Talk:Causes of climate change

Weird paragraph in Key attributions:Land use
Something about this paragraph seems wrong...

- For example, the harm done by humans to the populations of Elephants and Monkeys contributes to deforestation therefore to climate change.

While a careful reading yields "in the process of harming monkeys, humans destroy forests, a cause of climate change", a quick reading could easily yield "humans harm monkeys, monkeys prevent deforestation, thus, climate change". This can't be the only oddly-phraced paragraph like this.

Also, something about the capitalization of Elephants and Monkeys seems wrong, almost like this was copy-pasted from somewhere...

--FavoritoHJS (talk) 23:42, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Which ppm?
Could any of you experts clarify in the text of the article which kind of "ppm" you mean (volume? weight? moles? anything else?)? Please read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parts-per_notation#Mass_fraction_vs._mole_fraction_vs._volume_fraction if you wonder what I mean! Thanks! 130.239.42.216 (talk) 19:16, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
 * ✅ Keeling Curve (and thus most citations of atmospheric concentration) are volume, but happen to be written ppm instead of ppmv. I wiki-linked to Keeling curve article, and also to the relevant section of the article which makes clear the data are ppmv. Added a footnote. This is the only context in this article that "ppm" occurs. -- M.boli (talk) 21:32, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Best "Attribution" graphics
and others: I've just uploaded graphic "D" above -- the "Attribution" graphic from the US National Climate Assessment NCA5. However, I think it's far too klugey and detailed and messy for a Wikipedia article. I simplified it a bit, by removing the confidence intervals (shading) and uploaded it as rough "Version 2" of that file where you can see it on Wikimedia Commons. I am thinking of "tracing" the NCA5 graphic using Inkscape, to form an SVG without confidence intervals. However, I won't spend that time, if the result is against consensus. Please comment, whether you think we need an SVG "Attribution" graphic that I describe. — RCraig09 (talk) 17:51, 15 November 2023 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your work here. I actually think the uncertainty bars give (by accident) some information for lay people; namely they are biggest for the most importnat drivers, putting more emphasis on these drivers. I think the graph might work almost as is, with some translations (like well-mixed greenhouse gases, and anthropogenic -> human) —Femke 🐦 (talk) 18:01, 15 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Definitely, I would re-work the legends, add Celsius, etc. (However, I'm not sure how much of the public even knows what the uncertainty bars / confidence intervals are.) Thanks for the feedback. — RCraig09 (talk) 18:10, 15 November 2023 (UTC)


 * We learnt uncertainty bars in school back in the 70s. So I guess quite a few people leaving high school nowadays would know them Chidgk1 (talk) 06:44, 17 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Suggestion: use shades of colour for confidence intervals, e.g. a range from dark yellow in the center to light yellow at the edge. Uwappa (talk) 06:40, 17 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes that seems more intuitive than bars Chidgk1 (talk) 06:45, 17 November 2023 (UTC)


 * Thanks for surfacing this! I'm not a fan of the NCA5 graphic as it exists, but I think the data could be used to update the IPCC AR6 graphic, which is getting stale. I think the right question to ask is what trace lines we'd like to see. Here is my preferences for the trace lines to include:
 * Greenhouse gases: Nice having these separated out, saying "well mixed" seeems unnecessary.
 * Aerosols: Good as the trace helps explain why heating didn't kick in until 1970-ish.
 * Land use changes: Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that is what "Other antropogenic" means, and is much more clear. If I'm wrong then I'm OK with "Other human influences" in order to complete the picture.
 * Natural influences: This would aggregate volcanic and solar, drawing a clear distinction with the first 3 factors. I see no reason to have volcanic and solar separate, especially as solar is essentially a flat line.
 * Observed: I would include this only, not Total or Total anthropogenic, which to me are more noisy and confusing than helpful.
 * Efbrazil (talk) 19:05, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

Alrighty then! I plan to use Inkscape to generate an SVG with a limited set of traces, mostly as Efbrazil suggests, but including the more dominant error bars as Femke suggests. Uwappa: shading elements requires Inkscape's gradients feature, which are relatively crude and readily used for geometric shape that are simpler than these ~sinuous error bars. — RCraig09 (talk) 20:28, 17 November 2023 (UTC)


 * Good! When you do the update, please make "observed" go up through 2022. The data source is here: https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/. Efbrazil (talk) 21:14, 17 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Hmm... that would involve some fine tuning for a tiny detail... and the NASA data starts from 1880... but I'll keep it in mind. — RCraig09 (talk) 21:21, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

The newly created SVG is now uploaded and shown above. The traces in the NCA5 original are blurry, so don't get out a magnifying glass to critique accuracy. I did not have access to the numerical data, so I couldn't compute combined "natural influences" as you, Efbrazil, suggested. — RCraig09 (talk) 06:28, 18 November 2023 (UTC)


 * My main qualm with this graphic is that it doesn't clearly separate natural causes from human causes like the existing IPCC graphic does. I would change the labels to be like so:
 * Greenhouse gases (human)
 * Measured temperature, or perhaps simply Observed. The label should also be left aligned with the other labels.
 * Land use (human)
 * Solar (natural)
 * Volcanic (natural)
 * Aerosols (human)
 * Other issues:
 * You should be able to use the NASA data up to 2022, as that presumably is the same trace line as the graphic you are adapting
 * Add an x axis marker for the final year of measurment, hopefully 2022, for clarity as to when the data ends.
 * Please make the celcius .5 tick labels the same size as the main degree labels.
 * I don't like "Solar variability" being yellow with black outline; it should be a solid color like the others.
 * You lost the slight uncertainty in volcanic and solar.
 * Efbrazil (talk) 20:04, 18 November 2023 (UTC)


 * Gracias for los suggestions. Great ideas re labels. Detail: I purposely moved the black-font Observed temperature to the left because of space constraints to right margin; I think it's fine, even preferable, to make the observed temperature result look different from the temperature drivers (I gave it a wider trace). P.S., per the source, the average temperature is observed and not "measured".
 * Re other issues:
 * Looking at NCA5's caption, the temperature data is through 2019, presumably indicating the drivers are valid only through that date. Extending only one curve out to 2022 undercuts the future relevance of the graphic's driver indications.
 * Meh. A distracting detail that undercuts the future relevance of the graphic.
 * Not enough horizontal space, graphically. I'll probably just omit the half-degree indicators to be cleaner.
 * I ran out of distinguishing colors. Yellow doesn't show up without a black tracer.
 * I purposely omitted uncertainty bars for volcanic and solar since those uncertainties are smaller, as I thought someone suggested earlier. In any event, the original NCA5 JPG was too pixellated/blurry to do a decent job of "tracing".
 * I'll re-think things for Version 2, after other editors have a chance to provide input. — RCraig09 (talk) 21:08, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Version 2 is uploaded, changing legends re (human) and (natural). I added a gradient from blue to red to signify cooling and warming influences. — RCraig09 (talk) 21:59, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks! V2 critique:
 * The current IPCC graphic is actually a replacement graphic for the graphic that was simply the NASA temperature line graph, so I'm sensitive to keeping that data current. I plan to update the existing IPCC graphic when NASA data comes out next year.
 * I think it's important to say how far the data goes as per item #1. The overall trend lines are good, but people are also interested in "how was last year?", and we already have trend lines in other graphics.
 * OK
 * There are colors other than yellow, like orange and brown. Compound lines are busy looking and bad designtm.
 * The trouble is it raises the question of why uncertainty only exists for human factors; it makes the graphic look broken to me.
 * To come back to "observed temperature", I still don't like the alignment being different there as it adds to the busyness of the graph, but I don't have additional rationale to add :)
 * The existing IPCC graphic nicely aggregates all natural influences and is much less busy than this graphic. The main advantage of this new graphic is that aerosols and land use are separated out, but that's more advanced content that maybe belongs in a more advanced article. It seems that making the main point of human vs natural influences is what's important for the intro. Given all that, I'm thinking maybe we don't replace the IPCC graphic with this one. That also makes all my critiques up above a lot less important. Efbrazil (talk) 22:27, 21 November 2023 (UTC)


