Talk:Climate change

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Good article Climate change was one of the good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.


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[edit] needs balanced perspective

Climate change should be discussed with global warming entry – they are one and the same thing.

This has to be a balanced discussion also discussing the forecasts and uncertainties in forecasting temperature / CO2 increase which are proposed as the causes of the examples of climate change that are presented.

Discuss the politicization (sp?) of the entire issue, the role of IPCC, of Gore etc. This is very much at the heart of the attention and emphasis being given.

Discussion of post 1950s warming does not mention the pre 1950s temperature drop that is not explained by the forcings and “predictive” climate models.

The forecasts / predictions are major part of the actual basis for the attention and emphasis in the carefully planned publicity campaign of the IPCC. IPCC readily acknowledges that their role is to expand awareness to provide push for policy makers. The 90 / 95 / etc. probabilities are without merit, are not based on independent scientific fact but Delphi polling of scientists who are doing the scientific modeling. In fact, IPCC acknowledge that it is not possible to predict the future trajectory which is why they are developing scenarios not forecasts. Scenarios assume a set of initial values or base starting points for the forcings and forecast how these forcings will play out over time. This does not adequately take into account technological change that is and will continue to occur. None of this is identified and discussed in this entry.

In this regard, some analogies with Thomas Malthus "An Essay on the Principle of Population" (1798), [aka "Malthusian catastrophe, Malthusian crisis, Malthusian dilemma, Malthusian disaster, Malthusian trap, or Malthusian limit (Wikipedia)], Paul Ehrlich "The Population Bomb" (1968), Club of Rome "Limits to Growth" (1972), as well as Orsen Well radio case of H.G. Wells "War of the Worlds" (1936) as an example of how the media can be an effective force in public opinion.

Both in the US and UK court rulings do not allow presenting / discussing the climate change issues without a balanced view of the issues such as mentioned here. Wikipedia entries should also be required to be required to meet the same standards in presenting balanced views.

The need for climate change policy is based on economic evaluation of the future pattern of costs vs. benefit. The Stern review – which is discussed – has been strongly criticized in peer reviewed journals because of its assumptions and approaches which very greatly favor support the recommendations, which is neither scientific or intellectually honest. See e.g., the following references.

Nordhaus, WILLIAM D., “A Review of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change,” Journal of Economic Literature Vol. XLV (September 2007), pp. 686–702

Weitzman, MARTIN L. “ A Review of The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change,” Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. XLV (September 2007), pp. 703–724

Pielke, Roger, Jr. , “Mistreatment of the economic impacts of extreme events in the Stern Review Report on the Economics of Climate Change , Science Direct: Global Environmental Change 17 (2007) 302–310

Nordhaus, William D., “Alternative measures of output in global economic-environmental models: Purchasing power parity or market exchange rates?,” Science Direct: Energy Economics 29 (2007) 349–372 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Davidhbecher (talk • contribs) 04:27, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

You seem to have missed the line at the very beginning: 'for current global climate change see global warming'. Merging them would be like merging the history of the United States with the 2008 presidential election... Richard001 07:26, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
The global warming page in the terminology section states that global warming is an example of climate change, a subset as it were. The way these two articles are broken up is completely wrong. --122.104.2.224 (talk) 11:59, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
How so? Global climate change is purely the projected change of the climate. Global warming is an example of climate change - it is the heating of the climate. However, if temperatures drop, which many people believed before, that too would be global climate change.
I do, however, agree that this page needs to be expanded. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mathwhiz 29 (talk • contribs) 23:49, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] What makes The Great Global Warming Swindle documentary "unreliable"?

Please explain to me why the The Great Global Warming Swindle documentary is "unreliable"? There are numerous credible scientific experts giving their opinions. What makes Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth more reliable. Just because he won the Nobel Prize does not mean he is an expert scientist. And what makes the IPCC so reliable? They don't even actually research the climate. These scientists in The Great Global Warming Swindle documentary do conduct actual research.

