User:Dmcdysan/sandbox/Younger Dryas

Sandbox subpage to collect list of items to be done, draft proposed text.

Aloha, and Thanks for All the Fish!
Attributing topic title to this great work ,

in order to attend to personal matters I will be only intermittently active on Wikipedia, if at all, for several months. ....pause .... waiting for cheering and applause to subside .....

Seriously though, I intended to help, but realize sometimes such statements are not well received. 

I tried to make an number of suggestions that I viewed as constructive to improve this article and asked if anyone one was interested - I did not interpret lack of response as WP:SILENCE and tried to ask questions in the sense "that if you disagree, the onus is on you to say so." However, before expending more effort, if you are interested in me expanding on my proposals to improve this article please let me know by a positive response over the next several months. The good news is that I have already posted many of my ideas as topics on this talk page; the bad news is that I have more ideas only in a draft state.

I have been desperately seeking reliable third-party sources (e.g., college textbooks) on this subject and will purchase them for my own education. I think citing such sources would help address the too many primary sources issue that this article has. So far, I purchased the 2021 text Vanished Giants which supports the YDIH opponent view for Late Pleistocene extinctions. I plan to cite this reference there and that may help with the large number of primary sources used there. I am still searching for other such college level textbooks and i anyone has recommendations, I would greatly appreciate that.

The following may be disturbing to some, and although not directly relevant here, before reacting I suggest recalling and/or (re) reading WP:CIVIL - I have found this to be a helpful coping method for past stressful situations on Wikipedia. Others are reading this Wikipedia article and criticizing it, for example the 22 Oct 2022 Wikipedia's bias - a case study: The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis and the related discussion starting 25 Oct 2022 at Wikipedia FTN Talk thread M Sweatman publishing a blog attacking Wikipedia and two editors. Looking over that critique and the current state of the article, not much has changed for the better. Personally, I consider some of Sweatman's statements rude according to WP:CIVIL (e.g., the comments on the Evidence and History sections) but IMHO, the critique does make some valid points that editors of this article should consider. I found this only recently after going over hundreds of pages of archives. I had already independently made some recommendations along these lines previously.

The above FTN thread clarified to me in how some ways the article has come to its current state that may actually worse than that critiqued above by deleting a number of sentences and text that stated the YDIH proponent (which at my current level of understanding is equivalent to CRG member (however that is defined)). In a number of cases, the deleted statements had little content and may have been written by an editor sympathetic to YDIH opponents and the deletion was justified. However, the result is now that many sections/ paragraphs (e.g., the summary) begin with the YDIH opponent view while the YDIH proponent view is never described - that is a major reason why I believe the article has an even less WP:NPOV than it did on 22 Oct 2022. Through cooperative editing, I believe this could be resolved. I have little experience with WP:BRD, and see that is used extensively in Talk:YDIH. WP:BRD does describe many optional strategies and I suggest that interested editors consider those as well.

IMHO, there was some good discussion about reorganizing the article to list the proponent view (without undue weight) and follow it with the opponent view but no consensus that I saw. There was also some discussion about starting over on the article and rewriting it from scratch and I did see some interest for other editors in this approach. Some secondary sources have also become available and rewriting using only those could help condense and improve the article. For my own usage, I have started to do this in my sandbox, but it is not ready for review. If and when I have something worthy of your review, I will post a draft on this talk page. I can't find an official Wikipedia guideline for this, but please don't mess around in my sandbox. If you do, you will find a bunch of stuff there unrelated to this topic. I believe that I have avoided BADSAND (cool acronym) and have followed guidelines in User pages so I have nothing to hide. By stating this I realize that I have opened myself up to an investigation, and if I have done something inappropriate please message me with @ so that I can attempt to resolve it and learn.

