Talk:Effects of climate change

Template:Vital article

RfC: when to use excerpts

We've been discussing the use of WP:excerpts a lot, but haven't really come to a conclusion about when their advantages outweight their disadvantages. I'm starting an RfC to establish consensus about when to use them, to get a broader input. I hope that we can develop best practises, that may also be used outside of this particular article.

• A No particular restrictions
• B Only use them when the original text is (1) fully cited & a comment is place in the original article that cites should not be removed (some editors prefer leads to be citation-free, which is allowed per WP:LEADCITE)
• C Only use them as above + (2) the text is either recently reviewed (GA/FA), or reviewed by the person replacing article text with an excerpt for basic accuracy + prose quality.
• D Only use them as above + (3) also make sure there is no duplication of information with rest of article.

Femke (talk) 17:02, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

• Support C/D. Currently, some of the excerpts are not fully cited. Most worryingly is the excerpt about human health, which makes claims about suicide without a source. A delve into the original article shows that there aren't any WP:MEDRS compliant sources for this either. Having sources is a bare minimum. Additionally, if citations had been provided in the glacier retreat section, the outdatedness of claims would be immediately clear.

I also think that a review of the text is needed. We're using excerpts from articles without many active writers. There are likely factual errors, and biases. For instance, if we were to excerpt tipping points in the climate system, we would include non-neutral text introduced by a sock. Ocean acidification contains a highly outdated estimate of CO2 absorbed by oceans, which I think is only true under a very low emission scenario.. A recent review at GA level would also work, but poses some risk. We have a non-neutral sentence based on a primary source in sea level rise 'climate change worse than expected'.

We now have duplication of content between excerpts of sea level rise and retreat of glaciers since 1850, because that's how these article are logically built up. Using both excerpts leads to a lower-quality article here, so it may be wise to choose one.

There are quite a few disadvantages to excerpts that also make me support stricter inclusion requirements. It requires more layers of clicking to update it, the first sentence of an article is often a definition, which is poor prose later in an article. Of course, we desperately need less maintenance work, so that's a pro. Femke (talk) 17:06, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

• Thanks for starting this important discussion with your excellent points. I am someone who likes to use excerpts a lot. Here are my thoughts:
  1. An excerpt is usually taken from the lead of the article but it doesn't have to be from the lead. It could be from any part of the article. So if the lead turned out to be not ideal, let's transcribe a different part of the article (however, if the section heading is changed then the excerpt gets broken; hence the need to add hidden comments to alert people of that).
  2. Secondly, if the excerpt is taken from a lead then it'll often be the case that there are no references given because the lead doesn't need to use references (as you pointed out as well). So I don't think that is a conceptual flaw, just following Wikipedia standards. When the reader clicks through, they'll find the sources in the main body of that article. It's not always possible/needed to find sources for the lead for sentences which summarise several paragraphs of the article.
  3. If the lead of the other article is of poor quality then it should inspire us to improve that other article's lead as well. We are after all building a web of information, not just focusing on one article and leaving the other sub-articles untouched. E.g. if including the lead of ocean acidification into effects of climate change made an editor like yourself notice that there's something wrong in the ocean acidification article then that's great and there's an easy solution: let's improve that article (or at least its lead) at the same time. Same goes for effects of climate change on human health.
  4. A small amount of duplication with the rest of the article is a small price to pay, given that most readers won't read an article from start to end but will jump in whereever they have an interest (and often not read past the lead at all). The leads are so important. If the use of excerpts makes us aware of poorly written leads then that's good, let's work on those leads.
  5. So my recommendation would be: Option E: use excerpts where they help to avoid duplication of content between two articles AND ensure that the transcribed text is improved over time (meaning it doesn't have to be perfect yet on the day that the excerpt is added but the intention would be to make it perfect over time); so it's similar to your Option A+C but it takes a staged approach, it doesn't have to be all perfect straight away. EMsmile (talk) 17:31, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

     One of the reasons I would like some basic work to be done before replacing text with an excerpt, is that we're now giving more attention to likely misinformation. I had curated a lot of this article before the various merges/excerpts. Now it's completely unclear how much everything is checked. It seems like you support A. (I can clarify A as "in advance").

     By supporting using excerpts in the case there are no citations, you may create quite a monster, if the article you're taking text from also uses an excerpt. A lede is furthermore a magnet for newer editors adding their personal beliefs, and it's very difficult to see that if there aren't any references visible in the target article. Femke (talk) 17:38, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

Pinging Sophivorus as he might be aware of similar discussions about the use of excerpts in other WikiProjects? EMsmile (talk) 17:36, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

• Support A or B because this article is not GA or FA so I think not necessary to have strict rules - editors should be able to decide for themselves. If/when someone is able to prepare it for GA - which would obviously be great - then the person(s) preparing/proposing it and then the reviewer can agree between themselves and make a note for other editors. For example I currently have Electricity sector in Turkey being reviewed, and as the reviewer is very against excerpts have removed them all except the one from an article which is itself GA. Chidgk1 (talk) 18:54, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

  I do plan to bring this article up to GA if I ever recover. Don't you think A contradictions with WP:V? Femke (talk) 19:00, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

  OK B then. Hope you get well soon. Hey Mark83 - hope you are well - surely you should be insisting on more cites in the excerpted lead in Talk:Electricity sector in Turkey/GA5 :-) Chidgk1 (talk) 13:10, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

• Support D (which I take to include C and thus also B). Femkemilene's analysis covers my rationales as well. I agree that option A basically conflicts with WP:V policy.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:46, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
• B, but they should be further discouraged. Excerpts break the link between article code and article output. Look at any old version of an article and you will likely see redlinked templates scattered everywhere. Excerpts exacerbate that issue by turning it into actual article content. They also provide a potential avenue for disruption that is not captured by watchlists (related to break between code and output), in a similar way to image vandalism. Regarding C and D, these are nice but not enforceable. Aside from the fact they should be part of the normal editing process, they are also one-off measures relating to the initial excerpt placement, and thus do not help if the excerpted text is later changed. On a prose quality note, excerpts I've run across usually take from the lead. This will usually cause issues as the ways leads are written and formatted are not the same as what is done in a body. Excerpts would theoretically work best when used to reduce duplication horizontally between articles which would have the same text, as opposed to use within the vertical summary-style structure of Wikipedia articles. CMD (talk) 01:03, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
• I have several opinions which don't align with the choices, exactly. I'm not sure that excerpts are a great idea to begin with, but I also don't really like duplicated prose. I do agree that if you are going to use an excerpt, you should pull any supporting citations from the body into the excerpted intro and put a note not to drop them or move the definition out to the body (for named references used in more than one place). (Though I will confess when writing summaries of articles I sometimes haven't bothered to pull through the citations because it's already a lot of work and they are just a click away.) You should also merge the content you are deleting into the excerpted article and make sure there's no duplication when reading either article. However, there is no requirement to bring the result of your merge or the content of the excerpt up to any particular standard of quality or verification, assuming you've taken the best parts of each article. As long as you haven't made things worse with the rearrangement, you can just tag any unreferenced claims or other failings as you would on any article. It would be nice of you to do cleanup and fact-checking, but as a volunteer there's no requirement that you do all the things that need to be done yourself, and ensuring logical arrangement of material is helpful work unto itself that reduces the amount of material cleaner-uppers and fact-checkers need to wade through. -- Beland (talk) 23:57, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

  Good point. You're right about not restricting editors in how they want to make improvements. I think my worry is more about decent quality text being replaced by lower-quality text. A check beforehand would make sure that this won't happen.

