Talk:Climate change/Archive 67

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Archive 60

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Archive 65

The blessed farting, burping dinosaurs

I removed this:

Some scientists claim that methane gas released by the flatulence of dinosaurs caused global warming millions of years ago, the Sauropods producing 5 to 10 times as much methane as cows do today. (Davies, Ella. "BBC Nature - Dinosaur gases 'warmed the Earth'". Bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 2012-05-08.)

While dinosaurs were around for a very long time, and could well have been so productive of greenhouse gases as to change the climate, the relevance to this article about a quite distinct episode of climate change is difficult to imagine. --TS

Sorry, forgot to timestamp this. It was at least a day or two ago. --TS 01:50, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Well spotted. Narssarssuaq (talk) 10:03, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Listing what causes global warming then and now is relevant to the global warming article. Many sources talk about methane released from cows, and here is evidence that dinosaurs released many more times what cows did. Perhaps it would go better in Greenhouse gas. Dream Focus 18:11, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Are you saying that one of the causes of global warming is dinosaur farts? Certainly not now, and not even then. As to cows: if dinosaurs, "producing 5 to 10 times as much methane", couldn't cause global warming, it is not likely that cows have. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:52, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Reliable sources cover this in detail. Google news archive search for "cows" "global warming" and you'll find 4,770 news articles about it. [1] There are 1.5 billion cows in the world. The methane gas they produce does contribute to it according to many studies. Methane gas is "23 times more potent as a heat-trapping gas" than carbon dioxide. The United Nations makes statements about this. [2] Dream Focus 01:47, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

The methane gas you expell contributes to global warming; should that go into the article, too?

A Google search is not a reliable source. The most authoritative source is the IPCC; I recommend you study AR4, and particularly Chapter 9: Understanding and Attributing Climate Change. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:51, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Agriculture definitely is a major source of the anthropogenic component, and it's treated as such. The dinosaurs, though, aren't around to contribute to current warming. It doesn't belong in this article. --TS 16:46, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Minor correction: non-avian dinosaurs aren't around, the contribution of avian dinosaurs such as poultry is no doubt noted in the various studies. Either way, it's not really significant to this article.
Also note that methane gas is only "23 times more potent as a heat-trapping gas" than carbon dioxide in the short term, after that it decays to CO₂ and as such remains as potent for the long term. Fox News is a rubbish source for what the IPCC say. The general issue is covered under Greenhouse gases which mentions methane. . dave souza, talk 17:57, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Global dimming vs. global cooling

I think the relationship between global cooling and global dimming discussed in the previous section is interesting, so I added a small piece of text about it. Narssarssuaq (talk) 14:32, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

which I deleted, since this article is not a historical review of how the current scientific consensus evolvedNewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 20:02, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Citations/references.

Narssarssuaq: I have reverted your recent re-naming of the "Citations" and "References" sections. While it may seem obviously "incorrect" to you, you should keep in mind that this is not "obvious" to everyone else. Ask if you have questions. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:56, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

OK. My claim: The term "citation" is normally used about the in-text reference to the references. "Citation" and "reference" are not synonyms. Narssarssuaq (talk) 11:22, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

On what grounds do you claim knowledge of "normally used"? The use of "citation" and "reference" has been thoroughly muddled (even prior to Wikipedia), and if you would spend any time looking through the archives (as I have) you might see that there is quite a bit of contention about this. So no matter how clearly you think you see the matter, it really is not prudent to just jump up and change something like that without first discussing it. And this isn't really the proper place for that discussion. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:34, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Article feedback

So the article feedback tool exists, and apparently there have been over 600 comments left in the article feedback for this article. Once you get through the trolling comments, there are some semi-constructive suggestions, though some are contradictory (too long vs. not enough info). One that a few mention that I think we could actually improve on is that there aren't enough pictures. We have plenty of graphs, to be sure, but there's a grand total of one explanatory graphic, and it's a bit cluttered one at that. Anyone have any ideas for better graphics we can use? Also, can anyone else find any other useful suggestions in the feedback tool we might want to use? I found two graphics from commons that might be helpful which I've placed below the fold Sailsbystars (talk) 20:42, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

sailsbystars suggested graphics

Interesting. I didn't know the feedback was available. Someone should give feedback to the feedback people: lots of people answered "yes", "no", or "everything" which suggests they thought they were answering a different question. I looked though some of it (and flagged some as not helpful / abuse; hopefully that pushes those down for the next person who looks). Other things that come up are:

simpler text
definition
causes

A "simple" GW page was something we mooted years ago but never did. Maybe we could resurrect the idea? Definition I find it hard to be sympathetic with, cos we start with that. Causes? Dubious William M. Connolley (talk) 21:35, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

I view this exercise as talking about whether we should talk about what others who are not making the effort to edit the page want us to talk about. Meanwhile, Sailsby.... if you have improvement ideas - graphics or otherwise - be bold and try them, or give them a talk thread. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 22:36, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

It's a difficult subject to encapsulate in an illustration, but I suppose we should try. Ice cores, tide gauges, Argo floats, and satellites may be among the best choices.

From Commons:

Newspapers and magazines have discovered for themselves the dangers of inappropriate use of illustrations on this topic, so great care must be taken to annotate any illustrations carefully, and to consider whether their presence could be misinterpreted. It would probably be a good idea to steer clear of animal pictures. --TS 12:41, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Of those, I like the ice core best. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:45, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Ice core has better pix William M. Connolley (talk) 13:05, 7 June 2012 (UTC)