I'm not saying it's not possible that human activity is a major reason for the heating of the earth. It is possible, but the point is that it is still not proven. The debate is still going on. Just because an environmentalist group is 90% sure that their theory is correct, does not make it proven. Just because an obviously biased series of journalists report that all reasons for skepticism of anthropogenic global has been "squashed" or "proven wrong" does not make it true. The debate is still very much alive people and Wikipedia should be unbiased toward the debate.

I'll even do this for you: instead of the word "possibly", might I suggest we put the word "probably" or "very likely" in place of "more recently" in the introduction? Please consider my suggestion fairly; it’s not like I am trying to sway anybody's opinion or drastically change the article. I just would like for this article to be balanced and aware of other view points.--Lucky Mitch 19:31, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

You seem to harbor some misconceptions about the science of climate change, about science in general (e.g., we don't "prove" things in science), and about the role and participants of the IPCC. I'd encourage you to do some background reading on those topics. Raymond Arritt 19:39, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

You present a very good point about science. Scientific fact is based more around a consensus among scientists about the most likely reason for something rather than whether or not it worrying about whether or not it is completely accurate, and you're right, I do need to keep researching the issue. Though I understand Wikipedia is not a credible source, it is stated in the IPCC article that:

The IPCC does not carry out research, nor does it monitor climate or related phenomena. One of the main activities of the IPCC is to publish special reports on topics relevant to the implementation of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). (The UNFCCC is an international treaty that acknowledges the possibility of harmful climate change; implementation of the UNFCCC led eventually to the Kyoto Protocol.) The IPCC bases its assessment mainly on peer reviewed and published scientific literature. The IPCC is only open to member states of the WMO and UNEP. IPCC reports are widely cited in almost any debate related to climate change. National and international responses to climate change generally regard the UN climate panel as authoritative.

If I am understanding this correctly, the IPCC does not conduct research it just analyzes and reports published scientific information predominantly given by an organization that has been trying to "prove", or to be more accurate, make widely excepted as a fact, that climate change is caused mostly by human activity for some time now. It also looks to me like it is saying that the UN accepts all the information presented by the IPCC and thus makes it scientific fact.

If my interpretation of this is correct (which I hope it is not) it sounds to me like there is a problem with the system of how something becomes scientific fact. Again, I hope my interpretation of this is wrong and that something must undergo a stricter system of analyzation rather than just one organization's opinion. Please correct me if I am wrong so I can better understand your more scientific positions.--Lucky Mitch 00:49, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Your interpretation is indeed incorrect. The IPCC is made up of practicing scientists from laboratories, universities, and other institutions in relevant fields. They are not UN employees but remain employees of their home institutions. IPCC authors are free to consider the whole range of peer-reviewed literature relevant to the problem. They don't begin from "scientific information predominantly given by an organization" whether that organization be the UN or any other. Raymond Arritt 01:03, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

So is the paragraph wrong or need to be added on to or am I just completely not seeing something? Because I see nothing about the IPCC being made up of "practicing scientists from laboratories, universities, and other institutions in relevant fields" in the paragraph I cited from. If you ask me, what type of people the IPCC is made up of is a very important point and should be clearly stated at the begining of the article so that further credibility can be established.--Lucky Mitch 02:56, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Indeed that's a glaring omission from the IPCC article. It's indirectly implied by the text in IPCC#Burden_on_participating_scientists, but it should be stated directly. Raymond Arritt 03:24, 2 November 2007 (UTC)


[edit] New Ice Core Info

By no means do I oppose the inclusion of valid data that indicates CO2 variations relative to temp, this includes data that shows carbon dioxide lagging temperature flux, but this new section is highly editorial and lacks substantial references. The new graphs, in particular, contain a HIGH degree of bias in the embedded text. I've placed a POV tag rather than delete, because perhaps the editor could provide unadulterated graphs. Regards, AlphaEta T / C 22:40, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Concur with AlphaEta and Raymond arritt's recent reversion - the section is good to have but needs serious improvement and vetting to make sure no personal opinion slips in with the cited research. I've also warned the editor about personal opinion and NPOV. Michaelbusch (talk) 22:44, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

I've reverted even further [1]. There are some major problems. Start with the figures perhaps: Image:0Master Past 20000yrs temperatures icecore Vostok 150dpi.png asserts on itself that its copyright, which seems wrong. It contains a lot of text that is dubious (e.g. 16750 to 11750 years ago - massive heating pulse (solar). The stress on "present day" is wrong, because I assume he is using the "recent" of Petit, which they don't define well in the ftp file I read but isn't "now". We already have several pix of the ice core record without extraneous text.

