Talk:Climate variability and change/Archive 3

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Copenhagen Climate Conference

How much significance do you place on the scientists' statement from the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference here and do you think a link to it should be added to the Climate Change article ? There's some editorial discussion on the Talk:Sustainability page about its relevance / importance, so I thought I'd ask the experts.--Travelplanner (talk) 09:37, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Currently this information has been added in the History section of the Sustainability article concerning this recent development...
Environmental scientists (Copenhagen climate change summit 2009 Climate change report) Copenhagen Climate Council, issue a strongly worded statement:
"The climate system is already moving beyond the patterns of natural variability within which our society and economy have developed and thrived. These parameters include global mean surface temperature, sea-level rise, ocean and ice sheet dynamics, ocean acidification, and extreme climatic events. There is a significant risk that many of the trends will accelerate, leading to an increasing risk of abrupt or irreversible climatic shifts. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/13/stern-attacks-politicians-climate-change -- http://climatecongress.ku.dk/newsroom/congress_key_messages/ End -- skip sievert (talk) 16:23, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
If it belongs anywhere, it would be nearer global warming than here. But I'm not sure anything new came out - it looks more like PR than science William M. Connolley (talk) 20:06, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
PR...? I assume you are not kidding? More than 2,500 climate experts from 80 countries at an emergency summit in Copenhagen said there is now "no excuse" for failing to act on global warming. A failure to agree strong carbon reduction targets at political negotiations this year could bring "abrupt or irreversible" shifts in climate that "will be very difficult for contemporary societies to cope with" http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/13/stern-attacks-politicians-climate-change -- skip sievert (talk) 21:40, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Solar Variations

Why is this condemned to an "other" factor when it is patently the most important? --81.99.118.248 (talk) 04:20, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Excellent point, since solar heating is the primary, almost exclusively in fact, source of heat input to the earth's climate. Volcanic heat sources are trivial by comparison. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.71.141.93 (talk)

:Because while the overall input is large, the variations are small. Awickert (talk) 00:45, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Recent solar variations are small. Faint young Sun paradox. -Atmoz (talk) 00:57, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
I keep putting my foot in my mouth, huh. In any case, it doesn't seem like just an "other" factor in the article, though it probably should go to the top of that section.
Actually, taking a closer look, maybe that section should be split up. It seems to have real forcings (solar, volcanic, tectonics, orbital) combined with things like glaciers, which seem more like effects, and hysteresis, which is more like an observation of how. Awickert (talk) 01:08, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
I've been bold and made some changes. Revert and discuss as needed. -Atmoz (talk) 01:30, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
I like the new order. I'm taking the night off, but I'll check it more carefully soon. Awickert (talk) 02:02, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Translation please

Perhaps I'm being dense, but I can't figure out what this sentence means:

Climate change reflects abnormal variations to the expected climate within the Earth's atmosphere and subsequent effects on other parts of the Earth, such as in the ice caps over durations ranging from decades to millions of years.

The best I can tell it's trying to say that climate change happens on long timescales. Am I missing something? -Atmoz (talk) 07:05, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Torrent file about climate change

Here is a torrent file about climate change.

Here is another one.

Recent changes

I reinserted a section about pre-industrial climate change which was killed as collateral damage by Atmoz, who was sensibly hacking some duplicate global warming content. The re-insert is not available elsewhere, so I think it needs to go in. I've also created a very small feedback section to replace what's been hacked out. I think you need to at least mention feedbacks, and I kept it short. I reverted his revert of me, cos I think it was a bit gung ho. Andrewjlockley (talk) 21:05, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Undid - the order is talk, then decide, then act. Awickert (talk) 21:17, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
This article is about past climate change and changing climate in general, not the present climate change (aka global warming). Ruddiman and the early anthropocene stuff should be in anthropocene. -Atmoz (talk) 21:35, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
I think that climate change is a fair place for some stuff on this. it's global warming that needs a sep art. I think we need a section on anthropocene in this article, with a link to a 'main'. Andrewjlockley (talk) 23:31, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
Added anthropocene to the see also section. "Historical impacts of climate change" at the end looks stubby; perhaps that could be tweaked once the dust settles, and turned into a short lead-in to a more full-blown article on climate and civilization, with a see-also to anthropocene. Awickert (talk) 00:08, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
That;s an effect of the Anthropocene (possibly). I really feel that the pre-industrial human climate change needs further consideration in this article. Andrewjlockley (talk) 08:46, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
OK - expand the bottom section and perhaps it will spin off someday. I'll start. Awickert (talk) 20:41, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
Imho, the article Historical impacts of climate change, which AJL created should be expanded first, and then turned into a summary here. And the impacts shouldn't only be negative (ie. collapse of civ's) but include also the flourishing and decline of civs. Currently it reads as if climate change => catastrophy, which is a possibility but not a neccessity. Btw. Danish is certainly wrong, since the Vikings who settled Greenland came from Iceland. Norse cwould be correct, but Vikings is more accurate. (i'm correcting) --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 22:01, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Adding {{main|Historical impact of climate change}} to the section is not acceptable. That article contains no content that isn't here. I hope that will change (hopefully with a more diverse description of historical impacts (see above)) - but currently the link is more an argument for a redirect from HioCC to this section, than anything else... --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 01:02, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Kim - good to have a real-life Dane. I'll start looking at Historical impacts of climate change. In addition, there are a couple good articles I've seen about benefits. One is about a period of sea-level fall a slowdown in the rate of sea-level rise beginning c. 6 ka, correlated with delta progradation (therefore fertile farmland creation) at the same time as an expansion in old-world agriculture, and the other is about the origin and evolution of humans and the uplift of the East African Rift area.
Anyone else think we should cut the blurb here and paste it in the historical impacts article, and then return it in a more fully fleshed-out and representative way later? Awickert (talk) 01:14, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
I'm being bold and doing the cut-paste. Awickert (talk) 01:24, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Human Effects on Global Warming

I have spent a couple of months reading about the technical details surrounding the factors that to contribute to global warming. To date this article addresses most of the ones I have identified. The two areas that do not appear anywhere are:

The amount of heat (BTU s) that humans release into the environment. There are several sources: 1) fossil fuel (petrolium, natural gas, coal, peet, etc)oxidation 2) nuclear power plant (binding energy of the nucleus) release of heat and vapor into the environment 3) Industrial chemical reactions that are exothermic

The amount of methane and water vapor (also greenhouse gases) the activities of humans and agriculture generate.

It would be nice to see these added to the "Human Effects" Section

http://mustelid.blogspot.com/2005/05/global-warming-is-not-from-waste-heat.html. You meant to ask this at Talk:Global warming William M. Connolley (talk) 22:32, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
Globally, true of course; but the other day I read this article[1] which suggests waste heat could be significant over fairly large areas such as Japan (2.1 W/m2) or western Europe (4.2 W/m2 in the Netherlands). Would be a neat thing to model. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 23:22, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Economic opinion on climate change

It looks like this article was created back in Feb., but has received very little attention since. I did a spot of cleaning, but I thought I might bring it to the attention of editors here, since it seems to be falling short of the usual standard for climate change articles. --TeaDrinker (talk) 16:15, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Error in Article Heading

The header states "For current global climate change, see Global warming." However, this is utter nonsense, the current trend is global cooling. Every respectable scientific report on temperature shows that the recent peak in global warming reached a maximum in 1998, and we are currently experiencing a cooling trend.

http://digitaldiatribes.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/rss240slope0901.jpg


How is this even tolerated in an "Encyclopedia" ?