  On the other hand, by putting an excerpt in an article, you make it more difficult for other editors to improve it, as it breaks various tools, and requires editors to switch articles. As such, we may say it's best practice to do some work before including the excerpt, but not make this a (soft) requirement. Femke (talk) 17:11, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

Regarding the point made above by User:Chipmunkdavis I am not sure what you mean by "Excerpts would theoretically work best when used to reduce duplication horizontally between articles which would have the same text, as opposed to use within the vertical summary-style structure of Wikipedia articles." I think I roughly know what you mean by "horizontal vs. vertical" but in practice it is hard to distinguish; the same article can be seen as a sub-article in one context but as a "parallel" article in another. Perhaps it's helpful if we look at concrete examples: The articles on ocean acidification and sea level rise are so specific and so full of numbers which need to be updated regularly that I think they are prime candidates to be transcribed in many other articles instead of prose and data being duplicated across articles. You can check with the "what links to here" function where the articles are transcribed. For example in the case of ocean acidification, the lead (or the first half of it) is transcribed 9 times so far, i.e. to these articles:

• Carbon cycle
• Phytoplankton
• Hypercapnia
• Effects of climate change
• Marine pollution
• Ocean
• Ocean chemistry
• Effects of climate change on oceans
• Sustainable Development Goal 14

Sea level rise is transcluded 6 times so far:

• Coast
• Last Glacial Maximum
• Effects of climate change
• Marine transgression
• Effects of climate change on oceans
• Salt tolerance of crops

I think our top priority should therefore be to make the leads of such articles into excellent leads. If our conclusion is that those leads need to be fully cited so that they lend themselves better for transclusions then that would be an important conclusion, perhaps something that needs to be added to some guidelines somewhere. Personally, I am not sure if this ought to be the case though because if we don't have an overall policy for leads to be full of citations then why should it necessarily be different when the same lead is transcluded somewhere? You'd think the same rule should apply everywhere, whether it's a "normal" lead or a transcribed lead. So therefore, we would then have to argue that ALL leads should be full of citations.

Another example worth looking at is water pollution. It uses 13 excerpts. Some might argue that is too many. I think it's fine and due to the nature of water pollution which is a high level overview article that points people to all the relevant sub-articles like groundwater pollution, marine pollution and so forth. EMsmile (talk) 09:13, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

Hi! I support B or C (but see below) for the following reasons:

• I don't support A because I think it stands to reason (not to mention WP:V) that content in well-developed, important and high-traffic articles such as this one should have sources (as option B states) and be checked by the person adding it (as option C states). For newer or less important articles, I'd accept A much more readily. Also, note that WP:LEADCITE only allows (it doesn't recommend) keeping citations out of the lead. If a lead is going to be transcluded here, then citations can be incorporated into the lead before doing so, as there'd now be a good reason to do it. Since this is an important article with lots of traffic, I think editors of the transcluded article would easily agree to move citations to the lead in order to have it transcluded here.
• I don't support C because requiring transcluded articles to be GA/FA seems overkill, since this article isn't a GA/FA itself, and even if it were, an excerpt may be GA/FA quality even if its source article isn't (very often the lead section is the most well-developed part of an article). Now, option C actually is two options in one, the second one being that the person doing the excerpt should check the content for basic accuracy and prose quality. If that's all option C requires, then I totally support it, it even seems common sense to me, especially in important articles.
• I don't support D because most readers don't read Wikipedia from top to bottom like a book: rather they skim and skip through the TOC in search for what they want (see meta:Research:Which parts of an article do readers read and other research). Thus, if an excerpt happens to repeat some content putting it into context, then all the better for most users. But just to be clear: I'm not advocating repeating content, only that if it does happen, we shouldn't worry too much about it and barely count it as a downside to excerpts.

Kind regards, Sophivorus (talk) 14:26, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

• Option D for this article; invalid RfC for others. All of these factors are reasonable requirements: B per WP:V, C because as a basic good editing practice you should check text before you add it somewhere, and D as a basic prose quality issue. I note that WP:LEADCITE is a particular challenge for excerpts, given that it's not only allowed but encouraged. Sophivorus, would it be possible to create a {{Include refs on transclusion only}} template that'd wrap a lead and simplify the use of inclusion control for the references in it? Inclusion control can also solve the issue in D if applied well. Lastly, I have to note that, per WP:CONLEVEL, this RfC has no formal precedent-setting power beyond this particular article. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 17:42, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

  @Sdkb I guess you can wrap <ref> tags with <includeonly> tags. However, I don't see where WP:LEADCITE encourages omitting citations from the lead. Rather it says "The necessity for citations in a lead should be determined on a case-by-case basis by editorial consensus." which could be taken to encourage citations in the lead if it's also an excerpt. Sophivorus (talk) 17:57, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

  @Sophivorus, I guess maybe it's not explicit encouragement to drop citations there, but if you show up to FAC with an article that is just as heavily cited in the lead as the body, it'll draw some comments. Wrapping each individual citation in inclusion tags would be cumbersome and would fail as soon as any unsuspecting new editor tries to add a new lead citation. If we ever want excerpts to be adopted widely, we need to have solutions for issues like this that are clean enough they won't throw off even inexperienced editors. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 04:41, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

  @Sdkb Wrapping the lead in a template is a no-go since it'll basically make it uneditable in the VisualEditor. It could be wrapped in a <div class="norefs"> instead (content of a divs is editable in the VisualEditor) and a simple CSS line could then hide all references. But it would hide all references. If we wanted to show some, they'd need to be somehow distinguished in the markup so that the CSS doesn't touch them. That being said, this is all madness to me. Wouldn't it'd be much more reasonable to suggest changes to WP:LEADCITE and FAC to contemplate excerpts, since those guidelines were written before excerpts? Sophivorus (talk) 12:56, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

  @Sophivorus, the implementation of excerpts needs to serve our existing best practices, not vice versa. WP:LEADCITE is a very longstanding practice, and I don't see it changing soon, as a lot of editors will argue that omitting citations from the lead serves readers better.