 * Waitaminute. Lay readers, mostly high school graduates, do understand "solar" and "volcanic" but do not generally understand "confidence/uncertainty intervals". Further, we should in clude solar and volcanic to thwart the deniers who say "The sun warms the Earth, libtard!" The AR6-based graphic uploaded here, has always seemed less credible because it merely states a conclusion of what natural vs human drivers are, without justifying it with particular examples that are in the new NCA5 graphic. In short, I now favor retaining all six existing traces, but without confidence interval areas. Other editors, weigh in please! (We can deal with formal issues after resolving the big ones. PS: I've sent an email requesting actual data files, but have unsurprisingly not received an answer.) — RCraig09 (talk) 17:09, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Version 3 uploaded 24 Nov—without confidence intervals. I think Version 3 works best. — RCraig09 (talk) 16:19, 24 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Personally, I advocate for either version A or D. Whether or not a lay reader understands confidence intervals, we should still show them on these plots. A feels like the right amount of "busy-ness" to me and it makes the "it's not just natural effects" argument very obvious, whereas D (probably with tweaked colors: some of them are very hard to distinguish) is pretty complicated. If you do go with E, you need to add a "total predicted" line as well, otherwise it's too easy to read it as "our predictions of greenhouse gas effects are higher than the actual temperature increase". - Parejkoj (talk) 20:37, 24 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your input, Parejkoj. The fact is, as you say, "our predictions of greenhouse gas effects are higher than the actual temperature increase"! And that inference is also properly implied in NCA5 ("D", above); therefore, including (not-broadly-understood) confidence intervals doesn't avoid the quoted inference. I'm hoping for a broader consensus on balancing (a) non-techy/non-busy graphics with (b) completeness of driver components for adding credibility. — RCraig09 (talk) 17:32, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
 * My point is that you need to show the total prediction, since that matches the observed warming quite well. Without it, the implication is that our models are too high (they're not, there are just other effects you also have to include). - Parejkoj (talk) 21:08, 26 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I can definitely see the value of a "Total (human)" trace, especially in a GIF (proposed below). — RCraig09 (talk) 21:21, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

Possible GIF
Alternative: I could generate an animated GIF along lines analogous to that shown at right. The frames would progress from (1) natural drivers, then (2) human drivers including total human causes, then (3) observed temps, then (4) total human causes with observed temps. (Confidence intervals would have even less utility in the separate frames of a GIF.) I realize some editors oppose GIFs as being distracting. Please comment.
 * I've uploaded a basic GIF, separating natural vs human drivers, and juxtaposing "Total human causes" to the observed temperature. I excluded distracting confidence intervals as many (most?) readers won't understand them or be looking for them, and are sometimes impossible to discern from the original NCA5 image. I included both solar and volcanic as readers will understand them, and they are critical in refuting deniers' claims that it's the sun that's warming Earth. If there's enough consensus to use a GIF, I can spend the non-trivial amount of time it takes to smooth the transitions between frames. — RCraig09 (talk)
 * I'm assuming "Total human-caused" is really "total (both human and natural)"? If not, it should be, since we should be showing all the known effects. Parejkoj (talk)
 * An animated GIF's is not my cup of tea. I prefer a static graphic as it allows me to study it at my own pace.
 * A static image allows me to see all elements, all of the time, no burden on short term memory.
 * A animated GIF feels like being dragged along in a straitjacket, with no way to stop it.
 * I like the simplicity of Global_Temperature_And_Forces_With_Fahrenheit.svg:
 * My recommendation, simplify it even further, just show:
 * natural drivers, a fuzzy green area, more transparent on the edges, least transparent where the current green line is
 * observed temperature, a crisp black line
 * Remove
 * the green line
 * the red line and light red area
 * Update the graphic with recent data, till 2023 to show the hottest year ever recorded.
 * What the graphic will clearly show as a result: observed temperature was in the bandwidth of natural drivers till the seventies. Since the seventies temperature has risen out of the natural drivers bandwidth and has continued to rise to new record highs ever since.
 * Show stacked bars between between natural and observed to break down human caused into greenhouse gases, land use and aerosols, similar to 1979-_Radiative_forcing_-_climate_change_-_global_warming_-_EPA_NOAA.svg Uwappa (talk) 14:14, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Show stacked bars between between natural and observed to break down human caused into greenhouse gases, land use and aerosols, similar to 1979-_Radiative_forcing_-_climate_change_-_global_warming_-_EPA_NOAA.svg Uwappa (talk) 14:14, 5 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Thanks Uwappa! I also like the simplicity of the existing graphic and think it is better for the lead, although the new graphics can be useful for more advanced articles.
 * I'll update with graphic with 2023 data when available and consider other suggestions here when I do that. Nasa typically publishes that in mid january or so. Here is the source: https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/
 * Unfortunately, the trace lines for human and natural influences are not updated annually that I am aware of. That information trickles out in various reports, most recently and authoritatively in AR6. Efbrazil (talk) 18:48, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

What to do about the section "Non-consensus views"?
I came to this section because I am trying to figure out where we should put content that is about past discussions on certain aspects of the science which have in the meantime been resolved. I see some of that content is here under "Non-consensus views" but it seems a bit messy. There is also some in the article global warming controversy (which I would like to rename "climate change debates", see on the talk page there), see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_controversy#Debates_around_details_in_the_science. We also have a bit here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_denial#Discussing_specific_aspects_of_climate_change_science. Maybe what we actually need is a section in history of climate change science which explains some of those scientific debates and how they were concluded / reconciled? It could be useful for historical, archiving purposes? EMsmile (talk) 09:36, 21 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I've re-arranged the structure a bit to make it clearer what is not a key attributor (but was discussed in the past as being a hypothetical contributor). We need to make sure we don't repeat and overlap with content that is at global warming controversy or climate change denial or history of climate change science. So this might need further tightening up. Pinging User:ASRASR for info. EMsmile (talk) 14:27, 21 November 2023 (UTC)
 * (posting this in two Talk Pages, as it appears relevant to both) I think that disproven theories should only be included in /* History of ___ */ (sub)sections. If no such (sub)sections exist, then I would omit the content about disproven theories. This ensures that past misunderstandings do not undercut present knowledge, giving credibility to denialists. — RCraig09 (talk) 18:05, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

What does this article currently achieve?
To me, it just seems like almost everything it tries to say is already conveyed better at either climate change, greenhouse effect or scientific consensus on climate change. There are few parts which wouldn't fit under any of the three, but it's mostly what should be merged to extreme event attribution (an article which deserves far more attention than it does now).

Further, so much material in "Details on attribution" is distressingly essay-like. Turns of phrase like "(see also the section on scientific literature and opinion)" or "(see the section on solar activity)"? Eight paragraphs total, all of them cited to individual pages of the same paper from 2009, which are treated as separate references? What is this?! InformationToKnowledge (talk) 18:13, 25 November 2023 (UTC)