--Muhammad Suleiman (talk) 05:50, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

It's tolerated because you're wrong on all counts. Raul654 (talk) 16:45, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
Well... that graph actually shows that the 240 month trend is positive... must be that darned negative temperature. -Atmoz (talk) 16:49, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
Negative slope correlated with temperature... guess you have to be as smart as James "the hack" Hansen to figure that out.
http://righttruth.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451c49a69e201053665b6f1970c-800wi
How does it feel knowing that you are helping to destroy the economy?? meanwhile the earth will continue changing its climate just as it has done for 4.5 billion years, with or without less than 1/2 degree celsius changes "caused by humans".... thanks guys --Muhammad Suleiman (talk) 16:38, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
Please comment on the article, not contributors. Raul's link indicates why the graph you linked is suspect: first, starting in any year but 1998 creates a warming trend, and second ten years is not long enough to assess a climate trend. Hope this helps, --TeaDrinker (talk) 18:17, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
1988 to 1998 was long enough to decree a warming trend, sooo why isn't 1998 to 2008 long enough to decree a cooling trend ?? If you don't have the science to predict global climate on a decadal time line (any decade warming or cooling or both) you don't have the answer to what is really driving climate change !!
76.70.211.184 (talk) 03:11, 4 August 2009 (UTC) Sun Spot
Mu. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 03:59, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

redirection from GLOBAL CHANGE

Searching for "Global Change" I was redirected to "Climate Change", which is not the same. Climate change is (acc. to University of Cologne, Dept. of Geophysics and Meteorology, http://www.uni-koeln.de/globaler-wandel/) only one of the main aspects of global change. The others are (acc. to dito) changes in land use and land coverage, loss of species and changes in the atmospheric composition. Global Change refers to the large-scale environmental changes resulting from human impact during the (ongoing) process of the agricultural and industrial revolution. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.76.178.218 (talk) 10:36, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

This often happens when nobody has written the appropriate article yet; would you like to? Awickert (talk) 18:08, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
I changed the redirect to a stub as per my talk, and using a definition from PBS. Awickert (talk) 16:53, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Friendly Notice

Please retain this notice for at least 2 weeks to allow interested parties time to see it. I feel that editors who are interested in Global Warming or Climate Change related articles may also be interested in participating in the following RfC: RfC: How should this page be disambiguated? --GoRight (talk) 05:19, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

External link

{{editsemiprotected}}Climate Science Research at EcoWorld

That link is really more appropriate for Global warming, why don't you try it over there?. ~ Amory (user • talk • contribs) 00:53, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Reference to Frank Luntz on term 'climate change' for political reasons needed

There really ought to be a reference to Frank Luntz since he invented the term to soften the Bush administrations public policy on Global Warming [2] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.20.205.71 (talk) 19:23, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Climate Change Vulnerability Index

Is the Climate Change Vulnerability Index at [3] worthy of inclusion? -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 19:52, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Solar stuff

The 11-year sunspot cycle produces only a small change in temperature near Earth's surface (on the order of a tenth of a degree) but has a greater influence in the atmosphere's upper layers.[12] This sounds dodgy to me. Its not in the abstract. Is it in the body? If true, it should be off in SV too William M. Connolley (talk) 21:38, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, it's in the body. I quote some stuff here - want a copy of the article? It is probably better if I just send you a copy of the article. The relevant portions of the conclusions are:

Throughout the low latitudes (30°S–30°N) the stratosphere (16–55 km) warms in response to the 11-yr solar cycle in the ERA-40 data (Fig. 2 ). A large region of highly statistically significant positive response is found over the equator between about 35–50 km, peaking at about 43 km with an amplitude of 1.75 K. This warming is present in all seasons and is therefore likely to be a direct radiative response to solar irradiance and UV absorption by ozone in this region during solar maxima.

[2 paragraphs down] A negative temperature response to the solar cycle is found at high latitudes of both hemispheres. ... The anomalous meridional temperature gradient gives rise to a strong solar-induced zonal wind response in the upper stratosphere/lower mesosphere of both hemispheres (Fig. 3 ). These midlatitude features are predominantly a wintertime phenomenon associated with the strength of the polar night jet (Fig. 4 ). They are therefore likely to be due to indirect (dynamical) effects. Analysis of monthly responses suggests that it is the timing of the stratospheric winter warmings that is influenced by increases in solar cycle activity (Gray et al. 2004).

I will change "upper layers" to stratosphere for the moment. Awickert (talk) 17:30, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Climate Change News

I have been reading some useful climate change weekly news on http://www.climatechangebusiness.com/climate_change_news

Is the Climate Change News link worthy of inclusion?

Its a decent link on the subject.

Best

Mike —Preceding unsigned comment added by Zapytania (talk • contribs) 05:00, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Dead Link

There's a dead link under the 'See also' section. 'Cretaceous Thermal Maximum'. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mass09 (talk • contribs) 09:23, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Removed, thanks. You should soon be able to edit semi-protected pages yourself. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 09:29, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Support for population control

Many climate change experts have recommended population control policies as an answer to the challenges of environmental fluctuations. This is somewhat controversial however, since population control often amounts to agressive anti-fertility programs like China's one-child policy. These matters should perhaps be mentioned somewhere in the article. I also noticed that the topic was very briefly discussed in the article entitled mitigation of global warming. [4][5][6] ADM (talk) 00:44, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

If population control is recommended by "many" scientists it should indeed be mentioned on this page. If it is only a small portion of climate change discourse, and I suspect that that is the case, it is correct to only mention it in the sibling article of Mitigation of global warming. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 01:38, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Allegations of Junk Science

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/nov/24/hiding-evidence-of-global-cooling/ We all know how wikipedia loves the term "Allegations" (most notably, under any topic that is not pro-socialist). If it turns out that climate change is rooted in junk science, what a stain of embarrassment on Wikipedia! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.18.97.239 (talk) 16:35, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Effects of CO2

Added information that was in this article section.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of the United States, determined that carbon dioxide, and five other greenhouse gases, "endanger public health and welfare" of the American people. These gases, they said, contribute to climate change, which is causing more heat waves, droughts and flooding, and is threatening food and water supplies. http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/0/0EF7DF675805295D8525759B00566924

The EPA finding is based largely on the IPCC's findings. So, become a circular reasoning. EPA didn't do any independent research to corroborate his findings. This is an important difference from the past findings. "Lisa Jackson, Obama's EPA Administrator, admitted to me publicly that EPA based its action today in good measure on the findings of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC. She told me that EPA accepted those findings without any serious, independent analysis to see whether they were true."Inhofe: EPA 'endangerment' rule based on junk science; Is coal industry death coming soon?]Painlord2k (talk) 12:43, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
The IPCC doesn't do independent research, its an assessment report. Just as the Climate Change Science Program (now the U.S. Global Change Research Program is. Both are based on reviewing the scientific literature. The field is too large for an agency such as the EPA to assess the whole, which is why the IPCC and the USGCRP have been asked to do so. Inhofe is not a reliable source on this issue. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 12:58, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Article in Timesonline

Does this have any bearing on this Wikipedia article: [www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6936328.ece] btw what is a "ece" extension - don't think I have ever seen one of those before? Ottawahitech (talk) 15:11, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

No. You've misunderstood it. But you'd get a better and longer "no" if you asked at global warming William M. Connolley (talk) 15:55, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Volcanism

The reference to the US Geological Survey report in the third paragraph has a misleading conclusion. The report cited uses as it's source another report that was a measure of "total carbon" not carbon dioxide emitted by volcanoes. By stating in this section that the amount measured was of carbon dioxide could lead a reader to an incorrect conclusion. Total carbon release and carbon dioxide release are two entirely different things. I'll be doing some additional research on this before proposing an edit. Hammer8s (talk) 00:55, 9 December 2009 (UTC)halderman

This is just a different way of accounting. One ton of carbon is equivalent to 44/12=3.6(6) tons of carbon dioxide. Also, you mixed up the reports. Marland et all (2006), which now seems to be at [7], is used as a source for human emissions. We often use simply "carbon", because the major carbon-containing emissions (CO, Methane, CO2) nearly all end up as CO2 in fairly short times. I'm very sure that the USGS is well aware of this and has taken it into account. Note that they claim 30 billion tons of CO2, while Marland et al lists about 8 billion tons of Carbon, depending on the year [8]. 8 billion tons of carbon times 3.66 comes out at the 30 billion tons of CO2. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 01:27, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Changes to introductory paragraphs

I cannot see how the recent changes to the introductory paragraphs improve things: The rewrite is less clear than it previously was, especially the first paragraph. Weather patterns ≠ climate. "Trend" implies future (& what was wrong with "changes"?). Why does this article need so many names for global warming? The last two paragraphs are redundant as the same ideas are better expressed later in the article. And despite being twice as long it has lost useful information, as links to Earth, temperature record and attribution of recent climate change are gone. I would just put it back how it was before the template:technical was added. --JohnBlackburne (talk) 20:59, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

No-one's replied and a day later and I still the version in place a couple of days ago was much clearer and more appropriate so I've restored it. The alternate would be to edit what was there, but by the time the duplication was removed, the missing links put back and the sense made clear it would look much like what I've just put back. --JohnBlackburne (talk) 00:09, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Human influences

"Anthropogenic factors" are not human activities that change the environment, actually, as the first sentence of the "Human influences" section states. Anthropogenic factors are, perhaps over-simply put, "human factors." There are, of course, anthropogenic factors (human factors) that can change the environment, which I believe is the more precise point of the original statement. Somewhat of a semantic observation, but this is my first edit suggestion other than a few simple IP-anonymous typographic corrections, so I'm starting out tentatively.

