Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Climate change/Archive 5

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Proposal to have a stand-alone article on "ocean temperature"

I am proposing to have a (short) stand-alone article on "ocean temperature". At the moment, it is a disambiguation page. Until a few days ago it was a redirect to sea surface temperature. I envision something short, just a stub at first, potentially a bit similar to marine resources. I think this would be better than a disambiguation page because a) I think it's a notable topic, which will grow in importance due to climate change, that is currently touched upon in various other articles and b) a stand-alone article can be wikilinked from sentences in other articles whereas a disambiguation page cannot. For example, if I want to wikilink "ocean temperature" in this sentence: At depths of around 500 m, depletion of oxygen is becoming more common to due rising ocean temperatures and stratification. Where do I wikilink "ocean temperature" to? I am not meant to wikilink to a disambiguation page. So I'd probably wikilink to Effects of climate change on oceans#Ocean temperature. - I am curious to hear your thoughts. You can find the previous discussion in two places (not ideal, I know). It's been on the talk page of ocean temperature and on the talk page of sea surface temperature. My proposal is to bundle it in just this location now: https://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Talk:Sea_surface_temperature#Ocean_temperature_no_longer_redirects_to_here EMsmile (talk) 09:24, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

I don't think it would need to be particularly short, especially once you start getting into local differences, temperature profiles, circulation, and the interplay with other factors like salinity. I don't think Marine resources is a good article to use as an example. Temperature distribution in the oceans has potential to make for a fairly expansive article. I would suggest using "temperature distribution in the oceans" as a better title, with "ocean temperature" as a redirect to that instead. Reason being that it's a lot more descriptive. Licks-rocks (talk) 12:06, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

A standalone OT article may indeed develop. Alternatively, it may be more efficient to (1) move/rename the present "SST" article as "Ocean Temperature", and then (2) add specific section(s) including content re deeper regions. Both alternatives avoid the redirect/disambiguation problem altogether. As a preliminary step before moving/renaming, perhaps new content could be introduced into the SST article in a section /* Distinguished from deeper zones */ (or similar). I'm not advocating one approach (new article vs move/rename) over the other. —RCraig09 (talk) 16:05, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

Good idea Chidgk1 (talk) 18:22, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

Hi Licks-rocks, I haven't seen you before in the WikiProject Climate Change talk page, so welcome! Always good to see new people join the climate change information improvement effort. My example of marine resources was perhaps not the best. But I suggested that the new ocean temperature article should be small-ish because from what I can see we already have a lot of content about temperature at depths (or temperature profiles/distributions) in the ocean spread around other Wikipedia articles. So this new ocean temperature article could just give a very high level overview, easy to understand for laypersons but not duplicated detailed content that is in other sub-articles. I can see content about temperature at depth e.g. in these articles: ocean, ocean heat content, effects of climate change on ocean, Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, ocean current, thermohaline circulation. Temperature is everywhere! So the challenge would be to just pull out some key concepts into the new ocean temperature article but keep it short and refer to sub-articles. Do you think this would be workable? EMsmile (talk) 21:52, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

Regarding the suggestion of renaming the SST article and reworking it a bit, I am not sure that this would work; maybe. It does seem to me that we probably do need an article on "sea surface temperature" that is distinct from "ocean temperature in general". Maybe the solution would be to have three articles: Ocean temperature (as the overarching one, possibly as a disambiguation page), then sea surface temperature and deeper ocean temperature. The distinction would be: less than 50 m is sea surface temp and more than 50 m is deeper ocean temp. I think all the historical stuff, things about bathing, corals at shallow depth etc is about sea surface temp. Whereas the deeper ocean temp is more relevant in relationship to the ocean currents and now of course with climate change, as we are heating up the ocean to deeper and deeper levels... Also the other problem with renaming the SST article would be the hundreds of wikilinks that are linking to it. They would all have to be checked to see if they refer to the temp at the surface or to the temp at higher depths? - If we were to rename the existing sea surface temperature article would we still create a sub-article for sea surface temperature alone, or would there be no such article title anymore then? EMsmile (talk) 21:52, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

Hi User:Chidgk1 which of the proposals did your "good idea" refer to? My original one or the one from RCraig09 at 16:05?EMsmile (talk) 21:52, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

Not sure what I did to indent like that as I originally meant to reply to you. But RCraig09 idea is also good. Chidgk1 (talk) 15:57, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

Based on the redirects it seems like there's not another page covering ocean temp at depth, just the short section at Ocean#Temperature. I am very much not an expert on oceans at all, so I leave it to people smarter than me to say whether there's enough non-overlapping content here to merit an independent article, but it certainly sounds like a significant and independent thing. I think it's a good idea to take a pass at it. To @RCraig09's idea maybe it makes sense to expand Ocean#Temperature first, since that currently seems like the closest thing we have to something purely about "ocean temperature."

Regarding the disambig currently there, I noted at one of the other talk pages that it seems reasonable that in the basic context of a reader searching for "ocean temperature," it's likely there's not a clear WP:PRIMARYTOPIC (this changes, obviously, if we have an article specifically about ocean temp). As for linking within articles, I think context is reasonable; if something is talking about rising ocean temperature, I see no problem linking to Effects of climate change on oceans#Rising ocean temperature (and in fact, it's probably reasonable to have Rising ocean temperature as a redirect there). Dylnuge ^{(Talk • Edits)} 16:12, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for those comments, User:Dylnuge. I've tackled one of your easier suggestions first and that's to create a redirect from Rising ocean temperature to Effects of climate change on oceans#Rising ocean temperature. I think that's useful. And I think setting up a new, short stand-alone article on Ocean temperature would be good. Someone just has to have the courage (or time) to have a go at it. I've also looked again at Ocean#Temperature. It uses an excerpt from Effects of climate change on oceans#Rising ocean temperature when talking about the rising temperatures. I wonder if we ought to add more content about the "non rising" aspects, e.g. how these temperatures are measured at depth. - Compare also with Ocean#Color and Ocean color as the corresponding sub-article. In this case, only an excerpt is used, nothing else. EMsmile (talk) 10:59, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

Moved to Talk:Ocean temperature

EMsmile (talk) 20:13, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

Good article review of Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef

Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef has been nominated for an individual good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Chidgk1 (talk) 14:36, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

Articles on predicted outcomes for 1.5, 2, 3 degrees etc of warming

Hi all

Reading Effects of climate change I think what would be really useful for the reader would be either sections or separate articles to help them understand what 2 degrees of warming would actually mean, since this is how the media talks about climate change and how COP and other international efforts guage their work. My concern is we are burying the lead in the details of the text and not providing people with the simple facts of what a 2 or 3 degrees of warming world would be like. Obviously there is a lot info available from IPCC etc. If there were separate articles on 1.5, 2, 3 degrees etc:

1. What would be a good way of titling the articles? E.g 'Predicted impact of 2 degrees of global warming', it would need to be accurate but also understandable for people looking for this info, so avoiding technical language where possible.
2. What would a be a good way to divide this up? Articles for 1.5, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 degrees? Or something else?
3. What would be the best sources to use? I know IPCC would be an excellent source, are there others which summarise their reports well for laypersons?