 * I agree that this article, like many on this 20-year-old encyclopedia, needs polishing, organizing and cleaning. But it would be wrong to merely disperse its content across multiple other articles (if you were insinuating it should be deleted altogether). This article's concept is a small subset of the first three articles you cite, and is only one particular result of Extreme event attribution. The present article captures the extremely important concept of what causes climate change—probably one of the most important articles on Wikipedia. — RCraig09 (talk) 20:17, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
 * There is no argument that the subject of this article is very important. The present state of this article, however, makes it really tempting to just redirect it to an appropriately-titled section of scientific consensus on climate change and call it a day.
 * Perhaps someone with more experience in the subject (i.e. @Femke ) would have a more positive view of it, but the way I see it, what is present right now risks leaving anyone who read those three articles and then this one more confused, rather than less. I believe it needs to be rewritten almost from scratch, to refocus on the explanations of the actual attribution (both of the extreme weather events and the ongoing trends) to be worth keeping. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 08:15, 26 November 2023 (UTC)
 * This article certainly deserves to be standalone.
 * This is a set of key techniques upon which climate science builds. The consensus on climate change is much wider. There is consensus on causes (thanks to studies described here), on various impacts and on the need to solve the issue.
 * The more recent extreme event attribution literature could technically be merged in here, but at some point that field will be big enough to make merging awkward, so the best way forward is to link the articles up stronger. Attribution if recent console change is not a form of extreme event attribution in itself. EEA deals with hurricanes, floods and so forth, i.e. extreme weather events. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 08:35, 26 November 2023 (UTC)
 * We should cull some of the content on the scientific consensus in this article, and focus is more on the techniques on how we know climate change is attributable to humans rather than that peopke are it is. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 08:37, 26 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Exactly; there is surprisingly little on techniques in the article which is supposed to be all about them! Instead, there are things like "non-consensus views" (now retitled, but still disproportionately large and at times embarrassingly credulous) or multiple paragraphs where consensus findings are stated (which should be the purpose of the consensus article) without explaining how that consensus was formmed. There are even entire paragraphs devoted to findings like elephants and trees in Africa, which is effectively trivia on the scales this article is meant to be about.
 * I am well aware of what extreme event attribution is, but our article on that subject is...261 words long, last time I checked. Predictably, it also receives effectively no views. It can easily grow ten-fold or more, sure, but that wouldn't really solve the insufficient pageviews problem, and considering how sparse the actual attribution content is in this article, I suspect it'll be years before splitting would be justifiable. At that point, the split-off article would likely start to receive a lot more views than if we were to start building up the EEA article from its current stub-like state without merging. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 09:42, 26 November 2023 (UTC)
 * P.S. When you say that "the consensus on climate change is much wider", I wonder what you would make of my recent edits to scientific consensus on climate change, and the suggestions I voiced on its talk page? No-one has replied to those yet (even though I requested comment on the WikiProject talk for one of the proposals) so perhaps you would have the time for it? InformationToKnowledge (talk) 09:46, 26 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I struggle with reading long talk page messages due to long COVID, so I won't be responding there unfortunately. For this article, I've removed the most obvious things that don't belong here, and will see if I can bring out the two key points a bit better (like attribution has two steps: first detection then attribution). —Femke 🐦 (talk) 12:29, 26 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you to both of you for tackling this article. My thoughts are similar to those of User:InformationToKnowledge as I'm also asking myself what is the specific focus of this article and how does it differ from the others that InformationToKnowledge mentioned. Maybe a hatnote would help, and also the lead should be reworked as it currently does not make the specific scope of this article clear.
 * Some other minor points: Can we convert the remaining bullet point list in the lead also to prose rather? I've just converted one of the two bullet point lists to prose. It seems to me that we have a bit of repetition in the lead as well.
 * Can we do something about the "background" section? Could it be reworked to focus more on the methods? Move into the newly created "methods" section? (some of the content that I have now moved under "methods" might actually not belong there, I am a bit undecided about this; feel free to move back if you think it's wrong). I think a "background" section for our climate change articles is in most cases not suitable as each article could have a very long "background" section - where to start and where to stop? - so rather link to other relevant articles than to start again with the basics.
 * I find the structure of the article very confusing. How can we have a main level heading that has the same title as the article?: "Attribution of recent climate change". We really need to focus on the methods section, I guess. Should the section "Lines of evidence" be moved into the methods section? Or are we mixing up methods with results? Confusing. Let's get the main level headings right and make them generic if possible (a section called "methods" is generic). EMsmile (talk) 11:08, 27 November 2023 (UTC)
 * One option to get a better focus is to rename this into "Detection and attribution of climate change" to get that focus. We could then split it up into four sections: D&A of temperature rise, D&A of other climate variables, regional D&A and EEA. A bit similar to how NCA4 did it. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:43, 27 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I am happy to support your suggestion as you are far more deeply into the topic than I am. Would that make the article title too long though? And did you purposefully drop the "recent" from the title? I guess we don't include "recent" in all the other climate change articles that we have. So probably not necessary to include "recent" here either. Should we thus formally propose a move to Detection and attribution of climate change? And you don't think this would overlap too much with any of our other climate change articles? EMsmile (talk) 10:00, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I suggest Attributing weather events to climate change as the new title, coupled with an article rewrite. Climate change attribution is a major area of study like Femke says, and the focus is clear- saying how much more likely a heat wave or flood or other weather event is given the presence of climate change.
 * The addition of "detection" to the title does not help as far as I see it. We can keep "detection" as a topic in this article, but it should be an aside, and coverage should be similar to what we already say in the main climate change article. As in "yes, climate change is obvious, this is how we know". For instance, by noting the cooling upper atmosphere. We can then focus the article on the active and interesting point of study which is weather attribution. That would give the article a real reason to exist, separate from other articles. Efbrazil (talk) 16:57, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Even though extreme weather attribution is the hot topic now, the historical publications on detection&attribution (D&A) of climate form a larger body of work. The way I see it, is that this article should go a deeper into the techniqualities, whereas the consensus article should only mention the main arguments. A lot of work is also still being done in the D&A of regional climatic changes.
 * D&A are usually seen as one topic, not as two different topics. A cool review paper we can use is the following: https://www.geos.ed.ac.uk/~ghegerl/assets/WIRES.pdf (focussed on the role of models in this area, but also on observation-only methods). —Femke 🐦 (talk) 19:33, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I think changing the title so "Detection" is the first word is a problem given that "Attribution" is the overwhelming search word people will be looking for.
 * I see what you mean that in scientific circles detection has been talked about as an area of study along with attribution, but it's different in media. In media the only word thrown around is attribution, because the only focus is on assigning "blame" for weather news.
 * The science is now also focused more on attribution than detection, maybe because of media demands. My scan of AR6 shows a lot of talk of attribution as a high level concept, but the word detection is only used in context, like saying climate change influence can be detected in a particular metric. Efbrazil (talk) 20:14, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
 * As per WP:Commonname, maybe the article title and focus should be Causes of recent temperature rise? This is now also the section heading title that we chose for this theme at climate change. Or is that too simplistic? The proposed title Detection and attribution of climate change would be a bit confusing to layperson readers. - I think it's obvious that the current article title and structure is far from ideal, for example one of the article's main headings repeats the article title. EMsmile (talk) 11:29, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

The phrase "...recent temperature rise" is less meaningful than "...global warming", which has come to have a specific meaning. Just a few years ago, the Climate change article was still named Global warminng, showing its importance undr WP:COMMONNAME. In contrast, the phrase "...recent temperature rise" doesn't suggest the global nature of the phenomenon, and is therefore inappropriate. Separately, I agree with Efbrazil that it's best to avoid "detection" in the title. Separately, I think "Causes..." would be the most understandable way to begin the title. Bottomline, my favorite is "Causes of global warming" as it is concise but non-techy. — RCraig09 (talk) 17:31, 18 December 2023 (UTC)


 * We already have an article for that - it's called the Greenhouse effect. At its most basic level, global warming/climate change is caused by the increase in the greenhouse effect (and a smaller role from changes in albedo more recently). That is the what of the subject and reworking this article to focus on just this aspect would simply create two articles about the what, which is unnecessary duplication. In fact, I would say that the greenhouse effect article already covers this very topic much better than this article, which often looks simplistic and vague in comparison.
 * Let me repeat a key statement from @Femke which I, and I believe @Efbrazil, both agree with, yet both of you seem to have somehow overlooked.
 * The way I see it, is that this article should go a [lot?] deeper into the techniqualities, whereas the consensus article should only mention the main arguments.
 * Essentially, attribution, as understood by WP:RS is not about the what, but about how. It is about showing the scientists' work and the processes they used to arrive at the conclusions we see in greenhouse effect, climate change and scientific consensus on climate change. More recently, it is also about discovering (or ruling out) the connections between extreme events and climate change. Refocusing the article on that is practically the only way this article would provide reliable, worthwhile and unique information. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 18:04, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Naming (and scope) of this article

 * This subsection broken out in response to InformationToKnowledge's above post of 18:04, 18 December 2023.
 * I think I understand your point. However, the greenhouse effect is an abstraction (a process), and the causes of (contributors to) the greenhouse effect are inherently the causes of global warming. My main concern is that there should be a friendly-named article, Causes of global warming, to counterbalance the important article, Effects of climate change. Symbolically:
 * Causes --> GW ---> CC ---> Effects
 * I think abstruse techy terms like Attribution scare our lay-person audience away from what is critically important. I appreciate there is an issue as to where to place some content (here vs. greenhouse effect), but that can be solved through ordinary editing. — RCraig09 (talk) 20:46, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Very interesting discussion. I quite like the idea of causes of climate change. It would become a sub-article of the climate change article. Our main CC article has a section on causes of course and its sub-structure there is:

Greenhouse gases Aerosols and clouds Land surface changes Solar and volcanic activity Climate change feedback so then if we created a new article on causes of climate change, it would have a similar structure? Repeat the same but with more detail? Perhaps it would just pull in content (or excerpts in some cases?) from e.g. greenhouse gas emissions, greenhouse effect, climate change feedback and so forth.
 * By the way, the important article on greenhouse effect is rather layperson-unfriendly, I am currently doing some work on that (it also overlaps a lot with greenhouse gas).
 * Regarding this sentence: :The way I see it, is that this article should go a [lot?] deeper into the techniqualities, whereas the consensus article should only mention the main arguments., what exactly is meant with "technicalities"? Do you mean methods for analysing those causes?
 * The current main headings of our current attribution article are like this:

Background Detection and attribution Key attributions Attribution of recent climate change Extreme event attribution Factors that are not key attributions of recent climate change