This seems a good alternative to the first sentence of the Human influences section:

"Human or anthropogenic influences on climate change can include human activities, effects, processes or materials."

I would include an internal link to "anthropogenic" from which I was inspired to write this alternative. I believe double-brackets are used to engage internal links. The article is semi-protected due to the high risk of vandalism, or I would happily endeavor to figure out how to make the change myself. Perhaps since I have an account I can do this myself.

Thanks, Oxylotyl (talk) 21:17, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Edit request to Human influences section of Climate Change article

{{editsemiprotected}}

This article is semi-protected due to the high risk of vandalism, or I would happily endeavor to figure out how to make the change myself. Perhaps since I have an account I can do this myself after 10 or so edits.

I suggested the change on Dec 14, '09 on the Climate Page's talk page, but now understand that might not get attention. I hope this is useful:

"Anthropogenic factors" are not just human activities that change the environment, actually, as the first sentence of the "Human influences" section states. Anthropogenic factors are, perhaps over-simply put, "human factors" more generally. There are, of course, anthropogenic factors (human factors) that can change the environment, to which the term "anthropogenic" is most currently in reference to, and which I believe is the more precise point of the original statement. Somewhat of a semantic observation, but this is my first edit suggestion other than a few simple IP-anonymous typographic corrections, so I'm starting out tentatively.

This seems a good alternative to the first sentence of the Human influences section. Please change:

Anthropogenic factors are human activities that change the environment.

to:

Human or anthropogenic influences on climate change can include human activities, effects, processes or materials.

I included an internal link to "anthropogenic" from which I was inspired to write this alternative. I believe double-brackets are used to engage internal links.

Thanks, Oxylotyl (talk) 10:39, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Not done for now: The anthropogenic article you linked specifically says "The term anthropogenic [effect] designates an effect or object resulting from human activity." To me, this would logically mean anthropogenic factors are human activities causing an effect on something. When you become autoconfirmed, feel free to change it, but it's not critical at the moment. In the meantime, use this talk page or a related wikiproject's talk page to determine a consensus for the change. I'm glad to see you have an interest in editing wikipedia! Happy editing! Ks0stm (T•C•G) 13:57, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
Saying "Human or anthropogenic" is not necessary. It is poor grammar and one of the words would be redundant. The whole sentence is not needed for the same reason. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 08:19, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
how about combining the two thusly, into a more complete definition of "anthropogenic": Kevin Baastalk 14:46, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Anthropogenic factors of climate change are changes to the ecological environment that come directly or indirectly from humans. These include human activities, effects, processes and materials.

Thanks Kevin, that is a more precise revision of the original first sentence. If in agreement, can you make the change? I believe I still have too few edits to make changes to a semi-protected page. And perhaps anthropogenic could link to the internal article of the same name, if appropriate. Thanks. Oxylotyl (talk) 10:10, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Article probation

Please note that, by a decision of the Wikipedia community, this article and others relating to climate change (broadly construed) has been placed under article probation. Editors making disruptive edits may be blocked temporarily from editing the encyclopedia, or subject to other administrative remedies, according to standards that may be higher than elsewhere on Wikipedia. Please see Wikipedia:General sanctions/Climate change probation for full information and to review the decision. -- ChrisO (talk) 02:40, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Grammar correction

{{editsemiprotected}} Just to change 'continue' to 'continues' in the Ice Cores section (singular subject - 'study').

 Done Thanks! ~ Amory (u • t • c) 13:35, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Other evidence

A quick read of the present contents suggests to me that no mention is made of evidence of the type relating to changes in "start of seasons", as in spring seeming to start earlier, or birds migrating earlier or later. Melcombe (talk) 11:55, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm unfamiliar with this kind of evidence; could you give some examples? Awickert (talk) 20:11, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
I was hoping there would be someone around familiar with these fields. A quick Google gives:
For birds....
For seasons....
There must be better sources than these ....? Melcombe (talk) 13:51, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
And a recent publication is describe at http://www.ceh.ac.uk/news/2010_news_item_04.html . Melcombe (talk) 17:29, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
Hey - sorry I left you hanging here - I lost track of this discussion. What you probably want is an article closer to effects of global warming, unless you want to try to discuss longer-term variability in bird migration patterns. Thanks for all the links and I'm really sorry again for not responding! Awickert (talk) 23:17, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Add? A Complete List Of Bad Things Attributed To Global Warming from nvestor's Business Daily.

Add A Complete List Of Bad Things Attributed To Global Warming http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=529363 Posted 04/05/2010 05:05 PM ET (from nvestor's Business Daily: "Hardly a day goes by that the media don't blame something on global warming. Or so it seems. The British-based science watchdog, Number Watch, wondered just how many and went to the trouble of documenting them. It has kept on its Web site a near-comprehensive set of links to a long list of things attributed by either scientific research or the media to global warming. As you read it, some items will strike you as contradictory. Others, perhaps, as merely absurd. And still others as factually impossible. However they strike you, in perusing the list one thing will become clear: just how much the fear of global warming has come to taint both science and news reporting on the issue. Following is the list of phenomena (756 entries in all) linked at one time or another to warming. They range from acne, bubonic plague and a drop in circumcisions to Yellow fever, whale beachings, walrus stampedes, witchcraft executions and the threat of zebra mussels. Actual links to stories that make the claims listed below can be found at http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm. (Below the list are some claims that no longer have working Internet links.)

The list: ..."? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.39.185.100 (talk) 22:43, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

I think a list which includes the death of the Loch Ness Monster is not taking itself seriously to be considered a reliable source. --TeaDrinker (talk) 23:14, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
Backdoor Energy Tax This from Investor's Business Daily, seems a bigger investors.com Editorial concern. 99.24.248.94 (talk) 03:39, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
That may be a legitimate source... — Arthur Rubin (talk) 05:05, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
Apart from being a bit silly, this is all on the wrong page. You want Global warming William M. Connolley (talk) 09:34, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
Talk:Climate change denial is more precise than Human-activity created global Warming (the current climate change). 99.155.155.77 (talk) 21:37, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Glaciers paragraph problem - no citations, grossly incorrect information

The "Glaciers" paragraph has hardly any citations on any of the information it contains. Also, it says that, paraphrasing, "Organic matter left from glacial retreats can be accurately dated". Accurate is sometimes used as a broad term in the scope of the entire history of the Earth, but realistically the article should refrain from using words such as "accurate" or "precisely ascertained" as the dating methods used to find the age of such organic matter, soil, etc are hardly precise and have many, many limitations. Keep in mind, the dating methods used to find the ages are not provable by any means. The fact that nearly none of the dating methods used can properly date something where the age is definite, is a problem. Therefore, the science of dating organic or other matter is anything but accurate, and is closer to just being an educated guess.

I would make the edits myself, but as I am a new member and the article is under probation, I cannot make the edits. —Preceding unsigned comment added by EricW03 (talk • contribs) 04:23, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

I agree, and I noticed that no one has addressed this. How can I add more references? FullRoomingIn (talk) 04:41, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
Haven't been around recently, but have contributed to this article in the past. Removed "accurate" and "precisely": flowery terms that aren't needed here. The original poster is wrong about "proving" dating methods and about their accuracy and precision: Quaternary dating techniques are cross-correlated and tied into ground truth. This doesn't seem to be important for the article though, so just a note.
You can add more references by making 10 edits anywhere here and then editing this page. Awickert (talk) 08:28, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Top 10 Places Already Affected by Climate Change

I prepared this information, but I can not find a suitable place in which to add it, either in this article or in any of the articles in Category:Climate change.