Mahalo

Remove sentence from CRG section that cites PubPeer
Propose deleting "Subsequent concerns that have been brought up in PubPeer have not yet been addressed by the CRG, including discrepancies between claimed blast wave direction compared to what the images show, unavailability of original image data to independent researchers, lack of supporting evidence for conclusions, inappropriate reliance on young Earth creationist literature, misinformation about the Tunguska explosion, and another uncorrected example of an inappropriately altered image. "

Because, referencing discussion, covering this specific citation, reached a consensus that PubPeer is in general not reliable except in specific instances, such as when an acknowledged expert is involved (e.g., Elisabeth Blik). Blik is already cited in the second sentence of the paragraph. Therefore, this sentence is not verifiable from a reliable source.

Is Boslough 2023 Skeptic Mag article on Hancock’s Netflix Ancient Apocalypse a reliable source?
Regarding Mark Boslough 2023 Skeptic Magazine article on Hancock’s Netflix Ancient Apocalypse Series, Mark Boslough’s website identifies this as Recreational Writing separate from his Technical Publications

As of 10 Mar 2024 it is first in the reference list and used X times in the article.

RSN search returned several results for Skeptic Magazine (and none for Boslough) The following seemed relevant;, which reached the conclusion "This discussion has become a classic trainwreck. It did not begin with a question about a particular source used to support particular content." Perhaps the question needs to be raised with respect to this author, article and publication on RSN?

Rebuttal by James L. Powell of Sodom paper by Boslough
Include in CRG section.

Peer review and the pillar of salt: a case study

Additional Third-party, reliably sourced references
Clement, Peterson Oct 2008, Mechanisms of abrupt climate change of the last glacial period

Vanished Giants

Pleistocene Extinction book by Stuart

Se 4.4 Combined Hypothesis

To WP Pleistocene Extinction article

References already may be there.

Alavarez (Father and Son) as pseudoscientists in the 1980s now accepted mainstream theory
Found in https://vgm.a23.myftpupload.com/wally-broecker-says-a-cosmic-impact-caused-the-younger-dryas/

Schulte, 2010 The Chicxulub Asteroid Impact and Mass Extinction at the Cretaceous-Paleogene Boundary

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/41760554_The_Chicxulub_Asteroid_Impact_and_Mass_Extinction_at_the_Cretaceous-Paleogene_Boundary

See also Powell 2022.

Recent books from code search of Younger Dryas
Paleoclimatology: Reconstructing climates of the Quaternary, Bradley, 2015

Built on Bones: 15,000&amp;nbsp;years of urban life and death, Hassett 2017

Draft text proposed for CRG in history section- TBD
In 2016 the CRG was established as a non-profit corporation and Rising Sun. Some authors report this as their affiliation.

Draft Text for summary from Main Article, Powell, Dalton.
https://www.britannica.com/science/Younger-Dryas-climate-interval

James L. Powell Timeline of Wallace Smith Broecker

As W. H. Berger 21summed up in 1990: “The origin of the Younger Dryas is likely to remain an enigma for some time to come, perhaps forever. If the cold spell resulted from an interplay of positive feedback mechanisms within the climate system, it will not be possible to distinguish cause and effect.” Perhaps the foremost student of the YD was the late Wallace Broecker, whose interest in this cool episode had begun with his PhD thesis. Shortly before Berger wrote the passage above, Broecker et al. 22 proposed what became the accepted hypothesis as the cause of the YD. Broecker and colleagues envisioned that the volume of meltwater exiting Lake Agassiz produced a cap of low salinity surface water over the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans, strongly reducing thermohaline circulation (sometimes referred to as the oceanic conveyor belt) that Broecker had discovered, leading to abrupt cooling of the adjacent continents.

However, the apparent lack of geomorphic evidence for the purported eastern drainage of Lake Agassiz led Broecker 23 to abandon his own hypothesis, now saying that the YD “was likely triggered by a freak event rather than by something common to each glacial termination.” In 2010, he reversed direction, writing with colleagues: “Evidence from Chinese stalagmites suggests that, rather than being a freak occurrence, the Younger Dryas is an integral part of the deglacial sequence of events that produced the last termination on a global scale.” 24 As described below, Broecker would change his mind once again.

