Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Climate change

2024 GHG reports now out
I see from the chart in https://unfccc.int/biennial-transparency-reports they are still called national inventory reports. There is not yet any link to 2024 from https://unfccc.int/ghg-inventories-annex-i-parties/2023 but I would have thought some countries would have submitted them by now as the deadline is the 15th.

Of course I tried googling and simply overtyping 2023 with 2024 in the url but presumably UNFCCC have changed “ghg-inventories-annex-i-parties” to something else now “annex 1” is becoming irrelevant. Any idea where they are? Chidgk1 (talk) 06:52, 9 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Hmm maybe nobody has handed in their homework yet as I can only see old ones at https://unfccc.int/reports?f%5B0%5D=document_type%3A2040 Chidgk1 (talk) 10:14, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Or perhaps they will be put at https://unfccc.int/reports?f%5B0%5D=document_type%3A3517 but I cannot see how to filter or sort on GHG year. Have messaged UNFCCC but don’t expect any response as they never replied to a question I asked years ago Chidgk1 (talk) 10:30, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Some of them are at
 * https://unfccc.int/reports?f%5B0%5D=document_type%3A3517 and others at
 * https://unfccc.int/reports?f%5B0%5D=document_type%3A4590 Chidgk1 (talk) 17:22, 13 April 2024 (UTC)
 * There is now a page at https://unfccc.int/ghg-inventories-annex-i-parties/2024
 * I see four countries have handed in their homework on time - well done Australia, Japan, Switzerland and USA Chidgk1 (talk) 18:16, 16 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Perhaps some rich countries will not submit their spreadsheets until the Biennial Transparency Reports are due in December?  Chidgk1 (talk) 20:59, 1 May 2024 (UTC)
 * However https://unfccc.int/FAQ-moving-towards-the-ETF#__Reporting-of-Greenhouse-Gas-Inventories-in-the-Enhanced-Transparency-Framework says the GHG inventories for rich countries are still due 15 April - so why are so many so late this year I wonder. Chidgk1 (talk) 21:24, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

RFC on Food and Health in Climate change
There is an RFC requesting that editors choose between one of two draft sections on Food and Health in the article on Climate change. Please take part in the RFC. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:25, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

How to clean up the mess around trees and mitigation?
I was doing some work today on reforestation and got a bit stuck on one question: I noticed that several articles have content on tree planting + their role for mitigation. That content in the different articles is messy and often outdated. I wonder if we could centralise that content in just one place mainly (which one?) and then link or use excerpts from other articles to there. Here are the articles that all touch on this (the one with the best CC content first): In terms of pageviews they are all fairly similar with around 200-400 pageviews per day. (300 page views per day)
 * 1) Carbon sequestration - this has probably the most up to date content as it was recently worked on (500 page views per day)
 * 2) Afforestation (400 page views per day)
 * 3) Reforestation (200 page views per day)
 * 4) Tree planting (300 page views per day)
 * 5) Tree plantation (200 page views per day)
 * 6) Biomass (energy) - detailed but messy; we once tried to clean up this mess but the process got stuck...

As a related issue, these three forestry articles should probably each also have a section on climate change but don't have one yet (this could perhaps be addressed with an excerpt): EMsmile (talk) 16:11, 19 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Forestry
 * Forest management
 * Sustainable forest management - mentions climate change in several places but has no dedicated section for it.


 * As usual I think excerpts should be used. I don’t mind which article but if you can reach a decision on that ping me as I hope to be able to do a bit on this next month. Not an expert but the subject is quite interesting for me. Having said that I might end up writing something like ‘mitigation varies so much by location that you should read the national forestry articles’. I looked into this slightly for Forest in Turkey and it seems that one problem here is that, although we have lots of land, with climate change some of the places trees used to grow before the ancients cut them down will be too dry to reforest. But your country may have a completely different obstacle. Chidgk1 (talk) 19:07, 20 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you. That would be great to collaborate on this topic. I am a bit stumped on which article should become the main article for this content, so that we can then excerpt/transcribe from there. What would be your preference, and does anyone else have an opinion? Maybe if we can't decide, we take the one from that group that has the highest pages views? That would be carbon sequestration (500 views per day) followed by afforestation (400). Maybe tree planting and tree plantation are less suitable as trees get planted for various reasons, not just for climate change mitigation. EMsmile (talk) 09:00, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Carbon sequestration is fine by me. Am busy this week but may have time to ponder and compare next week. Unless anyone else has other ideas we can continue the discussion on the talk page of the carbon sequestration article.  Chidgk1 (talk) 12:09, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I would want to begin by merging the articles which appear to be the most duplicative. So, Sustainable forest management + Afforestation + Proforestation (another relatively small, overlapping article you have not mentioned) would all be merged into Forest management, which should be a top-level article (or at least second-highest level, after Forest), but is currently smaller than all of the above, at a mere 745 words.
 * Tree planting can probably merged somewhere as well - most of country-level content definitely seems to be more about forest management, for one thing. The parts of that article which are explicitly about planting new trees for carbon/aesthetic/soil management reasons could be merged into a subsection elsewhere? Alternatives include Carbon sequestration, Forestry, or even silviculture (an extremely technical article that seems to have notable overlap with tree plantation?)
 * In all, it seems like there is a lot which can end up merged or condensed if we really think about it. Once we are sure that we no longer have any forestry-related articles we don't need, it would be obvious which of the remaining pages would be the best place for this material. For now, merging those other articles into forest management seems like the most obvious path, and the rest can be figured out later. The only thing which might be even easier to do is merging Silvology to Forestry, since it appears they are either exactly the same, or at most one is a subsection of the other? InformationToKnowledge (talk) 17:48, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you, those are good points! For now, I have left posts on the talk pages of forest management and WikiProject Forestry in an attempt to pull the forestry people into this discussion (that project is semi-active though). I have thought about it in the past whether afforestation and reforestation should be merged (even though they are not the same thing). In both articles, the country examples sections overlap a lot because it's often not a clear cut thing whether the planting of new trees is classified as afforestation or reforestation. (but if they were merged, then under which new article title? Or merge afforestation into reforestation as just a sub-heading).
 * This could blow out into quite a big sub-project. So it would be great if we could get forestry people interested in this... As forests (new and old ones) are so important for climate change mitigation, this should also be of interest to members of WikiProject Climate Change. EMsmile (talk) 09:42, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I have made a start by merging Silvology to Forestry Chidgk1 (talk) 06:21, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Please comment at Talk:Forest management Chidgk1 (talk) 06:43, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Even more forestry articles are coming out of the woodwork. For example Outline of forestry includes Analog forestry and Ecoforestry - should more articles in that outline be merged and if so where? Chidgk1 (talk) 08:32, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Your comments welcome at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Ecoforestry#Merge_proposal Chidgk1 (talk) 10:25, 1 May 2024 (UTC)
 * @InformationToKnowledge As I have 2 merger discussions on the go now for several articles I am not thinking of starting any more but have no objection if you like to formally propose merges of Tree planting or Silviculture. Also if you have time I would welcome your comment at the 2nd merger discussion linked above Chidgk1 (talk) 15:41, 2 May 2024 (UTC)
 * But I got tempted with one last big merger proposal at Talk:Agroforestry. Thank you @Chiswckchap for commenting so quickly - perhaps you have thoughts on this discussion too. Chidgk1 (talk) 13:37, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Commented on both of those discussions now. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 19:10, 4 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks - I have requested they be closed Closure requests Chidgk1 (talk) 13:48, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks everyone - please continue discussion at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Carbon_sequestration#How_to_clean_up_the_mess_around_trees_and_mitigation Chidgk1 (talk) 06:53, 14 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I was asking myself where we stand with this proposed mammoth merger work, so I looked at the merger closure pages and am giving the following update here:


 * The result of this discussion was to merge Analog forestry and Close to nature forestry into Ecoforestry. No consensus to merge Mycoforestry at this time. --> this merger has been carried out but post-merge tidying work is needed.
 * Discussion of merge proposal for forest management (several articles):
 * Proposal to merge Sustainable forest management into Forest management - There is a weak consensus in favour of the merge. However, there is a clear concern that this would be a massive undertaking due to the size differences between the 2 articles which could result in Forest management becoming imbalanced.
 * Proposal to merge Afforestation into Forest management - No clear consensus for or against this merge.
 * Proposal to merge Proforestation into Forest management - There is a very weak consensus in favour of the merge. There are also some notable alternative suggestions on this proposal.
 * Several inline proposals to merge or combine other related articles such as Reforestation - No clear consensus for or against such merges. Outside the initial comments, very little discussion took place on these suggestions.
 * Regarding this: "I propose merging Silvopasture, Dehesa, Forest gardening, Forest farming, Syntropic agriculture, Inga alley cropping, Farmer-managed natural regeneration and Kuojtakiloyan into this article, because they all seem to be types of agroforestry and are fairly short." the consensus was "Consensus to not merge Silvopasture and Dehesa, at least for now, to allow further development. Consensus to merge the remaining articles into Agroforestry."
 * @User:Chidgk1 are you in principle ready to carry out all these mergers? It'll be so much better once it's all done. I think whenever it says "weak consensus" it means you can go ahead. EMsmile (talk) 10:50, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Unless I missed something they are all done Chidgk1 (talk) 16:43, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Reverted edits: Cloud seeding UAE
Lots of attention on the Cloud seeding in the United Arab Emirates article at the moment due to the floods. From what I've read, current consensus is that the floods are more likely due to climate change than cloud seeding activities but tonnes are blaming cloud seeding on social media. But when I tried to add this, I was reverted a couple times by an IP user for what I feel are unfounded reasons (view history). They did not engage with my comments on the Talk page.

Given the tendancy for cloud seeding to be popular with conspiracy theorists I'm concerned, that at worst, this could be climate denialist coopting another narrative to avoid a possible climate change link to the April 2024 floods.

(On another note, I hope to conduct some reviews of cloud seeding content with experts shortly). TatjanaClimate (talk) 06:41, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Could someone please take a look at the dispute on the Cloud seeding in the United Arab Emirates article?TatjanaClimate (talk) 06:48, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Climate change in country X redirects
I've started nominating a bunch of "Climate change in country x" redirects for deletion. The discussion is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2024_April_22#Climate_change_in_Bahrain Clayoquot (talk &#124; contribs) 18:22, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Added climate change content to water cycle
I had noticed a while ago that the climate change content for the high level article on water cycle was very weak or non existent. So then I added a section to the main text, waited a while for reactions and then just the other day also added it to the lead as a new paragraph at the end. Anyone interested in CC and the water cycle please take a look and help me improve it further. Interestingly, the pagewviews for the water cycle article are not as high as I would have thought. They have been dropping over the years and are now at around 1000 pageviews per day. The article is not great (that's probably one of the reasons for the low-ish pageviews), and a google search gives loads of other websites explaining what the water cycle is.

