Talk:Extinction risk from climate change

Scope unclear
I don't understand the scope of this article. If it's meant to not include humans then I think this should be clearer from the title. Also, isn't there a lot of overlap with other articles, in particular effects of climate change, climate change and biodiversity, Effects of climate change on terrestrial animals? We just have too many articles on similar topics here. EMsmile (talk) 22:20, 24 January 2023 (UTC)


 * I think it's the same issue as the one which was brought up on Talk:Sea level rise recently. Yes, the article is explicitly about the modern/future SLR, and it does not discuss paleohistorical examples of SLR. However, instead of renaming it "sea level rise from climate change" or some other poorly searchable title, we have simply placed an "About" note on top of the article directing readers to marine transgression. Likewise, I think that this article should have the same note directing readers to User:InformationToKnowledge/Climate change and civilizational collapse draft, once we settle on the title & other details, and it becomes a full article.
 * And I thought that the whole point of effects of climate change was to act as a general overview of all impacts, where each section then linked to/excerpted a detailed article about a given impact? In that case, there is no overlap.
 * You are right that the other two articles make things confusing, though. Personally, I find that Effects of climate change on terrestrial animals is an extremely poorly written article: absolutely disproportionate section on livestock with enormous blockquotes which should be condensed and moved to a separate article ASAP (we do have Climate change and livestock, actually, but it's a redirect about environmental impacts of meat, so a separate article discussing how they'll be affected by the future climate is probably justified), many, many paragraphs with either no citations at all, or citations with no links and page numbers to 15-20 year old research, really uneven coverage of species, etc. Effects of climate change on ecosystems is better, but I think it could also do with reorganization. I think this article gets the point across more directly then the others.
 * Here is what I propose:
 * 1) All material in Effects of climate change on ecosystems and Effects of climate change on terrestrial animals which directly discusses/references extinction projections that are not here yet is moved to this article.
 * 2) Last three sections of the ecosystems article ("Species migration", "Species adaptation" and perhaps "Impacts of species degradation due to climate change on livelihoods") are moved to the end of this article. Some of the terrestrial animals article is moved here too (i.e. much of the "Habitat fragmentation" section, as it explains how climate change drives extinctions).
 * 3) Effects of climate change on terrestrial animals is split into an article for every important type of animal. We already have Climate change and birds, and while it's very underwritten right now, it won't take too long to come up with ways to expand it, and it'll only get larger with time. There is also Decline in amphibian populations and Decline in insect populations (also a timeline, for that matter), which go beyond climate change, but that is acceptable. We'll probably only need a separate article on wild mammals and reptiles to complete the split.
 * 4) Effects of climate change on ecosystems is probably removed, although it's going to be a bit complicated. I was going to suggest that we create "Human impact on terrestrial life" to match Human impact on marine life and merge the ecosystems article there, but it turns out there is already Human impact on the environment, which would seem to overlap with that almost entirely. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 11:14, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks for this. I can see a lot of work coming up and it would be great if you had time to tackle some or all of it! It's all quite a mess at this stage. That's normal for Wikipedia as so many different people were involved over the years, and the science changing quite rapidly... So if we could pull this together better that would be great. I am currently trying to entangle the mess around bioenergy, biomass (energy), biofuel and energy crop (any chance you feel like helping there, too? :-) ).
 * I hadn't seen the Decline in insect populations article yet. Very interesting. Not linked well from our other climate change articles yet although I note that climate change might not be the main contributor to this decline. The timeline aspect in that article is more related to a "history of discovery" whereas for the extinction risk article I think the history of discovery is less important. They are just different studies projecting what will happen in the future.
 * So overall it depends on how much time & energy you have at your disposal and how ambitious you want to get. But I agree with you that the article Effects of climate change on terrestrial animals is not good and needs reworking, possibly splitting and so forth. Where is the best place to discuss this further? Talk page of WikiProject Climate Change to announce plans and then details on the talk page of Effects of climate change on terrestrial animals?
 * And yes, the main effects of climate change article could be seen as the parent article to many of the other sub-articles. Agreed. (by the way, we've had a recent name change, it's now Environmental impact of animal agriculture) EMsmile (talk) 12:27, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
 * After a little over a month, I finally found the time to go back to the article and rework it! I think the current structure should work well, though perhaps some may again disagree.
 * I have also moved as much information from Effects of climate change on ecosystems to this article as was possible to do while maintaining cohesion. I didn't double-check every single sentence I moved yet, so parts of the newer sections (i.e. "Causes") could probably be made a lot tighter than they are right now. Nevertheless, it should already be a great improvement.
 * The main thng I didn't move from that article is the section on forests, which appears to take up over half of the article. I think we might be better off using that section as the basis for some separate climate change and forests article and/or climate change and plants one (assuming neither of those exist already under a different name) and probably redirect the title here.
 * I looked a bit at the Effects of climate change on terrestrial animals as well. Unfortunately, so much of it does not even use hyperlinked references (only referring to a source by name) that dealing with it would be especially time-consuming. I moved the table of already linked extinctions here, but that is about it. I still think that the bulk of that article should be reworked into a basis for a revived livestock article, and the rest moved either here, to the forest article or Climate change and birds, since its best paragraphs are probably on birds.
 * P.S. Any updates on the biomass/bioenergy/biofuel rework? I know less about that subject matter than what I have been working on so far, but I would be interested in following whatever talk page is used for ongoing discussion there (if any). If it's still active than I'll join as well - but only after concluding the clean-up of this set of articles and finally getting a better replacement for the "apocalypse" article sorted out. (Unfortunately, no-one had even offered any feedback on my draft article yet, though the effort may hopefully pick up the pace now.) InformationToKnowledge (talk) 15:20, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I haven't yet looked in detail but the new structure seems heaps better. I am a little bit concerned that you made a huge change/rewrite all in one go here. I guess you must have worked out the new article in your sandbox first. I think for this kind of article such a massive change is probably fine (and might have been the only way). Just be aware that for other more tightly watched articles, the other page viewers might complain as it would have been very hard to follow your thought process. But you probably already know that. So it's all good. Thanks for your massive amount of work here! EMsmile (talk) 23:58, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Regarding the biomass/bioenergy/biofuel rework: yes, still ongoing and yes, active help is very much needed. I am not 100% sure which the best talk page is: I've been writing on the talk page of biomass (energy) mainly but also at bioenergy. I really struggle to delineate these 4 articles and there is still an option about merging some: biomass (energy), bioenergy, energy crop and biofuel. Let's continue the discussion at biomass (energy) for now? EMsmile (talk) 23:58, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Regarding Climate change and civilizational collapse draft, I suggest you start a new section on the WikiProject Climate Change talk page about that as it might have gotten lost/forgotten a bit in the long earlier discussion with RCraig09. Overall, I share your frustration about the lack of feedback on one's work here but I guess the root problem is that we have too few active Wikipedians who are editing on climate change topics... How can we change that? I wish there were dozens more... EMsmile (talk) 00:00, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Pre-GA review
User:InformationToKnowledge asked for my opinion on their talk page of this article, and what needs to be done before it meets the GA criteria. I think it would be very cool if this could be brought to GA, so a mini review. You've found all the good sourcing, so it's mainly a matter of trimming, sectioning and using the appropriate tone for Wikipedia