How would this TOC look in future? Maybe: Scientific methods to detect causes Main causes Factors that are not relevant causes EMsmile (talk) 22:20, 18 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Naming of this article should be decided before flyspecking of its contents.
 * Along this vein: note the dates of the #REDIRECTs to this article:
 * * https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Causes_of_global_warming&action=history 2007
 * * https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cause_of_global_warming&action=history 2015
 * * https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cause_of_climate_change&action=history 2015
 * * https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Causes_of_climate_change&action=history 2018
 * These redirects demonstrate, collectively, editors' concepts of what this article is expected to contain, and takes into account the migration from "GW" to "CC" in the literature and on Wikipedia. This content is distinct from greenhouse effect, which is an intermediate concept. — RCraig09 (talk) 23:17, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I didn't understand what you meant with "before flyspecking of its contents"? Sorry, I am not a native English speaker. Also, I don't know how the redirects prove or disprove anything. I've seen all sorts of redirects in the past... I am not opposed to an article title of "causes of CC" or "causes of GW" but I can't quite picture what it would contain and how it would be structured (keeping in mind that the causes are already quite well covered in climate change, for example). EMsmile (talk) 07:47, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I think the theory is that the most unwieldy parts of greenhouse effect and perhaps other such articles would be moved to the new/renamed article?
 * The issue here is that I believe it would only cause further subdividing of information which should really be read altogether. As was pointed out just now, Climate change already describes the subject of causes about as well (in fact, I would say better) than this article currently does. That section can probably be improved, but I see no compelling argument that there is a lot of information on that subject which a) laymen should know but don't; b) is currently missing from that section of the article c) would be too difficult to include into that section, but can be placed into a version of this article renamed to Causes of global warming/climate change to become more approachable to laymen (since we have already agreed that attribution implies more background knowledge.) Anyone who wants to rename and reorganize this article needs to make that case first.
 * Here is a point which EMsmile is probably already aware of, but RCraig09 may not be.
 * {| class=wikitable

! Article ! Pageviews
 * Climate change || 3,692
 * Greenhouse gas || 1,458
 * Greenhouse effect || 1,113
 * Greenhouse gas emissions || 666
 * Effects of climate change || 532
 * Attribution of recent climate change || 87
 * }
 * Now, pageviews are not the be-all and end-all: in fact I have already been on the receiving end of similar argumentation in the "apocalypse vs. civilizational collapse" discussion. Yet, here we are comparing several stable and long-established (10-20 y. old) articles, so it's probably relevant to note that if Causes of climate change * is meant to take after Effects of climate change to become approachable to an average reader than the greenhouse gas or greenhouse effect articles, then the pageviews appear to show the opposite.
 * (I consider that title superior, not only because we have been trying to avoid using global warming in all other titles, but also because it is alliterative, which is known to help in this context.)
 * I also really want to note how scattered a lot of this information is already. There is clearly a marked overlap between greenhouse gas and greenhouse effect already, and greenhouse gas emissions is not free of overlap either. Then we still have more than a few minor, yet related articles like Idealized greenhouse model or Illustrative model of greenhouse effect on climate change or global warming potential or even IPCC list of greenhouse gases.
 * In short, we need to decide how we are going to combine and reorganize this sort of information in a way that ensures it's actually seen by as many readers as possible now, not rename a relatively low-traffic article and hope we can figure this out later. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 10:34, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Your analysis is good and valid but it might also scare people off as it's so all encompassing and would involve a huge amount of work (to sort out all of those related articles). I prefer to take baby steps and to think of incremental improvements. So I still think we need to find consensus on a new article title (which then also says something about its scope) and then continue with incremental improvements by moving content from A to B. Do I sense that there is some consensus to rename the article to Causes of climate change? EMsmile (talk) 11:41, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
 * No, I would oppose renaming this article for now. I believe it consists of poorly structured content, and that drawing attention to it with a new name or otherwise spending much effort on it would not be a good use of our time at this stage. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 20:13, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Well, if the new title did indeed draw more attention to the articles by our readers than this would be a good thing, and could motivate Wikipedia editors to improve the article sooner rather than later. You don't seem to have a better proposal at this stage for a small improvement step other than the big complicated improvement of a bunch of articles together that you spoke about on 19 December (to which nobody reacted as it landed in the "too hard basket" I would say).
 * I still think a name change is a small step in the right direction and the other steps can follow later. User:RCraig might agree with me (?) when he wrote above "Naming of this article should be decided before flyspecking of its contents.". Are there alternative article name options on the table? EMsmile (talk) 23:16, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Ultimately, I think that "Causes of climate change" are not that complicated. Nearly everyone now knows the fundamentals (and those who choose not to are unlikely to be swayed by renaming this article), the corresponding section of Climate change provides a better intermediate-level explanation than this article does, and improving this article to provide an even more detailed explanation is not something we see much interest in.
 * Correspondingly, I just think that this article should be way down our list of priorities when compared to so many other things, like merging the ENSO articles, or sorting out the Aerosol/Particulate mess (both of those have several times more pageviews than this article), or creating that list of emissions by entities or the cryosphere article clean-up I have been doing. Action on all of those is far more likely to provide meaningful information our readers do not yet know and hopefully help them, when compared to this article, and so this one should not be placed ahead of them. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 12:37, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I agree with you regarding the massive amount of to-dos and the priorities (which - in theory - should be mostly guided by pageviews). I currently have no time for working on this article either but I am still itching in my finger tips to make that article name change ASAP. Why? Because you never know which other Wikipedia editors might be lurking out there and perhaps someone feels more inclined to work on it when it has a more intuitive title! So if nobody objects within the next week or so, I'll go ahead and make that name change. I don't see any harm in this. We could in addition put a maintenance tag on the article ("this article has multiple issues etc.") EMsmile (talk) 15:35, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Possibly, a reason that "Attribution of climate change" doesn't have more page views, is that the word attribution is not friendly. Renaming to Causes of climate change might increase viewership. I doubt anyone searches Google for "What is climate change attributed to?" — RCraig09 (talk) 16:39, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Indeed, this might happen. And perhaps that's the reason why User:InformationToKnowledge is opposed to the name change? He doesn't want more people to find this crappy article? I think though that we have many crappier articles (and they are still allowed to exist), and a name change plus higher pageviews could motivate someone with some spare time on their hands to get cracking and improve the article. So I am still pushing for that name change. EMsmile (talk) 17:45, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I like the rename to Causes of climate change. The word "attribution" raises the topic of "attribution science", which is the scientific area of study of whether extreme weather is attributable to climate change:
 * https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2021/10/04/attribution-science-linking-climate-change-to-extreme-weather/
 * https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-how-climate-change-affects-extreme-weather-around-the-world/
 * This article doesn't even cover that topic, so as I see it "Causes of climate change" is both more likely to be found through searches and is also a more accurate description of the article contents. Efbrazil (talk) 17:42, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * What do you think about my earlier argument that the current article just does not really provide any real added value? I checked the earlier discussion up above, and it appears that last month, both you and @Femke were effectively arguing in favour of completely rewriting this article to actually focus on attribution, while the idea to keep all content as it is and say that this article provides adequate information about causes belonged to @EMsmile and @RCraig09
 * I still find this new idea truly dubious. I looked at this article again just now, and it seems to me that around half the article now talks about solar activity and cosmic rays - i.e. material which can and should be moved to History of climate change science. Similarly, that entire bullet-point list of 20-30 year old papers in "Detection and attribution" can just as easily be moved to History of climate change science after condensing, because it really is historical information by now. Same as the quotes from AR4 (should probably be moved to that report's article, if they aren't already there.)
 * You're probably right on this; let's move it to history of climate change science or delete it. EMsmile (talk) 17:50, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
 * For that matter, the dozen or so paragraphs which are all referenced to the second National Climate Assessment from 2009 are also historical information at best. Very little of that material appears to be of much use now - it's all very vague yet sweeping statements that are written more like an essay or a pop-sci magazine article than an encyclopedia - just consider "Of course, there are not multiple Earths, which would allow an experimenter to change one factor at a time on each Earth, thus helping to isolate different fingerprints." or "The message from this entire body of work is that the climate system is telling a consistent story of increasingly dominant human influence – the changes in temperature, ice extent, moisture, and circulation patterns fit together in a physically consistent way, like pieces in a complex puzzle." Nearly all of this NCAR2 material is also tainted with obvious violations of WP:REALTIME. I don't know if any of it is even worth salvaging.
 * You're probably right on this; let's move it to history of climate change science or delete it. EMsmile (talk) 17:50, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
 * And so, once you move or delete content from those three categories, there would really be only a couple of paragraphs left in this article - and all of that is already better covered in Climate change and Greenhouse effect. Consequently, renaming this article would become completely unnecessary, as there wouldn't be enough content worth keeping. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 16:05, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The concept of what causes climate change is as critically important as the effects of climate change (see top portion of this graphic). It's not adequate that the main CC article and the GHEffect articles have ~something about the causes. Causation definitely warrants its own article, as that "debate" is still going on in the public. Through normal editing (after moving to Causes of CC), older content and "Factors that are NOT key..." can be reduced or removed. — RCraig09 (talk) 17:09, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I have made my proposal below - although you may still have to persuade Femke if you want to go ahead with this.
 * While we are here, I would like to mention an issue with that graphic. Most of it works very well, but I am disappointed in how it perpetuates three common misconceptions about permafrost:
 * Permafrost does not melt; it thaws, which is explicitly stated here by a subject matter expert.
 * The graphic implies that permafrost mainly emits methane, when the absolute majority of emissions by weight are, and even when we account for GWP, methane is in the 40-70% range. See the article.
 * The graphic also implies that permafrost thaw is the main natural methane feedback, when we have research demonstrating that its role is currently very limited next to tropical wetlands, and it's unclear when, if ever, it will overtake them (since their emissions will also grow proportionally.)
 * I think it would be best to replace that entire wording with something like "Wildfires, rotting vegetation: and methane release". It rectifies the current omission of wildfires from feedbacks, and "rotting vegetation" is a decent way to explain both wetland and permafrost emissions. (Some permafrost carbon is animal-derived, sure, but simple trophic laws make that a minority.) If the third quote box ends up taking more space as the result, then moving "Effects on humans" closer to the center (while shifting "Direct physical harm to humans" to the right) should settle it.
 * P.S. If the graphic apparently treats heat waves and the like as "Direct physical harm", then wouldn't that make pests and disease carriers indirect harm?
 * InformationToKnowledge (talk) 16:35, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * While we are here, I would like to mention an issue with that graphic. Most of it works very well, but I am disappointed in how it perpetuates three common misconceptions about permafrost:
 * Permafrost does not melt; it thaws, which is explicitly stated here by a subject matter expert.
 * The graphic implies that permafrost mainly emits methane, when the absolute majority of emissions by weight are, and even when we account for GWP, methane is in the 40-70% range. See the article.
 * The graphic also implies that permafrost thaw is the main natural methane feedback, when we have research demonstrating that its role is currently very limited next to tropical wetlands, and it's unclear when, if ever, it will overtake them (since their emissions will also grow proportionally.)
 * I think it would be best to replace that entire wording with something like "Wildfires, rotting vegetation: and methane release". It rectifies the current omission of wildfires from feedbacks, and "rotting vegetation" is a decent way to explain both wetland and permafrost emissions. (Some permafrost carbon is animal-derived, sure, but simple trophic laws make that a minority.) If the third quote box ends up taking more space as the result, then moving "Effects on humans" closer to the center (while shifting "Direct physical harm to humans" to the right) should settle it.
 * P.S. If the graphic apparently treats heat waves and the like as "Direct physical harm", then wouldn't that make pests and disease carriers indirect harm?
 * InformationToKnowledge (talk) 16:35, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