-- Wavelength (talk) 21:59, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Effects of global warming? Awickert (talk) 22:11, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
I considered that, but I am not certain that the climate change is limited to global warming. -- Wavelength (talk) 23:19, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
I added it to Physical impacts of climate change. -- Wavelength (talk) 07:03, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
When they say "climate change" in that context, they mean "global warming", but it sounds like you figured out what to do. Awickert (talk) 19:06, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Global Warming is But one effect of climate change. ~ Betaclamp (talk) 00:02, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Of interest: Alliance of Small Island States/Small Island Developing States for detail on "Island nations"? 99.37.85.58 (talk) 00:32, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
Changed to actual title: "Top 10 Places Already Affected by Climate Change: Catastrophic effects of global warming are being felt from the deserts of Darfur to the island nation of Kiribati". 99.54.137.73 (talk) 00:38, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Questions on new-ish section: "Gradual push, sudden shift"

I noticed this new section. It doesn't look like it belongs in causes; it seems to be an exposition about small causes having potential large effects, with sparse sources. I'm tempted to relegate it to a subsections of a "methods" section (while populating that section with info on longer-term changes, to balance it out), or even move it out of article space until we decide where it should best go. But I thought that asking opinions here would be a good first place to start. Awickert (talk) 07:42, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Needs substantial work, at the very least. I'll leave it until the arbcomm case is over I think William M. Connolley (talk) 10:29, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
Ah, that... I hope it wraps up soon. But back on topic: my major concern is that this may be an enthusiastic exposition of the author's personal work that probably needs a different home. Awickert (talk) 14:43, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
Yes. That is exactly what it looks like William M. Connolley (talk) 15:00, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

(outdent) Since this is going stale, and I think that it is an over-enthusiastic report of someone's personal publications that has a better home elsewhere, I have moved this section here. Awickert (talk) 07:49, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Gradual push, sudden shift

Main article: Abrupt climate change

During a gradual push, things sometimes tip, slip, and break. Had the 1997 El Niňo lasted twice as long, the rain forests of the Amazon basin and Southeast Asia could have quickly added much additional carbon dioxide to the air from burning and rotting, with heat waves and extreme weather quickly felt around the world (The "Burn locally, crash globally" scenario[1]).

Most abrupt climate shifts, however, are likely due to sudden circulation shifts. The best-known examples are the several dozen shutdowns of the North Atlantic Ocean's Meridional Overturning Circulation during the last ice age, affecting climate worldwide.[1] But there have been a series of less dramatic abrupt climate shifts since 1976, along with some near misses.

The circulation shift in the western Pacific in the winter of 1976-1977[2] proved to have much wider impacts. Since 1950, El Niňos had been weak and short, but La Niňas were often big and long, This pattern reversed after 1977. Land temperatures had remained relatively trendless from 1950 to 1976, despite the CO2 rising from 310 to 332 ppm as fossil fuel emissions tripled. Then in 1977 there was a marked shift in observed global-mean surface temperature to a rising fever on land at about 2°C/century.

The expansion of the tropics from overheating is usually thought to be gradual, but the percentage of the land surface in the two most extreme classifications of drought suddenly doubled in 1982 and stayed there until 1997 when it jumped to triple (after six years, it stepped down to double). While their inception correlates with the particularly large El Niňos of 1982 and 1997, the global drought steps far outlast the 13-month durations of those El Niňos.

In addition to near-misses for Burn Locally, Crash Globally in 1998, 2005, and 2007, there have also been two occasions when the Atlantic's Meridional Overturning Circulation lost a crucial safety factor. The Greenland Sea flushing at 75 °N shut down in 1978, recovering over the next decade. While shutdowns overlapping in time have not been seen during the fifty years of observation, previous total shutdowns had severe worldwide climate consequences.[1]

Edit request from TWOGIC, 27 September 2010

{{edit semi-protected}}

Global Warming is an invented thing...... The politicians are using this to make a dollar at your expense and your children's expense. It is sad to have people say man it is getting warmer of course it's getting warmer we are coming out of an ice age that was caused by a asteroid strike the lead to an ice age which is now ending. It's not global warming it's global normalization of average temp and man can't change that for nothing.

And never you no mind as exo-solar events that are occurring infinitely around us education in this world is simply mindless.

TWOGIC (talk) 15:08, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Vair exciting. But you want global warming William M. Connolley (talk) 15:21, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
Since this isn't requesting an edit, I've deactivated the template. Smartse (talk) 15:41, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Edit request from Frogmanatbac, 20 November 2010

{{edit semi-protected}}

Effects on Wildlife

Climate change may explain earlier occurring anuran breeding chouruses (Gibbs and Breisch, 2001; Green et al., 2001), changes in turtle sex ratios (Janzen, 1994), and local range shifts up mountain slopes (Seimon, 2007). Few amphibians or reptiles are likely to follow shifting climates because most do not have the migratory prowess of other organisms such as birds, mammals, and many fishes (Parmesan, 2006). This leaves these groups subject to the changing climates with little time available for adaptation (Rahel et al.,1996). Some species have already succumbed to shifting climates (Pounds and Crump, 1994; Pounds et al., 1999; Pounds, 2006).Alteration of precipitation patterns due to climate change may influence many aspects of the biology of an organism. It may partly explain the demise of the golden toad (Pounds et al., 1999) and may drive amphibian disease epidemics such as chytrids (Pounds et al., 2006). The warming climate may even reduce the intensity of sexual selection, especially by influencing call parameters (Gerhardt and Mudry, 1980; Sullivan, 1982; Cocroft and Ryan, 1995). It can reduce the overall abundance in anurans (Piha et al., 2007). Climate associated drought can drive population fluctuations by selecting against specific age classes of rainforest frogs (Stewart, 1995) and certainly would positively or negatively influence temperate species as well. In the case of the golden toad and the harlequin frog, the humid climate needed for survival migrated above the mountain leaving no acceptable habitat for these species (Pounds et al., 1994). Interactions between the increased drought and agriculture-induced landscape homogenization may lead to catastrophic species declines (Piha et al., 2007). Unfortunately, the complex relationships among climate variables and other stressors (Gunn et al., 2004) make it difficult to study their influence on amphibian life history and declines (Blaustein and Kiesecker, 2002; Davidson et al., 2002). In the case of Box Turtles (McCallum et al. 2009) and Blanchard's Cricket Frog (McCallum 2010) the impacts of predicted climate change patterns in Arkansas are significant. In the case of box turtles, the altered precipitation and temperature regimes would likely cause turtles to cease growth at body sizes too small to allow effective reproduction. Further, Blanchard's Cricket Frogs should experience reduced reproductive investment leading to smaller eggs. In both cases, population collapse would be the likely result.

Citations: McCallum, M.L. 2010. Future climate change spells catastrophe for Blanchard's Cricket Frog (Acris blanchardi). Acta Herpetologica 5(1):119-130.

McCallum, M.L., J.L. McCallum, and S.E. Trauth. 2009. Prediction of climate change impacts on growth and size at maturity of the Three-toed Box Turtle (Terrapene carolina triunguis). Amphibia-Reptilia 30:259-264

Schneider, S.H., T.L. Root, and M. Van Putten. Wildlife Responses to Climate Change: North American Case Studies. Island Press. 350 pp. Link: http://www.amazon.com/Wildlife-Responses-Climate-Change-American/dp/1559639253/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1290214546&sr=8-2

Frogmanatbac (talk) 01:17, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

I think you might have mistaken what the article is about, your edit appears to be related to global warming rather than CC. Effects of global warming is likely a better place for your edit to be included. SmartSE (talk) 01:32, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
You'll need to write this in your own words as well, the text above is a copyright violation of this source. SmartSE (talk) 01:34, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Definition of Climate Change at Status Quo (2010)

Due to the controversy over the definition of climate change, Savillo, I. T. (through personal communication) insisted that IPCC's definition having fallen short of science will just be a "study of realistic preparedness as what are actually occurring in the environment with emphasis to environmental temperature." In this sense they (global scenario) can arouse all the euphoria that they want and raise all the monies for what ever they have seen or experienced as patterns of yearly destruction and how to repair and prevent it. Enough of erroneous science. True science will take its course later... after accurate experimentation have been done. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.245.84.231 (talk) 15:00, 9 December 2010 (UTC) 173.245.84.231 (talk) 15:20, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Terminology

Clearly, any anthropogenic component of Climate Change is only an aspect of Climate Change and an extremely recent one at that. To adopt the name 'Climate Change' as the name for the human effects on climate is patently misleading and not remotely scientific procedure. Regardless of it's popularity, there begs to be an explanation for this blatant misuse of terminology, especially in light of it's use to replace far more accurate terminology.Multiperspective (talk) 02:08, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Er...I'm not sure what you're on about. This article defines Climate change as "a long-term change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods of time that range from decades to millions of years." Do you take issue with this definition? CurtisSwain (talk) 10:53, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