 * the last paragraph of the lead needs to have way fewer numbers. Even as somebody who loves numbers and statistics, I cannot read this, as it's too dense on numbers.
 * in general, the article requires some more trimming, or sectioning. As a rule of thumb, consider making new subheadings when you have more than four or five paragraphs. Most people skim Wikipedia, so headings are needed to bring them to the correct place.
 * You very very rarely want to start a sentence with "an 20XX study". This is a sign you're writing a review paper, rather than a Wikipedia article. This adds unnecessary words in a prime location. Again, most readers skim Wikipedia, which means they want to know the topic of a paraphragh within six words. Per WP:SCIRS, Cite reviews, don't write them
 * Consider putting some numbers in tables, rather than in prose everywhere. Prose high on numbers becomes very tough to read.
 * A pet peeve of my, but there are some instances of false precision (such as 50.29%. This fourth significant digit is very unlikely to have a good scientific justification. I would not have allowed it past peer review. It's okay to round numbers from papers, especially if the authors should have done so themselves.
 * Make sure there is no information unique to the lead per WP:LEAD. I was trimming the last paragraph of the lead just now, and saw that that would have removed content.

I do hope you nominate the article. The GA review process is either really good, or a bit too shallow depending on what reviewer you get (it's one person reviewing it). —Femke 🐦 (talk) 19:04, 17 April 2023 (UTC)


 * Thank you for this feedback! It'll likely require me to get quite creative with the current structure, but I'll see what I can do over the weekend.
 * I'll say that I don't think there's actually any unique content in the last paragraph of the lead. It's just that the lead has all its numbers in one place (which does create readability issues, yes), while they are spread out across multiple sections in the body, since those refer to 3-4 different families of species. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 09:06, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Relationship with biodiversity loss
I was doing some work on biodiversity and biodiversity loss recently and wonder now if this article shouldn't also say a bit about biodiversity loss and how that is all related? (as the biodiversity loss article also does talk about climate change). For now I have added it to "See also" as a stop gap measure.