Thanks

John Cummings (talk) 20:13, 9 November 2022 (UTC)

I seem to recall someone proposed this in the last few years, though I can't find it in the archives here. I think that there were several difficulties involved. Mainly, the content would be changing continuously as forecasts change, and it's not likely that the content would be dutifully updated on Wikipedia if the content were extensive. P.S. I think that a lot is efficiently conveyed by graphics, including this and this. I'm not trying to be a Negative Nancy, but I don't think this concept warrants a separate article, much less a family of articles. —RCraig09 (talk) 21:16, 9 November 2022 (UTC)

• Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet is a 2007 layman book where the chapters are titled 1°, 2°, and so on to 6, with climate apocalypse starting at 2. 1.5 used to be a thing but after COP27 I guess the plan is to not count degrees anymore. "The Uninhabitable Earth" talks about 2 degrees and is a layman source for an article for that degree. I think there could be articles for each degree and that if anyone looked for sources they could find them for each whole degree. Bluerasberry (talk) 22:10, 9 November 2022 (UTC)

I found the previous discussion on this which RCraig09 mentioned here in the archive: https://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Climate_change/Archive_2#Climate_change_degree_by_degree . The consensus then was not to proceed with this. I think that was the right decision. We have so many existing CC sub-articles that we have a hard time keeping updated that I shudder at the thought of creating new ones from scratch. I suggest this kind of content could perhaps be included in effects of climate change, an article which also needs further work and updates. There is also Climate change scenario which could be reworked to include information on effects by temperature increase. Or Representative Concentration Pathway. So it could be good to have it somewhere but please not in new stand-alone articles, would be my opinion. EMsmile (talk) 22:59, 9 November 2022 (UTC)

I agree with @EMsmile and @RCraig09 in that it would be unmaintainable and not necessarily a good way of redirecting energy -- because the concensus science at each of those degree points is much harder to interpret. I think the better route would be including graphics and media describing the impacts of those levels of warming in different sections. However, there is room (I think) to discuss the political goals of 1.5 and 2 degrees -- having a article that explicitely documents the history (and failure to meet) the goal could be a useful synthesis of the socio-economic stuff. In that kind of article, you could have a brief summary of the impacts at 1.5 and 2 degrees pointing at that main article about impacts. Sadads (talk) 13:04, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

Interesting idea but as most people nowadays seem to think warming will be 2ish degrees I think it should remain as one article Chidgk1 (talk) 13:46, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

New source for country articles

Climate Trace has just added a lot more GHG sources to their website, so I have been naming some steelworks and cement plants here in Turkey. You may be surprised which are the biggest emitters in your country. Chidgk1 (talk) 17:25, 12 November 2022 (UTC)

https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata_talk:WikiProject_Climate_Change#Anyone_like_to_make_an_import_from_Climate_Trace? Chidgk1 (talk) 16:15, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

Mitigation and economics - where should the bulk of this reside?

I am currently working on the climate change mitigation article and wanted to tackle the section on economics (currently called "Investment and finance"). I then realised that similar content on mitigation + economics (and on policies) is also spread over these two articles as well:

• Economics of climate change#Mitigation
• Economics of climate change mitigation

In which article should the bulk, i.e. the details about mitigation + economics reside? And do you think there is scope for merging of any of these articles? Both of those articles about economics seem quite outdated and messy to me. It would take a lot of work to bring them all up to scratch. - Noting a short previous discussion about CC economics here: https://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Climate_change/Archive_3#Can_anyone_help_with_economics%3F EMsmile (talk) 23:24, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

I've worked on the climate change template

Today and yesterday I've done some work on the climate change template (see the template's talk page here). For those who don't know this: thhe template is a box that can be added to the bottom of an article and which is meant to show an overview of all climate change articles. I felt that a lot of our articles were missing though. If you look at the revision history you can easily see what I added and changed. Some of my changes might require further discussion, let's do that here or better on the template's talk page. I found these "missing articles" by comparing this list of articles (a project that I am working on) with the existing template. I noticed incoming Wikilinks varied widely but when an article is included in the template then its incoming Wikilinks jumps up by about 400 additional incoming wikilinks (due to the template).

Question to the team: I would like to add a group called "climate change adaptation" which would be after "climate change mitigation". It would not be as big and would not have any sub-groups but I think it would be worth having. If not, where should the climate change adaptation topics be included? I am thinking of: adaptive capacity, disaster risk reduction, ecosystem-based adaptation, flood control, nature-based solutions (this one is currently in the mitigation group), maybe The Adaptation Fund and probably a few more. EMsmile (talk) 11:47, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

This is how the template looks (you can edit it just like any other article):

EMsmile (talk) 11:47, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

And a follow-up question: do we also need a "navigation side bar"? I've never understood when the side bar is preferred over the template at the bottom of the page. I find those sidebars a bit distracting but others love them. I am not sure which of the two templates work better on mobile devices. For comparison, this is how the "pollution side bar" looks:

EMsmile (talk) 11:49, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

To make it easier to follow, these are the terms I added to the climate change template yesterday:

• Nationally Determined Contributions
• Ocean deoxygenation
• Cooperative Mechanisms under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement
• Gold Standard (carbon offset standard)
• Cloud feedback
• Co-benefits of climate change mitigation
• Climate-smart agriculture
• Coupled Model Intercomparison Project
• Global surface temperature
• Carbon farming
• Carbon budget
• Effects of climate change on island nations
• Wetland methane emissions
• World energy supply and consumption
• Representative Concentration Pathway
• Sustainable Development Goal 13
• Marine heatwave
• Green Climate Fund
• Atlantic meridional overturning circulation
• Climate change and infectious diseases
• Climate change scenario
• Ocean heat content
• Carbon emission trading
• Oceanic carbon cycle
• Carbon accounting
• Climate resilience
• Arctic sea ice decline
• Biological pump
• Urban flooding
• Climate system
• Climate change vulnerability
• IPCC Sixth Assessment Report
• Instrumental temperature record
• Water security
• Carbon sequestration
• Water scarcity

EMsmile (talk) 12:43, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

The best place to discuss this template further is here.EMsmile (talk) 13:34, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

Copyright issues re IPCC graphics

File:IPCC AR6 WG3 SPM-50 Mitigation Options.png

IPCC AR6 WG3 SPM-50 Mitigation Options

I've just posted at Commons:Village_pump/Copyright#Graphics_published_by_the_IPCC. Please add your thoughts to the discussion. —RCraig09 (talk) 00:43, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for that. The discussion at Commons:Village_pump/Copyright#Graphics_published_by_the_IPCC is very active and interesting! I encourage everyone to take a look there. I am hoping for an easy to understand summary in the end. :-) EMsmile (talk) 11:34, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

There is no easy to understand summary yet. But as no one has yet deleted https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MitigationOptions_costs_potentials_IPCCAR6WGIII_rotated-de.svg I might use https://svgtranslate.toolforge.org/ to translate it and see whether that prompts either deletion or translation to other languages Chidgk1 (talk) 18:54, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

But the English option exists already, see here on the right. It's bound to be deleted at some point though, sadly. See also discussion on the mitigation talk page here, regarding recreating a version that would not violate copyright (it's not easy). EMsmile (talk) 21:10, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

World Soil Day - deserving of independent article?

Hello WikiProject Climate change! I believe World Soil Day is deserving of its own article. It has significant coverage and the year deemed International Year of Soil is getting further and further away from us.

• https://www.vaticannews.va/en/world/news/2022-12/world-soil-day-united-nations-environmental-awareness-earth.html
• https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/new-updates/world-soil-day-2022-history-significance-and-theme-of-the-day/articleshow/95995492.cms

Any thoughts on this? Either way, happy World Soil Day. - Wil540 art (talk) 00:37, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Hi Wil540 art: Yes, sure, go ahead. Some years ago, I helped with similar articles, i.e. World Water Day, World Toilet Day, Global Handwashing Day. You could take a look at their structure for inspiration. EMsmile (talk) 12:59, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Working on carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere, inputs welcome

I am currently making changes to carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere (this one gets around 500 pageviews per day), and will later also make some changes to the carbon dioxide article (this one gets 2500 pageviews per day). If you have an interest or knowledge in this topic, please take part in the discussions on the talk pages. For the article carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere, I am focusing it more on the present and future situation, and have moved the information about the geologic past to the end of the article (similar to the ordering in ocean acidification). I think in general people get confused otherwise if we first talk about the different CO2 concentrations millions of years ago, and then about the current situation. The other way around makes more sense to me: so first current and future, then the geologic past at the end of the article. (for comparison: the article atmospheric methane also focuses the article on the present time, not the geologic past). EMsmile (talk) 12:01, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Draft:List of imprisoned climate activists

I've started this draft. Any help is appreciated. CT55555(talk) 17:43, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Most IEA content is now CC-BY-4.0

Hi everyone. Fantastic news: The International Energy Agency has released most of its content under a Wikipedia-compatible license! License terms and exceptions are here: https://www.iea.org/terms . This means we are legally allowed to copy most IEA text and charts into Wikipedia if we provide attribution using the instructions at Help:Adding open license text to Wikipedia. Cheers, Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 03:12, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