-The term Climate Change is most commonly used to refer to recent anthropogenic climate change, I would suggest that this is reflected in the wikipedia article. The current disambiguation is not very well written and does not give a particularly good description of the terms common usage and technical meaning. Also Climate Change is also far more commonly used than the term Global Warming. I understand that Global Warming is used more in the United States than elsewhere, but the article should reflect the terms use internationally. I would suggest both the Climate Change and Global Warming articles be changed appropriately. As I am sure the contributors to this article are aware, climate change is a politically (if not scientifically!) conentious issue, and it appears as if the definitions of climate change and global warming currently used in wikipedia have been influenced by contrarians in the debate. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.152.178.230 (talk) 12:27, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

I assume the section below is yours. I believe you should centralize discussion at Talk:Global warming, since a discussion is already underway there, and it would be waste of editorial resources to discuss this issue in two place at once. Furthermore it seems that the discussion below has gone stale, and you would recieve greater attention if you concentrated on discussing the issue at global warming talk page. 174.52.224.148 (talk) 04:11, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
thanks, yes section below is mine, agree about not wasting editorial space and centralising. I am trying to continue the discussion at Talk:Global warming, would be interested to read your thoughts. 217.43.25.223 (talk) 12:08, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Request for clearer definitions of terminology and wikipedia page structure on climate change

Discussion centralized at Talk:Global warming
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Further to my comment on terminology above, this article in the guardian gives a far clearer explanation of the term 'climate change':

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/dec/21/what-is-climate-change

"Any process that causes adjustments to a climate system – from a volcanic eruption to a cyclical change in solar activity – could be described as creating "climate change".

Today, however, the phrase is most often used as shorthand for anthropogenic climate change – in other words, climate change caused by humans. The principal way in which humans are understood to be affecting the climate is through the release of heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the air.

Climate change is used interchangeably with another phrase – "global warming" – reflecting the strong warming trend that scientists have observed over the past century or so. Strictly speaking, however, climate change is a more accurate phrase than global warming, not least because rising temperatures can cause a host of other climatic impacts, such as changes in rainfall patterns."

I would suggest the wikipedia articles for 'climate change', 'global warming', etc. are in need of re-organising and re-writing in order to give the most accurate, impartial definitions of the terms according to common international usage. Please could people respond if the agree or disagree? (86.152.178.230 (talk) 15:45, 2 January 2011 (UTC))

Solar variance has exerted a cooling effect since 1750?

Under "Solar output", the article states that "most research indicates solar variability has induced a small cooling effect from 1750 to the present"
This seems to be in direct contradiction to the previous discussion and the plot to the right and as far as I know also to the IPCC assessment, and it isn't sourced. (The Svensmark citation at the end of the sentence is for a warming effect, not a cooling effect). I think this sentence needs to be changed, but don't dare edit a controversial article where others might be more knowledgeabele than I am. 84.59.62.132 (talk) 16:10, 10 January 2011 (UTC)


Graph of Vostok Ice cores

The graph showing variations between carbon dioxide levels and temperature cites the folllowing article as a reference: 

Petit RA, Humberto Ruiloba M, Bressani R, J.-M. Barnola, I. Basile, M. Bender, J. Chappellaz, M. Davis et al. (1999-06-03). "Climate and atmospheric history of the past 420,000 years from the Vostok ice core, Antarctica". Nature 399 (1): 429–436. doi:10.1038/20859. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v399/n6735/full/399429a0.html.

Out of curiosity, I reviewed the original article in Nature Magazine. The original article uses Deuterium levels as a proxy for global temperature, how the point of interest is that while the original article shows that the lag between carbon dioxide levels and global temperature is minimal and in some cases one leads the other. My point of concern is that the graph in the Wikipedia article on climate change shows that carbon dioxide levels rise well before (C. 1000 years) before temperature increases. This has implications with regards to which factor plays a greater role in the casuation of the other.

Given the disparity between the graphs in Nature magazine and the Wikipedia article, it is not possible that both graphs are accurate representations of the relationship between temperature and carbon dioxide levels. There are three distinct possibilities:

1) The information shown in Nature magagine is incorrect and the Wikipedia article is correct 2) The information shown in the Wikipedia article is incorrect and the article in Nature magazine is correct 3) Neither is correct

Can someone check the original data from the Vostok ice core to check the validity of the graph displayed in the Wikipedia article?

1) In the event that the information in Nature magazine is incorrect, it is questionable whether it should be used as a reference. 2) If the information in the graph is incorrect, it should be updated to reflect an accurate relationship between temperature and carbon dioxide levels. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Adrian Steele (talk • contribs) 00:39, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Sorry that it has taken so long for someone to get to your comment. The problem appears to be that the axes on the plots were not aligned with one another. I have fixed this; thank you for noticing (I certainly didn't eyeball that until you pointed it out). Awickert (talk) 03:08, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Volcanism: Internal or external forcing agent?

IPCC's glossary is self-contadictory. On the one hand, it describes internal variability as involving changes in the interactions between the five components of earth's climate system, and one of those components is the place where the volcanos live, e.g., the lithosphere. On the other hand, it describes volcanos as an external forcing mechanism. I'll eventually look for peer review references to help clarify this (minor?) point, though I expect we'll find inconsistency there too. For now, I note that these folks consider it an internal forcing mechanism.

NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 11:36, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

You didn't give a cite, but I'm ssuming you meant this glossary? Volcanoes are an external forcing, but changes in the lithosphere are part of the long term internal variability (e.g. rock weathering). There probably is some effect on volcanism due to climate over very long time scales, but for most purposes, volcanism counts as external (as it's not part of the climate). In the IPCC glossary I cited, under Lithosphere:
The same is true for plate tectonics.
The Global Climate Change website you cited seems to be using a different definition for internal and external variability, with the latter being apparently restricted to only forcings completely outside the Earth. That's not the most common definition, to my knowledge. Internal means part of the climate system (water vapour, vegetation, ice cover, ocean circulation, atmospheric composition and boundary layers, etc.), external means (mostly) outside the climate system (volcanoes, the sun, orbits, us burning things). - Parejkoj (talk) 03:35, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
Thanks, yes that's the glossary I cited in the related edit I made in the article. I didn't think to look up "volcano" in the glossary, and that resolves this issue. I will move volcanism over to the external forcing subsection in the article now. Thanks for correcting me. I think that concludes this Talk subsection.... please delete this subsection after you receive my "thank you" NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 12:29, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
FYI, in general, we archive threads rather than delete them so if something comes up again, someone can look in the archive to see if it's already discussed. On this page threads are automatically archived by a bot if the thread has not been edited in 31 days and archiving would leave the most recent four threads visible. Sailsbystars (talk) 13:06, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Plate tectonics is also an external forcing, so should also be moved down. If we want to have two sections in the article (one for internal, one for external), then we'll need more items in the "internal" section. - Parejkoj (talk) 14:07, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Are you sure? The following random examples (first 3 on google) all have it as an internal forcing:
http://www.plantsciences.ucdavis.edu/plantsciences_Faculty/Bloom/CAMEL/present.html
http://www.iodp.org/weblinks/IODP-Principal-Themes-ISP-Journalists-3/Internal-Forcing-of-Environmental-Change/
http://www.global-climate-change.org.uk/2-6-1.php
Besides, if it is debatable either way, I'd go with having it in internal forcings so the section isn't so small. It is internal to Earth, not from relatively outside influences like the sun, humans, etc.