I've now added the "proposed deletion" tag to causes of climate change to make way for a future name change of this article to causes of climate change. EMsmile (talk) 22:15, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Why, though? Wouldn't be easier to just remove the redirect from that namespace, paste the content from here, and move redirect here instead? Why does anything need to be deleted only to be recreated immediately? InformationToKnowledge (talk) 15:35, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Yea, I used to use the method that you describe but learnt later that it was wrong / against procedures. Maybe it has something to do with how the redirects get placed, or the talk pages, or the revision histories. The cleaner/official/preferred way is to have the current causes of climate change article deleted. EMsmile (talk) 17:20, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
 * It wasn't necessary to delete the redirect, as it didn't have a history, so could be overwritten even without WP:page mover priviliges. (Ironically, now that it has been tagged, only admins and page movers can overwrite the redirect).
 * For copyright reasons, a copy-paste move is never allowed. The history of the page shows who wrote it, which must be preserved.
 * Not sure there is consensus, as there is too much text to wade throught. With a contested move, a WP:move request is usually the best way forward, as this is closed by an uninvolved editor. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:21, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Furthermore, the WP:proposed deletion procedure you used, cannot be used for redirects. Best to revert yourself. When there is clearly consensus (for instance, if somebody closed this discussion, or if I'm the only one against), you can use the WP:RMT board to ask for somebody to make the move. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:26, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
 * OK, I've removed the deletion tag (I couldn't revert myself as someone else had already edited after me). I forgot that a redirect page is treated differently. With regards to consensus, I thought there is/was a consensus of sorts based on the above discussions. It seems to me that we are going round and round in circles and are becoming stuck again. Some of us want the name changed and then work on content, ITK wants to work on content first (but has no time for it and doesn't think it should be anyone's priority at the moment) and thus rather not change the title. - What's your opinion? Do you disagree with a re-focus towards "causes of climate change"?  EMsmile (talk) 17:40, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Proposal in an effort to get us unstuck: split this article into two, one that is simply about the causes (and not very fancy; more like a landing page), and one that explains stuff around "attribution science". Would that work? EMsmile (talk) 17:45, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The problem we identified was that there are too many overlapping articles. So creating another one isn't doing it for me. I still think a refocus is the best way forward, under this title. But haven't read the above discussion. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:58, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. How about we think of this article as being about the causes (mainly) but also about "how do we know that these are the causes?" (which is then about some aspects of attribution science). In which case the title of the article could still be "causes of climate change" or it could be trying to be more accurate: causes of climate change and attribution aspects (perhaps too long). - Meanwhile, I will make some changes as per the suggestions to ITK made above (i.e. moving things to history of climate change science EMsmile (talk) 09:00, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * In theory, we can reduce the net number of overlapping articles if we move both the "Summary of main causes" paragraphs and the two model articles (Idealized greenhouse model and Illustrative model of greenhouse effect on climate change) to Causes of climate change namespace, and build up that article around that. This article will then only really have the "Analytical methods" section, which will purged of outdated NCAR2 and use modern references to discuss attribution techniques.
 * Probably the main issue with this is actually verifying the material in those model articles, which seems like an unenviable task. On the other hand, I used to be concerned that including so many equations in the article might be detrimental to pageviews, but knowing that Aerosol has about as many equations and is at ~500 views/day, I don't think it's going to be much of a problem. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 16:12, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't "get" those two greenhouse effect model articles (tried to figure it out while doing work on greenhouse effect but gave up. Hoping for a smart person one day to perhaps merge them together. But for the task at hand here, I think they would add too much difficult theory. An article on "causes of climate change" should be very accessible to the public. What do you think of the changes I made to the article earlier today? An improvement? EMsmile (talk) 16:28, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, absolutely! You might have gone a bit too far with culling "Potential causes that have been ruled out" (at least a sentence with a reference on two on who ruled these out and when would make it a lot more persuasive than what is there now) but otherwise, these changes are exactly what was needed!
 * And again, my point is that I continue to doubt we can be much more accessible than what is already there at Climate change. I think that describes everything the public really needs to know already. For anyone who still decides to click onto such an article regardless, a whole lot of equations they cannot really understand may do a lot to help to convince them just by being there. Again, Aerosol has those equations, and it still receives high views (5X more than this article) and it does not seem like there are people complaining. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 16:48, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * OK, I've put a few sentences about the solar variation back in, copied across from history of climate change science - are those suitable statements and refs or are more recent ones needed?
 * And yes, a lot of content is similar to the climate change one. I have added a few more links across. Nevertheless, I still think this article serves a purpose and might be more accessible (shorter, simpler), than the climate change article for people who want practical easy information on causes (?). EMsmile (talk) 17:53, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Way forward on name and scope change

 * OK, so what's the way forward now? Do I need to take this to WP:move request, or have those who opposed the name change so far softened their stance (i.e. InformationToKnowledge and Femke)? I feel that with the reworking that I have done, I've reached a good compromise between causes and attribution of causes. I don't doubt that the article needs further work but that can come over time when people find the time to do so. What do you all think? EMsmile (talk) 22:45, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * A formal move request is long overdue. — RCraig09 (talk) 00:54, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