  On the technical end, the div wrapper sounds promising except for the issue you mentioned. Any ideas how we'd create exceptions? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 20:43, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

  @Sdkb Unfortunately it seems <ref> tags don't accept a "class" attribute and all accepted attributes have very specific meanings, so using any for this new purpose would be quite hacky and unlikely to be accepted or become popular. We could wrap references with <span class="exception"> tags, but it doesn't seem much different to me from using <includeonly> tags in the first place? Sophivorus (talk) 21:57, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

  I wasn't sure what level to start the RfC. In the end I decided that it would probably be good to have more experience with excerpts at GA level before launching a wider RfC (we're preparing for a GAN). I think it can still be useful as informal advice for similar articles. Femke (talk) 18:09, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

  Looking at PetScan, there are currently seven GAs and four FAs that use excerpts. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 04:44, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Discussion on overall structure

Should floods and droughts be in the section on weather?

I'm undecided: currently floods and droughts is in the section called "Effects on wildlife and nature". I am wondering if most readers would expect them to be in the section on "weather"? Or even in "effects on humans"? EMsmile (talk) 18:15, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

I'm very keen on reverting back to only having two subsections in 'wildlife and nature": ecosystems on land, and ecosystems in the ocean.

As such, I would place the physics of wildfires and floods in the "physical effects" section, and namedrop them in other sections where appropriate (for instance, just note that drought affect agriculture). Femke (talk) 18:49, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

I am unsure if the general public things of floods and droughts as a "weather" phenomenon rather than a "physical effects" phenomenon? I mean, both are so closely related to precipitation (too much of it, too little of it). Should they therefore be in the weather section? (I haven't checked yet where the IPCC report places them)EMsmile (talk) 08:44, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

About the oceans section: my idea was to make it a Level 1 heading as it's such a massively important topic. I felt that its sub-headings should be visible in the TOC, like "ocean acidification". Also, it would ensure everything is in one place. If you split it up, e.g. "ecosystems in the ocean" back into the "wildlife and nature" section, the rest into the "physical effects" section then the ocean material is not all in the same section anymore. There is so much overlap between the warming, acidification, effects on animals that I felt it would be better to keep it all together. Overall, I am trying to make it easy for readers to find what they are looking for. The term "effects on physical environment" is not easy to grasp for a layperson. Can we call it something simpler? EMsmile (talk) 08:44, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

If we want to have ocean as its own section (and I agree sea level rise and ocean acidification belong in the TOC), we need to structure the rest of the article among the same lines. So having all components of the climate system as it's own heading

• Atmosphere (we could say weather, for ease of reading)
• On land
• Ocean
• Biosphere (wildlife and nature, for ease of reading)

Again, I'm very strongly against mixing climate change 'changes' and 'impacts' in the same section. I really like how the Met Office visualises this: as concentrating circles. It starts with rising GHG levels, then changes in the physical environment, then how this affects life. Pinging @Beland here as well, as they've rewritten the ocean section. Femke (talk) 07:59, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

Also would like @Chidgk1's opinion here. Does the above structure make sense? Femke (talk) 08:52, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

Ah sorry, I didn't see this before making the change that I just did about "marine ecosystem", where I moved that paragraph back to the "wildlife and nature" section. I'm a bit undecided what to think of the shortened "ocean" section. Now that it's been shortened that much one could argue it might as well just be an excerpt from the other article (e.g. copy this text across to effects of climate change on oceans, then make into excerpt (with a fully cited lead). I would have preferred to have sea level rise and ocean acidification appearing in the TOC. Come to think of it, sea level rise really ought to be in the TOC, doesn't it? EMsmile (talk) 22:07, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

What do you think of the overall structure? With the next level, this could become:

1 Observed and future warming

2 Effects on weather

(Atmosphere)

2.1 Precipitation

2.2 Heat waves and temperature extremes

2.3 Tropical cyclones and storms

3 On land

4.1 Atmosphere

3.1 Floods

3.2 Droughts

3.3 Wildfires

3.4 Biogeochemical cycles

3.5 Permafrost

3.6 Ice and snow

4 Effects on oceans

3.1 Sea level rise

3.2 Acidification

3.3 Sea ice

5 Effects on wildlife and nature

5.1 Terrestrial and wetland systems

5.2 Marine ecosystems

This has the disadvantage compared to the current structure that biochemical cycles is very much between the different components of the climate system, so its classification under land is rather arbitrary.. Femke (talk) 08:24, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

Re the headline question I like that you have put floods and droughts under "land". Re the top level sections above I also like them such as "weather" and "wildlife and nature" as quite understandable: but things like economic and political effects don't seem to be included. Not sure best heading for those kind of things. I guess "Political, economic and social implications" as suggested earlier or ""Political, economic and social effects"? Chidgk1 (talk) 07:09, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

I am confused what people mean by "on land". Is it the same as terrestrial? Then shouldn't the section that is called "on wildlife and nature" be below "on land"? Also isn't there overlap between "weather" and "on land"? I do like the distinction between "land ice" and "sea ice", this could be helpful. If we decide to return to having a sub-structure for the section "on oceans" (and I do think that's useful for those terms to appear in the TOC), then I wonder whether "marine ecosystems" fits better under "on oceans"? And as a general comment, we should be consistent: either include the "effects on..." in every section heading or not include it in any. So then it would become "Effects on land" which sounds a little bit weird. EMsmile (talk) 12:53, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

Yes, on land and terrestrial are the same. The second main reason I'd like to treat effects and impacts in different section is that that makes it more likely impacts on ecosystems get WP:DUE weight. Currently, we're dedicating too little attention to this compared to the IPCC. If we put impacts on life under the 'ocean' or 'land' subsection, they risk staying rather small. Femke (talk) 08:44, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Continuing discussion on structure

Coming back to our discussion on structure. I have now moved droughts, floods and wildfires to the section on "weather" as I felt that for the general public those things are usually related to weather conditions, e.g. a drought often leads to a wildfire. Perhaps the section title should become "weather and related effects"? Hmmm... So the current structure looks like this now:

1 Observed and future warming
1.1Greenhouse gas emissions scenarios

2 Weather
2.1Precipitation (rainfall)
2.2Heat waves and temperature extremes
2.3Tropical cyclones and storms
2.4Floods
2.5Droughts
2.6Wildfires