Sokavik (talk) 18:10, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

There are two definitions being used here. The IPCC defines internal forcings as I did above (internal to the climate system, i.e. things that are affected by changes in climate) and external forcings as things external to the climate system (which means plate tectonics and volcanism are mostly external, except for some small, very long term effects). Your links define external forcings as things external to the Earth, which doesn't seem as useful. Anyone have some textbooks handy? - Parejkoj (talk) 18:51, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
The "internal/external to the climate system" perspective is more common in my experience. In response to your specific question, the intro textbook I used to use (Aguado and Burt) defines it in this way. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 19:35, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
Well, I see where you're coming from. Here's the NASA definition, though: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Glossary/index.php?mode=alpha&seg=b&segend=d
"Climate system: The five physical components (atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, lithosphere, and biosphere) that are responsible for the climate and its variations."
In that case, the lithosphere is considered part of the climate system, so presumably movements of the continental plates of the lithosphere would be internal to the climate system, internal forcings. At least the IPCC glossary (-- brief check, I could have missed something --) doesn't seem to have any very explicit exclusion of continental plates from the climate system.
What about this from the IPCC?:
"Volcanic activity, although part of the lithosphere, is not considered as part of the climate system, but acts as an external forcing factor."
That sounds to me like they'd ordinarily consider something part of the lithosphere to be part of the climate system (e.g. even though, "although part of the lithosphere") but make a special exception just for volcanoes since volcanoes are almost like human emissions in a way, sending gases and particulates up to the stratosphere, almost external. - Sokavik (talk) 20:02, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

See edit I made here, where I contrasted NASA vs IPCC definition of climate system. Does this help or obfuscate? Climate_change#Internal_forcing_mechanisms NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 12:33, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

The two definitions are identical, so there's nothing to contrast. If you look at the EOS definition for Lithosphere, it's talking about the rock, soil and sediments, which do interact with the climate. Also, it's not really "NASA" making that definition, but the Earth Observing System. I've reworded it. - Parejkoj (talk) 14:43, 4 June 2011 (UTC)
I like your revision. Just for the record, technically, the definitions are NOT the same. Orogeny, plate tectonics, and volanism are all lithospheric processes. The narrow "surface of the land" restriction used by IPCC creates a distinction with the broad all encompassing "lithosphere" definition of NASA's EO. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 09:02, 5 June 2011 (UTC)
but then again.... maybe they're parsing the issue this way due to the asthenosphere being the driver behind these
processes. Viewed that way, I would agree with you the definitions are the same. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 09:02, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Causes sub section lede

For one great discussion of internal vs external mechanisms, see http://www.global-climate-change.org.uk/2-6-1.php

If you like my tweaks in the first two paragraphs the third one still needs cleaning up. Seems like the examples given could be merged with paragraph 2, and distributed between internal and external forcing mechanisms. Also, seems like the phrasing and order of presentment should track with the phrasing and order in the more detailed subsection that follow. Anyone? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 11:43, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Regarding that:

Your recent prior categorization of the first two paragraphs looks excellent, the internal versus external forcing subcategories quite suitable.

However, I don't think moving the examples to the first couple of sections would be appropriate:

  • Images should best be relatively nearby their corresponding text. They are now in all cases, with little adjustments I just made. However, if the third section had its examples moved elsewhere, it'd have a bunch of stubby sections, and overall I think we'd run out of space for images. Technically one could have images sometimes on both sides, but I don't think that (and consequent uneven word wrapping) would look as good.
  • Especially if assuming a new reader, some of the examples are relatively helpful to getting an idea of the kinds of physical evidence left behind, suitable for being in close proximity.
  • The examples seem not always particularly linkable to a single cause (alone). Indeed, even just moving some of the examples to under a particular cause section could be misleading, since climate change has been influenced by multiple factors at once, even if one is relatively predominant than others depending on the historical period being considered.

A weakness is perhaps the current "see also" section, as such is half trying to be a list of prior climate periods in part, yet imperfectly organized. Maybe that should be reorganized, perhaps with a new section created, albeit while avoiding duplicating too much of global warming, paleoclimatology, and geologic temperature record articles. Aside from that, though, personally I think this article's formatting is pretty decent right now. A hypothetical reader comes in, gets a general idea relatively quickly and efficiently, then moves on to one of the other articles more narrowly focused.

Sokavik (talk) 15:47, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

"However, I don't think moving the examples to the first couple of sections would be appropriate:"
OK... as I work on global warming its possible I'll revisit this later and if I forget to discuss first, its just that I
forgot and will welcome revert... apologies in advance if that happens NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 12:41, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Volcanic Vs. Antropogenic CO2 emissions

The article currently says, under the Volcanism part about the causes of climate change:

"According to the US Geological Survey, however, estimates are that human activities generate more than 100-300 times the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by volcanoes"

But I followed the citation link to the USGS report and I don't think this is correct. The closest I could find to this was on a different page of the report (http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hazards/gas/climate.php) than the one linked to which said this:

"The current anthropogenic CO2 emission rate of some 36,300-million metric tons of CO2 per year is about 100 to 300 times larger than these estimated ranges for global volcanic CO2 emissions"

I think paragraph should be changed to:

"According to the US Geological Survey, however, estimates are that human activities generate more than 100-300 times the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by volcanoes"

It would be more accurate, no? The Talking Toaster (talk) 20:26, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Could you be more specific about what you want to change? I can't see any difference between the original and the suggested lines. Sailsbystars (talk) 20:58, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
(ec)Maybe I'm missing something but I can't see any difference between your proposal and the existing text. Mikenorton (talk) 20:59, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
He's waffling. Ha! Get it? Waffle. Never mind. Wikispan (talk) 21:26, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
Ah! Think I figured it out, the original quote is different According to the US Geological Survey, however, estimates are that human activities generate more than 130 times the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by volcanoes.. I'll change the "more than 130" -> "100-300" in the article to better reflect the source. Sailsbystars (talk) 02:41, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
This seems to be a rather ambiguous statement "estimates are that human activities generate more than 100-300 times the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by volcanoes".

The reason I say ambiguous is a)it does not state over what period of time, b)there is no indication as to the number of volcanoes involved, c) does this number include submarine volcanoes and fissures. As we know oceans cover 70% of the earth's surface and so most volcanic activities are hidden. What role do the spreading ridges play in warming the oceans which in turn contributes to climate changes.user:wikigeeek — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wikigeeek (talk • contribs) 04:12, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Conveniently, anwers to these questions are given in "Human Activities Emit Way More Carbon Dioxide Than Do Volcanoes". American Geophysical Union. 14 June 2011. Retrieved 20 June 2011., so I've added info giving the requested clarification. The downloadable pdf of the study is also interesting. . dave souza, talk 10:40, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from Ksinha42, 11 July 2011

This addition to the page is for a class I'm enrolled in at UMass Amherst.

Climate Change Physical evidence for and examples of climatic change There are many different indicators that our climate has warmed recently. One of these is that the timing of spring events has come earlier and earlier each year. Plant and animal ranges have moved upwards and toward the poles due to the increasing temperature. The warmer climate has increased the water temperatures as well. The evidence for this is that there have been shifts in the ranges of algae, plankton and fish as well as changes in their abundance.

Causes Concentrations of CO2 and methane in the atmosphere are much higher than the natural range during the last 650,000 years. The high CO2 concentrations are mainly due to fossil fuel use although land-use change also contributes a small part. The methane concentrations are not only due to fossil fuel use but also due to agriculture. If environmental policies concerning CO2 and methane emissions don’t improve the climate will continue to get warmer year after year. The solar forces and volcanic forces over the last 50 years would have produced cooling according to climate models which don’t include human activity. Since the opposite is what is actually happening, models that include anthropogenic forcings are much more realistic. Human’s emissions of pollutants and green house gasses into the atmosphere are mostly to blame for the warming of our climate. Changes in even wind patterns (effecting tropical storm tracks and temperature patterns) can be traced back to these anthropogenic forcings.

Projected Changes Between the years 2000 and 2030 green house gas emissions are expected to increase anywhere between 25% and 90%. Without any policy changes, the average temperature is expected to increase 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade for the next two decades. The warming will be highest over land and in northern latitudes. The warmer weather might also increase the spread of infectious diseases which normally are kept at bay by winter weather. Without the cold weather there to kill them, the infectious organisms and carriers could thrive. Extreme weather (tropical storms, etc.) will become more frequent and more destructive with the increasing temperature. The high CO2 levels in the atmosphere will lead to an acidification of the ocean. This could put marine organisms at risk of biological consequences.