An example of where student-added content was not overly successful

We had talked previously about the merits and challenges when students edit climate change articles as part of their course work (see here). Today I want to point out an example where it didn't work out well - in my opinion at least. It was on the article effects of climate change. I had to remove most of the content that the students had added (even though it was not spam or formally wrong, but the quality of the content was too low for this kind of article). I wrote about it here. Was I overly critical? I hope not. I do like the idea of students adding content (in principle). I think in this particular case the students did learn how to edit Wikipedia articles alright. But they did not improve the quality of this particular article but made it worse which is why I had to remove their content. EMsmile (talk) 10:48, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

I agree with you that students adding content is good in principle. On your point about us not noticing for some time I wonder if it would be possible/good to have some kind of automatic short notification to this talk page when a student chooses a climate change article? Such a bot would read "This user is a student editor ..." on their talk page, spot a match when they first wrote on the talk page of an article which has our project, and write a note here. Perhaps whatever software produces "Wiki Education assignment ...." could do it? @Ian (Wiki Ed): mentioned previously about talking to Sage about something similar to this. If they say no then could it be done with a Wikipedia bot? Chidgk1 (talk) 17:54, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

That could be useful. Another option would be for the instructor to announce here on the talk page their intention to work on CC articles and to be open for guidance / feedback during the early stages of their course. EMsmile (talk)

By the way, a highly successful university Wikipedia editing course was the one by User:Baylorfk (a Coordinating Lead Author of the IPCC AR6, WGI report) earlier this year in May. I was very impressed with the work of his students. Their task was to add recent info from the IPCC AR 6 WG I report into Wikipedia articles and they did so very skillfully, e.g. User:Kkimble08 and User:MarinersApartmentLandlord. That course was done outside of the WikiEdu system and is described here. EMsmile (talk) 20:53, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

Wow, what great news. I hope other instructors follow Baylorfk's example. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 03:28, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Should the term "climate change preparedness" redirect to somewhere?

I just came across the term climate change preparedness and wonder if we should place a redirect for it to somewhere? Is the term up and coming? Should it just be part of the climate change adaptation article? The article preparedness is rather weak at present. The term disaster preparedness redirects to emergency management#Preparedness. I came across this definition in a recent UN-GLAAS Report: "Mitigation, adaptation and resilience of WASH systems and services are important aspects of climate change preparedness." EMsmile (talk) 12:11, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

Merger discussion for Demand response

An article that you have been involved in editing—Demand response—has been proposed for merging with another article. If you are interested, please participate in the merger discussion. Thank you. Chidgk1 (talk) 13:09, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Move discussion for carbon accounting

A move discussion is currently taking place for carbon accounting to Greenhouse gas accounting. If you are interested, please participate in Talk:Carbon_accounting#Requested_move_3_January_2023. Thank you. EMsmile (talk) 13:16, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Move discussion for biomass

A move discussion is currently taking place for biomass to biomass (energy). If you are interested, please participate in Talk:Biomass#Requested_move_5_January_2023. Thank you. EMsmile (talk) 13:17, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Merger discussion for Predicting the timing of peak oil

An article that you have been involved in editing—Predicting the timing of peak oil—has been proposed for merging with another article. If you are interested, please participate in the merger discussion. Thank you. Chidgk1 (talk) 14:55, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

Question about superscript page numbers

I have a question about page numbers in the long ref style (see also a related discussion here where we talk about IPCC reports). My question is not about IPCC reports in particular but about how page numbers are displayed, so I am starting a discussion here. When I add page numbers I use the syntax {{rp|1079}} for page 1079 in a long report. Is it too confusing for readers to see that little superscript "1079"? EMsmile (talk) 21:02, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Someone suggested I do it like this instead: {{rp|p. 1079}}.

• My version looks like this for example (see the little superscript number at the very end of the sentence): The effects of CC on the water cycle are profound [...].

• The other version would be like this: The effects of CC on the water cycle are profound [...].
• Or even like this: The effects of CC on the water cycle are profound [...].

So my question: is it worth/necessary/better to add the little "p." or even "page" before the page number? Would it help our readers or clog up the page and waste pixels? I am tending against it for simplicity reasons. EMsmile (talk) 21:02, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

I'd also like to point out that very few readers click through to those citations. The most recent research on this topic I have found is this paper and presentation from 2020: "Quantifying Engagement with Citations on Wikipedia" see here. Full paper here. Based on that research one could argue that it's not worth adding the extra "p." or "page" or one could argue the opposite: if the extra "p." or "page" was there, more people would click? I do always add the page numbers, just wondering if the superscript number is sufficient or if it ought to have "p." or "page" in front of it? Maybe this has already been discussed elsewhere. EMsmile (talk) 21:02, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Template:Rp has some useful policy background. Dtetta (talk) 21:09, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Yes, the template states: "Do not add "Page", "pp.", etc.—just the numbers.". In the talk page archive of the template I found a previous discussion about p. or page and it seems that the consensus was to introduce a tool tip instead that appears when hovering over the little superscript number, see here: https://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Template_talk:Rp/Archive_1#Suggestion,_state_%22p%22_or_%22page%22 . I think that solution with the tool tip is pretty good. EMsmile (talk) 21:50, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Please see also a related discussion here on the talk page of carbon accounting: https://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Talk:Carbon_accounting#Adding_page_numbers . I would prefer to use the rp syntax rather than having the page numbers in the ref list (for the long ref style). This would avoid repeating the same ref several times in the ref list which I think would be important. What is everyone's opinion about the {{rp|6}} for page 6, for example? — Preceding unsigned comment added by EMsmile (talk • contribs)

WP:BIKESHED. Let's just do what we always do with reference styles: determine it per page. See WP:CITEVAR. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:54, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

Hmmm, I might have not made my question sufficiently clear: My question is: if an article uses the long ref style, then it should also use the rp syntax for page numbers (rather than add the page numbers into the reference list), shouldn't it? Long ref style and rp syntax go hand in hand, right? EMsmile (talk) 18:21, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

More people would use the page parameter in the {{cite book/cite report}} template for that, but both options are fine. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 18:50, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

References

Rename carbon credit to carbon allowance?

Your comments would be appreciated at Talk:Carbon credit#Rename to carbon allowance?. Thanks Chidgk1 (talk) 18:17, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

Climate reparations article needed

Right now, "Climate reparations" is a redirect to "Climate ethics." Here is a start on an actual article. The article could be a useful DYK next month, to provide background and context for COP 27. Oliveleaf4 (talk) 05:05, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Oliveleaf4 - thanks for raising this - would you be happy for me to add it to my list as a possible task for editathons? (I'm the Wikimedian in Residence for climate at the Global Systems Institute, so I might be able to pull in some extra hands, and possibly expert guidance for this article). TatjanaBaleta (talk) 06:16, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

Hi Oliveleaf4 your draft text looks good but do we really need a new article for this; wouldn't it be better to integrate it into either climate ethics or climate justice? I hadn't seen the climate ethics article before. The climate justice is fairly OK but also needs further work to make it more understandable. In general, I hesitate to start up new articles when we have so many existing ones about climate change topics that need further work & fleshing out. EMsmile (talk) 09:37, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

I see Oliveleaf4 moved the draft to Climate reparations in November. It's a useful new article - thanks for starting it! A summary of the topic would also be good within Climate justice. BTW I have boldly redirected Climate ethics to Climate justice. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 04:12, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Hi Clayoquot, I think your bold redirect from Climate ethics to Climate justice was a very good idea. Thanks. EMsmile (talk) 12:06, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

Hello friends! Glad to see you have been working on this. I am only on wiki once in a while these days, so I am not in a position to build out finished, polished articles. My goal is to provide information and citations as I come across them. So if you think it's better to incorporate the information into existing articles instead of starting new ones, for the most part I'm happy to leave it to you.

Regarding the number of articles needing further work, I'll post below about what I've found working the cleanup queue. Oliveleaf4 (talk) 16:47, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

Thanks @Oliveleaf4! TatjanaBaleta (talk) 06:54, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Help!

I have a question: how do I create an article within the scope of the project? Learning With Ameer (talk) 11:23, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

The template is {{WikiProject Climate Change}}. It goes at the top of the talk page. If there are multiple project banners you can put that template (the whole thing, including the braces) inside {{WikiProject Banner Shell}}.

