7 trillion (2011 value) under RCP4.5, rising to between US$8.8 and US$14.2 trillion under RCP8.5. Dtetta (talk) 00:36, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for putting all of this together. I'm slowly working these statements into effects of climate change, which me and @EMsmile plan to bring up to GA level. I find it a rather daunting task, given my lack of expertise. We can use more hands there (also to (re)move outdated/overly detailed info)

For statements with medium confidence, I'm slightly less inclined to add them. When I do, I usually try to formulate the sentence with less confidence (is likely, may, rather than will likely, standard present tense).

If the IPCC puts connects vulnerability strongly to adaptation, I see not reason not to follow them. For me, it is more logically placed under impacts, like what User:Richard Nevell (WMUK) did. Femke (talk) 17:16, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

The issue with adaptation in the lede is that the lede should be about what is important for a general audience to understand. Just as we needed to refocus on the issue that greenhouse gases are The Cause (not feedbacks), we need to focus on the fact that mitigation is The Solution. A very common right wing trope is that climate change is no big deal and people are very adaptable and will just buy a few more air conditioner units or whatever and be fine. The attitude that mitigation is not worth personal sacrifice or a vote is far more pernicious than the issue of denial.

Adaptation is an important issue, but we should not let the lede slide back to the old wording, which presented adaptation on par with mitigation and as an alternative to mitigation. A general audience first needs to understand that mitigation is the most important thing and that without it irreversible, unavoidable, and serious impacts will get much worse. Adaptation can partly mitigate a few of those impacts, but that's it. Efbrazil (talk) 18:05, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks Femke. In looking at this again, I think your view on vulnerability is correct. It’s clearly an element of the risk paradigm that IPCC uses to describe impacts, so it would make more sense to put any edits in that section of the article. I also agree with your approach for qualifying statements on medium confidence findings, although I think including long term impacts are also important, so I would still be just as inclined to add them where they make sense. Glad you and EMsmile are working on the effects of climate change article. I’m at the point where I think I could start to help again with that effort. Dtetta (talk) 15:51, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

That would be great Dtetta as we need more brains there (effects of climate change) - thank you (and thanks for this long list from the WG 2 report that you've put together). There's now also the newly split off article effects of climate change on agriculture which is also closely related to vulnerability and adaption and will need content from the WG II report be woven into it. EMsmile (talk) 23:21, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

Adaptation

Note 1: IMO, many of the statements in this section of the report, particularly the conclusions in C2, which are headline conclusions, render the current last sentence in the lead, as well as the second sentence in the Adaptation section (which to me imply a “don’t rely too much on adaptation” message), as outdated. Nowhere in the AR6WGII report do those statements, taken from the AR5 Synthesis report, appear to be repeated. I take that as meaning that the IPCC no longer supports that type of qualification of adaptation when describing it. In fact, many of the statements in this section of the report, as well as the breadth of findings in general, are at odds with that position, and appear to indicate a strong embrace of adaptation as being a crucial, unqualified priority in terms of CC response.

Note 2: I didn’t include any statements from the climate resilient development section. Although the idea of needing to combine adaptation and mitigation is important, there’s so much techno speak here that my eyes started to glaze over, and I found it hard to grab onto specific statements that could easily be incorporated into the article. If someone else wants to take a shot at capturing relevant statements from the section that would be great.

C.1 - Overview

• However, adaptation progress is unevenly distributed with observed adaptation gaps. Note - Currently included in the article, but we might want to include some of the details from the body of the report.

C.1.1

• Growing public and political awareness of climate impacts and risks has resulted in at least 170 countries and many cities including adaptation in their climate policies and planning processes
• Adaptation can generate multiple additional benefits such as improving agricultural productivity, innovation, health and well-being, food security, livelihood, and biodiversity conservation as well as reduction of risks and damages

C.1.2

• Most observed adaptation is fragmented, small in scale, incremental, sector-specific, designed to respond to current impacts or near-term risks, and focused more on planning rather than implementation.
• Gaps are partially driven by widening disparities between the estimated costs of adaptation and documented finance allocated to adaptation.
• At current rates of adaptation planning and implementation the adaptation gap will continue to grow.
• As adaptation options often have long implementation times, long-term planning and accelerated implementation, particularly in the next decade, is important to close adaptation gaps.

Future Adaptation Options and their Feasibility

C.2

• There are feasible and effective adaptation options which can reduce risks to people and nature.
• Integrated, multi-sectoral solutions that address social inequities, differentiate responses based on climate risk and cut across systems, increase the feasibility and effectiveness of adaptation in multiple sectors

C.2.1

• Adaptation to water-related risks and impacts make up the majority of all documented adaptation.
• For inland flooding, combinations of non-structural measures like early warning systems and structural measures like levees have reduced loss of lives
• Enhancing natural water retention such as by restoring wetlands and rivers, land use planning such as no build zones or upstream forest management, can further reduce flood risk.
• On-farm water management, water storage, soil moisture conservation and irrigation are some of the most common adaptation responses and provide economic, institutional or ecological benefits and reduce vulnerability.
• Irrigation is effective in reducing drought risk and climate impacts in many regions and has several livelihood benefits, but needs appropriate management to avoid potential adverse outcomes, which can include accelerated depletion of groundwater and other water sources and increased soil salinization.

C.2.2 - Food Availability

• Effective options include cultivar improvements, agroforestry, community-based adaptation, farm and landscape diversification, and urban agriculture.
• Adaptation strategies which reduce food loss and waste or support balanced diets (as described in the IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land) contribute to nutrition, health, biodiversity and other environmental benefits

C.2.3 - Forests

• Adaptation for natural forests includes conservation, protection and restoration measures.
• Cooperation, and inclusive decision making, with local communities and Indigenous Peoples, as well as recognition of inherent rights of Indigenous Peoples, is integral to successful forest adaptation in many areas.

C.2.4 - Ecosystems

• Conservation, protection and restoration of terrestrial, freshwater, coastal and ocean ecosystems, together with targeted management to adapt to unavoidable impacts of climate change, reduces the vulnerability of biodiversity to climate change
• Adaptation options, where circumstances allow, include facilitating the movement of species to new ecologically appropriate locations, particularly through increasing connectivity between conserved or protected areas, targeted intensive management for vulnerable species and protecting refugial areas where species can survive locally.