Hmm, even the reverted version is odd. When did this creep in? William M. Connolley (talk) 23:01, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

AlphaEta - apologies for wiping out your tag. I thought I was removing the objectionable (to me) stuff, but didn't go far enough. I've taken out the whole ice core section. I don't think this is the right article for it, or the right place for this battle. This article has always been a fairly quiet backwater that talks in generalities about climate change, whereas the battles go on elsewhere, e.g. at global warming.

In particular, the CO2/T lead-lags stuff is covered at Attribution_of_recent_climate_change#Warming sometimes leads CO2 increases in rather more depth and (I think) more fairly William M. Connolley (talk) 23:08, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

I do think that ice core measurements deserve some discussion here; after all, it's a major way of studying climate change. But we need better sourcing than homemade graphs and personal interpretation. It just happens that I'm in the middle of reading some of the Petit articles etc. in preparation for next week's classes, so maybe I'll reinsert something. Raymond Arritt (talk) 23:14, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
No worries regarding the tag deletion. I didn't feel knowledgeable enough to determine whether or not the material deserved deletion, but something definitely seemed fishy about those graphs. Kindest regards, AlphaEta T / C 00:42, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
You have a good eye for fishiness (or nose, or whatever). Thanks for bringing this up. Raymond Arritt (talk) 05:47, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

The ice core temperature measurements should certainly be discussed, but we need to be very careful that no readers take the false message that the ice core data show anything like antropogenic climate change. That is the problem with the section that was there. Michaelbusch (talk) 23:16, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Sorry if I was perhaps too abrupt. There is nothing wrong with home made graphs, if they just show the data without commentary William M. Connolley (talk) 23:24, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
Yes, as exemplified by the outstanding charts that User:Dragons flight has contributed. Raymond Arritt (talk) 23:30, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fourth IPCC Report

Shouldnt the 4th IPCC Report, its conclusions, etc merit some mention in the report? Since this is a large and complex issue, and I dont know the worldview of the wiki-maintainers of this article, I have not done it personally. AshLin (talk) 05:25, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

We already have articles on the IPCC and AR4. No reason not to link them here; go ahead and do it. Raymond Arritt (talk) 05:43, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Simple temperature chart

Since for most of us lay people what worries us is "global warming", could a simple chart be included showing average temperatures going up over a long period. The only temperature charts I can see show changes of "relative temperature", which may be useful scientifically, but for simple souls, it'd be nice to see that in the early 1800s the average annual temperature was x and now it's y. Ta. --Dweller (talk) 16:02, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

If we assume the measurements are accurate and ignore the complications involved in how exactly global temperate is measured/defined; we can say that between 1850 and 2000 the global temperature increased roughly 0.7 C
Restepc (talk) 22:37, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] This article is in Question, Specifically Sunspots

Obviously this article was written by politicians (or lobbyists) and not scientists. The concept of sunspots is highly in question and is no longer a relevant point in the discussion of climate change. To quote Spencer R. Weart (The discovery of Global Warming 2003) "The study of [sun spot] cycles was generally popular through the first half of the century. Governments had collected a lot of weather data to play with and inevitably people found correlations between sun spot cycles and select weather patterns. If rainfall in England didn't fit the cycle, maybe storminess in New England would. Respected scientists and enthusiastic amateurs insisted they had found patterns reliable enough to make predictions. Sooner or later though every prediction failed. An example was a highly credible forecast of a dry spell in Africa during the sunspot minimum of the early 1930s. When the period turned out to be wet, a meteorologist later recalled "the subject of sunspots and weather relationships fell into dispute, especially among British meteorologists who witnessed the discomfiture of some of their most respected superiors" Even in the 60s he said, "For a young researcher to entertain any statement of sun-weather relationships was to brand oneself a crank" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.67.112.236 (talk) 20:07, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