The YD literature is voluminous, with Broecker et al. 24 calling the period “the best studied of the millennial-scale cold snaps of glacial time.” The point of this much-abbreviated summary is simply to show that by the ﬁrst decade of the twenty-ﬁrst century, though the YD had come to be regarded as “the canonical abrupt climate change event,” scientists had not reached consensus as to its cause. 25 It was time for a novel idea.

21= Berger 1990, 22 = Broecker 1989 23=Broecker 2006 24=Broecker 2010 25 = Carlson 2013

That the six events listed above happened at or close to the onset of the YD suggests that they may have had a single trigger. In 2007, Firestone et al. 5 proposed that “An extraterrestrial (ET) impact event at ∼12.9 ka (later recalibrated to ∼12.8 ka)…caused abrupt environmental changes that contributed to YD cooling, major ecological reorganization, broad-scale extinctions, and rapid human behavioral shifts at the end of the Clovis Period.” They posited that the impactor was “one or more large, low-density objects…most likely a comet.” Thus the YDIH proposes that an impact caused the YD cooling and was at least partly responsible for the megafaunal extinction and the Clovis cultural decline.

5 = Firestone, West, Kennet 2007

Walter Alvarez

Chicxulub crater

Quote from Dalton?

Allen West and CRG as Unreliable Sources
Fringe theories/Noticeboard/Archive 82

Doug Weller mentions when rejecting In The News (ITN) request.

https://psmag.com/environment/comet-claim-comes-crashing-to-earth-31180

https://www.nature.com/articles/news.2009.997

Wolbach

https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/search/q=Wolbach&sort=date%20desc%2C%20bibcode%20desc&p_=0

Rex Dalton publications re: YDIH
2004 Nature https://www.nature.com/articles/4311027a

2007 Nature https://www.nature.com/articles/447256a

2009 https://www.nature.com/articles/news.2009.997

2011 Pacific Standard https://psmag.com/environment/comet-claim-comes-crashing-to-earth-31180

Some interesting quotes,

Some links are stale.

James L. Powell and Science Progress as Reliable Sources?
Acknowledging that "A little learning is a dang'rous thing," I searched WP:FTN "James L. Powell," and found the following

Jan 2022 Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Noticeboard/Archive 84#Interesting article on pseudo-archeology, with added comets

Nov 2022 Fringe theories/Noticeboard/Archive 89

I searched WP:FTN "James Lawrence Powell," and found the following that refer to the

Nov 2022 Fringe theories/Noticeboard/Archive 89 a comment by a single editor.

Jan 2022 -Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Noticeboard/Archive 84#Interesting article on pseudo-archeology, with added comets

Jan 2022 - Fringe theories/Noticeboard/Archive 84

In the article as of 2/29/2024, the 2022 James L. Powell is cited three times using the commonly used style as can be seen in the References-citation section, and twice ( a count requiring a search in source editing mode) using the shortened footnote with parentheses (sfnp) template, the usage of which has several issues as I responded to Hornoz in Talk:Younger Dryas. at

ADD LINK Before a bulk modification to this article is made this should be further discussed and ensure alignment with other Wikipedia guidelines. I suggest that editors interested in this topic focus on consensus for what are the reliable sources and/or individuals before implementing a wholesale change in referencing style.