I'd like to hear from Users InformationToKnowledge and Femke first because if they have changed their mind and no longer object the name change then we don't need to bother an uninvolved editor and burden them with having to read through the discussions, right? Or do you think we need a formal move request in any case? EMsmile (talk) 09:31, 24 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I didn't reply earlier as I was preoccupied with reworking the badly neglected article on Southern Ocean overturning circulation these past few days.
 * Now that this is done, I'll say that I still don't exactly support the proposal (I feel that it might end up like the situation with greenhouse gas and greenhouse effect, where even you have noted that their separation is rather awkward now), but after your recent substantial improvements to the article, I don't have strong opposition either. If @Femke decides that the move is now justified, I don't think I would object. Otherwise, it would be a good idea to either turn this into a true attribution-focused article or to refocus our collective attention on other long-neglected pages. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 13:42, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * About greenhouse gas and greenhouse effect: I think if we were working on a book we would for sure combine those two topics into one chapter. But in the logic of an encyclopedia, I guess it's justified to have them as separate entries. Also because incoming wikilinks would point to either one or the other. But it is a bit awkward. I see no other way around it though. Would you want to merge greenhouse gas and greenhouse effect into one?
 * However, I don't follow you how this issue is related to the issue at hand here. Other than "everything is related and interlinked to everything else". Also, "to refocus our collective attention on other long-neglected pages" is not really "an option" (but would just maintain the status quo, I guess) because you and me are only two people. There are potentially lots of other Wikipedia editors out there (current or future ones) who might or might not be inspired in future to work on an article that is called "causes of climate change".
 * I wouldn't object to changing the name to causes of climate change and their attribution if you think "attribution" is very important in the title. Would make the little a bit long and cumbersome though EMsmile (talk) 14:02, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * No my argument is that a separate argument on causes of climate change is much less necessary than an article on scientific attribution of climate change and its effects. So, my position is that either there is no rename and this article is fully refocused on attribution (the position advocated by Femke in November) or there are two articles. An outcome where there is an article devoted to a simple explanation of causes (which I still do not think can be made much simpler/more accessible than the explanation at Climate change) but no detailed article on attribution would, in my view, be the worst one. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 16:09, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * My position is unchanged. The recent refocus of the article has made it overlap too much with existing articles. I'm for going back to the focus on detection and attribution
 * Emsmile: if you want to avoid these overly long discussions, please use the standard procedures for a WP:requested move. That way, you get more people's input and an uninvolved editor gets to assess consensus. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:32, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I've started the WP:requested move now. However, I probably haven't done a great job with summarising the situation (someone else might have done it better). It wasn't clear to me whether you two are arguing for keeping the same title or a variation of it. Like I said above I think the content on attribution science (when someone gets around to writing it up) could still be included in an articled called causes of climate change; I think nothing speaks against that.
 * Secondly, I find it a bit unkind to impose on one or several uninvolved editors in this way now (they'd have to read through the previous lengthy discussions, too, right?). I would think that we have enough people in WikiProject Climate Change to resolve something that is relatively minor amongst ourselves. But here we are, let's see if some smart uninvolved editors can resolve this so that everyone is happy in the end.
 * I suspect the end result will be "no consensus" now and everything will stay how it is currently (not a good outcome in my opinion). But whatever the outcome is, it'll be good to finally resolve this and move on. Given that the article has such low pageviews (around 150 pageviews per day, with a downward trend). EMsmile (talk) 23:11, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Requested move 29 January 2024

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Moved. There's quite a lot to wade through here, and discussions leading in different directions... but on the key substantive question of whether to move this page, there is broad consensus that it's the correct thing to do, based on incoming links and what readers might expect to be here etc. There are still many unanswered questions on the structure and content of the page, and whether a split may be appropriate. Such discussion can continue after this move is enacted. &mdash; Amakuru (talk) 09:30, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Attribution of recent climate change → Causes of climate change – A lengthy discussion on this proposal has become stuck for some time now with some editors supporting this move and others opposing it. The people who support it feel that the new title would be clearer and would be what users are looking for (NB, the current article "causes of climate change" is a redirect to this article). Content about "attribution" (i.e. to know WHY something is the cause) could be reasonably included in an article called "causes of climate change". Those opposing the move feel that the article should for now remain under this title (or be moved to "Detection and attribution of climate change" (or similar) and that it should not be mainly about the causes but rather about "scientific attribution of climate change and its effects". I hope I have summarised the discussion from the talk page correctly. Looking for uninvolved editors to help get this discussion unstuck and to move forward. I think all the editors involved so far feel that the current status quo is not good, i.e. the current version of the article is not good / there is a mismatch with the title versus its content. EMsmile (talk) 23:04, 29 January 2024 (UTC) — Relisting. BilledMammal (talk) 12:18, 10 February 2024 (UTC) — Relisting. voorts (talk/contributions) 04:15, 20 February 2024 (UTC)


 * P.S. the discussion so far is just above, i.e.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Attribution_of_recent_climate_change#Naming_(and_scope)_of_this_article . EMsmile (talk) 23:17, 29 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Strong support. "Attribution" is abstruse, non-friendly jargon to our lay readers, who will likely Google "What causes climate change". Note the various redirects already pointing here that all start with "Causes...". Also, conceptually, Causes of climate change is an excellent balance to Effects of climate change. — RCraig09 (talk) 04:29, 30 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Oppose. (Outdated - See below for an updated position.) I strongly urge any formerly uninvolved editor commenting on this discussion to look at Climate change and consider what, if anything, makes the current article better than that section at, well, explaining the causes of climate change? I have not been able to get an explanation on this point over the past two months of discussion - nor a plan for how this article can be made better than the already existing section of a top-level article after the move. The most I have heard was "more editors will see it after the move and think of something, someday", which isn't really a plan. It's also a dubious assumption in its own right, considering how many articles with even 4-digit daily views still have multiple unreferenced paragraphs and other obvious issues (i.e. Ice, which currently receives 22X |Attribution_of_recent_climate_change daily pageviews of this article).


 * Further, there has really been a fundamental misunderstanding in this discussion. Neither detection nor attribution of climate change are about what has been causing climate change - both are about discovering what climate change itself has caused to be different from the norm. If you look at https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/, you'll see that it is chronicling heatwaves, storms, extreme wildfires, etc. - i.e. all the things which we are (correctly) filing under the effects of climate change. Even outside of extreme weather, the field is about discovering evidence of temperature increase, etc. - not providing explanations for what caused it. So, even if effects of climate change actually needed to "balanced" with causes of climate change (which I reject until and unless it can provide a clear, demonstratable improvement over the existing articles), the way to do it is not by moving this article! If Causes of climate change and other redirects point to here, that just means they are wrong and this error should be resolved by pointing them to the aforementioned Climate change instead, not by erroneously moving this entire article.InformationToKnowledge (talk) 08:49, 30 January 2024 (UTC)