In any case, I think it's important and strategic for us if the water cycle article makes it very clear how climate change is changing the water cycle and making it more intense. Of course we also have effects of climate change on the water cycle which will hopefully grow and mature over time as well. EMsmile (talk) 10:25, 26 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Thanks! I don't know where (or when) I might do anything with that article and for now, this is a good start! I guess I should also note that ~1000 daily pageviews isn't really "low" as far as our topic goes, unfortunately: that makes it #84 in March stats for the WikiProject, for one thing. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 21:04, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Black carbon needs all the clean-up it can get
This is a reasonably important contributor to climate change (and to general air pollution) and its article receives ~100 daily pageviews. Yet, whole paragraphs are unreferenced, there is a large table cited to 2000s research which is bound to be obsolete by now, and there are a lot of other, fairly basic structural issues which I would hope many of us can fix. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 20:35, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Remove Energy Tracker Asia from the spam blacklist?
Energy Tracker Asia is a non-profit website that covers the energy transition in Asia. It was added to the spam blacklist last year. The website, at energytracker.asia, looks like a reliable source to me for energy issues and climate change mitigation. Would anyone like to take a look at the site and share what you think of it? (Sorry you'll have to copy  into your URL bar as the spam blacklist isn't letting me create a clickable link here).

For transparency, Energy Tracker Asia is a group that I occasionally work with but I don't know what, if anything, they tried to do on Wikipedia that might have led to this. Clayoquot (talk &#124; contribs) 17:39, 30 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Good luck with that. Removing something from the spam blacklist might be an enormous amount of work and can waste days of person-time. I tried for years to get PV magazine off the list and gave up in the end. By the way I see that their content is under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. At one point there was a draft article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_undeletion/Archive_357#Draft:Energy_Tracker_Asia and see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Johnasonlily/Archive If anyone succeeds please let me know how you did it so I can copy your method as it seems to me that the argument for removing PV magazine from the blacklist is stronger than for this organisation. I am not saying either are reliable sources but there are plenty of unreliable sources which are not blacklisted. Chidgk1 (talk) 06:44, 1 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Sigh, thanks for sharing and commiserating. I once tried to add a ref to PV magazine and was blocked by the blacklist. Now I wish I remember what it was so that I could ask for the URL to be whitelisted. Maybe if a bunch of us make whitelist requests that will change the cost/benefit calculus. Clayoquot (talk &#124; contribs) 17:41, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Could somebody make a barnstar?
Contributing to climate change related articles is sure to be met with a lot of discouraging vandalism and flaming since it's such a controversial topic. I think it might be a nice way to encourage people who are helping with such articles by having a barnstar to award to them, as so many other WikiProjects, even less important ones, have: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Awards_by_WikiProject I'm not really good at that sort of thing though. Maybe someone else would care to make a WikiProject Climate Change Barnstar? I would really appreciate it.SigurdsSister (talk) 18:42, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
 * A few such barnstars already exist: click on any of the following: Global Warming and Climate Change Barnstar.png — Global warming and climate change barnstar 2.png — 20190812 Warming stripe barnstar 2000x1900.png. — RCraig09 (talk) 18:59, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Awesome! I will put them here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Awards_by_WikiProject SigurdsSister (talk) 19:49, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Best way to communicate with UNFCCC?
Shortly after Türkiye uploaded their GHG tables to https://unfccc.int/reports?f%5B0%5D=corporate_author%3A249 on 18th April I wrote to UNFCCC via their Facebook page to say that I thought the wrong tables had been uploaded - they only go up to 2020 so seem to be a repeat of the 2022 upload. But UNFCCC have not replied and the tables still seem to be wrong. So I looked at https://unfccc.int/transparency-contact-details and emailed their iar@… address to tell them again and to say that the Türkiye National Communication uploaded on 6th May 2024 is dated 2023 on its first page.

Am I making a silly mistake or is UNFCCC not checking dates properly? If the latter is anyone else having similar problems and how did you communicate with UNFCCC? Chidgk1 (talk) 13:37, 8 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Ah it seems from https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/sbi2024_inf03.pdf that they were deliberately resubmitted following a review but that the review has not (yet?) been published   Chidgk1 (talk) 14:29, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

Better redirect target for decarbonisation?
I am copying something below that came up on the talk page of hydrogen economy where I said I'd like to define the term decarbonisation for our readers explicitly at least once before using it more often in the article. Now I am wondering if the current redirect of decarbonisation to the main page of climate change mitigation is sufficient. I think it should redirect to a definitions section within either climate change mitigation or greenhouse gas emissions. And once again, I suspect that some sources say decarbonisation is only about CO2 (IPCC AR6 WG 3 does that) whereas others say it's about all GHGs (?). Copied from the hydrogen economy talk page my thoughts in this:
 * So then let's mention it at least once in this article that decarbonisation means reducing GHG emissions, and then afterwards we can continue to use the term. For me, this is not intuitive because decarbonisation seems to refer to carbon or CO2 specifically when it actually refers to all GHGs.
 * By the way, the IPCC AR6 WG 3 report uses the term a lot (520 times) but in the Annex they define it like this: "Decarbonisation: Human actions to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from human activities." This means they use the narrow definition to refer to CO2 only.
 * This means to me that we should somewhere in Wikipedia provide this definition and then have a redirect from "decarbonisation" to that page and section.
 * Also I find it interesting that our article on greenhouse gas emissions does not mention "decarbonisation" at all, and the one on climate change mitigation uses it only four times.
 * The question in my mind is: do we think this term is important, useful and should be used more often in our articles? If so, then let's ensure that people know what we mean when we use it. Or do we think it's not such an important / useful term, in which case we should avoid using it and simply spell it out each time. Now that I've seen how much the IPCC AR 6 WG 3 report uses it, it seems to me that it's an important term (more important than I realised).
 * P.S. I forgot that decarbonisation already redirects to climate change mitigation but I think it should probably redirect to a specific section within climate change mitigation, or within greenhouse gas emissions, and at that section the term should be clearly defined. EMsmile (talk) 09:31, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

At the moment it seems that we are implying that decarbonisation is a synonym for climate change mitigation, which it is not. Right? We say in the first sentence of climate change mitigation: Climate change mitigation (or decarbonisation) is action to limit the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that cause climate change. EMsmile (talk) 09:40, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Adopt a dedicated navbox for Climate change by country?
Presently, we are using a variation of the "Worldtopic" template, which looks like this.