Note the article on biodiversity loss has much higher pageviews than this one (about 300 per day compared to 50 per day for this one) so it would be useful to ensure they interlink nicely with each other and refer to each other where it makes sense.

Also, there is a sentence that I had moved from biodiversity to this article but I am now not sure if it really adds value or if the ref is any good etc. Please take a look if this is useful or not: A study in 2015 predicted that up to 35% of the world terrestrial carnivores and ungulates will be at higher risk of extinction by 2050 because of the joint effects of predicted climate and land-use change under business-as-usual human development scenarios.. EMsmile (talk) 13:26, 18 April 2023 (UTC) EMsmile (talk) 13:26, 18 April 2023 (UTC)


 * This article can effectively be considered a sub-article of biodiversity loss. That is, all extinctions caused by climate change are part of biodiversity loss, but a lot of biodiversity loss is unrelated to climate change. In that sense, the distinction should be quite clear. If there's anything I'm concerned about, it's the overlap between biodiversity loss and Holocene extinction (or at least, it's latter half). At a glance, it appears substantial, and more than a little messy.
 * As for the reference, I think it's is insufficiently specific, because it conflates climate change with land use change, which is a separate stressor. Plus, "higher risk of extinction" is a notably weaker and more vague language than what is used by most other papers, and this may stand out negatively. The article is already only 1-2k words away from the recommended maximum length (and it is most definitely going to continue expanding in the future, for good or ill), so we probably do not need this particular reference in this particular article. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 09:21, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the clarification about the relationship with biodiversity loss. Could you add a sentence or two about it to the article (at the moment, the term "biodiversity loss" is not yet mentioned). Perhaps in the lead section? Actually, we might need a section on definitions, not sure; the article jumps straight into "causes". I would first describe the observations and estimates; e.g. what do we even mean with extinction risk. And afterwards explain the causes. So swapping the first and second section of the article? The new order could be this this: what are we observing, why is this happening (causes), what are the implications (impacts), how can we prevent it. EMsmile (talk) 14:00, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Quote from "Models of drivers of biodiversity and ecosystem change"?

 * Do any of you think we should add the following blockquote from https://www.ipbes.net/models-drivers-biodiversity-ecosystem-change to an article? If so which?
 * Direct driver pathways of climate change are related to changes in climate and weather patterns impacting in situ ecosystem functioning and causing the migration of species and entire ecosystems. There are indications that climate change-induced temperature increases may threaten as many as one in six species at the global level. Rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations leading to higher ocean temperatures and ocean acidification are expected to have profound effects upon marine ecosystems, particularly coral reefs and marine communities near the seafloor. Recent studies projecting reef contraction due to global warming are unanimous in their depiction of the negative impacts on the marine biodiversity that depend on these ecosystems, although the direct effects of ocean acidification are highly variable across different taxa. Chidgk1 (talk) 15:41, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
 * It's interesting content but for a block quote it would be too long and difficult to understand. Should we convert some of it to own words if it's not already in the article? I was going to say it would also fit into the article Climate change and biodiversity loss but I see that one redirects to Effects of climate change on ecosystems - not sure if that is ideal. Pinging also User:ASRASR. EMsmile (talk) 10:11, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Then we also have Effects of climate change on plant biodiversity which will also overlap...EMsmile (talk) 15:38, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
 * So...better to reply late than never.
 * My issue with this blockquote is that it simply restates in prose (and with less clarity) what this article already says in multiple places. I.e.
 * There are indications that climate change-induced temperature increases may threaten as many as one in six species at the global level.
 * is actually referring to the same finding as this sentence in the currrent article.
 * The report concluded that global warming of 2 °C (3.6 °F) over the preindustrial levels would threaten an estimated 5% of all the Earth's species with extinction even in the absence of the other four factors, while if the warming reached 4.3 °C (7.7 °F), 16% of the Earth's species would be threatened with extinction.
 * I consider blockquote inferior here, as without any further context, one can very easily get the impression that the uncertainty in "may threaten as many" is about IPBES not being sure how many extinctions the current warming will cause, as opposed to what it actually means - that IPBES cannot foretell the future and know how high warming will get, and if we will reach the higher-end climate change it considers necessary for such extent of extinctions, or not.
 * (Notably, some other researchers believe that this many extinctions can occur at a much lower level of warming than what IPBES believes, as chronicled in the same section, but that is hardly an argument for including the quote.)
 * Similarly, the next two sentences mainly refer to corals, and I'm not sure if it adds anything to the information already presented in that section of the article (or the fish section, for that matter). InformationToKnowledge (talk) 10:09, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Proposal for new first sentence
I have just added this as a proposed new first sentence (I think it would be useful if we could have the article title in bold in the first sentence): There are several plausible pathways that could lead to an increased extinction risk from climate change. This is because... See also guidance about the first sentence here: MOS:FIRST. I am very open to further discussion of course - this is just a first attempt. I was tempted to change it to extinction risk of plants and animals, and am now wondering if the article title should rather be extinction risk of plants and animals from climate change? EMsmile (talk) 07:08, 22 June 2023 (UTC)