 * The issue here seems to revolve around (mis)use/ambiguity of the word attribution. Climate_change is well organized and impressively detailed, but is almost five desktop-screenfuls of text—too detailed and buried in the bloated highest-level CC article (~21 screenfuls). Bottomline: there should be a specific, dedicated, focused destination for readers who Google "What causes climate change?". Dictionary.com's "attribute" focuses on causation, so, if anything, much of the ~evidentiary/~investigational content of this current "Attribution of recent CC" article is somewhat ~misnamed and should be moved to "Climate change attribution science" or incorporated into the fairly new Extreme event attribution article. Details of what's in the highest-level CC article could be moved to the proposed "Causes of CC". — RCraig09 (talk) 16:29, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I broadly agree with RCraig09's assessment. I think moving some of the details from the main climate change article to this one could work. But are you saying we'd need a new article called Climate change attribution science? I hesitate to create a new article but had proposed something similar above to which Femke said above on 18 January "The problem we identified was that there are too many overlapping articles. So creating another one isn't doing it for me." - But putting the details into Extreme event attribution could work. Some broad explanations on how attribution is done (e.g. "footprinting") can stay in the article, in my opinion. (currently it's the section on "analytical methods"). But I don't want to write too much, as I am keen to hear from the uninvolved new editors. :-) EMsmile (talk) 20:11, 30 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Support because some people might think we are attributing the shares of blame for climate change to countries i.e. country x is 10% to blame and so onChidgk1 (talk) 15:38, 2 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Support Conditional on follow up edits. The article will become more high profile and is a mess right now. As others have said, a bonus of this change is that it would be good to slim down the main climate change article and move some of that content into here.
 * In general, the rename makes sense though. Causes of climate change is primarily what the article is covering already, not the issue of "attribution science" as the term is popularly used. In popular use, "attribution science" is focused on saying how much more likely weather events are given that climate change is happening.
 * Any content regarding attribution science as it relates to effects of climate change should go to "Effects of climate change", probably in a new section there that elevates the issue.
 * In general, I also agree that causes of climate change is going to be a popular topic for wiki links and searches. Meanwhile, losing a weak article called "Attribution of recent climate change" that is really covering causes is no great loss. Efbrazil (talk) 23:28, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Bogazicili (talk) 16:03, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Support The first sentence literally says: "Scientific studies have investigated the causes of climate change". This is the scope of the article. However, the article does talk about the recent, human-induced climate change. So, similar to Climate change, there should be a clarification at the very top of the page, such as:
 * I agree with your proposed hatnote (especially since the new article title would not longer have "recent" in it). EMsmile (talk) 20:59, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
 * The first sentence was changed recently, before this move request was started. It used to be about attribution instead. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 18:06, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, it was me who changed it on 19 January. Before, the article started like this which I didn't think was a great first sentence: Four main lines of evidence support attribution of recent climate change to human activities: ... (I doubt that many lay person readers understood this, since "attribution of" is unclear, "lines of evidence" is also a bit unclear). EMsmile (talk) 21:02, 6 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Weak oppose Detection & attribution is such a key scientific concept that I would hate to lose our article on it. That said, causes of climate change is easier to digest for a lay audienc, which I find really important. I think it has a higher risk of attracting bloat, as it sounds less technical. With the poor state of the article as is, that may not be such a big problem. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 18:08, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Alternative options: I'd like to put some alternative options on the table:
 * Option 1 (my preference) is to change it to "causes of climate change" but still include content about attribution in the second half of the article.
 * Option 2: split the article into two and have one article on causes and one on Detection & attribution.
 * Option 3: Keep it all together in one but make it clearer in the title by calling the modified article causes of climate change and attribution (or similar) (that's if we think we should get lay people more interested in the "attribution" part).
 * Option 4 is to leave the status quo, i.e. keep the current article title (and rework the content later, to match the title).
 * What I can see so far is that only Femke and InformationToKnowledge are favoring Option 4. The rest of those who have commented here want Option 1? (I know it's not a matter of vote counting, as per WP:VOTE). Have I summarised it correctly? EMsmile (talk) 21:19, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm OK with Options 1 or 2, preferably 2. — RCraig09 (talk) 22:48, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I agree with Craig, although I think the new attribution article should be simply called "attribution science". Go ahead and google the term- google comes back with only climate change hits, so it's not necessary to qualify the term that way. It would also help make it clear that we aren't talking about "causes" or "effects", but rather a more technical subject, allowing for the article to differentiate itself. However, taking this one poor quality article and splitting it into a high profile article plus a technical article is a tall ask. Great if you want to do it, and I'll see if I can help... Efbrazil (talk) 01:33, 9 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Comment Based on above comments, I looked at an older version of this article . Most of the article seems to be about detection and attribution. If we are going to separate articles, shouldn't we keep this article as is and create a new Causes of climate change article? The current version of this article can be reverted to an appropriate previous version. The extensive recent work done by can be copy an pasted into the new Causes of climate change article. What do you guys think? This is just a weak suggestion, given that fixing wikilinks etc may take a lot of work. Or, we can rename this article to Causes of climate change but not split. We can clarify in the first sentence about the scope of this article ("Scientific studies have investigated the causes of climate change, using detection and attribution studies" or something like that). We could cover everything together and also explain how they detection and attribution tie into causes. In the end, I definitely think we should have a Causes of climate change article, but not sure which way to get there. Bogazicili (talk) 23:16, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Conditional support/oppose I have opposed the idea of a separate article on Causes of climate change before, but my recent work on Climate change itself forced me to confront just how difficult it is to avoid neglecting the description of impacts when so much of that article is devoted to details on causes. Thus, I am now in favour of a separate article - and over the past several days, I have been drafting such an article in my sandbox.
 * However, I would still oppose renaming this article, for reasons present both in my first voting statement, and in the comment by @Bogazicili. Once again, attribution, in this context, is not about what causes climate change to happen, but about what climate change causes to happen. A subtle, yet extremely important difference. Causes of climate change redirecting to this article has always been a mistake, and the way to correct it is by turning that redirect into a separate article, not by doing an inherently wrong rename that would be forced to redirect to another article almost immediately anyway. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 12:07, 13 February 2024 (UTC)
 * , great that you are preparing a suggestion. Just FYI though, if the consensus ends up splitting this article, after the CURRENT content is transferred to the new page, any actual changes you make will need to be gradual, so that others can check your suggestions, work and sources, especially given the problems outlined here Talk:Climate_change We can't make wholesale giant changes. Bogazicili (talk) 17:03, 13 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I think the work in the sandbox was probably a good idea. I am OK with splitting the article into two, although I had been favouring keeping it in one, as per what Bogazicili  said above ("We can clarify in the first sentence about the scope of this article ("Scientific studies have investigated the causes of climate change, using detection and attribution studies" or something like that). We could cover everything together and also explain how they detection and attribution tie into causes.").
 * However I am not totally sure about this statement from ItK: attribution and detection is "about what climate change causes to happen". Meaning: it's to find out "is this particular drought caused by climate change?" (did I get it right?). If so, then this is quite different to what I thought we are discussing here. I thought we are discussing the causes of climate change and the science behind knowing that the rising CO2 emissions are indeed caused by humans (that "lines of evidence" thing).
 * In any case, given that the main climate change article has been linking people to this article under the sub-heading on "causes" for a long time now, I think this article needs to be renamed and refocused to become "causes of climate change". I think it's what people expect to find when they click onto the link. (and that existing redirect from "causes of climate change" is also correct, I would say).
 * The other, potentially new article, on the topic of "is this particular drought caused by climate change?" should either be a completely new article, or can it not just be within Extreme event attribution? "Attribution science" redirects to there by the way. Or take out that redirect and work on a standalone attribution science article? EMsmile (talk) 08:19, 17 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I think we can still cover all those in one article. Currently, this article is only 2,325 words . I'd suggest improving this article first (also renaming), and splitting it if it gets too long.
 * , also:
 * 1) Attribution seems to be used in this way as well: "Multiple lines of evidence support attribution of recent climate change to human activities:[8]"
 * 2) "Detection of a signal requires demonstrating that an observed change is statistically significantly different from that which can be explained by natural internal variability."
 * Those two definitely tie into Causes of Climate Change article. Bogazicili (talk) 21:14, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Hi Bogazicili, yes you don't have to convince me of that. :-) It seems that we have a lack of clarity about the meaning of attribution and whether it can mean two things or if we need to settle on one thing. Attribution can be about:
 * attributing the current climate change to human activities; and/or
 * attributing a certain event (like a drought) to climate change.