I searched WP:FTN on "Science Progress" and found the following:

Oct 2022 Fringe theories/Noticeboard/Archive 89

Oct 2022 Fringe theories/Noticeboard/Archive 89

To me, this topic is the most comprehensive regarding the definition of "CRG, as articulated by Proxy Data

"The historical development and chronology is useful as background information, but I think it belongs at the bottom, maybe just before the popular culture and a section in which Comet Research Group spinoff ideas (both indirect and direct) of Hancock, Carlson, Sweatman (Gobekli Tepe decoded), Bunch (Tall el-Hammam is Sodom), and Tankersley (Hopewell comet) are discussed. Also, it is impossible to talk about the YDIH and all the associated knock-off pseudoarcheology without referring to the influence of the Comet Research Group, which was not formally incorporated until 2016 but came into existence as an un-named entity in May, 2007 with the first public announcement of the YDIH in its current form at the AGU joint assembly meeting in Acapulco with public statements to the media by Firestone, West, Kennett, and Becker (three of whom went on to be co-founders of the CRG for the sole purpose of funding, promotional, and media work on the 2007 version of the YDIH and its related spinoffs). The CRG and the YDIH are inseparable and the YDIH page should make this clear from the beginning of the page."

It appears that any proponent of YDIH is by association part of the CRG, as summarized by Boslough.

The source of the 2022 Powell paper is appears now to be https://journals.sagepub.com/home/SCI

Younger Dryas impact hypothesis

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6805854/

Scientific Reports

M. Sweatman's Blogspot
25 Oct 2022, Wikipedia FTN Talk thread M Sweatman publishing a blog attacking Wikipedia and two editors

identified October 22, 2022, Wikipedia's bias - a case study: The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis

Interesting discussion and proposed means to improve

Suggest (re) reading guidance from WP:BRD first.

See Proxy data comment: complete rewrite, Evidence and history section poor.

Jo-Jo Eumerus "cherry-picking"

Equivalence of CRG and YTDIH proponent?

MENTION IN BOTH Sweatman and Wikipedia bias poster

November 01, 2022 James Powell's response to Mark Boslough regarding the destruction of Tall el-Hammam

https://martinsweatman.blogspot.com/2022/11/james-powells-response-to-mark-boslough.html?m=1

Article structure discussions
Immediately following the Sweatman blogspot discussion, from the FTN archives Drilling deep into the article structure, explains why the article does not follow WP:NPOV - a number of sentences representing the YDIH proponent POV were very general and had a long list of citations (See green highlighted text).. Now the article in a number of sections (Summary, CRG, Evidence and History) summarize the opponent view (in a way that needs to be confirmed as verifiable) with citations and there is no summary nor citations for the proponent point of view. Some good suggestions here as well that appear to have not been followed up on.

YD Volcanic Hypothesis
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379121004674

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2022485118

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/10/231003173447.htm

[https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aax8587#:~:text=The%20Younger%20Dryas%20(YD)%20event,present%20(1%2C%202). https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aax8587#:~:text=The%20Younger%20Dryas%20(YD)%20event,present%20(1%2C%202).]

Issues with Summary First Paragraph - Posted 3/11/2024
Previous unsigned remark from Slatersteven

Slatersteven OK, thanks for responding. Looking back through the history, I found that the phrase "is a speculative attempt" was created on 22 Aug 2022 by an anonymous IP address as shown in this diff:  (

That anonymous user also deleted text and a reference by a renowned climate scientist WS Broecker on 12 Aug 2022 as shown in this diff:  IMHO this is important information from an expert in the field (It is reference 109 in [Powell 2022] dated to  2013). I am undoing that change since it is separate from this topic.

Some, some questions and hopefully Doug Weller or others can provide some advice or give some pointers:

Briefly in early January 2023 "speculative attempt" was changed to "theory" and reverted back to an earlier version where another anonymous IP replaced user "speculative attempt"  with "theory attempting"  as shown in this diff  I agree with what Doug stated there in his revert, paraphrasing, look at the title - this is a hypothesis, not a theory.
 * Do Wikipedia editors have to accept (older) input from an anonymous IP address, or can it be undone without discussion?
 * If true, can such a reversion be done manually, with explanation in Notes, for example referring to this topic?