 * I really like this change to first paragraph! Thank you!
 * I would not be in favour of renaming the article, as the new proposed title is too long and will likely reduce its visibility. I can only think of oneargument supporting such a name change - and it's the older discussion that the current article needs to cover human extinction in order to justify its name.
 * The main obstacle to this is simple - as of now, there are effectively no studies which advance the claim that any given level of climate change (outside of the far future cosmic/geologic timescales) can lead to human extinction - even the few papers which are the centerpiece of climate apocalypse at most make vague gestures and stop several steps short of offering any quantified risk in the same way as what has been presented for all the species chronicled in this article. Maybe "climate endgame" will spur on something similar with its talk of "decimation risks" and the like, but for now, it only offers a framework and it will be years before we can realistially expect any such paper drafted, submitted, reviewed and published. If that does happen, then a sub-section for humans would make sense here, and the title would no longer be obsolete.
 * For now, my proposal is the same as before - and that is to emulate sea level rise, which does not attempt to spread itself even thinner than now, and instead simply has this note at the top: This article is about the current and projected rise in the world's average sea level from climate change. For sea level rise in general, see Past sea level.
 * Until and unless assessments of human extinction risk due to climate change of the same scientific rigour as applied to non-human species appear, I believe this article should carry a similar note: This article is about the scientific projections of present and future climate change driving Earth's species extinct. For speculation about climate change potentially resulting in human extinction, see climate change and civilizational collapse.
 * For that to happen, I would have to publish that first draft I ever proposed. I delayed doing this, because when considering the topic's complexity, and how many eyes there will be on that page once it's published, there's quite a bit more I would like to add to it, and working on more straightforward pages beforehand is good practice. Nevertheless, it's still my plan for both articles. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 09:55, 22 June 2023 (UTC)
 * OK that makes sense, thanks. For now I have added this hatnote (the article that we link to can be changed later): This article is about scientific projections of present and future climate change driving Earth's plant or animal species extinct. For speculation about climate change potentially resulting in human extinction, see climate apocalypse.. I would prefer for the hatnote to be a bit shorter though if possible? EMsmile (talk) 11:59, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Possibly useful reference
This Biological Reviews article, "More losers than winners: investigating Anthropocene defaunation through the diversity of population trends" might be of interest in this Wikipedia article. — RCraig09 (talk) 22:12, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Improving reading ease of the start of the lead
I've done some copy edits to the lead to improve its readability (as it's transcribed at biodiversity loss). I've change the last sentence of the first para into something that is hopefully easier to understand, shorter but still correct. The original long, detailed sentence was However, the speed of recent climate change is so unprecedented, that even under "mid-range" scenarios of future warming, only 5% of current ectotherm locations (a category which includes amphibians, reptiles and all invertebrates) are within 50 km of a place which could serve as an equally suitable habitat at the end of this century.. Please double check with my new version if you agree. The first para should try to have summary statements and I think this one went into too much precise detail. EMsmile (talk) 22:46, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

Removed graph with 450 million timespan from the lead
It wasn't clear to me what this graph (on the right) was doing in the lead of this article, when this article is all about current and future climate change and not about the geologic timeframes? I've removed it for now and have added it to biodiversity loss, although maybe it doesn't fit there either. Or am I missing something? Maybe with a clearer caption it could be useful but not for the lead image, maybe further down in the main text somewhere. EMsmile (talk) 13:55, 8 February 2024 (UTC)