C.2.5 - Ecosystem based adaptation

• Urban greening using trees and other vegetation can provide local cooling.
• Natural river systems, wetlands and upstream forest ecosystems reduce flood risk by storing water and slowing water flow, in most circumstances.
• Coastal wetlands protect against coastal erosion and flooding associated with storms and sea level rise where sufficient space and adequate habitats are available until rates of sea level rise exceeds natural adaptive capacity to build sediment.

Urban, Rural and Infrastructure Transition

C.2.6

• Considering climate change impacts and risks in the design and planning of urban and rural settlements and infrastructure is critical for resilience and enhancing human well-being
• The urgent provision of basic services, infrastructure, livelihood diversification and employment, strengthening of local and regional food systems and community-based adaptation enhance lives and livelihoods, particularly of low-income and marginalised groups.

C.2.7

• Globally, more financing is directed at physical infrastructure than natural and social infrastructure and there is limited evidence of investment in the informal settlements hosting the most vulnerable urban residents.
• Combined ecosystem-based and structural adaptation responses are being developed, and there is growing evidence of their potential to reduce adaptation costs and contribute to flood control, sanitation, water resources management, landslide prevention and coastal protection.

C.2.8

• Sea level rise poses a distinctive and severe adaptation challenge as it implies dealing with slow onset changes and increased frequency and magnitude of extreme sea level events which will escalate in the coming decades.
• Responses to ongoing sea level rise and land subsidence in low-lying coastal cities and settlements and small islands include protection, accommodation, advance and planned relocation.
• These responses are more effective if combined and/or sequenced, planned well ahead, aligned with sociocultural values and development priorities, and underpinned by inclusive community engagement processes.

C.2.9

• Approximately 3.4 billion people globally live in rural areas around the world, and many are highly vulnerable to climate change. Integrating climate adaptation into social protection programs, including cash transfers and public works programmes, is highly feasible and increases resilience to climate change.

Energy System Transition

C.2.10

• Energy generation diversification, including with renewable energy resources and generation that can be decentralised depending on context (e.g., wind, solar, small scale hydroelectric) and demand side management (e.g., storage, and energy efficiency improvements) can reduce vulnerabilities to climate change, especially in rural populations. Dtetta (talk) 15:35, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

I read our text more like: "you can't only rely on adaptation, you need mitigation too" rather than “don’t rely too much on adaptation”. Still, it would be great to see updated thinking into our article. I think points that can be added are:

• The first C2
• The lack of funding for natural solutions instead of physical solutions
• Urban greening.

(And of course, one way to put more emphasis on adaptation is by making it into its own heading rather than a subheading, but I'm repeating myself). Femke (talk) 13:45, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

I would also like to repeat myself on putting more emphasis on adaptation. At any rate, my takeaways from Conditions for Climate Resilient Development:

• D.1 "Comprehensive, effective, and innovative responses can harness synergies and reduce trade-offs between adaptation and mitigation to advance sustainable development", a useful general statement to note adaptation and mitigation can be complementary.
• D.1.1 "There is a rapidly narrowing window of opportunity to enable climate resilient development...Climate resilient development pathways are progressively constrained by every increment of warming, in particular beyond 1.5°C, etc.", a note that adaptation is preventative, and easier to implement earlier rather than later, along with the specific note that it should happen before the 1.5°C point.
• D.1.2, no specific useful words but supports a general statement that adaptation must vary by socioeconomic and geographical factors.

This is the point where the techno speak really kicks in, and much is simply an elaboration on the above general points, and there's some repetition. Much is likely undue here. Some points that stood out to me:

• D.3 "Interactions between changing urban form, exposure and vulnerability can create climate change-induced risks and losses for cities and settlements...inclusive planning and investment in everyday decision-making about urban infrastructure, including social, ecological and grey/physical infrastructures, can significantly increase the adaptive capacity of urban and rural settlement...Coastal cities and settlements play an especially important role in advancing climate resilient development", essentially, cities are important areas to focus adaptation on, and coastal ones should be a particular focus (it does not state the obvious reason why here, but does in D.3.3).
• D.3.1 "Taking integrated action...Based on socioeconomic circumstances, adaptation and sustainable development actions will provide multiple benefits including for health and well-being", essentially, climate adaptation can be integrated with other urban development. (My personal go to example is Rotterdam but there may be better ones and it isn't in this source.)
• D.4 "Safeguarding biodiversity and ecosystems is fundamental to climate resilient development"
• D.4.2 "Documented examples of adverse impacts of land-based measures intended as mitigation, when poorly implemented, include afforestation of grasslands, savannas and peatlands, and risks from bioenergy crops at large scale to water supply, food security and biodiversity", not really adaptation, but potential inclusion about mitigation.
• D.4.3 "Biodiversity and ecosystem services have limited capacity to adapt to increasing global warming levels, which will make climate resilient development progressively harder to achieve beyond 1.5°C warming"
• D.5 "Societal choices and actions implemented in the next decade determine the extent to which medium- and long-term pathways will deliver higher or lower climate resilient development (high confidence). Importantly climate resilient development prospects are increasingly limited if current greenhouse gas emissions do not rapidly decline, especially if 1.5°C global warming is exceeded in the near term (high confidence)."