3 Oceans
3.1Sea level rise
3.2Ocean acidification

3.3Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC)

4 Ice and snow
4.1Glaciers and ice sheets
4.2Sea ice
4.3Greenland and West Antarctic Ice sheets
4.4Permafrost thawing

5 Wildlife and nature
5.1Terrestrial and wetland systems
5.2Marine ecosystems

6 Abrupt or irreversible changes
6.1Tipping points
6.2Irreversible impacts

7 Impacts on humans
7.1Health
7.2Agriculture
7.3Water security
7.4Economic impact
7.5Displacement and migration
7.6Conflict
7.7Social impacts on vulnerable groups
7.8Human settlement
7.9 Especially affected regions

Earlier on you (Femkemilene) suggested a section called "on land" but I wonder if that is IPCC jargon perhaps... As a layperson, the term "on land" means nothing to me. Cities are on land, forests, floods affect land. So anything that is not in the ocean could be "on land". So I find that too vague and don't think it would help us to have a section called "on land". With regards to impacts on humans, I am pondering if that should perhaps be renamed to "Political, economic and social implications" (see also comment by User:Chidgk1 above). Because impacts on humans is maybe too vague as well, given that all the other things like sea level rise, heat waves, floods etc. also all affect humans. So splitting off "effects on humans" seems somewhat unhelpful, as if we could clearly delineate which effects of climate change impact on humans and which don't. They all impact humans directly or indirectly, don't they? EMsmile (talk) 15:30, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

You mentioned above this website (https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/climate-change/effects-of-climate-change) which tries to differentiate between changes (effects?) and impacts. Their listing looks like this:

Changes to the climate system:

• Changes in the hydrological cycle
• Warmer land and air
• Warming oceans
• Melting ice
• Rising sea levels
• Ocean acidification
• Global greening
• Changes in ocean currents
• More extreme weather

Impacts of climate change:

• Risk to water supplies
• Conflict and climate migrants
• Localised flooding
• Flooding of coastal regions
• Damage to marine ecosystems
• Fisheries failing
• Loss of biodiversity
• Change in seasonality
• Heat stress
• Habitable region of pests expands
• Forest mortality and increased risk of fires
• Damage to infrastructure
• Food insecurity

When we talk of "effects of climate change" in our article title, we mean the changes and the impacts, don't we. EMsmile (talk) 15:30, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

I've changed the section headings now to help us delineate changes from impacts. Does this work?:

• 1Observed and future changes in temperature
  • 1.1Greenhouse gas emissions scenarios
• 2Weather-related changes
  • 2.1Precipitation (rainfall)
  • 2.2Heat waves and temperature extremes
  • 2.3Tropical cyclones and storms
• 3Weather-related impacts
  • 3.1Floods
  • 3.2Droughts
  • 3.3Wildfires
• 4Changes for oceans
  • 4.1Sea level rise
  • 4.2Ocean acidification
  • 4.3Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC)
• 5Ice and snow changes
  • 5.1Glaciers and ice sheets decline
  • 5.2Sea ice decline
  • 5.3Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets decline
  • 5.4Permafrost thawing
• 6Wildlife and nature impacts
  • 6.1Terrestrial and wetland systems
  • 6.2Marine ecosystems
• 7Abrupt changes and irreversible impacts
  • 7.1Tipping points
  • 7.2Irreversible impacts
• 8Impacts on humans
  • 8.1Health
  • 8.2Agriculture
  • 8.3Water security
  • 8.4Economic impact
  • 8.5Displacement and migration
  • 8.6Conflict
  • 8.7Social impacts on vulnerable groups
  • 8.8Human settlements
  • 8.9Impacts for humans in especially affected regions EMsmile (talk) 15:53, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

  I think the current top-level structure works. Thanks for rearranging. Also happy with a rename of the "On humans" section into Socio-economic impacts. Not sure if food and health fall under that term. We could split the human section into two as well

  8. Health and food

  8.1 Health

  8.2 Food security

  8.3 Water security

  9. Socio-economic impact

  9.1 Economic impact

  9.2 Impacts on vulnerable groups

  9.3 Displacement

  9.4 Conflict

  9.5 Human settlements

  9.6 Especially affected regions

  Femke (talk) 18:58, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Super, I am really glad you like the new structure (I was a bit nervous as it was a big change). I have now split up the section "on humans" as per your suggestion. It's a bit difficult with the agriculture content because I often also see it in the economic impacts sections of articles. Also we should not forget marine food production which might be hugely impacted as well (that's why I added it to the food security section). - The climate change article links to the "on humans" section of this article. Where should it link now instead? EMsmile (talk) 14:35, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

That link can be removed imo. There are already a lot of further reading links, and the main effects of climate change is already linked before. Femke (talk) 17:17, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

Question about the sentence that summarises the known tipping points

In this edit you (Femkemilene) removed a sentence that I had recently added with the comment "rm uncited. Not all of these are likely tipping points. ENSO/gas hydrates are more likely not a tipping point". I took the sentence from here, i.e. it was simply the sub-headings of this section put into one sentence. The resulting sentence was "Tipping points include: Shutdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, West Antarctic ice sheet disintegration, Greenland ice sheet disintegration, Amazon rainforest dieback, permafrost and methane hydrates, coral reef die-off, West African monsoon shift, The El Niño–Southern Oscillation, Arctic sea ice." If any of those are not tipping points then this should also be corrected in Tipping points in the climate system#Tipping elements, right? I suggest to correct the sentence and then add a suitable reference, rather than deleting it completely? Overall, I feel that our section on "Abrupt or irreversible changes" requires reworking. Perhaps the sub-headings could be removed as those are covered in Tipping points in the climate system (although I think you mentioned somewhere that that sub-article is no good? What should be our plan of attack there?). EMsmile (talk) 09:14, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

The main climate change article has a paragraph about tipping points like this:

"The greater the amount of global warming, the greater the risk of passing through ‘tipping points’, thresholds beyond which certain impacts can no longer be avoided even if temperatures are reduced. An example is the collapse of West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, where a temperature rise of 1.5 to 2 °C may commit the ice sheets to melt, although the time scale of melt is uncertain and depends on future warming. Some large-scale changes could occur over a short time period, such as a collapse of certain ocean currents. Of particular concern is a shutdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation,, which would trigger major climate changes in the North Atlantic, Europe, and North America." EMsmile (talk) 09:17, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, I hadn't realised you recently added it. I've change the heading to "possible tipping elements" in that article.