Sources IPCC Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report Science Museum of the National Academy of Sciences, http://www.koshland-science-museum.org/exhibitgcc/index.jsp http://www.grida.no/publications/climate-in-peril/page/3545.aspx http://www.cbmjournal.com/content/1/1/2


Ksinha42 (talk) 21:59, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

where are you wanting to add this and are you sure that its not there already (or can whats there be altered to suit). Monkeymanman (talk) 15:04, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Origin of the term "Climate Change"

It would be nice to see mention of this added in. Is the establishment of the IPCC the first instance of the use? Who coined it?Jemiljan (talk) 21:08, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

It wasn't coined by the IPCC, it was already in use in scientific literature to describe both changes in the geological past e.g. [10]from at least 1978, and possible changes in the future, specifically related to increases in CO2 concentrations e.g. [11] from at least 1980. Identifying its original coinage may be difficult. Mikenorton (talk) 22:11, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
It appears to have started out as the term climatic change as in the 1965 symposium on the Causes of Climatic Change [12], and was in use as early as 1948 [13]. Mikenorton (talk) 22:28, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
See citation to NASA article I added to terminology section today. They cover the evolution of the terms a little bit. Not sure if it will answer your precise question.NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 04:22, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

Include Planetary boundaries metric.

Include Planetary boundaries metric. The current wp Planetary boundaries has for Control variables.

64.27.194.74 (talk) 18:32, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Why? Planetary boundaries may be notable, but the particular "boundaries" selected (by us, apparently, rather than by the references) are not. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 23:26, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
64.27.194.74, see current Planetary boundaries ... dynamic situation. 99.181.134.19 (talk) 07:13, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
Dynamic, but my concern still has not been met. CO2 concentration is the one from the primary reference; radiative forcing is from an interpretation of the primary reference, which doesn't really qualify as a secondary reference. What might be added (provided WP:WEIGHT could be established) to global warming, but not to this article is:
The details are only relevant in planetary boundaries. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 19:26, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
Why Mr. Rubin? 97.87.29.188 (talk) 19:50, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
The WP:BURDEN is on the editor adding material (in other words, you.) — Arthur Rubin (talk) 19:52, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
Maybe not just me ... and you ... 20:26, 9 July 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.87.29.188 (talk)
The current wp Planetary boundaries has for Control variables.
with links add (Carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere & Industrial Revolution). 64.27.194.74 (talk) 20:28, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
Being grammatically challenged, these posts are incomprehensible and IMO that makes them deletable, or at least archivable, due to their disruptive nature.NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 21:46, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Terminology

The last sentence in this section is confusing and misleading: climate change is not synonymous with global warming. The current human-induced change may end up in an ice age, who is to tell? Suggest to replace global warming with climate change or a true synonym. Petersburg (talk) 02:05, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

"Who is to tell" is the same as with any scientific topic, the experts in that scientific field, their peer reviewed journal publications, and consensus among them. That science has not shown "ice age" as a predicted outcome, at least over the next few centuries (IIRC). The context of that last sentence is to make clear that the use of the term "climate change" by groups such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and their specific definition of the term, is synonymous with anthropogenic global warming. --OuroborosCobra (talk) 04:51, 19 July 2011 (UTC)
As far as I know, climate change has generally replaced the term global warming. Our effect on the climate goes way beyond warming and so the more encompassing term climate change is the preferred one. The sentence is misleading because it implies that in certain usage the two terms are synonymous, which they are not. Climate change includes global warming but not the other way around. Petersburg (talk) 23:57, 22 July 2011 (UTC)
Technically you are correct but in practice unfortunately not everyone pays as much attention to the tech definitions, and thru extensive and prolonged use - though initially technically wrong - an argument can be made that alternative meanings have already, or at least will become, considered synonymous by the dictionary publishers. I left the text you objected to but added text from a NASA article that acknowledges the pervasive (wrong) use of global warming, and explains the correct distinction. Hopefully that resolves it. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 04:18, 23 July 2011 (UTC)
That's a good approach, thanks. Petersburg (talk) 16:47, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

Historical perspective

Is entirely missing from this article. After defining what climate change generally is, the article jumps into discussing the current climate change, neglecting to warn the reader or to give a historical context. Suggest a new section to give an overview of past changes to lead into the current one. Petersburg (talk) 02:08, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

What do you mean by "warn the reader"? --OuroborosCobra (talk) 04:46, 19 July 2011 (UTC)
I mean that using the term climate change in a generic sense first is followed by a specific sense immediately without warning or without a couple of sentences that would bridge the gap. Petersburg (talk) 23:53, 22 July 2011 (UTC)
Assuming you're correct (I haven't looked) why complain here about such a small matter? Just write a bit of glue if you think it will improve the article. Assertions of fact of course need good citation.NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 04:20, 23 July 2011 (UTC)
This is not a complaint but an observation. It is polite to bring up points on the talk page before editing. Petersburg (talk) 16:43, 23 July 2011 (UTC)
It is not a simple matter to introduce this change since the jump occurs within Causes. It would require a new section, under which the current climate change can be discussed. This is now described more or less in Human influences within Causes. Petersburg (talk) 16:52, 23 July 2011 (UTC)
Oh. Good point, I apologize. The greenhouse effect and greenhouse gas pages suffer a similar issue, where some contributions seem to be about the principles in general on any appropriate astronomical body, and other contributions drift to earth (maybe today or past). Meanwhile, global warming talks a lot about climate change not just temperature rise. So I take it back, you're quite right, it won't be simple to bring the most-read pages on this broad topic into a consistent whole. If you want to pursue it, perhaps one could make a list of the most read pages, their claimed focus (if any), their actual focus, and any proposed changes to the focus. But its a big undertaking. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 17:28, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

Outline structure

I am reviving the thread in Archive 3, topic #40, and I am adding on some related comments that recently appeared on my talk page (and am moving here with permission of all parties).

First the archived part

If you like my tweaks in the first two paragraphs the third one still needs cleaning up. Seems like the examples given could be merged with paragraph 2, and distributed between internal and external forcing mechanisms. Also, seems like the phrasing and order of presentment should track with the phrasing and order in the more detailed subsection that follow. Anyone? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 11:43, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Regarding that Your recent prior categorization of the first two paragraphs looks excellent, the internal versus external forcing subcategories quite suitable.
However, I don't think moving the examples to the first couple of sections would be appropriate:
Images should best be relatively nearby their corresponding text. They are now in all cases, with little adjustments I just made. However, if the third section had its examples moved elsewhere, it'd have a bunch of stubby sections, and overall I think we'd run out of space for images. Technically one could have images sometimes on both sides, but I don't think that (and consequent uneven word wrapping) would look as good.
Especially if assuming a new reader, some of the examples are relatively helpful to getting an idea of the kinds of physical evidence left behind, suitable for being in close proximity.
The examples seem not always particularly linkable to a single cause (alone). Indeed, even just moving some of the examples to under a particular cause section could be misleading, since climate change has been influenced by multiple factors at once, even if one is relatively predominant than others depending on the historical period being considered.
A weakness is perhaps the current "see also" section, as such is half trying to be a list of prior climate periods in part, yet imperfectly organized. Maybe that should be reorganized, perhaps with a new section created, albeit while avoiding duplicating too much of global warming, paleoclimatology, and geologic temperature record articles. Aside from that, though, personally I think this article's formatting is pretty decent right now. A hypothetical reader comes in, gets a general idea relatively quickly and efficiently, then moves on to one of the other articles more narrowly focused. Sokavik (talk) 15:47, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