Right now there isn't any content in your article Draft:Climate Change History for anybody to know what you plan for this article. You might check related articles:

• Category:History of climate variability and change for climate change history
• Paleoclimatology and Historical climatology for how climate is studied in far-past and and recent eras
• History of climate change science for the history of the science, as opposed to the history of the climate.
• Category:Climate history subsumes all the above and more

-- M.boli (talk) 15:08, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

Pinging @Learning With Ameer to make sure they see the comment, Sadads (talk) 21:49, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

The article on carbon sink overlaps too much with carbon sequestration

I plan to make some improvements to carbon sink. My initial reaction from looking at the article is that it contains a lot of content that should really be at carbon sequestration (and a short summary or excerpt to point across would suffice). With this post here I just want to test the waters in case someone has already thought about this in the past, and wants to propose an improved structure for the carbon sink article. My inclination would be to cut it down a lot, condense it and make it into a high level overview article. EMsmile (talk) 13:59, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

"Wikipedia:CLIMATE" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Wikipedia:CLIMATE and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 February 3 § Wikipedia:CLIMATE until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. IntegerSequences (talk | contribs) 07:11, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

Comments on working the cleanup queue

Would like to share what I've found when working on the cleanup queue.

QUICK SUMMARY:

Whatever you enjoy doing to improve the encyclopedia, just keep doing it.

Although one person can definitely make a difference, there is no magic plan or prioritization I can see that would work on the cleanup queue.

It might be worth taking a look to see if the articles needing "clarification" are just confusing, or if they are factually inaccurate.

Mostly I have done citation and link cleanup, or quick fixes. If I really knocked myself out during my spare time after work, once in a while I could either catch up with the articles needing cleanup, or bring the article backlog down by about one article. Once in a while I managed to bring the total number of issues for cleanup down a little bit.

However, focusing my efforts on bringing the cleanup queue numbers down meant I had to skip the articles that needed really significant cleanup, like the articles with long lists of citations. The articles needing extensive cleanup were often the most important in terms of content and number of readers.

Sometimes I would work on one article that needed a bunch of cleanup, and the backlog numbers didn't come down. Sometimes I tried to finish off the new articles needing quick fixes. This makes the numbers come down for a little while, but then you run out of quick fix articles. Sometimes I would just work on a quick fix for one little issue. Getting through the quick fix issues can bring the total number of issues down, but may not have much impact on the number of articles needing cleanup.

My takeaway is:

All forms of cleanup are needed

The cleanup backlog listings are a valuable tool

A single editor can definitely make a dent in the cleanup backlog, but you can't bring the numbers down very far without help from other editors.

Going slowly to develop a high quality article, and recruiting expertise among editors who can get the significant articles right, may be the most important thing we can do for our readers

Doing routine, mechanical fixes on the lesser read articles can help ensure that misinformation doesn't spread

Lots of people at editathons have told me they are really good at "clarification", but I have almost never seen an article needing "clarification" resolved, in this or any other WikiProject's cleanup queue!

In conclusion,

There is no magic plan or prioritization I can see that would work on the cleanup queue.

Whatever you enjoy doing to improve the encyclopedia, just keep doing it.

Sometimes at work, people have asked me, "Is Wikipedia really accurate?" So I ask them, "Well, what are you interested in? Let me show you." Then I show them how to find the cleanup queue for the Wikiproject they're interested in, and we take a look at the articles on the list. I point out that if they really want to ensure that everything is correct on Wikipedia, there's plenty to be done. So far, I have not recruited any new editors this way.

A special thank you to everyone working to develop high quality articles, that don't end up in the cleanup queue!

Oliveleaf4 (talk) 17:59, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

Thanks @Oliveleaf4. I wonder whether the articles listed in the “cleanup” link from this project page could have default sort according to the priority of this project? Chidgk1 (talk) 12:16, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

@Chidgk1, you could ask for another column to be added for sorting by priority, but I would want to keep the ability to re-sort each section by column. Re-sorting a section by different criteria can be quite helpful for picking out a task you can tackle in the time available.

The project priority sort would be more important for the big topical WikiProjects with lots of editors, that can clear more than 50 articles a week.

Some articles in our queue which are tagged for multiple WikiProjects may be getting finished off according to the priorities of editors working on cleanup for other WikiProjects.

It's quite interesting to see how many WikiProjects there are now which focus on a specific aspect of cleanup, generally prioritized by date. The thing for us is that we will only see results from the cleanup-focused WikiProjects once in a while, since we make up such a small subset of the encyclopedia. The scale of our project is such that a single editor may actually be able to keep up with one or more sections of our queue.

Oliveleaf4 (talk) 03:43, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

I have asked at User talk:Bamyers99/Archive 19#Could the whole cleanup list for a project be sorted by importance? Chidgk1 (talk) 12:50, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

WikiProject Petroleum

Hello, there is a proposal to form WikiProject Petroleum, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Petroleum. Jerium (talk) 14:41, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Stratification (water)#Requested move 1 February 2023

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Stratification (water)#Requested move 1 February 2023 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 21:23, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Update: we now have a new article on ocean stratification which was formerly part of stratification (water). Ocean stratification is one of the things that is being amplified by climate change, so quite important. EMsmile (talk) 08:48, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

Reminder: climate denial review in different language Wikipedias

I'd like to bring back to your attention an important piece of work that was started by User:Femke a year ago, prompted by a BBC podcast about climate change denial content in different language Wikipedias. Here is the project description on Meta: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_portal/climate_denial_review Just putting it here in case some of our newer members hadn't seen it yet and have time to help with it. The earlier discussion, prompted by the BBC podcast is in the talk archive here. EMsmile (talk) 09:01, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

I was prompted to look this up today due to a related article that was posted on the Facebook Group Wikipedia Weekly. It's not about climate change but it takes a thorough look at another topic area where a few editors are pushing "wrong" content about the holocaust and the treatment of jews in Poland. The article describes in detail the failures of Wikipedias admin and arbitration process in detecting and sanctioning persistent behaviour that leads to misleading and wrong content. This is due to the fact that admins want to only focus on editor conduct not on content issues. It's a very interesting read: Wikipedia’s Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust. EMsmile (talk) 09:01, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

Net Zero vs Carbon Neutrality

A key issue that we (the everyone) will face relates to a distinction between Net Zero and Carbon Neutrality - this is fundamental to tackle greenwashing. The ISO Net Zero Guidelines were recently published which gives loads of great source material and, because of how they are written (collectively through ISO), they are well suited to be used as a basis for an article. Could an admin or experienced user help me to execute the change needed to split the redirect and build the article? Many thanks, Dan Our2050World (talk) 23:28, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Hi Our2050World, welcome to Wikipedia! You want to change the redirect from "Net Zero" so that it becomes a stand-alone article? Currently it redirects to carbon neutrality. It would be easy to do, you just need to use source editor on the existing Net zero page. But it would be best if you suggest this on the talk page of carbon neutrality first (ah, I see now that you already posted there; that's good). Perhaps you can build up the planned content for a new Net zero page in your sandbox before carrying out the split? I am not sure if a split is needed or if the redirect should perhaps simply be changed to point to a particular section within the carbon neutrality article? - Please also take a look at a new merger discussion for carbon credit and carbon offset here: https://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Talk:Carbon_offset#Proposal_to_Merge_this_Article_and_Carbon_Credit_Article . EMsmile (talk) 08:23, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

Hello @Our2050World. When I talk about a missing articles on Wikipedia, that is the example I give! Carbon neutrality is usually applied to companies, products and individuals, and is usually a short-term goal. The global and national goals to decarbonise to net-zero are quite a different topic. I don't quite understand the greenwashing aspect it. Could you expand on that at talk:carbon neutrality?

You already have to ability to do this. When you WP:split an article, keep in mind that WP:copying within Wikipedia requires attribution. You could do it WP:boldly, but writing a new article is sometimes difficult to do for new editors, so I would continue to ask for a bit of help at talk:carbon neutrality. When using the ISO guidelines, keep in mind that these will be written for an expert audience, and that Wikipedia articles should be significantly easier. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 09:02, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

New Wikimedian in Residence

Hello all!