Also in January 2023, Ghmyrtle and Sietecolores proposed alternative text:

Please look at their proposed text and comment as to whether the current text or that proposal is best for the article. Thanks

(Wasn't easy for me to find the above! Possibly there is a better way to search, I am still learning



Posted 3/11/2024


 * @Slatersteven, reading over the BRD policy, I propose that we move to the WP:BRD approach on a sentence by sentence basis for the two sentences in the first paragraph of the summary:
 * "Bold, revert, bold again: Don't stop editing, and don't discuss. Make a guess about why the reverter disagreed with you, and try a different edit to see whether that will be accepted. It's often helpful if your next effort is smaller, because that may help you figure out why the other editor objected to your change."
 * The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis (YDIH) or Clovis comet hypothesis is a speculative attempt to explain the onset of the Younger Dryas (YD) cooling at the end of the Last Glacial Period, around 12,900 years ago. [citation needed]
 * In this diff, I provided a citation for "speculative" and propose that deleting "speculative " here and making changes that I suggested above. If you do not object, then we could proceed with:
 * "Bold, discuss, bold: You make a bold edit, then open a discussion. After the discussion, you or others boldly improve the edit based on the discussion suggestions. This cycle is useful if your edit is helpful, but needs to be improved, and if feedback would be valuable to improving the edit."
 * Do you agree to proceeding cooperatively in this way to improve the article? Dmcdysan (talk) 17:29, 11 March 2024 (UTC)
 * No, I am waiting to see what others say, I am not the only person here, I objected to the edit. 17:44, 11 March 2024 (UTC)
 * No, I am waiting to see what others say, I am not the only person here, I objected to the edit. 17:44, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia Internal Links versus Section Links - Posted 3/11/2024
'''See dialog with Beland 3/11-12 2024. Take comments regarding links into account in future editing.'''

Response and questions to reversions in these diffs by Beland, and Doug Weller,

Searching on "inappropriate usage of internal link" I found:, which states "A wikilink (or internal link) is a link from one page to another page within the English Wikipedia ...."

I have seen the internal link syntax used to link to a section within the same article many times, and obviously the Wiki language syntax allows this (since it generates HTML). Links within an article (implemented as a web page by Wikipedia) to other sections (HTML anchors) in the same article are valuable in at least some cases. After more searching, I found the following:

Template:Slink, which states: "This template is appropriate ... to reference sections within the same article. (Wikilinks to sections in other articles appear to be used appropriately here).

In the future, I suggest not only mentioning inappropriate usage of a wikilink, but recommend use of .Template:Slink.

Questions: Are the internal links in the first paragraphs of BRD inappropriate internal links (i.e., links to the same page, not another)? Should a section link be used instead? Does the indirection via the redirect WP:BRB change this?

Unless I hear an objection I plan to begin using section links. I have already begun using them on Talk pages.

Looking though all these administrative guidelines and sampling the contributions of senior editors, I have gained an appreciation for the work that goes on behind the scenes to keep Wikipedia at the level of quality it has in many articles. Than you for all that you do!

Additional reliable sources - Mahaney YDIH paper summaries, citations - Posted 7 Mar 2024 to Talk:YDIH
Mahaney is not mentioned in the article as of 7 Mar 2024. I believe (at least) the following citations are relevant.

Sept 2022 Mahaney et al, Late Pleistocene Glacial-Paleosol-cosmic record of the Viso Massif—France and Italy: New evidence in support of the Younger Dryas boundary (12.8 ka)

January 2023 Mahaney The Younger Dryas Boundary (YDB): terrestrial, cosmic, or both?

Search on [Holliday 2023] shows Mahaney mentioned 33 times, mostly in conjunction with black mats interpretation.

A highly cited source in Geology, Geomorphology and Paleoclimatology according to Research Gate, William C. Mahaney. I believe the publishers are also reliable sources. Any disagreement?