As I said before, I think it's illogical to talk about tipping points separately from the rest of the physical changes. We should instead describe the ice sheet tipping points in 3.4, the Amazon in 5.1, and the AMOC in 4.4. Currently, the TOC is overwhelmingly long, and that is before the upcoming merge. Minor tipping elements such as ENSO are likely undue for this article. By putting the tipping elements in context, we won't be tempted to describe the edge cases in this article. Femke (talk) 17:24, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

References

I see your point but we may need to do both: include those discussions in the relevant sections but somehow also provide an overview in a section that is visible from the TOC which should probably be called "Possible tipping points" (rather than "Abrupt or irreversible changes"?). The term "tipping point" is quite prevalent in the climate change debate (rightly or wrongly?) and I could imagine that many readers might jump to that section from the TOC. Unless we think the tipping point discourse is overrated and we want to downplay it a bit? (this makes me wonder whether the term "feedback" is closely related to "tipping points" and is sufficiently covered in our article) EMsmile (talk) 12:59, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

Compared to the scientific literature, the media puts more attention on the topic. Following the scientific literature, I'm not comfortable with giving it a section + subsections in the TOC. What we could do is move the subsections to the tipping point article (replacing the poorer-quality text there, I'll do it if you agree), and include a tipping point section without subsections. I think two fully developed paragraphs should suffice.

If we don't include very speculative tipping points, I prefer the shorter 'tipping points' as a section title.

Most tipping points (in some definition all) come about due to strongly positive feedbacks. However, most of the time, there is no tipping behaviour in the presence of positive feedbacks. Feedbacks just amplify the relevant change. Femke (talk) 17:38, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

That sounds very good to me, please go ahead. Could you also add a sentence into that section about how feedbacks relate to tipping points, like you've just explained to me here. Very useful clarification, I find. EMsmile (talk) 12:22, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

Copyright

As far as I'm aware, the IPCC reports do not have a compatible license. User:EMsmile, I found one sentence copy-pasted, that you got from one of your experts. I didn't quite understand the sentence, so I deleted half of it and paraphrased the rest. Could you go over all the sentences you've added from that expert to see if there are more copyright violations? Femke (talk) 19:46, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, I seem to have missed that sentence. I think none of the other sentences that I added were straight copy and pastes but I'll double check again. Regarding this sentence, I also didn't understand it: "Warming has increased contrasts in precipitation amounts between wet and dry seasons and weather regimes over tropical lands." I suppose it must be important if Thian Yew Gan felt it should be included, so I'll check with him how it could be worded more clearly (and paraphrased). For the benefit of the other editors: the sentences in question are shown here. Their wording has mostly already been modified; also they are not all in this article but some where added to relevant sub-articles like climate change in Greenland, retreat of glaciers since 1850 and so forth. That's because we had used excerpts of those, so Thian's edits were made directly in the "source articles" of those excerpts. EMsmile (talk) 22:24, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

Thanks

If you don't understand it, it's likely that our readers do not understand it either. They likely know less about climate change than you. Femke (talk) 09:06, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

More importantly, have you checked for close paraphrasing/copyright infringements now? I found a minor one again. Femke (talk) 12:02, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

I checked but some of it is open to interpretation. As you know "too close" paraphrasing is not a science (WP:CLOP) - "Limited close paraphrasing is also appropriate if there are only a limited number of ways to say the same thing.". If key statements are taken from the IPCC reports it's not always easy to "summarise" them. Perhaps in those instances it might be better to use direct quotes rather than attempting paraphrasing which is not close but still 100% accurate? Even better would be if the IPCC assessment reports became open access. Are you aware of any ongoing discussions about that (the start of a discussion last year seems to have led to nowhere). EMsmile (talk) 16:15, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Direct quotes should typically be used for creative expressions, or opinions, not for matters of fact. Paraphrasing is always difficult if your initial text is already in summary style. The best thing is to try and summarise a broader point, rather than a single sentence. Is there any specific one you would like a second opinion for? Femke (talk) 17:36, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

References

I have a problem with the changes made to the "sea level rise" information

Previously, "sea level rise" was a section that appeared in the TOC. And it used an excerpt from sea level rise which should presumably be the article where all the main facts and data should be bundled. Now it no longer appears in the TOC and it's a copy of text from sea level rise which means when in future new data is published we'd have to update two articles: sea level rise and this one. I feel that the sea level data is really one where an excerpt would make the most sense and increase efficiency of editing. I think we should put it (the excerpt) back as a section on "physical environment" as it not only affects oceans but also the coast, human habitations and so forth. Of course we could first improve the lead of sea level rise or improve the relevant section that we want to transcribe (it doesn't need to be the lead). EMsmile (talk) 22:18, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

I'd be okay with using an excerpt here. There will inevitably be a bit of overlap with glacier retreat, but not too much. The article is in good enough shape to be excerpted now, even if an update will be needed before GA. With numbers, I try to update as close to nomination as possible. Femke (talk) 09:02, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

I've made the change now, as discussed. Added an excerpt for sea level rise and an excerpt for ocean acidification. Both terms need to appear in the TOC in my opinion, hence this change. EMsmile (talk) 18:01, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

Geography

How can drought be triggered by physical conditions — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A03:2880:32FF:7:0:0:FACE:B00C (talk) 10:55, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Climate change mainly affects droughts via two mechanisms: 1) there is less rain in regions that were already relatively dry and 2) there is more evaporation due to higher temperatures. Femke (talk) 12:01, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Also there is a mention of the Hadley Cell changing latitude in Climate_change_in_Turkey#Impacts_on_the_natural_environment. You might like to check the latitude of your country and update "Climate change in (your country)" if it applies to you too. Chidgk1 (talk) 06:48, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

geography

if you were the minister of department of environmental affairs,how were you going to solve the problems brought by climate change? 41.116.53.181 (talk) 19:06, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Good question. It would be great if you could read the adaptation report summary for policymakers linked at the end of IPCC Sixth Assessment Report and update Climate change adaptation or the climate change article for your country. Their report on Climate change mitigation should be out later this year. Chidgk1 (talk) 06:37, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

GA: to do list

Feel free to add more things to the list, or write your name if you want to tackle something. I'm still finding duplications of ideas from the almost finished merges. Pinging @EMsmile: and @Chidgk1:

1. Decide on structure  Done
2. Make sure all section have appropriate weight
3. Check if all excerpts agree with RfC. Replace the excerpt about glaciers with up-to-date text
4. Expand subsection terrestrial a bit (+50%?)
5. Integrate tipping points into the text  Done
6. Update (we cite the 2007 IPCC report about 40 times, a lot of which needs updating)
   1. Update sea level rise (Femke)  Done
   2. Food security
   3. Water security  Done
   4. Health (note that we need WP:MEDRS)
   5. Economics (note that the excerpt is partially off-topic, and partially duplicates food security)
   6. More?
7. Completely rewrite displacement (partially written by topic-banned user, who did not take text-source integrity seriously). Condense to two/three paragraphs (Femke)
8. Further eliminate systemic bias (Nigeria + India + China + Indonesia are now mentioned less than the US)
   1. Textual
   2. Graphs and photos
9. Tag and address unreliable sources/missing sources
10. Sign up for WP:GOCE
11. Improve the section on precipitation (reduce repetition, decide on using only newer sources or also keeping those older sources, e.g. NOAA 2007)