The first one would be included in the article causes of climate change, the second one would be more relevant in an article on attribution science.
 * So, where do we go from here now? I think we have argued long enough now and should move forward? I think we all agree that the current status quo is not good. I still favour Option 1 above, but would also be fine with Option 2. EMsmile (talk) 10:32, 28 February 2024 (UTC)
 * First and foremost, do we have any real evidence that attribution is actually used in the former sense in any professional or academic context, as opposed to whichever Wikipedian had first created the article misinterpeting the word to mean that, with the misperception persisting once the article was created?
 * @Bogazicili provided two quotes supposedly proving that Attribution seems to be used in this way as well...but they are literally just quotes from past versions of this very article that's being questioned. The reference for the first does not use the word "attribution", and the second passage is entirely unreferenced.
 * Consequently, I still see zero reason to avoid a split. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 13:59, 28 February 2024 (UTC)
 * True, Bogazicili did use those statements from an older version of the article. But if you put this question into google like "how do we know that climate change is attributed to human activities" it comes up with the search results that I'd expect, like "Are humans causing or contributing to global warming?" and "Is Human Activity Responsible for Climate Change?" I am happy to not call it "attribution" in the article though if that term is incorrectly used like that (I don't know if it is or isn't) but the content that the article should contain remains the same, i.e. an explanation how we know that it's the human activities that have caused climate change.
 * If you (or anyone else) wants to create a separate article on the attribution aspect (along the lines of "is this particular drought caused by climate change)?"), I wouldn't stop you. Putting them both in one article probably doesn't work well. I do wonder if you couldn't just utilise attribution science for that - as has been suggested by someone else further up.
 * So therefore, can we now go ahead and change the name of this article and have it NOT included the content on "is this particular drought caused by climate change)?" but have it include "Is Human Activity Responsible for Climate Change, and how do we know this?". EMsmile (talk) 15:59, 28 February 2024 (UTC)
 * This is the thing, though: wouldn't it be more logical to have this article name redirect to attribution science, while causes of climate change is built up anew? That is, we move most of the material here to the second namespace (CCC), then we replace it with what me, you and @Uwappa have been drafting over at my sandbox, and then we move whatever remains that would belong in attribution science over there, and turn this into a redirect. It makes far more sense to have a redirect with the word attribution point to the common use of the word. And if necessary, we can add a hatnote for the people who expected to be taken to the old meaning of this article. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 16:22, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Hmmm I am not sure about this. The question in my mind is what to do about all the internal wikilinks that are currently pointing to attribution of recent climate change. I assume (but haven't verified this) that most of them want to actually go to "causes of climate change" and not to attribution science. There are about 500 of those incoming wikilinks see here. Should we check out a random 50 articles of those and see what their mention of attribution of recent climate change should actually redirect to, and then make the final decision?
 * And do we have rough consensus now that we'll end up with two articles: causes of climate change and attribution science? EMsmile (talk) 13:51, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Between the two of us, yes. Having said that, I thought that decisions about naming (including of redirects) should be made on the basis of WP:RS, and not the more common usage by lay people, even if they happen to be Wikipedia editors?
 * I would like to request comments one more time from the editors who participated extensively in the earlier stages of this discussion but not more recently, such as @Efbrazil and @Femke. Preferably, both on the question of where this article name should redirect, and on the proposed draft of the article on causes. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 13:25, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm not following all branches of this discussion, but I support having two separate articles, one of which is Causes of climate change(a needed counterpoint to Effects of climate change) and the other covering the attribution process. — RCraig09 (talk) 18:02, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the ping and for hashing this through. I agree with the naming resolution and with the redirect to "causes of climate change". Thanks for pursuing that!
 * The draft of causes of climate change looks OK as a start point, although I think it needs major changes once it goes live. A few things:
 * Both the lead and "Factors affecting Earth's climate" need a lot of work, and I'd look to merge them in the process. Right now it seems like the sections are covering the same material from different perspectives. The subtopics in the article should really be the causes, all setup should be in the lead.
 * I don't think "Human-caused influences" makes sense as a group. If you are talking about modern climate change, all the causes are human. If you are talking about prehistoric climate change, then stuff like greenhouse gases changed for reasons not due to humans. I'd move the sub items to the top level.
 * I'm also not a fan of "Ripple effects" as a top level item, although I like the idea behind it. I think you are trying to say the issues are downstream of causes, which is good because otherwise it sounds like we are saying carbon sinks and feedbacks are causes. Maybe "Climate system response" is a better title, although I'm not sure if the carbon cycle is considered part of the climate system really. "Climate change sensitivity and longevity" is another idea, although that's really a mouthful.
 * Efbrazil (talk) 18:43, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your feedback!
 * I was under the impression that the lead should never contain any material completely unique to it, meaning that some sort of a set-up section is still necessary?
 * The idea was to have a heading name in opposition to "Natural variability" for solar and volcanic patterns. That name is certainly WIP, and I'm open to suggestions, but that is the basic idea.
 * It was actually @Uwappa who named that section, but yeah, that seems to have been the idea. "Environmental cycle responses" could be better, maybe?
 * InformationToKnowledge (talk) 18:16, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Good to see these additional responses by RCraig09 and Efbrazil, thanks; I think neither of them provided input to the question whether the 500 incoming wikilinks that are currently coming to this article are meaning to go to causes of climate change or to attribution science? My proposal was to check a random number of 50 of the incoming 500 wikilinks to determine if those incoming wikilinks are likely mostly wanting to go to causes of climate change or to attribution science? Depending on the results of this analysis we can then decide if this current article becomes causes of climate change (my preference) or if it becomes a redirect to attribution science, and a brandnew article causes of climate change is set up (= the choice of I2K as per their note above one 16:22, 29 February 2024). It's just a procedural question, it doesn't affect the content per se. In the extreme case, one of the two options might mean adjusting the 500 incoming wikilinks accordingly. EMsmile (talk) 19:12, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
 * (Regarding Point 1 above: the lead should be a summary of the entire article; this means that the lead could be a little bit repetitive with some of the content that comes in the main text, of course) EMsmile (talk) 19:15, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I like the resolution for incoming wikilinks that EMsmile proposes.
 * As for whether the lead should be a synopsis of the article, the answer is yes of course, but the trouble is that the lead and "Factors affecting Earth's climate" are covering pretty much the same territory, so Factors comes across as purely redundant. The lead is supposed to be a synopsis, not a copy of one section. The fix probably requires moving bits of "Factors affecting Earth's climate" to the respective causes being talked about.
 * Again, I don't think any of this needs to be fixed before the renaming occurs. I would like the renaming to happen ASAP, then we can all tackle the new articles in a clean up process. Efbrazil (talk) 19:49, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I agree with Efbrazil.
 * Also, I've just taken a look at the incoming Wikilinks now. Firstly, I removed attribution of recent climate change from the climate change nav box. As a result, there are now only about 100 incoming wikilinks, not 500. Then I looked at the first eight and adjusted their wikilinks (in several cases, the wikilink should just go to climate change anyhow). What I found is that all of the 8 articles that I looked at, the wikilinks in 7 of them actually wanted to go to "causes" and only one wanted to go to "attribution" (the latter was the one from the climate article). These were the ones that wanted to go to "causes":
 * List of climate change controversies
 * Bjørn Lomborg
 * History of the petroleum industry in the United States
 * Petroleum
 * Market failure
 * Earth Simulator
 * The Wall Street Journal
 * We can continue with this exercise. But so far I don't seen an advantage of the preferred solution of I2K which is to create a new article on causes of climate change. I think it's better to rename this article and to move any of the unique attribution content to extreme event attribution (possibly rename that one to attribution science). EMsmile (talk) 23:49, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
 * As I said, my only concern is about where the redirect will end up pointing to. Honestly, though, let's just get it done now and move on to other problematic articles. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 10:22, 5 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Just to ensure I understand exactly what you mean: what did you mean with "my only concern is about where the redirect will end up pointing to"? The proposal is that the current article will be renamed to causes of climate change. And we could set it up that a search for "attribution of recent climate change" would redirect to attribution science. Is that what you meant? - And I agree, let's get it done. So we (you?) copy the content from your sandbox across to here now and then change the name? EMsmile (talk) 10:41, 5 March 2024 (UTC)
 * And we could set it up that a search for "attribution of recent climate change" would redirect to attribution science. Is that what you meant? Basically, yes.
 * And yes, pretty much. You have a lot more experience with moves and merges, so I would prefer to leave these steps to you, if you don't mind. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 11:35, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Happy to assist but step one is to delete the existing "causes of climate change" article and I always get confused on how to delete a redirect page. Does someone know and can get it done? It needs to be deleted to make way for the name change. Once it's deleted, I can do the rest (but am also happy for someone else to do the rest). EMsmile (talk) 14:35, 5 March 2024 (UTC)


 * So, this was kind of my question all along. Why can't we paste the contents of first this page, then my draft into the CCC redirect page, and then make this page into a redirect to attribution science instead? InformationToKnowledge (talk) 15:00, 5 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Let's just do it in the way that I have outlined above. It's easier and more straight forward. I have continued to check the incoming wikilinks and they all want to go to a "causes of" climate change article, not an "attribution of" article. I just need that current CCC page to be deleted by an admin, or someone to tell me how I do it myself. I can investigate. - This way, all the history and talk pages stay intact as well. EMsmile (talk) 15:24, 5 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I've nominated it here now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2024_March_5#Causes_of_climate_change (not sure if I have done it correctly). EMsmile (talk) 15:38, 5 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I've closed the discussion at Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 March 5 to "wrong forum" since 1) this discussion has not been closed and 2) such a request should be made on WP:RMTR to move the page if the discussion closer does not have the necessary user rights to perform the result. Steel1943  (talk) 15:46, 5 March 2024 (UTC)
 * OK, getting rid of a redirect that is "in the way", is more complicated than I thought... Anyway, so I am waiting now for an uninvolved editor to close the move discussion. I think it's fair to say that consensus has been reached. - After that I can make the request at WP:RMTR. EMsmile (talk) 21:21, 5 March 2024 (UTC)
 * In a perfect world, the closer of this discussion should put in the WP:RMTR request if they cannot perform the move themselves. Steel1943  (talk) 22:00, 5 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Could you be the closer of this discussion? It's been kicking around for a long time now; those of us involved are eager to get this finalised now. EMsmile (talk) 22:29, 5 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Generally speaking, it is good practice not to ask someone in particular to close a move request, although I know that your comment was made in good faith. The close doesn't seem so straightforward to me, but the place to go to request a close is WP:CR. Dekimasu よ! 09:14, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks for providing this guidance, I'll place my close request there then. EMsmile (talk) 09:32, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Or maybe I ought to wait another week or so? The guidance on that page says "Do not post here to rush the closure. Also, only do so when the discussion has stabilised." EMsmile (talk) 09:36, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I'd recommend for you to wait. It's best when the discussion has died down, with no new responses. Then it would be a proper and more durable closure. After all this discussion we wouldn't have to deal with it again for a long time lol Bogazicili (talk) 21:57, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
 * Observation: My survey of ~ten random "What links here" entries convinces me that almost all of the incoming links relate to the (non-techy) "causes" concept and not the (techy) "attribution" concept. Accordingly, I think it's the attribution content that should be placed in a new article. A navigation hatnote atop the present article, to be moved/renamed Causes of climate change, can readily forward readers to a new "Attribution..." article. — RCraig09 (talk) 17:48, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
 * This makes most sense to me. Bogazicili (talk) 21:46, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Agreed, I've in the meantime also looked at additional "what links here" entries, and my observation matches with yours. I've already corrected a few more of them and have changed those wikilinks to causes of climate change. EMsmile (talk) 21:58, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Support per RCraig09 (the observation above). Bogazicili (talk) 21:49, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

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 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 ( 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 ). 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) 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)