CMD (talk) 16:08, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Livelihoods paragraph

Dear Chidgk1 could you please specify the reason for deleting this sentence, please? The risks posed by disasters and climate change affect these groups and populations in different ways and vary also depending on the populations’ societal differences, including their gender identity, sex, ethnicity, and age. Unfortunately, we did not manage to reply to the below 'clarification needed' request per time: "surely not gender identity as such but whether other people or govt marginalize people whose gender identity they don't like (for example Hijra (South Asia)) - so surely covered by next sentence about marginalised people (March, 2022)." The second part of the sentence, which includes gender identity, refers to “societal differences”, and reinforces the concept. This content is taken from this FAO publication: https://doi.org/10.4060/cb7431en. User:Richard Nevell (WMUK) Gaia797 (talk) 15:04, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

• I support the deletion. I tried to address the concern by tightening up the existing wording to more closely mirror the source material. As the source makes clear, the overriding predictor of impact disparity is wealth. The secondary predictors are geographic location and social standing. Social standing can then factor into a wide range of demographic correlations that we shouldn't be trying to enumerate, as this is an article on climate change. We don't want rank how gender, beauty, disabilities, BMI, caste, national tax structure, or whatever else is correlated with social disparity. --Efbrazil (talk) 16:41, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

  I lean support adding a sentence about which groups are affected more (not just marginalised people), at least the most important ones (wealth, then gender I believe?). However, there was significant WP:CITATION OVERKILL. We've recently also tried to make this article understandable to non-academics, and terms like "gender identity" don't really work. For easy writing, an average sentence length of 12 words, with an occasional sentence up to 20 words is recommended. Would you mind sharing an improved sentence, with one (or maybe two) sources max here on talk?

  To address Efbrazils point, you'll have to show that enumerating these groups is WP:DUE. Do overview sources (so about climate change in general) also put a lot of emphasis on these various groups? An good overview source is the IPCC WG2 report.

  Thanks for collaborating here. Also make sure to keep discussion on-wiki (I noticed a we in your comment, which implies off-wiki discussion). Femke (talk) 17:14, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

• Richard Nevell (WMUK) That certainly looks a reliable source - and short enough to read in total - I will read it and hopefully comment further shortly. Chidgk1 (talk) 05:56, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
• Richard Nevell (WMUK) How about something like "More women in positions of power could help women farmers get the resources needed to adapt to the effects of climate change on agriculture." citing that source? Although maybe someone could shorten it slightly. Also going off-topic if only Elvira Nabiullina had been president of the whole country rather than just the central bank. Chidgk1 (talk) 06:20, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

  That seems to be going in the opposite direction: being even more specific in this overview article. Easiest is always to use overview sources, rather than specialist sources. Femke (talk) 17:07, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

Inaccuracy in "Changes of the land surface" section

The final sentence of this section ends with a single sentence, concluding that "Globally, these effects are estimated to have led to a slight cooling, dominated by an increase in surface albedo." This is contradicted in the citation provided . The sentence immediately preceding the sentence quoted in the citation states that there is a "net small warming signal".

I suggest editing both the citation, to include the preceding sentence, and the body text, to indicate that there is a slight warming effect, not a slight cooling effect. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bordriiv (talk • contribs)

This paragraph is only about the biophysical aspect. We describe the biogeochemical aspect in the section above about greenhouse gases. Femke (talk) 19:46, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

If it is only talking about biophysical effects I think that should be stated explicitly, rather than relying on the reader to infer that "these effects" doesn't include greenhouse gas emissions. Bordriiv (talk) 16:56, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

References

Suggestion about the section on "observed temperature rise"

I'm proposing a sub-heading in the section on "observed temperature rise" for the following reasons: It would give this long section (5 paragraphs) a sub-structure which would also make it accessible from the the TOC. As an aside, I am also contemplating transcribing this section to instrumental temperature record which also has a section on regional aspects (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_temperature_record#Regional_temperature_changes). It could include the same content, and not more because I feel that the details of the regional aspects should be at effects of climate change. A second sub-heading within "observed temperature rise" might also be helpful, such as "global temperature observations" (to distinguish from regional aspects) or something about "Methodology". I understand it's meant to be short and a summary of Main articles: "Temperature record of the last 2,000 years" and "Instrumental temperature record", and maybe that's the reason why now sub-headings were used. But I think the sub-headings could give the readers some useful orientation. EMsmile (talk) 15:44, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

Do we need a bit more information about ozone?

I am wondering if the article might benefit from a bit more information about ozone (as a GHG but also in terms of air quality / surface ozone concentrations). In the AR6 WG I report, the term ozone appears nearly 1,200 times. I am thinking in particular the information about surface ozone is missing, e.g. this kind of statement " Sustained methane mitigation reduces global surface ozone, contributing to air quality improvements and also reduces surface temperature in the longer term, but only 15 sustained CO2 emission reductions allow long-term climate stabilization (high confidence)" (technical summary, page 68). Also the links between heatwaves and surface ozone. Note the article effects of climate change doesn't mention ozone once. I came to this topic via the route of air quality that is mentioned at effects of climate change on human health. EMsmile (talk) 11:24, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

I think we did mention ozone in the past. The difficulty with ozone is that we have to dedicate quite a few words to it if we include. Most people know ozone from the ozone hole, and are unaware it's also a GHG. So if we include it, we need to use difficult words like troposphere and stratosphere. Furthermore, as a GHG it's already partially covered, included in the effect of its precursor elements (f.i. methane and N2O). Overall, I'd lean weakly against introducing it here. Attribution of climate change is the more appropriate place to talk about causes in-depth. Femke (talk) 18:52, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Interesting that this issue comes up, I was just reading about the effects of wildfires in thinning the ozone layer.[2] Not sure at what point this research becomes suitable for the article, or if it’s touched on at all in AR6 WGI. Dtetta (talk) 21:26, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks to both of your for your interesting responses. Apart from the fact that ozone is a greenhouse gas (which does get mentioned in the climate change article), there is also the aspect of ozone at ground level reaching concentrations that are harmful to humans and this is more likely to happen when there is air pollution plus heat waves. It's explained quite well in the Wikipedia article on ozone here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone#Low_level_ozone (it says there "Ozone pollution in urban areas is especially concerning with increasing temperatures, raising heat-related mortality during heat waves.". Ozone warnings / air quality is something that readers can relate to, and it's not overly complicated. Maybe it's too detailed for this article, or perhaps it could be included with a sentence or two. And/or it needs to be included in effects of climate change, doesn't it? Or if we see it purely as a health issue, then only include it in effects of climate change on human health? It's interesting that the IPCC AR6 mentions ozone so often (1200 times), compared to methane which is mentioned only half as often - 682 times, and heat wave is only mentioned 342 times. EMsmile (talk) 22:20, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Took a look through the AR6 SPM, and what I found supports Femke’s comments. Namely, that the coverage of ozone there is more focused on ozone precursors and the effect they have on atmospheric temperatures. Ozone/ozone precursors are mentioned as a human influenced driver (along with GHGs, aerosols, and land use change), so I could see us briefly mentioning it in the drivers of temperature rise section, but I would defer to Femke on this. Dtetta (talk) 04:04, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