Let me introduce Tatjana Baleta, who started as a Wikimedian in Residence at the Global System Insitute in Exeter. With a background in conservation and science communication, she'll be engaging students and academics in Exeter (and beyond), to contribute to Wikipedia. The project was set up together with Clayoquot and Sadads, and has been a few years in the making. Misinformation on this topic can be really damaging, so I'm really excited to get more expert eyes involved!

We're in the initial stage of training and scoping. If you have ideas about important gaps, biases or opportunities to make articles less technical, feel free to drop her a note.

This residency occurs simultaneous with Wikipedia:Meetup/SDGs/Communication of environment SDGs, which engages senior academics around the world. We'll try our best to train people well before they edit, so that the volunteer community won't be overwhelmed. If anything goes wrong, feel free to contact me or Tatjana.

Femke (talk) 17:39, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Welcome! Feel free to stay in touch with me and others at meta:Wikimedians in Residence Exchange Network. Bluerasberry (talk) 17:44, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Fantastic. Welcome aboard, Tatjana! Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 20:07, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Thanks Femke and hello everyone! Looking forward to working with you all! TatjanaBaleta (talk) 14:02, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

Welcome also from my side, I look forward to collaborating with you. I think we are both going to train new editors from time to time so I'd be keen to compare notes on that. For example, I have created some simple editing tutorial videos which are available on my YouTube channel. They are nothing fancy. They might even have to be redone eventually with the new Vector 2022 (I've just yesterday switched over to the new look myself). I am curious: are you using existing videos for training or planning to create your own? Should these be shared on Wikimedia Commons, or somewhere else, or would they just clog up storage space? I've also got a large-ish powerpoint presentation for training purposes which can go hand in hand with such training videos. Happy to share and learn from others how they do their trainings. And the best training at the end of the day is "learning by doing". EMsmile (talk) 16:00, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing these, EMsmile ! Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 01:41, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for raising those questions re: training videos - we're still in the process of working these details out, but will be sure to keep you in the loop! TatjanaBaleta (talk) 09:42, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing these from me too! - I'll share them with my teammates, as we start our work on researching and inputting climate action information. @ AnnetteCSteps (talk) 00:23, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

Upcoming Editathon

Hi all, just wanted to leave an FYI note about the upcoming editathon at the Global Systems Institute as part of this WiR, happening on the 26th of January '23. Myself, Femke and Clayoquot will be training some new editors that work in the climate space, so you'll likely see a few edits from new editors around.

With their climate knowledge we hope it will be a productive session, but if you notice any serious issues please feel free to reach out to me. We'll be hosting more editathons with similar audiences this year and hope to facilitate some useful contributions. Thanks! TatjanaBaleta (talk) 14:59, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

Africa Environment

Hello everyone,

First I would like to introduce you to a project which will run in March.

The m:Africa Knowledge Initiative (AKI) has tasked m:Wiki In Africa (WIA) and Wikimedia Community User Group Côte d’Ivoire (WMUG IC) with the challenge of driving content creation and contribution using the visibility offered through the African Union’s Wangari Maathai Day (3rd of March).

The main focus of the initiative is to encourage Wikimedia and other communities to contribute content related to Africa’s Climate to the Wikimedia projects in March 2023 and beyond!

The topics covered in this focus relate to the climates of Africa, and the impact of climate change and environmental issues or threats faced by countries and communities across Africa. Due to Africa’s historical landscape, for maximum impact the project will be bi-lingual : French and English. Content created should primarily be on Wikipedia, or Wikidata.

To do that, we are a small team organizing elements. For exemple, we were offered a fund to attribute micro-grants to individuals and groups in Africa to organize events. We also were asked to partner with organizations that have resources that might be helpful for the project. We are also collecting resources to serve editors. And finally, of course, we have to create plenty of red links :)))

One of the people willing to help is User:Cmwaura, already a member of this WikiProject, but I hope that more will be willing to join the effort this March.

Beside informing you, I have a few propositions where you could help if you are interested, and a question for you...

1. First we launch yesterday the call for African individuals and community to propose local activities. Can you help us relay the call ? https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Africa_Environment/Microfunding
2. We also currently posting in various places. Telegram, Facebook, WikiProject pages, our websites... here is one such links recently posted : **https://www.wikiinafrica.org/2023/02/08/wangari-maathai-day-celebrated-with-the-africa-environment-wikifocus-throughout-march/

• • https://twitter.com/wikiafrica/status/1623385333814403087

1. Third, we will need jury members to evaluate the quality of the propositions submitted by the local organizers. A call will be published in the next couple of days. I will post the link later, but if you are interested, we are planning to support at least 11 propositions and the reviews need to be done before early March
2. We need suggestions of resources. I am sure you already have some good ones. We are starting to collate our resources here : m:Africa Environment/Resources
3. Last but least... we want to create some red lists. And of course to avoid reinventing the wheel. I am aware there are already some red links in your Africa task force. But maybe some would be interested to enrich them ?
4. Additionally, we would like to put a special effort to create many articles to cover Climate of Country pages. At the moment, there are only 3 countries covered... we have started creating for such a table, but this table is hosted on meta, and the red links are ... green. Would this wikiproject will willing to host our red links pages ? If yes, we could transfer our current stuff. For example : m:Africa Environment/Lists/Climate of

Waiting eagerly for your feedback and thoughts. Anthere (talk) 18:06, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

This comment is perhaps only relevent to South Africa. I like your decision to use Wikidata. If anyone is interested in improving the info on South African coal-fired power stations they can contact me as I have some Wikidata stuff for Turkish coal-fired power they might like to copy Chidgk1 (talk) 06:39, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Hi Anthere and welcome to the WikiProject. In terms of redlink lists and articles to improve, I suggest topics around energy access by country. E.g. Clean cooking in country x, or Access to electricity in country x. The current decade is critical for making long-term decisions around what kind of infrastructure African countries will put in place to meet local needs for electricity and for modern fuels. Excellent sources on the nexus of energy access and climate include the International Energy Agency, World Bank, the WHO, and Our World in Data. The references on Sustainable energy and Energy poverty and cooking could be useful starting points for choosing sources. Cheers, Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 17:37, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Note: IPCC broke the links to draft reports

I'm not sure if they can be found elsewhere and we can do a WP:AWB run to fix all the links (webarchive likely), or that we just have to manually change thousands of links and find the new published page numbers.. I just updated Wikipedia:IPCC citation/AR6. So please, use the preformatted citations (/finish them), rather than copying citations between articles. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 08:53, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

This happened when the IPCC Working Groups published the final versions of their contributions to the Sixth Assessment Report, replacing the provisional ones that have been up since August 2021 and February and April 2022. I've alerted them to the problem and asked if there's a way of correcting it or to let us know if other changes are happening. Jonathanlynn (talk) 15:46, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Your opinions on fossil fuel phase-out?

It is correctly marked as top priority - your opinions at Talk:Fossil fuel phase-out#Do we need the hydro, solar, nuclear and biomass sections? would be welcome if you have time - and your edits too of course Chidgk1 (talk) 16:42, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Bradextw is improving the readability of climate change articles

Hello @Bradextw - I just noticed. Thank you and if you ever run short of difficult to read articles just ask here and I am sure we will be quick to load you up with lots more work :-) Chidgk1 (talk) 15:20, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Cool! Welcome aboard Brad! Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 17:55, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Proposed collaboration to add science-based content, resources, quotes and more on climate mitigation.

Hi all,

I'm a former environmental data/outreach scientist turned into a climate action scientist, who founded and leads the nonprofit org Climate Steps, which is all about answering the question "What can I do to fight climate change?" I also am on the Board and am content lead for Earth Hero, a growing-in-popularity climate action app. Climate Steps has been collecting science-based mitigation information and mentoring action for 6 years (focused equally on the relative impacts of different actions and how to take steps), and Earth Hero for three (focused on describing each specific action and providing how-to tips.) CSteps was approached by a couple Wikimedians from WMF and WikiCred about collaborating, and as we've talked, I totally agree. We each research similar content, but put it on different platforms in different styles. It would be great to combine the research, editing and some writing efforts!

