Talk:Causes of climate change

Reference style

(copied the below from sandbox of I2K talk page - just so that we know this is still a "to do"). EMsmile (talk) 21:42, 13 March 2024 (UTC) I wonder why the ref style is so messy here. Could we change it over to long ref style consistently please? Did this mixture of ref styles came about because text was copied from the climate change article which uses short ref style? EMsmile (talk) 09:39, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Yes, since the hope is that the creation of this article would substantially lighten the corresponding section of climate change as well, so I moved everything I considered appropriate to here. Can you do the conversion on your own? InformationToKnowledge (talk) 09:44, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Ah, I hate working with short ref style, it's so cumbersome... Can we agree that the ref style for the causes of climate change would be long ref style? It's just easier that way. EMsmile (talk) 10:37, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Certainly. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 11:31, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Good. Just to be clear that I understand what happened: a lot of the text of this new article was copied from climate change to here? Basically whereever I see a ref in short ref style then I can assume that that sentence came from climate change? At a later point you/we will then propose to cull some of the content in the section of "causes" at climate change ? EMsmile (talk) 13:29, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Yes to all. In fact, once the material in this sandbox is moved into the new article, I would like to use it to draft the shortened version of that section in climate change. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 17:23, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

OK, cool. I wonder if there is a more automated way of converting those short refs into long refs. I have done it manually in the past (for some other articles) but there are a lot of them here, so the tasks seems quite daunting. Probably 3-4 hours of work. Perhaps in some cases, not all the refs are needed anyhow or you'd want to use different ones than what was used in the climate change article? EMsmile (talk) 22:04, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

I've started the process and converted the first six of those refs that had short ref style but broken links to long ref style. It's going to be quite a tedious process to get them all done... If anyone wants to help please do. EMsmile (talk) 21:28, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Is there a wiki policy against mixing sources btw? Just asking because I use both and I was curious. Usually prefer short ref when multiple pages from a single source get cited separately. Bogazicili (talk) 13:21, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

Ah, I see it at Wikipedia:Inline_citation. But a lot of articles use both even when FA. Bogazicili (talk) 13:30, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

I find long ref style so much better. It's loads easier for new editors and also when moving content from one Wikipedia article to the other. Also when using excerpts. And the thing about page numbers is easy to resolve by using the small superscript numbers with the syntax ({{rp|6}} for page 6, for example. As far as I can see, for WikiProject Climate Change, only the main CC article uses short ref style but pretty much all the sub-articles use long ref style now (some of them have been changed over by me; many of them were using a mixture). EMsmile (talk) 23:01, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

Oh I have no preference for this article, it's completely up to you and InformationToKnowledge. I'm not going to be closely involved I think. I just thought switching styles was too tedious and I was confused about the MOS (there was also this whole thing here lol [1]). Bogazicili (talk) 20:59, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

Too many refs for one statement?

I am working through converting the short ref style to long ref style. But I am seeing quite a few instances where there are too many refs for one statement (not good see WP:OVERCITE. For example this one in the "aerosols" section: Smaller contributions come from black carbon, organic carbon from combustion of fossil fuels and biofuels, and from anthropogenic dust.

@User:InformationToKnowledge: could you check which refs could be omitted here? Also for some of the other sentences with many refs - if you have time. NB: with the short ref style there is only one square number in brackets but this can contain several refs. Looks like this for example: Air pollution, in the form of aerosols, affects the climate on a large scale.

By the way I am seeing plenty of primary sources refs in the climate change article. That's fine by me but just saying, as in one of your discussions you asked if FA means it has to be all secondary sources. Clearly it doesn't. EMsmile (talk) 22:27, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

References

EMsmile (talk) 22:27, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

Useless references

There are something like 38 references with missing sources. Either provide them or see the material removes as unreferenced. DuncanHill (talk) 01:24, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

OK well I've found all the missing sources and added them. I seem to have added more material than is strictly necessary for the IPCC reports, but I think someone else can trim that down now I've done all the heavy lifting. When you copy material from other articles you need to copy over all the sources called by references in that material. DuncanHill (talk) 02:23, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for this effort, DuncanHill! You can see above that I had started to sort out those refs (converting from the short ref styel to the long ref style) but it was very time consuming so I ran out of time (and what hoping that someone else would help, too). I had also commented above that some sentences have way too many refs. The material had been copied from climate change (not by me). Anyhow, thanks a lot for your help here! EMsmile (talk) 14:40, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