So nothing in AR6 about ozone as an air pollutant for humans during heatwaves? Then maybe it's not significant, I guess. I remember hearing about it in the news and finding it scary but haven't yet dug into it. EMsmile (talk) 15:45, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

Energy

I reverted Efbrazil’s 15 March @16:57 and @16:44 edits. Re-organizing the limitations to renewable energy paragraph to highlight bio energy as the main concern makes no sense to me. From all of the articles I am reading, the key challenge/obstacle still remains the intermittency of renewable energy sources. I don’t often see the issues around bio energy being discussed nearly as often, although they are legitimate concerns and deserve mentioning in this section. The edit justification “Reorganizing renewable energy obstacles paragraph for readability and flow”, also doesn’t seem accurate, given what was changed. Clearly stating that the edit was highlighting the prominence of bioenergy issues would have been more helpful.

I also reverted the 16:44 edit that moved the hydropower sentence. IMO it works better in the context of discussing obstacles to renewable energy. The first sentence is mainly about trends in renewable energy compared to fossil fuels, and the main drivers of those trends (cheaper renewables). I would also prefer to see the nuclear energy sentence moved out of that paragraph to a different location in the section, but that’s another story.

All-in-all there were a number of revisions that day to the mitigation section that, cumulatively, were a significant change. There was one other that I disagree with, but not strongly enough to revert it. It would be helpful, when making edits of that magnitude, if we could all post the proposal here on the talk page first. Maybe others would support these edits, but it would be good to have that discussion first. Dtetta (talk) 15:17, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

In terms of the sentence starting with “Solar and wind have seen…”, that had been deleted, I suggest we keep it and edit that sentence (and the next) to: “Solar and wind have seen substantial growth and progress over the last few years, and are now the cheapest forms of adding new power generation capacity in most countries.” Dtetta (talk) 15:32, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

I moved bioenergy earlier in the paragraph simply for flow, as there are several sentences on solar / wind and only one on bioenergy and that reads awkwardly to have bio be the concluding sentence of the paragraph. I wasn't making the edit to say bioenergy is more important, but I can see how you'd see it that way. Anyhow, I'm fine moving it back to the end of the paragraph, even though it reads terribly. Hopefully something better than the current arrangement will occur to one of us.

The key thing in the intro is creating balance and fair coverage. Hydro, nuclear, and solar/wind each contribute about a third of clean energy, so we need to cover each of their prospects. We can go further on hydro in the renewables section, but we shouldn't omit hydro prospects from the intro.r

I have no objection to adding in a version of the solar and wind comment to the intro as you say, but again I was trying to create coverage balance between nuclear, solar/wind, and hydro. The sentence on solar/wind that I cut was just a synopsis of what is already being said elsewhere. Efbrazil (talk) 15:57, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

So I would suggest that we move both the nuclear power and hydropower sentences to that latter paragraph, where bioenergy still is. The last sentences of that paragraph on obstacles to renewables would now read:

”Nuclear power generation is now several times more expensive per megawatt-hour than wind and solar, and its share of renewables has remained unchanged over the past decade. Hydropower growth is also slowing as the best sites have been developed and concerns about social and environmental impacts grow.” Same references.

Again, the purpose of this would be to keep the intro paragraph focused more on trends in renewable energy generation (and the most significant trend is the current and expected future increases in solar/wind), and that latter paragraph focused on obstacles (and some potential solutions). I think we will still have a balance between solar, wind, nuclear and hydro, but it will be in that paragraph. Dtetta (talk) 22:16, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

I don't know that there's a problem with the intro breaking down the mix the way it does. Nuclear, hydro, and other renewables each generate about a third of clean energy, so it makes sense to begin the topic with that breakdown. Also, the suggested sentence has some issues. Nuclear is not a renewable and it's share of clean power has been decreasing (although its overall use is growing). Efbrazil (talk) 22:12, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Efbrazil Sorry, just made that change, and did not see your comment, having waited a couple of days. If you want to propose starting with that breakdown you mention, then I think the whole paragraph needs to be redone, as the paragraph starts with “Renewable energy is key to limiting climate change.” I’m fine with looking at alternative ways of introducing the idea of clean energy in that opening paragraph. Do you want to make a proposal? You’re correct in that nuclear is not a renewable. So, in terms of the latter paragraph, I would suggest we just change the first sentence to “There are obstacles to the continued growth of clean energy, including renewables.” That intro sentence would then be broad enough that it would include nuclear. I imagine there are folks who would also object to categorizing either nuclear or hydro as “clean energy”, but that is another issue. Dtetta (talk) 23:28, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

A note of caution, though. IMO, a key concern regarding including hydro and nuclear in the first paragraph is that the overall mitigation lead clearly states that “ Although there is no single pathway to limit global warming to 1.5 or 2 °C, most scenarios and strategies see a major increase in the use of renewable energy in combination with increased energy efficiency measures to generate the needed greenhouse gas reductions.” The second Clean energy paragraphs also features renewable energy in describing transitions to lower GHG emissions. So I think the first Clean energy paragraph would ideally support those statements, and focusing on nuclear and hydro (as well as bioenergy) in that paragraph seems like a distraction from that standpoint. I’m not aware of any major reports that feature nuclear or hydro as significant solutions to lowering GHG emissions over the next 30 years.Dtetta (talk) 00:34, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

Dtetta I backed out the edits as they were factually wrong, as explained in the edit comments. In terms of organization, it makes sense to introduce nuclear / hydro in the first paragraph as they are currently 2/3rds of the clean energy mix. It's not like we are hyping those sources up- we are explaining why they are not the path forward (although they are key to providing base load power). I'd be OK with putting them in a second paragraph that could be dedicated to the current mix of power and the issue of base load power, but they shouldn't be stuffed into the end of a paragraph that is about obstacles to wind and solar, which is an unrelated topic. Efbrazil (talk) 17:01, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

How about changing "Renewable energy is key to limiting climate change." to "Low-carbon power is key to limiting climate change." or "Low-carbon power and heat is key to limiting climate change."? Chidgk1 (talk) 18:59, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Edit summary

Just saying that this article's edit summaries are just... perfect. I wish that I could do the same! CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 17:03, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

Revisiting the edit discussion on the Clean energy text

Along with reverting my recent edit to the article, Efbrazil has removed some recent posts I made to this page regarding the Clean energy subsection (which strikes me as a violation of the basic precepts of this talk page, as well as several elements of the Wikipedia:Etiquette policy). I am reposting them here, along with a proposed compromise that I hope can resolve this content dispute, and avoid the repeated editing and reverting of these portions of the article.