I think that it is clearly not great, as it effectively functions as a giant wall of hyperlinks that's really hard to parse. Further, it automatically lists every bluelink that starts with "Climate change in", even if it's just a redirect.

I propose that we replace it with this navbox that I had created just now. As you can see, it groups everything by continent (also linking to continent-scale articles in the process) and it also summarizes what each one of those articles is meant to contain.

InformationToKnowledge (talk) 10:11, 10 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Looks very nice! By the way, we also have this article Climate change in the Americas (although it's only a listing). EMsmile (talk) 10:38, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I've used it for the first time here now: Nationally determined contribution. However, is it acceptable to use a navbox within the main text (rather than at the very end)? Also, such a navbox is not displayed when using a mobile phone to view a Wikipedia article. How can we get around this? For the NDC article it now says this "By country -- Information about NDCs by country are shown in some of the country climate change articles below." but the problem is that on a mobile phone the navbox that follows is not displayed. EMsmile (talk) 17:28, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Great! Meanwhile, I have finally added it to every one of the regional sub-articles. I also adjusted the K-G maps on all those articles while I was at it. Took forever, but felt so good to finally get it over with!
 * However, is it acceptable to use a navbox within the main text (rather than at the very end)?
 * Climate change in the United States does it already, so I would assume yes?
 * And no idea about mobile interfaces. Sounds like something Wikimedia tech support needs to figure out, not us. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 18:04, 25 May 2024 (UTC)
 * MENA is a Eurocentric term. IPCC uses proper terms such as West Asia Countries under MENA should be put in Asia or Africa. Bogazicili (talk) 06:29, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Well, we already have an article titled Climate change in the Middle East and North Africa, so I was just following that. It wouldn't make sense to change this part of the template but leave the article itself alone; presumably, we would first need to reduce that article to a disambig and move its content to Asia/Africa articles, then change the template?
 * Of course, this kind of a change would require a full discussion first. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 06:54, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
 * It looks nice and very structured, but... Hick's_law favours one big list. One choice from a big list is easier than two choices from smaller lists.
 * The first choice, continent, is hard, requires knowledge that is subject to discussion. Is Morocco not in Africa? Is Afghanistan not in the middle East? Is Turkey not in Europe? Why is Kuwait not in the middle east?
 * Alternative: one big list and highlight every first new character, e.g. Afghanistan &middot; Albania &middot;  Algeria ... Bahamas &middot;  Bangladesh &middot;  Barbados ... Cambodia &middot; Cameroon &middot;  Canada ...
 * The country name will suffice to find it in the list. Uwappa (talk) 07:15, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
 * We should just use UN terms: United Nations geoscheme. Bogazicili (talk) 07:57, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
 * @Bogazicili @Uwappa The point of this navbox is to showcase all of our regional content in a single format - and that includes continent-scale articles, so the continental subheadings are non-negotiable. And until we as a community make a decision to junk/rework the MENA article, it should stay in place as a subheading.
 * I should also say that numerous climate change articles still use the term even now - i.e. consider this 2021 paper, which includes authors from Turkey, Morocco and Saudi Arabia. Plenty of other examples can be found. So, I don't think this subject is so clear-cut, and longer discussion would be needed.
 * Is Afghanistan not in the middle East? - According to Middle East, not really.
 * Why is Kuwait not in the middle east? - Because Climate change in Kuwait is a redirect, and I decided to limit this navbox to actually existing articles (similar to what @Clayoquot was advocating the other month). InformationToKnowledge (talk) 08:32, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
 * You went by continents in the navbox except "MENA", so it looks biased now. MENA can be linked under Climate change in Asia and Climate change in Africa. Bogazicili (talk) 08:39, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Please read Hick's law.
 * It is easy to select one item from one big list, if the list is sorted by a known search criterion, e.g. country name.
 * It is harder to select one item from a nested, 2 level list, even when the reader knows both search criteria.
 * The high level search is the problem here. The reader needs a lot of knowledge for the high level search. Morocco is in North Africa and that is part of MENA, not Africa. Turkey is not in Europa, it is not in Asia either, it is also part of Mena. Afghanistan is not in the middle east, it is in Asia. And there is no information about climate change in Kuwait as Climate change in Kuwait is a redirect and redirects don't count. Pffft... Why do I need to know all this just to navigate to a country? Why have a complex nested list if one big list is easier?
 * An other alternative: Stick to country name as the only required search criterion. Make the visual search easier by grouping countries by first character:
 * Afghanistan · Albania ·  Algeria ...
 * Bahamas · Bangladesh ·  Barbados ...
 * Cambodia · Cameroon · Canada ...
 * Uwappa (talk) 12:31, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I did read that article - I am simply unconvinced about your interpretation of it. Most people will know their country's continent very well - particularly now that I took out the MENA subsection. The differences you are claiming are practically impossible to ascertain without an empirical study, and would amount to a couple of seconds at most even if they exist. Once people have seen it more than once, they would likely find it easier to navigate than the alternatives.
 * And grouping by country alphabetically has another big issue - it will most likely result in a very ugly navbox. It'll have to be quite long (>20 lines if there's going to be 1 per letter, as opposed to 10 lines in the current navbox) and really top-heavy because so many country names start with the first handful of letters of the English alphabet, then it would be practically skeletal until a second bulge at M and another at S.
 * Lastly, if you really want to see Kuwait in this navbox...maybe it's time to actually create Climate change in Kuwait? I made Climate change in Asia practically from scratch earlier this month: an article for a fairly small country is bound to be much easier to do. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 10:54, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you for taking out Mena and listing Morocco under Africa. Good!
 * Please note that the formula in the Hick's_law article defines the time for processing just one menu. For a two level menu, you will have to add up the times of both levels.
 * Please watch https://www.nngroup.com/videos/hicks-law-long-menus/ A long menu with many items is fine if:
 * the menu items are sorted
 * items are known to the user. That is my worry with the continent of a country.
 * Navigation will be difficult or even fail if:
 * a reader does not have a clue of a country's continent. Such a reader will have to scan all continents and may give up as that is too much trouble.
 * a reader may have doubts and be slowed down by a puzzle. Where to look for Russia?
 * a reader has a different idea about the continent of a country. e.g. "Turkey is in Asia". I can't find Turkey in Asia, so Climate_change_in_Turkey does not exist!
 * a reader that knows about Turkey and Russia being both in Europe and Asia might look in Asia and Europe, but that is a doubling of effort.
 * The mental step -what-is-the-continent is a needless mental detour. Go from country to continent and back again to find the country. Why o why???
 * Chunking by the first character of a country name avoids these problems. The first character is known, no additional knowledge required. Anybody that can find the letter T will be able to find Turkey.
 * And yes, it is a bit of a design challenge to get the design of the list right. That is a solvable puzzle.
 * I am not happy with leaving out climate_change_in_Kuwait and other redirects. It will give the false impression that no information is available yet. Uwappa (talk) 14:21, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
 * ...Sometimes I suspect that if even a fraction of the effort which goes into these arguments was devoted to actually creating articles, we would not have had to debate the question of these redirects in the first place, as full articles would have already existed by now. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 18:14, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
 * That article can be renamed to West Asia and North Africa. But for now I don't see any reason why the navbox shouldn't be changed. Bogazicili (talk) 07:56, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
 * If this navbox is used I will add Turkey to both Europe and Asia to make it easier to find. Chidgk1 (talk) 19:29, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Climate change will not follow arbitrary human UN geoscheme allocations, we should not expect our articles to conform to those groups. (National borders are relevant as they affect policy and legal response, geographical groupings do not.) CMD (talk) 07:12, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
 * @Chidgk1 AR6 WG2 lists both Cyprus and Turkey in "Southern Europe" on page 1882, and does not appear to list either in Asia, so I have kept them in Europe only for now.
 * @CMD Right, climate change is about physical geography. According to the IPCC, that means that the real unifying factor for that area is actually the Mediterranean Sea. If we want to follow their consensus exactly, that might mean reviving Climate change in the Mediterranean article from a redirect. See the discussion linked over at the next topic down. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 10:41, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
 * OK, I changed it. See more details about why I changed my reasoning over at the (soon-to-be-gone?) MENA article talk page.
 * Though, I can't help but observe that if this logic is to be followed consistently, then a whole lot of articles currently referring to the Middle East would need to be altered as well. I.e. right now, besides that climate change article, we have Demographics of the Middle East and North Africa, Education in the Middle East and North Africa, Obesity in the Middle East and North Africa and Water conflict in the Middle East and North Africa. Would you take on the responsibility to look at those and others like them as well? InformationToKnowledge (talk) 10:36, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Are you asking me? I'm not really involved in those projects. In any case, Wikipedia is not a source for itself. So we don't have to follow what other Wikipedia pages do. Bogazicili (talk) 18:37, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
 * My point is simply that standardization is a good thing (there is a reason why the International Organization for Standardization has existed for so long), and if one way to refer to a given region is clearly superior to the others, then it should be adopted across the entire Wikipedia, and sooner rather than later. It wouldn't make sense to rename "our" article with MENA in its title but leave any others standing if the arguments for/against are exactly the same. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 18:11, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Are you asking me? I'm not really involved in those projects. In any case, Wikipedia is not a source for itself. So we don't have to follow what other Wikipedia pages do. Bogazicili (talk) 18:37, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
 * My point is simply that standardization is a good thing (there is a reason why the International Organization for Standardization has existed for so long), and if one way to refer to a given region is clearly superior to the others, then it should be adopted across the entire Wikipedia, and sooner rather than later. It wouldn't make sense to rename "our" article with MENA in its title but leave any others standing if the arguments for/against are exactly the same. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 18:11, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Definitely don't include countries where the link is a redirect to a "Climate in country x" article. These articles rarely say much about emissions. If anyone is up for a challenge, what I think would be really helpful is navboxes like "Countries with highest greenhouse gas emissions", "Countries with highest per capita greenhouse gas emissions", "Countries with highest per capita cumulative greenhouse gas emissions", and "Countries with fastest-growing greenhouse gas emissions". Restrict each box to the top 10 countries and sort the links with the worst countries at the top. Clayoquot (talk &#124; contribs) 22:23, 26 May 2024 (UTC)