And now more recent comments imported from my talk page

I noticed that you restructured a bunch of Climate change. However, in reading your version, I find it quite a bit more confusing and less to-the-point than the previous version. In particular, some of the sentence constructions are hard to follow, the paragraphs towards the beginning of the article don't seem to relate so well to each other, and I'm confused as to the need for the "internal" and "external" forcing mechanisms, especially since for many of those that are under "external", you have written that they should be under "internal". I'm generally disinclined to do a wholesale revert without talking to the person who made those edits, but the article looks in fairly rough shape compared to where it was before (and please don't take the criticism the wrong way - I do want to know what you were trying to improve so we can see if we can find a better way to do that). Awickert (talk) 01:58, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the approach you've taken. When I started I found the article to be in need of lots of help. I'll try to answer your specific points.
Sentence structure... Actually I changed very little of the text except to add the part about internal/external. Most of my edits were sorting out pre existing text. If some sentence's structure is bad, please edit it! Here are my edits, with a few improvements by P
Outline... I appreciate your comments and encourage you to refrain from wholesale revert, since there's been a lot of subsequent edits and at least one other editor likes my structural re arrangement [[14]]; Its true I erroneously argued that "volcanism" should be internal, however I was unwittingly basing that on an incomplete definition of the climate system, one that simply listed "lithosphere" as part of the climate system. It seems the lithospehere component is meant to refer to the surface, and volcanism is specifically defined by IPCC as being an external forcer. I learned that in the talk page discussion in this article. I appreciate the fact you read my text (thanks!) but I was dead wrong.
Paragraphs towards the beginning.... hard to comment, I don't know what you're referring to. In general, anytime one attempts to sort something out, be it papers or misc hardware or text, at a midpoint in the project my experience is that the big pile slowly turns into well organized piles with the leftovers still a bit jumbled up... and the funny thing is the jumbled up small pile starts to stand out more, since its side by side with tidy organization. So instead of just jumbling it all up once again to hide the disarray, you keep whittling away at the small pile of leftovers. If there's some bizarrely located paragraph, please help!
What I was trying to improve... its been awhile. If memory serves, I thought the prior articles arrangement of text about different forcing mechanisms to look a bit like the rock type "conglomerate". Lots of matrix, and hunks of different size and density in no particular order. In the current comments on the talk page, someone complains that the article is emphasizing contemporary Earth-bound global warming. Its my understanding the article is supposed to be about climate change on any planetary body in any geologic period. If that is the focus, then that lends impetus for an organization based on internal or external forcing mechanisms in general.
If you have specific ideas go for it, or just want to flag specific paragraphs that are a problem but aren't sure what to do about it (probably, neither am I since I left it that way) you can always start a section in the Talk page to call the attention of other editors working on this recently.
May I have your permission to move this entire subsection (including your comment) to the article's talk page? Maybe there's a way to un-archive the thread I linked to early in this reply comment, and if so I'd add this there NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 09:15, 20 July 2011 (UTC)
Yep, you may move all of this to the talk page of the article - it'd be more useful there.
What seemed strange to me about your new organization is that we have ocean variability sitting all by itself in a category; is there anything else that could go in "internal forcing mechanisms" to make it less lonely? I'd be happy to chip away at it. What in particular seemed less clear to me was the restructuring of the "causes" intro paragraph: I thought the old one (link above) was fairly clear, while the new one seems to wander quite a bit - I think the radiative forcing beginning could be better explained and connected to the forcing mechanisms that are discussed in the article.
I hadn't realized that your talk page comments would be archived so quickly, so I missed them. Unfortunately, we've been left with a mess because the climate folks decide to make their own definition of lithosphere (see the Wikipedia article for the dominant usage, which is what geologists use). What are we to do - ignore the source, or be inconsistent with the definition of the word? I see you've qualified it, and I'll try to think of something as well.
Well, I think I have a better sense of what's going on now, and I will take your permission to edit boldly (and of course tell you that my feelings won't be hurt if you change my edits boldly) and I think we will be able to make some improvements. Awickert (talk) 15:47, 20 July 2011 (UTC)
This is in reply to your statement that "the climate folks decide to make their own definition of lithosphere". At first I thought that too, based on Geology 101 in my undergrad. Further reading suggests vulcanism has its roots in the asthenosphere and not just the lithosphere..... armed with that info made me change my mind. I now think those climate folks do have a technically correct point when they split the hairs that way. If not, its still more useful since vulcanism makes irregular spikes in the climate system, as opposed to gradual day in day out type carbon cycle processes like forest biomass or permafrost uptake or outgassing.NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 17:41, 20 July 2011 (UTC)
Volcanism has many sources, but the melt generally is formed in the mantle and migrates up to the surface (thereby involving the lithosphere). And plate tectonics is entirely about the lithosphere. I think I see what they are saying though: they want to include interactions with the land surface. Anyway, I'm going to try to not get too hung up on it, and just edit a bit. Awickert (talk) 06:16, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from 155.198.222.17, 8 September 2011

Please add external link to:

Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London

Sesbailey (talk) 13:37, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

That link requires a login, so unless there's another link to the institute, it won't be added, whether it's a useful link or not. Mikenorton (talk) 14:27, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Graphics

I'm seeing lots of white space with zero text due to the number of images. Is it just my laptop? — ThePowerofX 10:10, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

More likely your browser. Looks OK here on a small screen in Iceweasel (basically same as firefox3).--IanOfNorwich (talk) 00:06, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

IPCC citations, Harv

I am going to be replacing the IPCC citations with the canonical form I have developed, and also converting citations with {{Harv}} templates. I suspect nearly all of the players here have seen what I have been doing at Global warming and other articles, so I reckon there is no surprise, and no objections. _ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:02, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

I am not sure if that is a good idea. {{Harv}} is not commonly used from what I have seen. I would prefer that the most often used system is used. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 09:27, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
And what other system would you propose? I am thoroughly opposed to named refs, for all kinds of reasons I won't go into at the moment except for saying that they are just way too difficult to work with. That named refs are "the most often used system" is, I think, most unfortunate, and a failing to be corrected. That named refs are most common is due to novice Wikipedians being directed to use refs, and then, when a citation needs to be repeated, to use a named ref; then they get used to the wet diaper. This has led to the kinds of problems which motivated me to develop the canonical citations, and to eschew named refs. _ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:59, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

The biggest "External Forcing Mechanism" is not listed.

On a long-term basis, the most significant force is the impact of comets and asteroids into the Earth. The most famous of these is the one that created the K-T boundary and the extinction of the dinosaurs. Whilst these are of course extremely rare, they are utterly traumatic when they occur.

What to do about this omission in this article? I suspect that all that we need is a new paragraph that states more-or-less the above, and then links to things like Alvarez hypothesis, Tunguska event and Extinction event. Is this going in the right direction? Old_Wombat (talk) 09:45, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Do you have a citation claiming that comet and asteroid impacts are the biggest external forcing? Because I rather doubt that that's true. - Parejkoj (talk) 12:07, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes I am sure that I can find one (in fact probably several), when I do, I shall post it/them for your reading pleasure. It is now well accepted by the mainstream that these are the biggest, in the sense of the most traumatic sudden events. Again I refer you to the above links, especially Alvarez hypothesis. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Old wombat (talk • contribs) 07:29, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

OK, quick Google search has found the below These are reasonably "balanced" in that they talk about the asteroid impact as merely one of the possibilities.

http://hoopermuseum.earthsci.carleton.ca/saleem/meteor.htm

http://paleobiology.si.edu/dinosaurs/info/everything/why_2.html

http://www.dinosaurfact.net/dinoextinct.php

http://www.unmuseum.org/deaddino.htm Old_Wombat (talk) 07:44, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

http://library.thinkquest.org/C005824/extinction.html

I checked the first few links. While all of them deal with the Alvarez hypothesis, none mentioned climate, and even less the role of the impact as a climate forcing. I think you are somewhat confused. A large-scale asteroid impact can initiate climate change, but it is not, in itself, a (significant) forcing. The initial forcing is mostly due to changes in effective albedo caused dust and soot, with longer term effects caused by changes in greenhouse gases as the result of large fires and disruptions to the biosphere. Most of the latter would be described as a feedback. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 08:34, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
I would tend to characterize asteroids and cometary impacts as climate "perturbations" rather than climate changers because it appears that such impacts alter the climate for a period of years to decades and then the climate resettles although it is unclear if it settles back to the same state as it was in before. Wikipedia itself mentions that the effects of an extinction level asteroid would remain for "years," not that it would cause a change in the climate. I imagine that depends on whether the asteroid/comet triggers other "feedbacks" that push the climate beyond "tipping points" - if such feedback loops and tipping points exist (which I imagine they do if the damage/change is large enough). I can see arguments being made in both directions on including asteroids & comets but aside from the literature and references already out there I don't find anything new on this - it's a decision people will have to make on what we have.174.49.84.214 (talk) 20:16, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
I don't recall that there have been in any major impacts recently (or are did all the government scientists destroy all the e-mails?), so the current bout of climate change, the anthropogenic warming, most likely is not due to an impact. This thesis seems to have about zero relevance to this article. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) 21:20, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
  1. ^ a b c Calvin, William H. (2008). Global fever: How to treat climate change. Cite error: The named reference "Calvin2008" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  2. ^ (Miller AJ, Cayan DR, Barnett TP, Oberhuber JM (1994) The 1976-77 climate shift of the Pacific Ocean. Oceanography 7: 21–26. http://meteora.ucsd.edu/~miller/papers/shift.html)
  3. ^ Recent Mauna Loa CO2
  4. ^ Recent Mauna Loa CO2
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