Optional

1. See if the misalignment of figures from excerpts can be fixed by technical editors
2. Provide alts for figures Femke (talk) 17:36, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

This is a great list, thanks for putting it together. It's a daunting task but overall worthwhile to do. I'll try to contribute where I can. EMsmile (talk) 12:03, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

Question about water security section

Do all the sentences in that section come from the sources that are mentioned? Some of the sentences seem to be unsourced, like "Between 1.5 and 2.5 billion people live in areas with regular water security issues. If global warming would reach 4 °C, water insecurity would affect about twice as many people. Water resources are projected to decrease in most dry subtropical regions and mid-latitudes, but increase in high latitudes." EMsmile (talk) 12:07, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

Yes, the standard way of citing on Wikipedia is not one citation per sentence. See WP:CITEDENSE. Within a paragraph, a source is typically expected to cover everything back to the previous source. So when you add a new sentence+new source mid-paragraph in a paragraph with one citation, you may be to duplicate the citation. It's not a policy, so you're allowed to put redundant citations in. I usually take them out, as it's a small impediment to readability. Femke (talk) 17:08, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

I think the rule "one reference per paragraph, not one reference per sentence" is fine when the sentences clearly belong together and can be found in the same section of the publication. This is not the case here. I tried to find the exact page number for the three sentences of this paragraph and failed "Between 1.5 and 2.5 billion people live in areas with regular water security issues. If global warming would reach 4 °C, water insecurity would affect about twice as many people. Water resources are projected to decrease in most dry subtropical regions and mid-latitudes, but increase in high latitudes. As streamflow becomes more variable, even regions with increased water resources can experience additional short-term shortages". Apparently they are all from the 5th IPCC report but where?: https://archive.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg2/WGIIAR5-Chap3_FINAL.pdf The third sentence I could maybe guess came from page 236 but nowhere do I find something about 1.5-2.5 billion people. What I do find is this "About 80% of the world’s population already suffers serious threats to its water security." but that's different. I also searched for the exact source of the second sentence but could not find it in that IPCC report. In any case, I think the three sentences (if they really did come from the same reference) ought to be strung together with a logical flow. Words like "therefore", "despite of this" and so forth would show that they belong together. EMsmile (talk) 10:59, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

I also find the current formulation misleading as it makes it appear that water security is directly a climate change issue. The point is that climate change makes it worse but the other factors leading to water scarcity might be more directly to be blamed (and possibly easier to address); see article on water scarcity. It's easy nowadays to blame every existing problem on climate change, I think we need to be careful with that with respect to water availability. EMsmile (talk) 10:59, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Completely overlooked that citation to AR5. Now clarified it's found in the AR6 citation. I read it differently from you, but feel free to add something about other factors that impact water security (population / food production). I think it would be misleading to say that water security isn't direclty a climate change issue: According to AR6 WGII FAQ4.2 in the Water chapter: Nearly half a billion people are living in unfamiliar wet conditions, mostly in mid- and high-latitudes, and over 160 million people are living in unfamiliar dry conditions, mostly in the tropics and sub-tropics. Femke (talk) 17:44, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

I'll take another look at it soon. Thanks for replacing AR5 with AR6 for this. Water resources have been stretched to the limit in many cases due to rapid population growth, "wasting" a lot of water, more and more irrigation in agriculture, building and growing cities in the "wrong places" (arid climates) and using fossil groundwater for water supply etc. Add climate change on top of it and of course it'll make it all worse still! It's like floods, wildfires and droughts: they were there before as well but climate change makes them worse/more frequent etc.... EMsmile (talk) 14:24, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

Variations between regions

I've deleted this section for a couple of regions: 1) It was poorly sourced: only one citation was recent. 2) A lot of the information overlapped with 'Observed and future warming' 3) The figure of the climate classification is a bit too detailed to be displayed properly. Difficult to see differences between now and 2100 4) The information about vulnerable regions is better placed in the "Especially affected regions" region. I'm copying the deleted text here if anybody wants to merge parts of it into other sections. Femke (talk) 13:28, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

Variations between regions

See also: Climate variability and change § Variability between regions

Past (prior to 2017) and projected (up to year 2100) Köppen-Geiger climate classification maps.

When the global temperature changes, the changes in climate are not expected to be uniform across the Earth. In particular, land areas change more quickly than oceans, and northern high latitudes change more quickly than the tropics, and the margins of biome regions change faster than do their cores. There are three major ways in which global warming will make changes to regional climate: melting or forming ice, changing the hydrological cycle (of evaporation and precipitation) and changing currents in the oceans and air flows in the atmosphere.

Projections of climate changes at the regional scale do not hold as high a level of scientific confidence as projections made at the global scale. It is, however, expected that future warming will follow a similar geographical pattern to that seen already, with the greatest warming over land and high northern latitudes, and least over the Southern Ocean and parts of the North Atlantic Ocean. Land areas warm faster than ocean, and this feature is even stronger for extreme temperatures. For hot extremes, regions with the most warming include Central and Southern Europe and Western and Central Asia.

CMIP5 average of climate model projections for 2081–2100 relative to 1986–2005, under low and high emission scenarios.

Femke (talk) 13:28, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

I felt that a modified version of the first paragraph might be useful for the lead, as these are broad summary type statements which give a good overview, don't they? I have therefore added parts of them to the lead now. But maybe I was wrong in my assessment and they are not correct? EMsmile (talk) 17:46, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

References

Sentence about contrasts in precipitation amounts

(moved from above): Regarding this sentence, I also didn't understand it: "Warming has increased contrasts in precipitation amounts between wet and dry seasons and weather regimes over tropical lands." I have discussed the sentence in question further with Thian. He suggests this new wording which is easier to understand: "Warming by GHG forcing has increased contrasts in precipitation amounts between wet and dry seasons and in regions over tropical lands. It has also resulted in a detectable increase in the precipitation of northern high latitudes." What do you think? EMsmile (talk) 23:32, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

The part about northern high latitudes would fit in the first sentence, which talks about geographical increase/decrease. We'd talk about 4 different regions, which is difficult to do in nice prose... Probably split the sentence into one about drying and one about getting rainier.