While this paragraph is sourced, I think its inclusion in the article gives the reader the impression that only cranks would study climate-solar linkage. People in the 1930's could not predict weather with sunspots, but it does not follow that the sun has no influence in climate change. However, I believe that is the effect that this quote has in this article. Also, it is dubious that the predictability of weather by sunspots in the 1930's is relevant to an article on climate change. From my POV, all it does is reinforce a particular POV, not a NPOV. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.49.59.64 (talk) 12:43, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

{{editprotected}}

I request that the block quote in the grandparent paragraph be removed from the article because it violates WP:NOR. While it has a verified source, it is an irrelevant anecdote about the state of weather forecasting in the early twentieth century. This is at best tenuously related to the subject of "climate change", which is defined in this article as "any long-term significant change in the “average weather” that a given region experiences". Thus, it falls under the "Synthesis of published material serving to advance a position" paragraph of WP:NOR and should be removed. This request seems to be uncontroversial, given the lack of response to the above discussion. Also, the page says it is semi-protected, but it is not editable by a registered user. User3517 (talk) 07:05, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
Y Done. Semi-protected pages can be edited by an autoconfirmed user, which is any user account older than four days. Your account didn't meet the 4 day minimum so you couldn't edit this page; try back later in the week and you can make any change you like. --CapitalR (talk) 08:03, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I've moved the cut text to solar variation because it fits better there. The claims of OR appear quite weird though William M. Connolley (talk) 19:58, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Notes/References and See Also

I notice this article has a Notes and a Reference section. Is this intentional or rather a relict from the early days of this article? If so, should we clean it up and merge the Notes into the Reference section? --Splette :) How's my driving? 22:51, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

I have started to clean up the 'notes' and move items from the 'refences' section. Also I was bold and reduced the See Also section to just Glossary of climate change for several reasons: This section has become very long over time and was full of links to articles that are only remotely connected with climate change in general, such as Green vehicle and Global Day of Action. In Glossary of climate change the reader will find all those links, mostly with a one line description of the article. The same policy was adopted for the Global warming article. In addition, the climate change info box links to most of those articles already. If you should have a problem with me removing the See Also links, lets discuss it here. Thanks, Splette :) How's my driving? 21:46, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] External links

I suggest to remove the external links section. Just like the See Also section, it has been growing constantly. Although all those links carry the name 'climate change', they are exclusively about the current global warming, not climate change in general. However, here at wikipedia we distinguish between climate change in general (this article) and the current climate change going on (the Global Warming article). Therefore the links are misplaced here. Does anyone object against removing them? Splette :) How's my driving? 03:43, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Be bold. William M. Connolley (talk) 22:14, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
Additional support. Cheers Geologyguy (talk) 22:23, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. I removed it now. Splette :) How's my driving? 22:38, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] could use more on stuff other than global warming

Since there's already an article at global warming to cover that issue, it'd be nice if this article covered other things, rather than just being a second article on the same topic. For example, our article on Canaan mentions that it's hypothesized that the Canaanites profited during periodic bouts of climate change that caused local farming economies to collapse, but this article mentions nothing about periodic climate changes in the ancient Levant and their effect on farming and migration... --Delirium (talk) 08:11, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Actually we have recently removed already quite a bit of the current global warming stuff. As for Canaan, just as you say its a hypothesis and as long as there is no hard evidence that it has something to do with climate change, I would prefer not to include it in the article. This article should focus on the science of climate change. Splette :) How's my driving? 19:57, 13 February 2008 (UTC)


[edit] Delisting GA

This article is listed as a GA, but is not of GA standard, because it has two maintenance tags. If someone is able to fix the specified problems in the next few days, fine. Otherwise I will have to assign a B class to the article. Johnfos (talk) 03:35, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I think we can remove the second tag. Raymond added it some time last year. At that point, this section had no references, but a 'fact needed' tag on the beetles. However now, there are 4 references in this section, including one for the beetles. For me this would justify the removal of the tag. Of course, this entire section is still not too comprehensive and should be improved further. Splette :) How's my driving? 06:02, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Ok, since I see no objections here I have decided to remove the second maintenance tag as references are provided for ice cores,pollen analysis, beetles and glacial geology. Splette :) How's my driving? 02:54, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Appreciate your efforts, Splette, but I will need to delist the article now, with the hope that it can be re-submitted at WP:GAN when further improvements are made... Johnfos (talk) 02:49, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Need to mention other Green house gases