 * It seems like there is no consensus for the change InformationToKnowledge did. So I'll be reverting the navbox if there are no additional comments. Bogazicili (talk) 06:10, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
 * InformationToKnowledge does have a point. The current navbox is a giant wall of hyperlinks. I also agree that the set of hyperlinks should be chunked. The disagreement is just on the way of chunking. Should chunks be by area of by first character of the country name? Uwappa (talk) 07:31, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Do we need a navbox with every country? It is replacing the usual continent navbox, eg.., which is much smaller and likely more directly applicable given outside of edge cases it will include nearby states with similar climate challenges. CMD (talk) 08:13, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
 * The issue with those continent navboxes is that a large fraction of their contents consists of redirects to (usually) tiny sections in "Climate of ...", "Environmental issues in..." or "Geography of..." articles, as opposed to an actual "Climate change in" article. Yet, a reader looking at that continent navbox has no way to tell at a glance which link will take them to a proper article and which one won't. (Well, outside of a general inference that poorer, less influential countries are less likely to have full articles.)
 * In theory, we can delete every single redirect (which is what Clayoquot has been proposing), but that is a really blunt approach, and I think it's better to have readers directed somewhere then no place at all - I am extremely doubtful that proper articles will spring up anytime soon once the redirects disappear. So, this dedicated navbox which is curated to only include the actual articles is the best solution.
 * Further, I think it's important that people get to see the links to continent-scale articles at a glance, as well as that this template includes an "overview bar" (Greenhouse gas emissions, impacts, mitigation and adaptation in each country) that immediately tells the readers what each of those articles is meant to contain (and what is missing from some of them/from the redirects.) InformationToKnowledge (talk) 09:11, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
 * @Clayoquot I thought other editors (particularly @Chidgk1) were opposed to editorial decisions that effectively seek to ascribe blame? ("fastest-growing greenhouse gas emissions" in particular is bound to be dominated by the developing countries which are expected to increase emissions as part of their development even in AR6 - see page 61 of WG3 TS, for one thing.
 * There is also a practical issue of attempting to maintain navboxes with an inherently dynamic structure - every time the top 10 changes (according to who?) such a navbox would have to be changed as well. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 11:10, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I agree that cumulative emissions is also important. Maybe we can have links to List of countries by greenhouse gas emissions and List of countries by cumulative greenhouse gas emissions (this article should really exist) as links in the navbox. We can also have another section for hotspots. The navbox would have 3 categories: by continent (above) or by county (like Uwappa suggested); by hotspot (Mediterranean etc); and by topic (Greenhouse emissions list by country, net zero goals by country, Climate Change Performance Index etc) 19:19, 27 May 2024 (UTC)