I still don't understand what contrast there is "in regions over tropical lands". Between what? I'd just omit it. Femke (talk) 08:41, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Further e-mail exchanges with Thian has led me now to this formulation: "Warming has increased the contrast in precipitation amounts between wet and dry seasons (colloquially: "wet seasons are getting wetter, dry seasons are getting drier"). Warming has also increased the contrasts between wet and dry tropical weather regimes over tropical regions. Furthermore, it has resulted in a detectable increase in the precipitation of northern high latitudes." What do you think? EMsmile (talk) 17:34, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

I would leave out the sentence about weather regimes. I've read it a few times, and still not sure I understand. The other two sentences can be integrated, as long as duplication is avoided. F.i. the first sentence already talks about more precipitation in the subpolar regions. Femke (talk) 18:42, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

I think this is potentially important information and we have an author of the WG I report available on tap right now (Thian Gan). He's been trying to improve the sentence over several iterations by now so I don't think we should give up and omit it. In which sense do you find it unclear? I think it's understandable now but perhaps I only think I understand it and if you point out what is unclear exactly then I'll get your point. Overall, is this a good example of how hard it is to translate climate science information into language that is accurate and understandable for the general public? EMsmile (talk) 21:54, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

A problem is that most people won't know what a "weather regime" is Chidgk1 (talk) 15:30, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

That. Is it a spatio-temporal thing, or mostly spatial, mostly temporal. Is it something that happens on a weekly scale, or more like a monthly scale, or all of it. Meteorology was part of my masters, but I only have a vague idea what it is.. I do not think it's a necessary sentence here either. Even if we explain it well, we already detail many other types of rainfall contrasts, so that our readers will lose interest in the text. Femke (talk) 17:17, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

Yes the "weather regime" part could be explained only in articles about tropical countries where it is important I guess. Chidgk1 (talk) 17:39, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

I am assuming that "weather regime" could be substituted with "weather pattern", right? (note there is no Wikipedia entry for "weather regime"). With regards to "we already detail many other types of rainfall contrasts, so that our readers will lose interest in the text." - are you referring to the section on "precipitation"? It's true that similar concepts are explained there but I find the references in that entire section are lacking or rather old. A reference from 2007 is cited several times. The first paragraph of "precipitation" has only one reference from 2007. I'd rather replace and improve that with the WG I report content and reference by using an improved version of the sentence that I had proposed above. I am sure there will be a way of paraphrasing it so that it's clear und understandable to everyone. Or we could also investigate other parts of the report to see what it says about your queestion of spatial or temporal. The point is, we have an expert available willing to answer our clarification questions by e-mail (Thian Gan) so why let that rare opportunity pass? (yes, it's time consuming) EMsmile (talk) 09:28, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

You're absolutely right about the paragraph being undersourced. Please do replace it. I don't know if weather regime and pattern are the same. If you would really like to include it, feel free to contact Thian again, if you think he really wouldn't mind. Femke (talk) 17:32, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

References

Economic impacts section

I am looking at the section on "economic impacts". I would be inclined to merge that content into the lead of Economic impacts of climate change and then replace it with an excerpt. The lead would be fully cited. Would people find that a good move or any objections? In my opinion, this kind of tactic has the potential to improve two articles simultaneously: this one and also this sub-article: Economic impacts of climate change. Similar question to the section on "conflict" which could instead be an excerpt from climate security. I think the nature of an article such as "effects of climate change" will be that there will be lots of relevant sub-articles which could be transcribed if the particular effect in question already has a sub-article. EMsmile (talk) 09:31, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

Sounds good to me Chidgk1 (talk) 13:02, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

The lede of economic impacts of climate change is a very poor shape, so I would be keen to see what you make of that. The text here is of decent quality, so it should preferably stay. The biggest problem of citing ledes is that the first sentence is usually a definition, which makes for poor prose in the middle of the article. Currently, the 'economic impacts' article has a full paragraph definition that doesn't even correspond to the rest of the article, so that will need to go.

Let's await the outcome of RfC before including more excerpts. There are good points being raised when their disadvantages may be larger than their advantages. Femke (talk) 17:05, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

There is an easy solution to this: if the text is better here than there, then it could just be moved/copied across and replace the poorer text in the other article. This way we kill two birds with one stone, i.e. improve two articles at once. (one could even argue that the other article should include an excerpt from this article). What I want to avoid is that the same content is written differently in two articles, when it should really be the same, bundled in one article. We have soooo much work to do on Wikipedia, I think we need to make sure we work efficiently. I don't want to have to maintain an article on "economic impacts of climate change" as well as a section called "economic impacts" in an article called "effects of climate change" in future. If there is a better method of being efficient, without using excerpts, let's explore those? (I'll wait before including more excerpts in this article) EMsmile (talk) 17:53, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

Which paragraph do you mean with "Currently, the 'economic impacts' article has a full paragraph definition that doesn't even correspond to the rest of the article, so that will need to go. ". I am happy to delete it if you point out to me which one that is? EMsmile (talk) 17:54, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

I've now improved the lead of Economic impacts of climate change by using the text from here and copying it across. If we were to use an excerpt now from the lead of Economic impacts of climate change it would give us the same result as we currently have. (the old lead of Economic impacts of climate change was pretty poor; not much was worth salvaging). So if we decide not to go down the excerpt route we now have two text blocks with identical text in two articles. Is that OK? I guess over time they would diverge again which would be fine. But if someone wanted to improve content on economic impacts where should they focus their energies. Here or there? EMsmile (talk) 18:18, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

P.S. I am aware that what I've done is not ideal. Further work is needed to make the lead of the other article into a true summary of the article (which it wasn't before either). So more work is required there but at this stage, the new lead is better than the one that was there an hour ago. EMsmile (talk) 18:21, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

Definitely better, thanks :). Not as good as this article though. For instance, the first paragraph of the lede should rarely contain quoted text. Femke (talk) 18:51, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

Where do we stand now with the economic impacts section? I guess we have decided for now NOT to use an excerpt from Economic impacts of climate change. The section currently has two sub-sections: "Overall economy and inequality" and "Vulnerable sectors". Is that perhaps too much? I wonder if the section "vulnerable sectors" should be moved to Economic impacts of climate change and maybe just a brief summary stay here. I also find it ironic that it starts with this sector "Oil and natural gas infrastructure is vulnerable to the effects of climate change" given that oil and gas industry is a major contributor to climate change. I don't think they should be listed first. Also, does agriculture need to be mentioned here as a vulnerable sector? But then it overlaps with the section on agriculture. My feeling is that the economic impacts section is currently too long and detailed; I'd like to compress a bit and move content to Economic impacts of climate change if that is OK? EMsmile (talk) 12:10, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Update: I have changed it now from "most vulnerable sectors" to "most affected sectors" and moved the sentence about oil and gas to later.EMsmile (talk) 16:19, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

I think it's an important topic, and would like to cut it with only about 25%.