In the section of this article refering to Greenhouse gases the only greenhouse gas mentioned is C02. the article mentons that "greenhouse gases is the primary cause of global warming" I think that this section could be improved from just a rant about CO2 and its effect on climate change to include the other green house gases like H20, methane, nitros, oxide, ozone and CFCs. It doesen't mention anything about the percentages of the green house gases, I mean water vapor is 95% of all the greenhouse gases. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sero12 (talk • contribs) 12:04, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

No it isn't. And we don't need to repeat all of greenhouse gas here William M. Connolley (talk) 22:26, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

No we don't need to repeat all of the green house gases article but the mention of the other green house gases would be more fitting for the article, or as an alternative just renaming it to effects of CO2 on climate change, becuase thats all it mentions the effects of CO2 on climate change. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sero12 (talk • contribs) 08:56, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Fine im going to rename the section to "Effects of CO2 on Climate Change" —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sero12 (talk • contribs) 08:45, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

I think that the sentence "Current studies indicate that radiative forcing by greenhouse gases is the primary cause of global warming." should be changed to a more relevant: "One important mechanism of climate change is radiative forcing due to the presence of greenhouse gases".--User3517 (talk) 05:16, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Thats nice. Why do you think that? William M. Connolley (talk) 06:52, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
The main reason is that it smacks of a bias in the sense that the reader is expecting a discussion about the mechanisms of climate change and all of a sudden encounters a conclusion about current global warming. That is why I think sentences expressing the ideas about current global warming should be in another paragraph. A second reason is that this sentence strikes me as less relevant introduction to a discussion about the mechanisms of radiative forcing by greenhouse gases than the sentence I proposed. I am open to alternative wordings - what do you suggest?--User3517 (talk) 11:59, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
I would think that in a section called "Effects of CO2 on climate change" people will expect some passing reference to recent changes. They get that, very briefly, with refs to sub-articles; and then we talk about older times. That doesn't seem so unreasonable William M. Connolley (talk) 18:40, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
I am earnestly making a suggestion for the betterment of this page. I am under no illusion about my ability to make my edit succeed. You hold all the power in this situation, so your opinion will prevail. --User3517 (talk) 02:26, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
Then my opinion is that you haven't made a case for your change. I invite others to comment William M. Connolley (talk) 21:07, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Current events

I have reverted the addition of a "Current events" section twice now. First, WP:NOT#NEWS. We should not write from a short-term perspective. Moreover, this stuff is probably better in Effects of global warming than in this more generic article. No matter where it goes, it needs reliable sources. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 09:34, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Agree. Its the wrong article; and random factoids don't belong anywhere William M. Connolley (talk) 20:29, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Can we get a definition of short term/long term?

The current article starts "For current global climate change, see Global warming." which is fine, so far as it goes. Currently we seem to be in a short period of global cooling, starting about 1998. That may just be a random fluctuation or we may be seeing something of more significance. In my opinion, it's too soon to tell. But it's not too soon to come up with some sort of dividing line at which point you can say that the quoted first line should be changed. So fellows, what's the correct time period around which there should be a consensus? How many years does it take for a trend to stop being a short-term aberration? TMLutas (talk) 00:45, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Do you also consider a cosine-curve to be trending downwards - because you've picked cos(0) and cos(π) as the two points to determine the trend? (hint: 1997/1998 strong El Niño, 2007/2008 Strong La Niña). --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 00:58, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Climate is up for GA

Leaving a note on this page, since it is one of the more active climate articles on wikipedia. So far, no one from the meteorology or tropical cyclone projects has been willing to review it, after four weeks. One of you all should have enough knowledge to know if it is ready or not, and if not, why. Thegreatdr (talk) 18:59, 14 May 2008 (UTC)