So I am somewhat familiar with Wikipedia, in that about 17? years ago now, I advised on the Encyclopedia of Life and was curator for some of its info, which also entailed doing some wiki-thons, and being trained on Wikipedia at the Smithsonian. But I'm a little rusty! So forgive my mistakes as I relearn how to edit.

But I wanted to share with you two invited proposals that I've submitted to WikiCred and WMF, and I hope to turn in another one here in March. I didn't have a chance to share and ask for feedback before submittal, because I did them all in a rush after helping my father start to set up long term care. (And then I ran into problems with proxy servers.) But I would love your comments now, and what aspects of this appeal to those working in WikiProject Climate Change.

The stress of both proposals is on the research. The WMF Rapid Project one is to bring in core resources for climate mitigation, while the WikiCred one is larger and more involved in help rapidly build up 1) more quality knowledge on the impacts of individual climate action - which can be quite impactful (fighting some misinformation in the media about that); and 2) create a couple subpages to the individual climate action page and climate mitigation pages. Plus and link many other existing pages back to climate change and climate action. People have a lot of questions about climate action - and will more and more. It's very important to get the useful information out there. It's not so much on How-to tips (I read the talk section below), but on what steps are important. Earth Hero instead is a great place to put the specific how-to tips, so it's best to keep sending that info there. CSteps has more of a narrative, story-telling platform. But we need research, so this would be a great collaboration for us too.

Sorry for this being so long, but here are the two proposals. @Phoebe, I loved your talk, and thought you may like this. Ideas on how to move this collaboration forward, even if we don't get funded are welcome. @Clayoquot, @EmSmile I have come across your work as well, and would be interested in your suggestions and perhaps help in coordinating the work. Thanks! @AnnetteCSteps.

WMF, Rapid: https://docs.google.com/document/d/195f21lIcRP3BhA1wCWbGSdnfamfSL-iIizn_4657l30/edit?usp=sharing

WikiCred: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dNKXgh0uW7vCMiQEq57zgewFhtM_O4Md/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=107718282937044699967&rtpof=true&sd=true AnnetteCSteps (talk) 19:21, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Hi AnnetteCSteps, thanks for reaching out and good luck with your two proposals and your work in general! There is so much work to do on climate change info that it's a matter of "the more the merrier"! My climate change editing work is done as part of this project currently (and until mid 2024). A lot of my work involves editing the English Wikipedia climate change related articles, either by myself or with external content experts and of course together with the other Wikipedians. A lot of my project's work involves currently the IPCC AR 6 report and "translating" their academic language into something that users can easily understand. The IPCC reports are basically massive literature reviews, so personally I have no need for additional lists of resources (i.e. publications) at this point. I am also not that interested in quotes at this point but other people might find a compilation of quotes very useful. So at this stage, I am unsure about immediate areas of collaboration with you. My focus is on editing Wikipedia articles with regards to updating content and improving readability. I think this doesn't overlap with your efforts which is more on compiling resources and quote if I understood your proposals correctly? If you want to discuss more on specific details you can also reach out to me via the e-mailing function (see at the bottom of my user profile page). EMsmile (talk) 15:44, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

What does WikiCred stand for? EMsmile (talk) 15:46, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

Credibility of content. Here it is: [[1]]. First, I should add that I was just rewarded the Rapid Grant, so we're on board now! Basically I wanted to reach to let you know and coordinate, so in terms of bringing in resources, I don't overlap with what you do (as the IPCC is a big resource for me too); and perhaps a brief discussion of what type of literature you aim for from that (beyond what I see). Also, I want to create a 'main credible resources' page), like is done for WikiProject Vaccine Safety and some for PCC's Agriculture Task Force, with key background resources for main topics within individual mitigation that other Wikimedians can use for initial background references. The quotes are really a side efforts, and we're doing mostly just because CSteps has quotes in a database, Earth Hero does too, and WikiQuotes is gathering quotes, so we want to just pool them all into one database. (We use them on our own websites and apps.) But the main thrust is getting the key articles behind the science of grassroots mitigation in, such as behavior change and how neighbors influence neighbors, what science has found about the impact of commenting on public regulations, the pros and cons against civil disobedience in the climate sphere, can regular folks affect industry behavior? and is consumer choice actually impactful and in so which arenas? Things like that. The second proposal above, which I'll hear about early next year, is to focus on editing and writing for Food and Agricultural mitigation actions individuals can take, but I'll bring that up more later if funded. Thanks for the welcome, and I look forward to running into you now and then--AnnetteCSteps (talk) 20:29, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

I agree with EMsmile about the more the merrier :) Feel free to ask for feedback here on your plans about what articles you're planning to update. Sometimes the people in this WikiProject have suggestions about sources or know of other articles that already have relevant content. Good luck with the transition for your father. Best, Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 05:15, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

Thank you! on all counts.--AnnetteCSteps (talk) 20:29, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

Pinging @TatjanaBaleta. She's the Wikimedia Visiting Fellow at the Global Systems Institute. May be some overlap as well. Sounds great :). Social science is often a bit neglected on Wikipedia, so this may really bridge a gap. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 20:38, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping @Femke, and great to e-meet you @AnnetteCSteps. I'm working with students and researchers at the GSI to add and update climate change information on Wikipedia, and would be happy to explore synergies with you on mitigation and climate action topics. I also have an interest in developing updated source lists for editing on climate change. Perhaps we could arrange to chat further? TatjanaBaleta (talk) 11:35, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

Sounds fantastic. we (Mark and I) dive in in January, and before we start the lists, we would like to chat first with folks to help set priorities and make sure we're covering the bases. I was even hoping perhaps for a group meeting, after I kindof compile some of the feedback I've gotten and what we see as priorities. So would love to chat further with you. AnnetteCSteps (talk) 21:00, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for the great @TatjanaBaleta. We were asked to wait to implement the grant until after today, so tomorrow we'll be diving in. Lotsof discussion to be had. We actually will be working on several different projects through two different pilot grants: references, quotables, food/food-waste and agricultural climate actions for individuals, and actions for African activists. Focusing on key sources especially that are good science-based overviews of subjects and thus can be referenced by others easily to help lead discussions. Looking forward to chatting about priorities and ideas.

Still remembering how to use Wikipedia - it's been a decade since I've been on with projects (my username didn't pop up again.) Two folks in CSteps will also be joining, and I need to get them set up too. But it's coming back to me. Cheers!@AnnetteCSteps. 31 January 2023 (UTC) AnnetteCSteps (talk) 00:30, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

I just want to chime in here and introduce myself. I’m Mark Stewart, aka Loupgrru, and I haven’t done a lot of editing on Wikipedia, really just grammatical issues and filling in missing words that I noticed here and there over the last ten years, very infrequently. This is my first major involvement. I’m an English teacher with a little experience in journalism, and I’ve been focusing on how collaborative communities can improve many aspects of our lives for the last ten years, including reducing greenhouse gas emissions. I began writing for climatesteps.org a couple of years ago, and have developed their section on the relationship between community and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions since then.

I’ve very happy and excited to be involved in the two projects with Wikipedia that Annette mentioned. I too have to deal with a learning curve for Wikipedia citation procedures, and ask for everyone’s patience as I learn how to do this. Loupgrru (talk) 03:21, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

@Loupgrru, thanks for getting involved. Welcome! Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 16:29, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, @ClayoquotClayoquot! Loupgrru (talk) 21:50, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

Hi All,

Both pilot projects have been funded by Wikimedia (one WMF and one WikiCred.) The first one - compiling key climate action references (and quotables) across 3 organizations (4 hopefully) in WikiSource and WikiQuotes, and helping create a key overviews reference page here, starts this week. (slowly starts this week); the second grant covers research and adding in information about impactful food/food-waste/and agriculture actions that individuals can take. That one starts Feb 8th. See links above. Both are worked on through the spring at least, via a team of 4 part-timers from Climate Steps. More info to come, but one thing I'd love to have is a meeting of minds on what holes in the Food/Ag action sphere need to be filled in re: climate actions. A number of individual climate actions are impactful in the personal, social, political, and industry-related spheres - it's just applying them and finding new ones in the food/ag area.