Here are the most recent posts that Efbrazil and I made on this topic: So I would suggest that we move both the nuclear power and hydropower sentences to that latter paragraph, where bioenergy still is. The last sentences of that paragraph on obstacles to renewables would now read: ”Nuclear power generation is now several times more expensive per megawatt-hour than wind and solar, and its share of renewables has remained unchanged over the past decade. Hydropower growth is also slowing as the best sites have been developed and concerns about social and environmental impacts grow.” Same references. Again, the purpose of this would be to keep the intro paragraph focused more on trends in renewable energy generation (and the most significant trend is the current and expected future increases in solar/wind), and that latter paragraph focused on obstacles (and some potential solutions). I think we will still have a balance between solar, wind, nuclear and hydro, but it will be in that paragraph. Dtetta (talk) 22:16, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

I don't know that there's a problem with the intro breaking down the mix the way it does. Nuclear, hydro, and other renewables each generate about a third of clean energy, so it makes sense to begin the topic with that breakdown. Also, the suggested sentence has some issues. Nuclear is not a renewable and it's share of clean power has been decreasing (although its overall use is growing). Efbrazil (talk) 22:12, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Efbrazil Sorry, just made that change, and did not see your comment, having waited a couple of days. If you want to propose starting with that breakdown you mention, then I think the whole paragraph needs to be redone, as the paragraph starts with “Renewable energy is key to limiting climate change.” I’m fine with looking at alternative ways of introducing the idea of clean energy in that opening paragraph. Do you want to make a proposal? You’re correct in that nuclear is not a renewable. So, in terms of the latter paragraph, I would suggest we just change the first sentence to “There are obstacles to the continued growth of clean energy, including renewables.” That intro sentence would then be broad enough that it would include nuclear. I imagine there are folks who would also object to categorizing either nuclear or hydro as “clean energy”, but that is another issue. Dtetta (talk) 23:28, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

A note of caution, though. IMO, a key concern regarding including hydro and nuclear in the first paragraph is that the overall mitigation lead clearly states that “ Although there is no single pathway to limit global warming to 1.5 or 2 °C, most scenarios and strategies see a major increase in the use of renewable energy in combination with increased energy efficiency measures to generate the needed greenhouse gas reductions.” The second Clean energy paragraphs also features renewable energy in describing transitions to lower GHG emissions. So I think the first Clean energy paragraph would ideally support those statements, and focusing on nuclear and hydro (as well as bioenergy) in that paragraph seems like a distraction from that standpoint. I’m not aware of any major reports that feature nuclear or hydro as significant solutions to lowering GHG emissions over the next 30 years.Dtetta (talk) 00:34, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

___________________________________________

And here is what I propose for these paragraphs (using the same references as are currently in the text). The first paragraph would read:

“Renewable energy is key to limiting climate change. Fossil fuels accounted for 80% of the world's energy in 2018. The remaining share was split between nuclear power and renewables (including solar and wind power, bioenergy, geothermal energy, and hydropower). That mix is projected to change significantly over the next 30 years. Solar panels and onshore wind are now the cheapest forms of adding new power generation capacity in most countries. Renewables represented 75% of all new electricity generation installed in 2019, nearly all solar and wind. Meanwhile, nuclear power share remains the same but costs are increasing. Nuclear power generation is now several times more expensive per megawatt-hour than wind and solar. Hydropower growth is also slowing as the best sites have been developed and concerns about social and environmental impacts grow. Other forms of clean energy, such as nuclear and hyrdopower, are, experiencing intermittent growth, or remaining steady.“

The latter paragraph would read:

“There are obstacles to the continued rapid growth of clean energy, including renewables. For wind and solar, there are environmental and land use concerns for new projects. Wind and solar also produce energy intermittently and with seasonal variability. Traditionally, hydro dams with reservoirs and conventional power plants have been used when variable energy production is low. Going forward, battery storage can be expanded, energy demand and supply can be matched, and long-distance transmission can smooth variability of renewable outputs. Bioenergy is often not carbon-neutral and may have negative consequences for food security. Other forms of clean energy have their own drawbacks. Nuclear power generation is now several times more expensive per megawatt-hour than wind and solar, which limits its growth potential. Hydropower growth is limited by the fact that the best sites have been developed, and concerns about social and environmental impacts have grown.“

To repeat my rationale for this edit:

• It keeps the intro paragraph focused on trends in renewable energy generation (and the most significant trend is the current and expected future increases in solar/wind), and that latter paragraph focused on obstacles (and some potential solutions). This is consistent with the lead sentence of the paragraph, which indicates that this is a paragraph largely about renewables.
• The relative role (and trends) of nuclear and hydropower is clearly noted, but the details about their problems are removed, so as not to be a distraction from the main theme of the paragraph.
• First paragraph now better supports the statement in the Mitigation lead “Although there is no single pathway to limit global warming to 1.5 or 2 °C, most scenarios and strategies see a major increase in the use of renewable energy . . . to generate the needed greenhouse gas reductions.” I’m not aware of any major reports that feature nuclear or hydro as significant solutions to lowering GHG emissions over the next 30 years.
• The latter paragraph now clearly states that the obstacles/solutions being discussed include clean energy in general and renewables in particular. So the coverage of this issue is more comprehensive.

Femke, Clayoquot, Chipmunkdavis, or RCraig09, would any of you be willing to weigh in here to help resolve this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dtetta (talk • contribs) ​​​

I don't see where Efbrazil removed your comments, they seem to be there still? Could you provide a WP:diff, Dtetta?