 * I've struck my "fastest-growing greenhouse gas emissions" idea as I agree this one needs context. In terms of maintenance, the others would just need one good citation per navbox, updated once a year. That's relatively easy. Clayoquot (talk &#124; contribs) 21:43, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

Merge/rename discussion over at Climate change in the Middle East and North Africa
Directly related to the topic immediately above. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 10:23, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

Managing Köppen-Geiger graphics in the regional climate change articles?
So, some time back, pretty much every one of our "Climate change in X" articles had a pair of graphics added: one showing their current Köppen climate classification, and another with the projected classification for 2070-2100. There were two issues with those:


 * 1) The labels on the graphics are not very readable without zooming in. Whoever added them originally decided to address this by blowing them up to a truly disproportionate size that ended up effectively breaking the page layout and forcing the readers to scroll the entire page horizontally. Perhaps it was not the case when it was first added, but that's certainly what happened once the new default skin was adopted. Here is an example of what it used to be like.
 * 2) The only available projection was for RCP 8.5, and we all know how unrealistic it is.

When I added the new template across all of these articles recently, I also decided to rescale those graphics to more wiki-friendly sizes (like in the example above which now looks like this) and to add the same disclaimer I now place on all RCP 8.5-only graphics. Then, though, it turned out that had found a newer paper, which now has Köppen-Geiger projections for a full range of IPCC scenarios. You can see an example at Climate change in Turkey.

Even so, there are still two issues we need to decide on:


 * 1) How many graphics should we include, and for which scenario? For the Turkey page, Uness232 decided to go for SSP3-7, describing it as a "mid-range, relatively likely scenario" in the caption. That really isn't accurate, as SSP3-7 is still a scenario where the emissions never go down in this century - they just don't accelerate like they do in SSP5-8.5. Methane and  emissions actually go up more in that scenario than in any other - one look at AR6 WG1 SPM (p.13) ascertains that. Considering that even last year, global  emissions increased by a mere 0.1%, I think it's safe to say that scenario is nearly as implausible as the worst-case. The citations I have in the captions both refer to RCP 4.5/SSP2-4.5 as the most plausible.
 * 2) However, the thing with Köppen-Geiger zones is that they can be fairly persistent. I.e. according to that classification, zones in the countries like Egypt, Indonesia and Tanzania would barely change even under RCP 8.5, because most of their territory is already at the furthest ends of the classification. With SSP2-4.5 maps, a lot more countries may not appear to have significant change by 2100. I guess we could attempt a three/four image collage and say that the 8.5 projections represents the plausible 2300 state? (Enough references say that climatically, RCP8.5 2100 = RCP 4.5 ~2300.)
 * 3) Once we have decided on the graphic selection, do we want to rewrite their legends in larger font or something, in an attempt to make the text visible in reasonably-sized thumbnails?