Very much looking forward to working with you all on this! AnnetteCSteps (talk) 20:33, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Hi @AnnetteCSteps, congratulations on receiving funding! Looking forward to seeing the source lists for climate action. Re: Food/Ag, you've probably seen the WikiProject Climate change/Agriculture Task Force page, could be a place to start. TatjanaBaleta (talk) 07:52, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

Most assessments as 'Stub' articles are wildly out

I noticed that a very large number of articles assessed as 'Stubs' in this project's Quality Assessment table do not deserve their low grading (c.500 in total). By losing the genuine stubs amongst better length articles, we lose the opportunity to direct editors towards improving those smaller articles most in need of attention. I will try and work through some when I have time (High and Medium importance stubs have now been re-assessed).

I wanted to raise this as an issue because I was about to suggested to a group of university students that they could use the assessment table to easily find those pages most in need of improvement and expansion. Sadly, it seems that won't be possible until all the ratings are re-assessed by this project, and quality assessments applied to 'all' projects, not just this one. You may find WP:RATER a very useful tool for this task. Nick Moyes (talk) 12:21, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Ah thanks did not know there was a tool. Am having trouble installing it - asked for a button - User talk:Evad37/rater.js#Any chance of an install button? Chidgk1 (talk) 14:52, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

I ignored the warning message on install and it seems to work. But I am a bit confused. Firstly I tried a few and it still rated them as stub - perhaps I did not try enough but what makes you think a lot of them are not in fact stubs? Secondly why is “stub” marked for each project - that would imply that an article could be a stub for one project but not another? Thirdly thanks for fixing the high and medium importance articles - why is it worth the effort checking the low importance articles? Chidgk1 (talk) 18:32, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

@Chidgk1 All very good questions! In my view, many of the 'stub' articles I looked at did actually contain sufficient information that they merited at least 'Start' class. They mostly contains more than just a couple of sentences and a few citations - easily enough to give some context and understanding, yet clearly not enough to be anything near a perfect encylopaedic article.

Let me pick on 'Stub' article Arnt Eliassen totally at random, I feel this deserves better than a stub rating. If it were a stub, it would be regarded under WP:ASSESS as Provid[ing] very little meaningful content; may be little more than a dictionary definition. Readers probably see insufficiently developed features of the topic and may not see how the features of the topic are significant. In fact, there is an informative lead section, a cited section about his career, some personal information in another section and seven references. I would place that at 'Start' level, explained at WP:ASSESS as Provid[ing] some meaningful content, but most readers will need more. I come away knowing a little about this person and some sources I could follow up on. It was not encyclopaedic, but was a good starting point. Hence: Start grade in my view

Of course, assessment is very subjective. I recently worked through a couple of thousand articles at WP:ALPS and feel these all merited stub assessment as all were short and far from giving anything like a clear or full picture of the topic.

You asked why is stub marked for each individual project. Another qood question, and 99.999% of the time I would expect the quality assessment to be identical for every WikiProject. Rater lets you change this with one click in the top right dropdown box. However, there could be very rare occasions, say, on a technical topic, where one Project might feel that it didn't quite meet its own quality standards of referencing or detail, whereas for other WikiProjects it might be perfectly acceptable. I would never expect to see the lower assessment grades being applied differently across different projects (up to and usually including C grade), but I might not worry if one gave an article a B grading, whilst another gave it a C or an A.

And another excellent question is "why bother assessing all those pesky low-importance stubs?". Well, firstly, what is not important to one person or to one WikiProject can be of great interest to another. It might be of low importance here, but high importance in another field! Consider the Grosses Fiescherhorn - a not very well-known 4000m high glaciated mountain in Switzerland. It's graded of low importance both to WikiProject Switzerland and to the worldwide project, WikiProject Mountains, but not to WP:ALPS where, because it has a more local focus, it is regarded as 'high' importance as one of the 'collectable' summits over 4000metres high in the mountains of the European Alps.

The second reason for bothering is that, by correctly assessing all articles, new editors looking for articles to improve can come and find the poorer 'stubby'; ones and work to improve them. If they can't find them amongst the better quality articles that are still marked down as stub, we are less likely to attract someone's attention to it. Two days ago I drove 200 miles to help out at a UK university training event where Journalism students were being taught about using Wikipedia, and set a task to work on creating a new article each in the Climate Change area. A few days beforehand, I suggested to their tutor that she set the an alternative optional task of improving 'stub' articles and bringing one up to either Start or C-standard. easier than creating a new article from scratch. But, having arrived and looked at this Projects Assessment Table, and finding it so out-of-date- I had to tell her to forget that idea because the table simply couldn't be trusted to present all related articles in a reasonable way. You can't expect someone to work on improving a Stub article to Start or C-grade when it's actually already there, or close to it. So, it was a lost opportunity.

Although many other WikiProjects are relatively inactive (and WP:ALPS is a qood example of that, I firmly believe that all Assessment Tables are one of the best ways to direct new editors to find articles to improve in areas that interest them. If they're no good to start with, then we'll lose that opportunity.

I do hope this make sense and addresses your questions. And I hope this rather long reply might spur you and others here to revisit and systematically work through the entire Assessment Table in due course. Best wishes, Nick Moyes (talk) 10:27, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Interesting. I agree it would be worth improving that table. A while ago I worked on the top and high importance labels in that table, see here. But in general, we need more people to work on these climate change topics so if you get journalism students interested in that, that's great! - And I don't understand what the Rater Tool could do for me? I usually just change the ratings or importance labels manually on an article's talk page? EMsmile (talk) 12:19, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

@EMsmile I went through the mid importance stubs and mostly accepted the RATER recommendations when it suggested ‘start’. So if you and others are happy with those changes I could ask whether similar rater checks and changes to all our low importance articles could be done in some kind of automated single run Chidgk1 (talk) 14:50, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

I agree that if I was rating Arnt Eliassen manually it would be ‘start class’ but when I run rater it says ‘stub’ - maybe you could check to see whether rater also says ‘stub’ for you or whether there is some kind of fault in my install or I am running it wrong Chidgk1 (talk) 13:56, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Ah now I have RTFM I see I misunderstood - it displays a rating bottom left of ‘start’ and then I have to reset the climate change project drop down if I accept that. The manual says that could be 'wildly inaccurate' but I will try a few and if it gets them right I will ask if a bulk run is possible. Chidgk1 (talk) 14:24, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

I totally agree that it would be great if journalism students could improve stub class articles and much better than them trying to create new articles. And I am glad you are helping the uni. But we already have 24 high and mid importance stubs and hundreds of start class articles for students to improve, and I would rather spend time classifying the importance and quality of our “unknown” articles than checking the rating of low importance articles. If those articles which are not very important to us are important to other projects it is up to them to rerate them. Alternatively if the rater tool proves reliable we could ask whether it could be automated to run against all our low importance articles in bulk Chidgk1 (talk) 14:11, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Citation needed for certain sentences within a paragraph?

I have a style guide question, perhaps others can help me understand this better: It's about adding more refs within one paragraph or not. I find it problematic when a long-ish paragraph has only a citation at the end of the paragraph as it may not always be clear if all the sentences are related to that same source. In particular when the sentences are not linked with each other with words such as "however", "in addition to", "similarly". (I see at WP:CITEFOOT: it is usually sufficient to add the citation to the end of the clause, sentence, or paragraph, so long as it's clear which source supports which part of the text.).

Here is my example from carbon accounting (in bold the two sentences that should have a ref in my opinion): The voluntary market is expected to grow tremendously over the next few decades. To date, the Scope 1-3 emissions of the 54 Global Fortune 500 companies that committed to net zero by 2050 or earlier is about 2.5 gigatons of CO₂ equivalent. By comparison, the volume of credits traded on the voluntary carbon market was about 300 megatons as of 2021. Global demand for carbon credits could increase up to 15 times by 2030 and 100 times by 2050. Carbon removal projects such as forestry and carbon capture and storage are expected to have a larger share of this market in the future, compared to renewable energy projects.

In my opinion, the first and the last sentence in that paragraph would benefit from a citation as it's not clear (to me) which of the three citations exactly would substantiate these two statements. Also in my opinion, I'd rather add a ref once too many then once too rarely.