Mahaney may not qualify as a third party since he was a co-author in a 2018 paper with over 30 other authors (Wikipedia automatic citation supports a maximum of 15), some identified elsewhere in this article as YDIH proponents: [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322879765_Extraordinary_Biomass-Burning_Episode_and_Impact_Winter_Triggered_by_the_Younger_Dryas_Cosmic_Impact_12800_Years_Ago_2_Lake_Marine_and_Terrestrial_Sediments Extraordinary Biomass-Burning Episode and Impact Winter Triggered by the Younger Dryas Cosmic Impact ∼12,800 Years Ago. 2. Lake, Marine, and Terrestrial Sediments]

Adding a link to the 2007 Rex Dalton Blast in the past? Nature article could help address the banner comment "This article may be too technical for most readers to understand."

Does anyone object to addition of a brief summary at the end of the "Black mats" section, where all of the citations are older except for the simulation by Jorgensen in 2020, which has been called into question since it is only a simulation and not a field measurement. Not clear if all the references give in the 7 Mar 2024 version of that section are relevant and if the summaries are verifiable. Suggest replacement with "black mats" section of secondary source [Hollliday 2023]   Could help address issue of usage of too many primary sources. (Suggest there be a banner added at beginning of the article stating this. I'll look into how to do this unless someone objects.

Comments?

Put in new section in Popular Culture - Added to YD 7 Mar 2024
The Day After Tomorrow 2004 film.

Invisible comment suggesting that Boslough 2023 Netflix critique be moved to this new section as well.

Sweatman - Holliday et al.'s Gish Gallop: Impact scenarios - Posted 7 Mar 2024
Response to Hemiauchenia

[Sweatman 2021]

[Holliday 2023]

Martin Sweatman appears to be a busy fellow, for example see draft responses to [Holliday 2023] on his blogspot (Note, for discussion on talk page only, not proposed for inclusion in article)

January 29, 2024 Holliday et al.'s Gish Gallop: Summary

February 18, 2024 Holliday et al.'s Gish gallop: Introduction

I didn't know what Gish gallop meant, but provided a wiki link (Wikipedia so often a good reliable source of information, you gotta love it!)

Sweatman may get this published in a reliable source, but [Holliday 2023] may not be the final word in this ongoing debate, for example, see the topic NYTimes Magazine piece that shows a gifted article added by jps.

2013 National Geographic Article - Quotes from Walter Broecker - New Topic YDIH Talk 7 Mar 2024
Found in https://vgm.a23.myftpupload.com/wally-broecker-says-a-cosmic-impact-caused-the-younger-dryas/ Sept 2013 National geographic article by Robert Kunzig, Did a Comet Really Kill the Mammoths 12,900 Years Ago?

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/130910-comet-impact-mammoths-climate-younger-dryas-quebec-science

Some interesting quotes. from renowned climate scientist Wallace Smith Broecker

"Most people were trying to disprove this," said Wallace Broecker, a geochemist and climate scientist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. "Now they're going to have to realize there's some truth to it"

""The idea is that the system is drifting toward instability, but can't quite make it," Broecker said. "Then an impact comes along and it's like a knockout punch."

Researchers are only beginning, Broecker added, "to figure out what an impact did or didn't do. It's going to take a lot of people a lot of time."

South American reference summary to Pleistocene extinctions - Summarized 3/3/24 in Pleistocene extinctions
Late Pleistocene extinctions

Prates, Perez https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-22506-4

Mention Article from Science Daily in Crater Impacts and Airbursts - Posted to FTN 3/2/2023
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/10/231003173447.htm

Martin Sweatman as Unreliable Source - Posted 2/29/24
FTN search results:

May 2017 Fringe theories/Noticeboard/Archive 56

Jan 2022 Fringe theories/Noticeboard/Archive 84

Nov 2022 Fringe theories/Noticeboard/Archive 89

Other Sweatman publications

https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/search/q=author%3A%22Sweatman%2C%20Martin%20B.%22&sort=date%20desc%2C%20bibcode%20desc&p_=0

Reference formatting comment to Hypnos - Responded 2/29/24
Yes, easier on Source editors but 2 clicks vs one for readers. No identification of first usage and number of usages.

See Talk:Younger Dryas.