In general, I like the new structure slightly better than before. The issue of implying nuclear is renewables has now been solved. In terms of prose: I prefer to strike 'have grown' from the hydro sentence, as that sentence is a bit too long and now repeats the word grow. Which source are you using for: "Other forms of clean energy, such as nuclear and hyrdopower, are, experiencing intermittent growth, or remaining steady". Happy to do further copy-editing after placement in the text if consensus is found. Femke (talk) 16:13, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks Femke, the sources for that sentence are the current reference for hydro, and nuclear being unchanged comes from page 5 of this IEA report. I agree with your concern about the grown/growth redundancy, I was just trying to minimize my editing of what I thought was Efbrazil’s text. Dtetta (talk) 02:46, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

I'm looking into this and will comment soon. Take care, everyone. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 22:29, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, I have no idea where or if I touched dtetta's comments, I don't see it in history either. If it happened, it was by mistake.

I am somewhat opposed to stuffing nuclear way down in the structure as dtetta proposed.

Reasons to keep nuclear / hydro at the beginning are two fold. First, a common right wing talking point is "just do nuclear", so I think it's important to get the price comparison out of the way early. The focus on wind / solar over nuclear needs to be grounded in timelines and cost per kilowatt at the outset. We can then digress into talking about wind and solar obstacles. Otherwise it comes across potentially as bias- in that we are fruity liberals that just like wind and solar more than nuclear because they are more natural to our hippie thinking ways.

Second, it's important to separate the issue of "this is where we are at now" vs "this is where the IPCC projects we need to go". In terms of clean energy, nuclear and hydro are 2/3rds of the clean energy mix at present, so they should be mentioned in detail at the outset when we are presenting reality as it is today. Meanwhile, mitigation pathways are just that- possible future scenarios. It is possible that technological advances and a delayed timeline towards net zero results in most clean energy ultimately being nuclear. Efbrazil (talk) 23:21, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, folks, for weighing in on this, and my sincerest apologies to Efbrazil for accusing him of something he did not do. When I went to respond on the talk page to his March 25 reversion of my edit, I looked for “Reverting other March 15 Edits to the Mitigation Section” (which had been the title of our discussion) in order to respond. But I no longer could see that section. I saw he had made some edits on the talk page on March 25 and did not see that discussion listing anymore, so I incorrectly assumed he had deleted the that topic/section - but I missed the edit where Chidgk1 changed the title of that discussion topic to “Energy”. I sometimes have trouble figuring out the diffs, for some reason. It was a bad, mistaken assumption on my part. Dtetta (talk) 14:53, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

No worries, and thanks for the mea culpa! Efbrazil (talk) 18:01, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Clean energy issues

OK, deep breath... I appreciate everyone's efforts that have been made to improve flow. I'm also struggling to choose between any of the above options because I think there are big substance issues with this section.

• Framing of energy sources: I’d like to see a framing of “To reduce emissions, we’ll need to move towards low-carbon sources of energy. Here’s what those energy sources could be. Everyone agrees there is huge potential for upscaling wind and solar, if we address issues a,b, and c. Hydro and nuclear are currently major low-carbon energy sources but have issues x, y, z. Using CCS with fossil fuel power plants could be done but has these other issues.” The current framing is centered on a category of solutions (renewables), rather than a problem statement. Then having set up this frame, we’re left to untangle the problem that the carbon footprint of renewable energy sources varies a lot, and then we have to fit in nuclear, and we forget to discuss fossil fuels with CCS in the context of energy.
• The overall strategy for decarbonizing energy is not getting across. The strategy, for which there is strong consensus in the literature, is 1) You phase out coal-fired power plants as rapidly as possible and dramatically increase production of clean power, 2) You electrify as much as you can. Not just heating and transport, but industry too.
• The need for energy system transformation isn’t getting across. We should add a condensed version of this section on energy system transformation from our article on Sustainable energy.
• We're taking statements from mitigation pathways, which describe how climate targets could be met if the right policies were put into place, and making them sound like predictions. It would be more in the spirit of the sources (and more relevant to the subject of this article) to write in terms of how to solve the climate problem, not in terms of what we think will happen to energy prices in the next 30 years.
• The sourcing needs a review. I’m seeing some sub-optimal sources (such as World Nuclear Industry Status Report and Vox), and at least one ref to a 50-page PDF file with no page number given.
• We should be aware of the problems of the “renewables have won” argument.[3] Environmentalists have a habit of making the transition to renewables sound inevitable. The main problem with this argument is that any politician hearing this is going to think, “Great! I don’t have to bring in unpopular carbon taxes, I just have to sit back and let the free market take care of the climate problem.”
• I’d like to reframe the way this section talks about money. The costs of most energy sources vary significantly by location, and the costs of nuclear power vary depending on whether you're talking about continuing to use an existing plant or starting up a new one. Measuring energy costs in cents per kwH is problematic because it doesn't take into account the cost of accommodating variability. It would be much more scientifically defensible, and relevant to real-world concerns, to make the point that the transition to clean energy is affordable (not synonymous with cheapest) and compatible with goals for creating jobs and for economic justice.

I think a major rewrite is needed. I might be able to draft one if we can get consensus on the general direction for it. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 17:09, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

I support the direction you have outlined for advancing the clean energy section. If I had to rank them for priority x urgency, sourcing is the highest time-urgency in my view. Clarifying the overall need and strategy for decarbonizing energy are top priority rank. Paleorthid (talk) 17:43, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

I also agree with goals, plus a couple additions.

We need to clearly articulate "this is current reality", then separately list out "here are some mitigation pathways".

Keep in mind that decarbonization is just one of many goals in "sustainable energy", so we should not assume that the pathways are the same. I agree with what you say overall strategy is.