I've now taken out those IPCC reports that weren't actually used. When I have time, I'll continue with the effort to convert the short refs into long refs style (if someone else also has time, feel free to step in). EMsmile (talk) 14:54, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Overedited sentence no longer makes sense

I do not know the subject well enough to correct it. Have not checked the footnotes, though. Here is the sentence: Thus, both effects are considered to each other out, and the warming from each unit of CO₂ emitted by humans increases temperature in linear proportion to the total amount of emissions. Anitissamalicious (talk) 15:10, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

PS The problem is the verb missing after "considered to." It might be "cancel," and then again, it might be "balance," and then again it might be something else completely. Anitissamalicious (talk) 15:12, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

Beyond the longstanding issue with a confusing sentence: the second and third paragraphs are too detailed-sciency-techy for the lead in a layman's encyclopedia article. That content belongs somewhere in Greenhouse effect. The basics of the GHE should be briefly explained in the lead rather than obliquely referred to as if Everyman is already familiar it. —RCraig09 (talk) 19:45, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

The questionable language was introduced in this massive edit by User:InformationToKnowledge. By this post, I request clarification. The existing cite "[8]:746" fails verification as there is no page 746. Please clear up the issues re the appropriateness of techiness level of the last two paragraphs of the lead. —RCraig09 (talk) 21:31, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

It is page 746 when AR6 WG1 is viewed as a single, full PDF, but not in the single chapter-specific PDF. The specific wording being cited is As cumulative emissions increase, weakening land and ocean carbon sinks increase the airborne fraction of CO2 emissions (see Figure 5.25), but each unit increase in atmospheric CO2 has a smaller effect on global temperature owing to the logarithmic relationship between CO2 and its radiative forcing. Then the paragraph discusses a few high-profile studies, and concludes with Overall, there is high agreement between multiple lines of evidence (robust evidence) resulting in high confidence that TCRE remains constant for the domain of increasing cumulative CO2 emissions until at least 1500 PgC, with medium confidence of it remaining constant up to 3000 PgC because of less agreement across available lines of evidence. There are also multiple times throughout the chapter where it says that the "TCRE" is effectively linear, i.e. the near-linear relationship between cumulative CO2 emissions and global warming (TCRE).

Thus, to answer the question by @Anitissamalicious, "balance" is probably the best verb.

@RCraig09: Right, somewhere in the greenhouse effect. I think that says it all: I doubt even you can tell which parts of that article are actually useful for laymen and which ones are basically textbook inserts no-one actually reads beyond glancing at the formulas. You are absolutely correct that article should explain that the greenhouse effect is actually logarithmic, but the way in which it'll be experienced by humans is linear: the problem is that its structure is such a mess with no clear path to improvement that I am not sure where to even add that.

Lastly, a lead to a decent-sized article should consist of several paragraphs. What would be your alternative to the current 2nd and 3rd paragraph of the lead?

Here, I should probably remind to everyone taking part in this conversation that one of the key motivations behind creating this article in the first place was to lighten the Climate change article by offloading some of the details from its Causes section to here. That was the reason why sections such as "Land surface changes" and "Aerosols" are virtually identical between here and Climate change. However, as it so often happens with that article, WP:STATUSQUO prevailed and so we are stuck with duplicated paragraphs, no other editor apparently noticing or caring. If we are giving this article a second look to the point of rewriting the lead, it's probably a good idea to figure this whole aspect out as well. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 13:04, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

Our first duty is to our mostly-layperson readers, not to a perceived guideline tying lead size to article size. @InformationToKnowledge: To answer your question re alternatives to the present 2nd and 3rd paragraphs: I would replace the logarithmicish- and linearproportionalish jargony paragraphs that explain the inner sciency workings of the GHE with what actually causes climate change—per the article title: a judicious bit of expansion of the existing first paragraph, focusing qualitatively on basic concepts (GHE, GHGs, aerosols) based loosely on the dominant categories in the current graphic: . Above all, the lead should be immediately understandable to the average person returning from a political rally. —RCraig09 (talk) 20:37, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

Revision of lead to include short description of GHE

Per my post of 19:45, 20 Jan 2025, I've added a one-sentence description of the greenhouse effect, which underlies the causes of climate change that are the very subject of this article. I've re-worked surrounding sentences accordingly. —RCraig09 (talk) 20:34, 21 January 2025 (UTC)