Long question, I know, but please comment, as it is fairly important. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 16:19, 31 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Hi, and thanks for opening this discussion.
 * Before everything, I want to say that my pick of SSP370 was unintentional. I meant to pick either 2-4.5 or 4-3.4 (I don't remember which one right now, but those are, as far as I know, the scenarios most in line with the 2.5 to 3.0C warming prediction), but I think I just misread something and never checked back. As for the questions:
 * 1. If the sources explicitly state 2-4.5 to be the most likely, we should use that one. It does not matter if the zones are persistent in my opinion; we are here to present information, and if the relative persistence of zones in some countries makes the image collage unnecessary, the best practice may be removing those collages on those pages. Using RCP 8.5 maps for 2300 would be fine, I suppose, but with the existence of a map that specifically clarifies itself to be 2071-2100, this might be somewhat confusing.
 * 2. I'm neutral on this; I am comfortable with zooming in, and so for me this is not an issue. Some people might prefer more accessible legends though, so I also don't have any objections. Uness232 (talk) 17:56, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Not every climate change leads to a different Köppen climate classification.
 * I would prefer just one graph, for a specific region, that shows changes for the 2 basic variables of a climate: temperature and precipitation.
 * A graphic could show the differences between pre-industrial and current. It could also show future scenarios, what will the climate be when we reach the +1.5C and +2.0C from the Paris agreement? Such scenarios would not be pinned down to specific years.
 * Design ideas for such a graph: Paris_climate_change.png Climate_change_paris.png Changing_climate_proof_of_concept.png Uwappa (talk) 04:15, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I think for places with minimal projected Köppen changes, these ideas are doable, but for a few reasons I find Köppen maps more appealing when there are noticable changes between time periods:
 * 1) Beck et. al. came up with a methodology for estimating the monthly precipitation and temperature for different periods by through a complex process that we can not easily replicate. Therefore we would be unable to easily use accurate "future" maps.
 * 2) A graph can only give information about one place, or the average of a place. There are countries (including Turkey) where climate change will have opposite effects on different regions.
 * 3) Real-life cities have problems measuring climate change; they have UHIs. Bakırköy, by the 2030s, will have 30-year climate normals 3C warmer than its pre-industrial temperature, and obviously we are not at 3C of warming. Uness232 (talk) 21:45, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
 * A map similar to Natural_disasters_caused_by_climate_change.png show dangers and opportunities.
 * Such a map could show impacts for global +1.5C and +2.0C, not for specific future years. Uwappa (talk) 06:53, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Sure, though if we are going to use a map like that, why not use Köppen maps anyway? Places where there's a desertification threat would be indicated by A/C/D -> B, places with new possibilities of summer drought would be represented by Cf -> Cs, warmer temperatures would create a chain of E -> D -> C -> A, and Xxb to Xxa would signal new heat dangers.
 * And even with a 'danger' map, some areas might need to be completely blank, as it is in the map above. Uness232 (talk) 09:45, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, that sounds great to filter dangers: desertification, drought and heat.
 * To add: floods in low areas. Uwappa (talk) 13:10, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I think you misunderstand. I was not saying that we should make a map ourselves, borrowing criteria from Köppen and renaming these criteria as risks to fit our needs. That would be WP:OR. I was suggesting that, as long as there are environmental changes that can be captured by Köppen, we should just use a Köppen map. If that is not possible for that region, we can think of alternatives. Uness232 (talk) 11:36, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Re the legend would it be too difficult to only include the zones which are on that particular map? For example I don’t think we need “polar tundra” on the Turkey legend. Also rather than having to look alternately at the legend and map I would find our map more readable if I could put the main zone names directly on the map. The smaller zones could have their label nearby off the map with an arrow. Chidgk1 (talk) 20:11, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Re the legend would it be too difficult to only include the zones which are on that particular map? For example I don’t think we need “polar tundra” on the Turkey legend.
 * That's already how it is: Turkey has alpine tundra on a few of its highest mountains. Uness232 (talk) 21:49, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Ah I see now on Ararat - that would be better shown with an arrow I think Chidgk1 (talk) 21:14, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I like the bar graph. Chidgk1 (talk) 20:33, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Laboratoire des sciences du climat et de l'environnement
There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Laboratoire des sciences du climat et de l'environnement that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Safari Scribe Edits! Talk! 01:16, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Decocidio
There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Decocidio that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 20:35, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

Climate action investing articles
Some Wikipedia articles to create/update: Climate Action 100+, Ceres (organization).

Climate action investor networks have become big players in the business world, but I think Wikipedia coverage is out of date. The above two are in the news because of a House Republican subcommittee report alleging anti-trust violations.

The report document repeatedly refers to Climate Action 100+ and Ceres as main players in what it terms a "climate cartel" which is compelling corporations to address climate change. And it turns out this is non-trivial. Many of the biggest investment and pension funds are participating in these networks, using shareholder persuasion to institute carbon accounting and quantify climate change risks and so forth.

But as a Wikipedia users I don't find much here.
 * Climate Action 100+, described by Reuters as "the world's biggest climate investor group", does not have an article or a redirect, it seems to be nowhere mentioned.
 * There is only little in the Ceres article about climate action investing. The article describes an organization Ceres created Investor Network on Climate Risk, which seems to have gone defunct long ago. The INCR URLs redirect to defunct pages on the Ceres web site. Following Archive.org history of archived redirected URLs, I get eventually to Ceres Investor Network, which is I think what the House Republicans were bloviating about.

The House committee is holding hearings on the investor action networks' "war on the American way of life" (I didn't make that up). Some really big investment houses have been forced by political pressures to drop their participation.

But Wikipedia seems to be behind on this. No article on Climate Action 100+, Ceres article is out of date, Ceres Investor Network seems to be represented by an obsolete article on a defunct subsidiary. I'm not at all sure what to do with the subcommittee report. (Which maybe shouldn't be included until there is informed news coverage and reactions.) And I am very ill-equipped to provide the needed updates.

I'll probably post something over at Wikiproject Business also. -- M.boli (talk) 14:14, 13 June 2024 (UTC)


 * I suspect you are as well equiped to create an article on Climate Action 100+ as most of us here. Although perhaps companies are leaving it ( https://www.ft.com/content/6ae809be-2b87-48e9-bac2-d243155fbb49) as they might be afraid of what Trump would do to them - just speculating wildly. You could create a draft and submit it. Chidgk1 (talk) 18:12, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

New to Wikipedia editing process
I joined today (Monday17 June 2024) Wikipedia and am interested in contributing to its extensive climate crisis coverage. I would appreciate any suggestions or advice anyone may wish to offer please. Alfred Robert Hogan (talk) 17:19, 17 June 2024 (UTC)