For nuclear, we should probably give a nod to some more promising technologies, like small modular reactors and China dumping 440 billion into the tech over the next 15 years : https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-21/new-reactor-spotlights-china-s-push-to-lead-way-in-nuclear-power

For the cost per kilowatt issue, we need to be clear that timelines and cost per kilowatt are the key obstacles preventing nuclear from being a silver bullet for clean energy. Yes, there's a lot of nuance, but that's the headline. Efbrazil (talk) 17:47, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Sounds good. I'm curious what you can come up with. Keep in mind that the English we used in sustainable energy was probably too academic. IPCC WG3 should be out in a week, but will likely be more conservative (that is to say, more reliant on negative emissions) than IEA , which is more conservative then IRENA. The grey literature here (IEA/IRENA) is more highly regarded than the IPCC I get the impression. Femke (talk) 17:55, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for offering to do this Clayoquot. I’m not sure, though, that I would agree that there are significant substantive issues with this subsection. Efbrazil and I were going back and forth over a relatively small portion of it. I don’t think I was ever advocating for a major rewrite, and I certainly don’t think one is needed. Some thoughts on your bulleted comments:

• “Framing of energy sources. . .” I worry that the term “low carbon source of energy” is even more jargony than renewable energy - I think most readers have a rough understanding of the latter, but not the former. I also think we need to focus what authoritative sources are saying. If you look at Achieving the Paris Climate Agreement Goals - Table 8.1, p 180, or IEA - Net Zero by 2050 figure 2.5 p 57, you will see that renewable energy in general, and wind and solar in particular, dominate the increases in energy supply between now and 2050. I still think that should be one of the key takeaways of the intro paragraph for this section. AR6WGIII should be coming out soon and may have something to say about this area, but for now, those strike me as two of the best references.
• “The overall strategy for decarbonizing energy. . .” I agree that this is a problem with the current text. But I think one of the main reasons that it is not getting across is because we still have tangential information about hydro and nuclear in that intro paragraph. Which is why I tried to get it out of that paragraph and into the paragraph about obstacles to clean energy. I actually think the second and third paragraphs do a pretty good job of getting at your points about phasing out coal and electrifying as much as you can. The UNEP source does mention electricity in industry, so we could certainly add that to the first sentence of what’s now the third paragraph. Or it could be added to the subsection on Agriculture and industry.
• “The need for energy system transformation isn’t getting across. . .” It seems to me that we are already getting at the key points you are referring to in the second and third paragraphs. Do you think you could be more specific?
• “We're taking statements from mitigation pathways. . .” Not sure I agree here. I think should be describing as best we can what the scenarios and strategies that we cite are stating - that approach has better text-source integrity, IMO. I do agree that it does sound a bit like predictions, but we are in fact talking about scenarios and strategies. Improved wording is always welcome.
• “The sourcing needs a review. . .” I think its always a good idea to regularly verify the sourcing, but I did not see any significant issues in this subsection, and could not find the World Nuclear Industry Status Report reference you mention, at least not in he citations for this subsection (currently 210-236). I think this could be done as a side task, rather as an integral element of any rewrite.
• “We should be aware of the problems of the “renewables have won” argument. . .” I don’t agree with the premise of this statement - it strikes me as a false dichotomy. I think we can emphasize both renewables and a carbon tax, in fact, I think they complement each other
• “I’d like to reframe the way this section talks about money. . .” Emphasizing that the transition is affordable does seem like a good idea, and maybe there’s a good way to capture that in this subsection. But I don’t see how it’s more scientifically defensible to talk about affordable rather than lowest cost. Lowest cost is also what most of the references I have seen on this issue are saying, and I it’s vital that the reader understands that specific idea as a way of understanding the trends that are happening. In addition, we do talk about variability issues in the limits to clean energy paragraph. We also talk briefly about climate justice in the policy options section - is there more, specifically, that you would like to add? It’s an interesting concept, but I don’t see this as a major consideration that would justify a rewrite on the scale you seem to be suggesting.

Given the concerns you express, I would suggest that the edits I proposed in the earlier topic above move us towards progress on a couple of them, and should be carried out. We can then look at proposals for further edits. Dtetta (talk) 23:54, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

To address the concerns/questions Femke noted in her March 26 post in that earlier topic, as well as Efbrazil’s March 27 concerns about mentioning the current importance of hydro and nuclear, the last sentence of the first paragraph could read: “Other forms of clean energy, such as nuclear and hydropower, currently have a larger share of the energy supply. However, their future growth forecasts appear limited in comparison.” To address redundancy concerns, the last sentence of the latter paragraph could be: “Hydropower growth is limited by the fact that the best sites have been developed, and new projects are confronting increased social and environmental concerns.“ Dtetta (talk) 03:36, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Sure, that sounds fine. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 13:40, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

And in terms of references for the last sentence in the first paragraph, I would propose the figures in the Teske and IEA reports that I mentioned above. Dtetta (talk) 20:52, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

So just to summarize, my suggested edits for these two paragraphs are, for the intro paragraph:

“Renewable energy is key to limiting climate change. Fossil fuels accounted for 80% of the world's energy in 2018. The remaining share was split between nuclear power and renewables (including solar and wind power, bioenergy, geothermal energy, and hydropower). That mix is projected to change significantly over the next 30 years. Solar panels and onshore wind are now among the cheapest forms of adding new power generation capacity in most countries many locations Our World in DataIEA 2020. Renewables represented 75% of all new electricity generation installed in 2019, nearly all solar and wind.Meanwhile, nuclear power share remains the same but costs are increasing. Nuclear power generation is now several times more expensive per megawatt-hour than wind and solar. Hydropower growth is also slowing as the best sites have been developed and concerns about social and environmental impacts grow. Other forms of clean energy, such as nuclear and hydropower, currently have a larger share of the energy supply. However, their future growth forecasts appear limited in comparison. IEA - Net Zero by 2050 Fig2.5 p57 Teske 2019 Table 8.1 p.180“

And for the paragraph on obstacles to clean energy:

“There are obstacles to the continued rapid growth of clean energy, including renewables. For wind and solar, there are environmental and land use concerns for new projects. Wind and solar also produce energy intermittently and with seasonal variability. Traditionally, hydro dams with reservoirs and conventional power plants have been used when variable energy production is low. Going forward, battery storage can be expanded, energy demand and supply can be matched, and long-distance transmission can smooth variability of renewable outputs. Bioenergy is often not carbon-neutral and may have negative consequences for food security. Other forms of clean energy have their own drawbacks. The growth of nuclear power is constrained by controversy around nuclear waste, nuclear weapon proliferation, accidents, and costs World Nuclear Industry Status Report Fig. 44, p.293. Hydropower growth is limited by the fact that the best sites have been developed, and new projects are confronting increased social and environmental concerns.“