I think that most affected sectors should start with a paragraph about agriculture & fisheries, as agriculture is the most affected sector. To make sure there is very little overlap with other text, we should do this from an economic perspective (so mostly from a farmer's perspective), whereas food security (now renamed agriculture), should focus on the aspect of a food consumer. Femke (talk) 17:32, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Section about Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC)

Regarding the section about "Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC)": I am a bit confused: which is the main sub-article that would feed the content of this section? Is it Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation or Shutdown of thermohaline circulation? Is there perhaps a case to be made to merge the two articles together? I have the feeling that they overlap a lot and that a merger might reduce the amount of work needed to keep them both up to date? EMsmile (talk) 12:32, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

I think the articles as currently organised should be merged. Both cite a lot of medium-old studies (2017 and before), while this is a subject of intense study. Another example where our limited resources are the main reason I'd support a merge to ensure old material is deleted and stays deleted. Femke (talk) 08:46, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Agreed. I'll add the merger tags but I am unsure which should be merged into which, and what the preferred new article title should be? I am guessing Shutdown of thermohaline circulation should be merged into Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, and is that an ideal (or good enough) title? EMsmile (talk) 21:41, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Agreed twice, that is the ideal title :). Femke (talk) 16:12, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

OK, merger tags added. Wondering what other search terms members of the public may use for this. Those search terms should then redirect to there. (Myself, I did know about that ocean current issue but had never heard of AMOC until very recently; just as one example of a member of the public) EMsmile (talk) 18:59, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

The media often confuses the Gulf Stream and AMOC. I've recently seen the term Gulf Stream System used a synonym for AMOC (f.i. this UCL press release). Even if the AMOC were to shut down, the Gulf Stream would remain in some form. Not sure if Gulf Stream System has a unique meaning. Femke (talk) 19:23, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Done that one - while I am in merging mood how about Talk:Atlantic_meridional_overturning_circulation#Propose_merge_Multiple_equilibria_in_the_Atlantic_meridional_overturning_circulation? Chidgk1 (talk) 12:14, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

How big should the section on "Displacement and migration" be?

I feel that the section on "Displacement and migration" is perhaps a bit too long now and that content should be moved to climate refugee (this topic doesn't exist as a stand-alone article yet, it's part of environmental migrant). Or it could be the other war around: that the bulk of information sits here and that climate refugee links to here for more information. So where should the bulk of information be, which article do we see as main and which as sub? Again, I'd like to avoid too much repetition & overlap between the two articles. EMsmile (talk) 13:09, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

As suggested above, I think 2-3 paragraphs is appropriate. I wouldn't like to see this content moved before scrutiny, as part of it is written by a now-blocked user (because of the merge, I don't know which). They had a habit of POV pushing and poor source-text integrity. Note that scientific and legal sources will avoid the term climate refugee, as climate-related migration does not work with the legal definition of refugee. Environmental migrant is definitely the place most of this information sits best. Femke (talk) 17:27, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Yes you are right it should be a very short summary here Chidgk1 (talk) 05:47, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

I'll try to help but 2-3 paragraphs would be longer than a very short summary... Hmmm... Also, how could I identify this: "They had a habit of POV pushing and poor source-text integrity."? Are you saying the person added refs to the end of sentences but when one opens those refs they don't actually have those statements in them? - Note also that I have just proposed on the talk page of environmental migrant to create a sub-article called climate migrant. This might make our lives easier. EMsmile (talk) 14:20, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

The sources were misrepresented and cherry-picked in different, sometimes subtle ways. The user exaggerated the migration caused by cliamte change. I've gone over the text once, so the worst should be out. But do be critical when rewriting. Femke (talk) 20:26, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

I have now created a spin-off article called climate migrant from environmental migrant. This should now make it easier to tidy up the section on "Displacement and migration". EMsmile (talk) 08:30, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Reminder: need to add content on forestry

We need to add some content on effects on forestry but I don't have the information at my fingertips. I just read in a book about climate change effects in Germany how profoundly forests in Germany (and presumably similar countries) will be affected: I am thinking here of trees dying due the drought damage coupled with certain pest insects. Changes in types of trees that can grow in the new climate etc. Will try to work on this or if someone else has info available, please add. EMsmile (talk) 11:49, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Good point. There are two angles we can take: talk about forests (under nature), or forestry (the human management of forests, in "Socio-economic impacts"). I think the first option makes the most sense, and would fit nicely under the heading "terrestrial and wetland systems". The current subsection is a bit too short (typically, one should not split a section with two short paragraphs into subsections, per MOS:OVERSECTION).

Talking about that section heading, it's a bit jargonny. Would "ecosystems on land" be better? Femke (talk) 20:23, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Yes, good idea about "ecosystems on land". Have changed that now. I think the forests and forestry issues belong in two places: once in the "ecosystems on land" section about natural forests, including the Amazon. And once in the economy section when it comes to farmed trees (=forestry) and tourism/recreation? EMsmile (talk) 01:01, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

We could add a short sentence to the agriculture paragraph of the economy section. I don't see how tourism is related to forestry? Not a whole lot of tourism taking place in forests? The European Commission website also groups those together. Tourism is a separate heading. Femke (talk) 08:50, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Oh but tourism in relationship with forests is huge (do we need to distinguish between forests and forestry perhaps?). Or is it only huge in Germany? Here, many people love to visit forests for weekend recreation or holidays. Think Black Forest, Spessart for example but there are many more. I would assume it's similar for other European countries that still have nice forests (Scandinavian countries maybe?). - And I am wondering if our article on effects of climate change on agriculture ought to be broadened to "effects of climate change on agriculture and forestry". EMsmile (talk) 21:45, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

What source do you have that states that the effect of climate change on tourism in forests is important? I very much doubt it's due for this article. Tourism in countries that "overheat" during summer and winter sports are much more affected (see f.i. the EC website linked above). Femke (talk) 16:15, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, nothing at my finger tips (just a Germany book that I am currently reading, detailing how forests in Germany will deteriorate by 2050 but it hasn't got specific figures on tourism numbers). Will keep looking but I also put this section here on the talk page in the hope that it will spark others into action as well, or that someone else has that kind of data at their fingertips. Forestry will be affected, just like agriculture. But it might fit better into a broadened article on effects of climate change on agriculture and forestry. EMsmile (talk) 17:03, 28 March 2022 (UTC)