Advantages of adding refs also within a paragraph include:

• It doesn't leave the reader guessing which ref supports which statement.
• If the paragraph gets split up by some future edits then the sentence doesn't end up without a ref. This is particularly important if the sentences within a paragraph are not linked with clear linkage terms, and thus future editors might decide to add a paragraph break or to move a statement from A to B.

The only disadvantage of too many refs is that it makes is slightly harder to read maybe. For comparison: the main climate change article has a ref for almost every sentence and certainly doesn't just have one ref at the end of a paragraph.

I guess the key guide here is: so long as it's clear which source supports which part of the text. - for the example from the carbon accounting article I don't think it's clear. EMsmile (talk) 15:35, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

References

EMsmile (talk) 15:35, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

Do we really need a climate change sidebar?

I noticed that User:Arcahaeoindris created a new climate change sidebar and added it to the climate change mitigation article. I am just wondering what to make of it. Perhaps it's great or maybe it's superfluous. Presumably it is their intention to also add it to all the other climate change articles? I am not necessarily opposed to this but I do wonder if it's adding any value, given that we already have a navigation box at the bottom. Is the new sidebar meant to show the same articles as the navigation box? Or is it meant to be a truncated version? Does it work better on mobile devices than the nav box at the bottom of the article? Here is the talk page for the climate change sidebar: https://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Template_talk:Climate_change_sidebar#The_same_or_different_to_climate_change_nav_box? And here is the talk page for the climate change navigation box: https://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Template_talk:Climate_change EMsmile (talk) 14:15, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

I think readers are more likely to notice the sidebar. Dunno if an ipad counts as a mobile device but it looks good to me on the Safari browser on ipad Chidgk1 (talk) 13:51, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

I totally appreciate the work that's gone into this template. I have always found our navigational templates on climate change and sustainable energy to cause more problems than they solve. This template says we have a "series on climate change" but we don't actually have a series - we have a variety of articles that talk about various aspects of the issue from various angles and with various levels of detail. Wikipedia is a reference work on climate change, not a course on climate change. Every CC navigational template I have seen, including this one, has the same problem of "How do you decide what to include and in what group and order?" and comes up with incongruous answers like putting "Deforestation" on par with "Greenhouse gas emissions" as this one does. So I would say thanks but no thanks to this template, unfortunately. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 16:06, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Clayoquot. I think our range of climate change articles (4000 articles currently tagged with the WikiProject Climate Change tag) is way too huge to fit neatly into a sidebar. See also WP:SIDEBAR which says the articles should be tightly related. We do have a renewable energy sidebar and a pollution sidebar. These are smaller topic areas where a sidebar can work. Maybe we could have a "climate change mitigation sidebar", would that make sense? Note we also don't have a "Medicine sidebar" as the topic area is way too broad but we do have a medicine nav box. EMsmile (talk) 00:00, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Hi User:Arcahaeoindris you have not responded to these concerns yet but instead have added the sidebar to quite a few articles by now. I plan to remove them for the reasons as described above. Note for others: there is also a "global warming sidebar" here which is under discussion for a merger: https://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Template:Global_warming_sidebar EMsmile (talk) 12:04, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Hi @EMsmile:, thanks for the reminder! I responded on the template talk page but will repeat my view here: "I was intending for this to be a truncated navbox for only the core topics. Kind of like how there are dual navboxes and sidebars for a lot of major topics, e.g. Template:COVID-19 pandemic and Template:COVID-19 pandemic sidebar, Template:George W. Bush and Template:George W. Bush series, and even Template:Green politics which can be formatted as a sidebar or main navbox. Not sure answers for the other two questions but those were my thoughts".

On the above discussion, I still think the sidebar could be a useful and eye-catching way of linking together key articles. Climate change is a broad topic, but I don't see how this means it is too broad to have a sidebar. We also have sidebars for big topics like Template:Speculative fiction sidebar and Template:Alternative medicine sidebar. I would not expect all 4000 articles to be included in the sidebar or for it to be on all 4000 pages, but understand if a more closely knitted area like a climate change mitigation sidebar would be better. Arcahaeoindris (talk) 20:40, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

Hi Arcahaeoindris, thanks for these inputs. I think more targeted sidebars could indeed be more useful (for the same reason that we don't have a sidebar on medicine or on literature but on Template:Speculative fiction sidebar and Template:Alternative medicine sidebar). In our case here I could imagine that a sidebar just for mitigation articles could be useful. And maybe one on "Effects and impacts of climate change" (I am undecided about using effects or impacts here), and maybe one on "Society and climate change". And "Climate change by location". I guess it's saying: take some of the main headings of the existing CC sidebar and make them into more targeted sidebars. Perhaps this would work better. Could you try it out, starting with a climate change mitigation sidebar maybe? EMsmile (talk) 11:09, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

As you like - I have started with one for Template:Climate change and society Arcahaeoindris (talk) 10:40, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

OK, I think this is better. But I would remove the image as it would be incredibly hard to find a suitable image or icon for this sidebar. Couldn't these sidebars just be without images to make it easier? (I do like that you chose a woman who is doing the lecturing but still it looks a bit top-down and simplistic...) EMsmile (talk) 10:58, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Made another one for Template:Climate change mitigation as well. Sure, can remove the image although think they do make them more eye-catching. If you can find a better one feel free to replace them. Arcahaeoindris (talk) 11:36, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Does it really need to be eye catching though? Why? Why do we need to draw additional attention to this sidebar? It's already quite prominent anyhow. I don't really want to use brain power to find suitable images for several sidebars that I didn't really think were needed in the first place.... Let's just make it easier for ourselves and agree on "no images for these sidebars"? These climate change articles already have enough images and graphs in them. (and a graph as the main image, like you have done for the climate change mitigation sidebar, is even less suitable, I think). EMsmile (talk) 12:24, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Proposal to merge carbon credit and carbon offset

Please participate in the discussion here on whether carbon offset and carbon credit should be merged into one article and if yes, what the title of the combined article should be: https://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Talk:Carbon_offset#Proposal_to_Merge_this_Article_and_Carbon_Credit_Article. The merger was proposed by User:Dtetta. EMsmile (talk) 08:46, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

I’ve nearly finished an outline for a combined article tentatively title “Carbon Offsets and credits” (still need to flesh out the “Recent Trends” section). It’s located at: User:Dtetta/Carbon offsets and credits. I think this effort shows the tightly intertwined nature of these two concepts, and why it would make sense to have a combined article.

Regarding the proposed title, there are several examples of other WP articles covering closely related concepts that use “and” in the title, such as: Provinces and territories of Canada, 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, and List of United States counties and county equivalents. There may be another way of describing this combination of terms, I just have not been able to think of a better one.

Within the outline, notes in italics indicate what portions of the existing two articles I have included at various point. Where a reference is described using citation numbers, it is referring to citations from the current articles that I would propose to keep in this article.

I would appreciate thoughts on the following:

• After looking at this outline do you think it make sense to have a combined article?
• If not, how would common areas such as “Background and General Features”, “Project types”, “Ensuring quality and identifying value”, and “Effectiveness and limitations” be captured in each of the articles? IMO even the “Programs and markets” section is difficult to separate cleanly. As I was going through the outline, I looked for areas where there seem to be clear distinctions between credits and offsets. The clearest would be in the compliance programs. But offsets are even intertwined within those programs.
• Are there concepts in the existing articles that you don’t see represented here, but think should be?

Thanks:) Dtetta (talk) 15:39, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

If anyone does want to comment, please post comments here on the Carbon offset talk page. Dtetta (talk) 15:51, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

It would be great to get another couple of people who could offer their take on this - anyone have time and brainpower to spare? The current status of the proposal is to merge carbon credit into carbon offset. I'll add the merger tags to the two articles accordingly now. EMsmile (talk) 10:58, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

The merge seems like a good idea, and the reasoning makes sense. Although, the list of bullet points is certainly a little hard to parse, as you would have to keep flitting between the proposal and the existing articles?

It also doesn't help that in my view, many of the sections in either article could do with more extensive referencing and general condensation. Yet, that is certainly best done once the merge takes place, so I would support it. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 09:49, 19 March 2023 (UTC)