I included the text that Clayoquot proposed in the topic below and put in the article on 4/3. Listed references here are for sources not currently in the article. As a side note, I found the Lester reference to be fairly inaccessible. I would prefer a source for the second to last sentence in the obstacles paragraph for which the reader doesn’t need to have ready access to scientific books. I added the “World Nuclear Industry Status Report” citation to that sentence (along with the additional mention of costs. Dtetta (talk) 19:32, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

In my comment below I explained why we should not use the World Nuclear Industry Status Report as a source. Why do you think we should use it? Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 19:37, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

Did not notice in your comment where you were concerned about it being an industry report, I thought your main concern was the news article citation. The Our World in Data source also discusses rising nuclear energy costs - we could use that instead. I am seeing multiple sources talking about increased costs for nuclear energy, so I thought important to include, and the IEA 2020 report doesn’t seem to talk about trends. I am also ok with leaving that part out, if you feel strongly about it.Dtetta (talk) 20:17, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

Ah, I see, thanks. BTW World Nuclear Industry Status Report isn't an industry report, it's more like an anti-industry report, and the IEA 2020 report says "Electricity from new nuclear power plants has lower expected costs in the 2020 edition than in 2015." I'm generally comfortable using Our World in Data, however it doesn't fully support the claim that costs constrain the growth of nuclear power. If someone can produce a high-quality source that supports this claim, I'd welcome that but the high-quality sources we've found so far don't support it.

Overall I think your proposal is an improvement, and thanks again for doing this. I am a bit uncomfortable with stating that nuclear energy is "clean" in a matter-of-fact way. There is pretty robust scientific consensus that nuclear energy is low-carbon, but whether nuclear is "clean" is much more controversial. I'd rather that we introduce the idea that some energy sources are a lot worse for the climate than others and that the latter are called "low-carbon energy sources".

I agree the term "low-carbon energy source" is more jargony than "renewable energy", but that should be OK if we explain the term (and I'll note that we use the terms "low-carbon energy" and "low-carbon fuel" later in the section without defining them). "Low-carbon energy source" is a concept that we should teach the reader; by the time the reader finishes the article (or section) they should have learned the basic terminology of the subject area so they can read further about it. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 20:53, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I noticed yesterday, after I proposed it, that the World Industry Energy report is published by an anti-nuclear group, so it’s findings may be suspect from that perspective, I did think the report was well researched and documented, and it was related to one of Efbrazil’s additions, I believe. So I was trying to preserve some of his work in including it. But it is a problematic source. Your point about documenting specifically that economics is constraining nuclear growth is an interesting one, although the paragraph that particular sentence is in starts with the word “obstacles”. IMO calling increases in energy generation costs an obstacle does not seem contrary to WP:OR, but I can appreciate the general concern. I am OK with leaving it out for now.

I think the concern about calling something “clean” applies to just about all of these technologies. We could retitle the subsection “renewable energy”, and make it clear in our references to nuclear that is not considered renewable per se. Or we could talk about “low carbon”, and spend a few words clarifying what it means. I would like to try to get this edit done, and then discuss how best to add that concept in. Still think renewable is a more straightforward and understandable way to be describing all this, but would be interested in discussing specific proposals for incorporating the “low carbon” concept more broadly. I think finding other wording for the “low-carbon energy” reference in that last paragraph would also be a valid approach. That entire paragraph needs work, but that is another issue. Dtetta (talk) 13:46, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

I think having "Clean energy" as the title of the subsection is good. It's a reasonable title for a section that discusses energy sources that most people would consider to be cleaner than oil and coal (talk about a low bar). My concern is with the sentences within the section. When we say, "Other forms of clean energy have their own drawbacks" we are implying that the things we are going to talk about are forms of clean energy. If you drop the "Other forms of clean energy have their own drawbacks" sentence I'd be comfortable.

BTW I don't feel this is a showstopper issue. I'm OK with people making bold changes; I don't want to be in the way of that. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 17:08, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Good idea to drop that sentence, as it’s become redundant once the term “clean energy” was added to the first sentence. Dtetta (talk) 18:35, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Nuclear energy - balancing aspects

Thanks everyone for the feedback above. I think I'll approach issues bit by bit.

Here is what we currently say about nuclear energy:

Meanwhile, nuclear power share remains the same but costs are increasing. Nuclear power generation is now several times more expensive per megawatt-hour than wind and solar.

Other than the statistic of nuclear's current share of the energy mix, this is all we say about nuclear energy: the cost aspect. Focusing exclusively on one aspect isn't presenting a balanced perspective of aspects of the topic. The growth of nuclear energy is hindered by cost (in many locations at least) but it's also hindered by concerns around nuclear waste, nuclear weapon proliferation, and accidents.

The sourcing we're currently using is a Reuters article whose subject is an annual report by the World Nuclear Industry Status Report. Our WP:RS guidelines say "Scholarly sources and high-quality non-scholarly sources are generally better than ne ws reports for academic topics." We shouldn't be using a single news story as the basis of everything we say about the relationship between nuclear energy and climate change, especially when the news story is centered on an announcement from activists.

There are a couple of better alternatives: 1) If succinctness is critical, we could simply say that nuclear energy is controversial and link to nuclear power debate for people who want to see why it's controversial. 2) We could summarize the main aspects of the controversy. With either approach, we should use higher-quality sourcing. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 14:13, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

Done in my most recent edit.[4] I didn't mention cost-competitiveness because my source (Letcher) doesn't mention it as being a major issue. The reason Letcher doesn't mention it is probably that cost-competitiveness varies so much depending on location, circumstances, and the local costs of alternatives. According to the IEA, nuclear is often cost-favourable.[5]

Agree (single) industry reports are inferior to iea/scholarly sourcing. I like the new text. Femke (talk) 19:50, 3 April 2022 (UTC)