 * Welcome to Wikipedia Alfred! I am sure you will contribute a lot! Alexander Sauda/אלכסנדר סעודה (talk) 17:25, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
 * It's best when starting out to look at changes previously made to an article, and make small changes that adopt a similar approach. Start with small, non-controversial changes. When in doubt, you can ask other editors about a particular question or suggestion, by posting on the article's talk page. — RCraig09 (talk) 18:52, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Woo hoo, great to have you on board! Thanks for dropping by and introducing yourself. In terms of suggestions,
 * 1. Be bold - people's first contributions to Wikipedia are often their most valuable ones even though they often aren't perfectly formatted. I don't think it's important to look at the changes previously made to an article, which can be confusing. If you see an error, just fix it.
 * 2. Include a citation to a reliable source for everything, immediately, and include page numbers if the source has more than 10 pages. Ensure every sentence has at least one citation.
 * 3. Cite IPCC reports as much as you can. Don't sweat about the formatting of citations to IPCC reports initially - if you get it almost right we'll standardize it for you later.
 * 4. Improve existing articles before you create new ones. For the most impact, spend most of your time on existing articles as new ones tend to get a lot less traffic.
 * 5. Don't start by editing wp:Featured Articles (Climate change and Sustainable energy) as they are more difficult to improve.
 * 6. If you run into any difficulty, you can ask questions here or at the wp:Teahouse.
 * 7. If you want to start with non-controversial edits, look for outdated content and replace it with updated content from the same publisher. E.g. replace 2018 Our World in Data statistics with 2023 Our World in Data statistics. Nobody could possibly object to that and it really helps.
 * Cheers and welcome ! Clayoquot (talk &#124; contribs) 20:16, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Welcome.
 * What you could do: Describe climate change in a way that local people can relate to. Answer the question: What does climate change mean for me, the people, my state, my country, ?
 * Is data available for local climate change graphs such as Paris_climate_change.png and Climate_change_paris.png?
 * How has climate change effected local people? Which changes are positive? Which are negative?
 * What are scenarios for the future? Can local people adapt? Will they have to relocate?
 * Uwappa (talk) 08:31, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Zero carbon v Net Zero house
Someone changed "zero carbon housing" to be also "net zero home" in June 2024. This conflates two different concepts. We already have a separate article for low-energy house -- 64.229.90.32 (talk) 21:46, 17 June 2024 (UTC) 64.229.90.32 (talk) 21:46, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Introduction
Hello! I am Amen Azoon I am new in this project! I want to contribute to climate editing in Wikipedia. I would appreciate any help! Thank you Amen 34571 (talk) 18:15, 23 June 2024 (UTC)


 * Hello and welcome! Are there particular articles or topic areas you're interested in? We could use help pretty much everywhere :) Clayoquot (talk &#124; contribs) 01:01, 24 June 2024 (UTC)
 * You may want to look above, in the above section titled "New to Wikipedia editing process", which has some helpful suggestions. — RCraig09 (talk) 05:38, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Discussion on PV Magazine at the Reliable Sources Noticeboard
People might be interested in the discussion on PV Magazine here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Is_pv-magazine.com_reliable? Clayoquot (talk &#124; contribs) 01:20, 2 July 2024 (UTC)


 * Deeplink including questionmark: WP:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard Uwappa (talk) 05:45, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I just cited it - thank you Chidgk1 (talk) 12:11, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

University of Ghana edits
I mentioned this talk page to one of the students User talk:Bernard Opoku 1234 who is doing some stuff in case they have questions. But as there are several students I wonder whether there is a prof or anyone else we should mention this project to.

It seems https://wikiedu.org/about-us/ only cover US and Canada - don’t know if there is anything similar for Africa Chidgk1 (talk) 14:24, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Readings and References for WP Editors on different climate topics.
Hi all,

On the other side of a lot of work now, we went back and revised a table of topical readings/references for WP Editors that we had compiled as part of a Rapid Grant from Wiki Foundation. Our goal was to find overview readings/references for at least 10 main topics on climate actions (energy, food, transportation, personal....) to share - items that we can use to help structure WP articles or our own articles, or to be able to quickly answer questions about climate action topics. We based this idea off of the previous Africa climate project page's table of recommended references.

Luckily, one of our contractors, @resilientsage (Shoshana), came back after a year hiatus and took over the project from the first draft we shared. Shoshana is a trained researcher and has worked for the EPA on agriculture and food topics, and she (and I some) reviewed and edited the table to meet Wikipedia standards more strongly. Shoshana notes:

This reference list is for climate wiki editors (and wiki editors writing outside WP) to consider reading and conveniently have available to cite when adding to climate pages specific to topics, as well as to build upon (i.e., add articles into). Under the column *Wikipedia Status*:

a) The sources listed as "Recommended for Wikipedia" are meant to be solid references about relevant topics and we believe likely to meet wiki community standards.

b) As examples and to consider using again, we have included select citations used in climate-related Wikipedia articles as “From Wikipedia”.

c) Because wiki standards are specific to context, we have also created a list of potential references that may be useful but are unclear as to whether suitable for potential inclusion/or that depend on context: i.e., the "To Be Discussed."

So, for instance, if you want to write about climate and transportation - there are some potential articles that might be of interest - just look for Transportation under the column Topics.

We really want this to be of help by being a starting point for discussion about key articles we can/should use, and for editors to add to, comment on, etc, as time goes by. I think the first step is to have @Clayoquot and any others interested look at the Google sheet, and then we can create a subpage under the Recommended Sources where this could be the start of a framework of resources we recommend each other read on particular action topics.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1S39mCutie6Qa3lSKZRI1aMw1X1kTD4i6ouO2v5LKKiM/edit?usp=sharing.

Cheers, Annette AnnetteCSteps (talk) 19:29, 18 July 2024 (UTC)


 * Hi Annette. Sorry, I am not willing to spend more time working on initiatives to create lists of sources. I cannot justify further investing my volunteer time in a project that seems to be more about spreadsheets than about editing articles. I know your heart is in the right place. I think what Wikipedia needs most is for strong researchers and writers like you to edit articles. I could be totally wrong though - maybe someone else here will find this kind of spreadsheet useful enough for their work that they offer to review it. Clayoquot (talk &#124; contribs) 21:26, 18 July 2024 (UTC)