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Featured articleClimate change is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.
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February 28, 2006Peer reviewReviewed
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March 26, 2020Peer reviewReviewed
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In the news News items involving this article were featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "In the news" column on March 5, 2004, and October 11, 2018.
Current status: Featured article

Semi-protected edit request on 14 October 2024

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Different regions may experience better or worse growing conditions for crops as a result of climate change. Temperature, rainfall, and frost-free days, for example, are all increasing the length of the growing season in practically every state. Longer growing seasons can benefit and hurt food production. Some farmers may be able to plant longer-maturing crops or more crop cycles entirely, when others may require additional rainfall during a longer, hotter growing season. Summiaarif (talk) 01:47, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. JTP (talkcontribs) 02:28, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wildfires

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In the second paragraph of the lead, the second sentence states among other things that 'wildfires are becoming more common. ' Two sources are cited, one about wildfires. [1] While the idea behind the claim is correct, the claim itself is false. The IPCC source states that ' Climate change is playing an increasing role in determining wildfire regimes alongside human activity (medium confidence)'. This is not the same as wildfires becoming more common. Actually, two sentences later the IPCC states 'Global land area burned has declined in recent decades, mainly due to less burning in grasslands and savannahs (high confidence). ' Instead of using a blanket claim about all wildfires, I propose that we focus on the thing that the IPCC actually says. The source states that 'future climate variability [is] expected to enhance the risk and severity of wildfires in many biomes such as tropical rainforests (high confidence). ' This is a nice high confidence claim that illustrates the global warming-induced threat of wildfires.

Did you check the updated IPCC report, AR6 WG2 p.9: Observed increases in areas burned by wildfires have been attributed to human-induced climate change in some regions (medium to high confidence).? Bogazicili (talk) 15:17, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Good point, it's important to check their latest update. This particular statement is in agreement with their 2017 report, in that some regions have more (and/or more severe) wildfires because of climate change. The 2022 report does not give a blanket statement about wildfires in general. Panoramics (talk) 15:55, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
However, they do say that further global warming will increase wildfires. For example, at page 55 of the technical summary of AR6 WG2, it says 'At a global warming of 2°C with associated changes in precipitation global land area burned by wildfire is projected to increase by 35% (medium confidence).' Panoramics (talk) 16:26, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Carbon capture rates for CCS

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Hi everyone. I have a few proposals regarding statements on carbon capture and storage in this article. Here's my first proposal. We have an unsourced sentence that says:

Where energy production or CO2-intensive heavy industries continue to produce waste CO2, the gas can be captured and stored instead of released to the atmosphere.

I propose changing it to:

Where energy production or CO2-intensive heavy industries continue to produce waste CO2, technology can sometimes be used to capture and store most of the gas instead of releasing it to the atmosphere.[2]

As explained in the World Resources Institute source, "today’s carbon capture systems do not capture 100% of emissions. Most are designed to capture 90%, but reported capture rates are lower in some cases." Additionally, it is not economically or geologically feasible to deploy CCS at all or even most facilities. There are 2,400 coal power plants in the world and thus far we have managed to add CCS to four of them. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 21:41, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 20:30, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ IPCC SRCCL 2019, p. 45: "Climate change is playing an increasing role in determining wildfire regimes alongside human activity (medium confidence), with future climate variability expected to enhance the risk and severity of wildfires in many biomes such as tropical rainforests (high confidence)."
  2. ^ Lebling, Katie; Gangotra, Ankita; Hausker, Karl; Byrum, Zachary (2023-11-13). "7 Things to Know About Carbon Capture, Utilization and Sequestration". World Resources Institute.

Scale of CCS

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The article currently says:

Although its current use is limited in scale and expensive,[1] carbon capture and storage (CCS) may be able to play a significant role in limiting CO2 emissions by mid-century.[2]

I feel this sentence could use some attention for neutrality, to accurately reflect the expert consensus on realistic levels of expectations for CCS. The IEA describes "excessive expectations and reliance" on CCS and direct air capture as a common misconception.[3] By mid-century, it envisions CCS and direct air capture to mitigate 8% of energy sector emissions. The current pace of deployment of CCS is nowhere near meeting even that low target. The IPCC stated in 2022 that “implementation of CCS currently faces technological, economic, institutional, ecological-environmental and socio-cultural barriers.”[4]: 28 

The current sentence comes across as optimistic, in part because of the "Although..." construction which "can have the effect of calling the validity of the first statement into question while giving undue weight to the credibility of the second" (MOS:EDITORIAL). I'm not sure if the reader will understand what "currently limited in scale" means. CCS is currently capturing one one thousandth of anthropogenic GHG emissions.

I propose changing it to:

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) has a small but critical role in reducing emissions.[5][6]: 28  It is relatively expensive[7]: 38  and is in operation at only 44 plants as of 2024.[8]

(I will make the citation formatting consistent with article style). Courtesy pings to Dtetta and Femke who were involved in this sentence. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 01:05, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think this goes in the right direction: I don't think "significant" is really justified based on current thinking. I have three qualms with the new proposal.
  • The WRI source says it "may" have a small but critical role
  • The IPCC says "CCS is an option .. ", again not saying it is definitely critical
I further doubt people understand what share of power is produced by 44 plants (0.1%, 5%?). We could be more vague here, to avoid maintenance issues.
I showed this proposal to someone in my team to explain how Wikipedia discussion works, and he noted that the 42 of the 44 plants are CCUS plants (so frequently used for enhanced oil recovery), which makes this feel too optimistic. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:59, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for looking into this and for engaging your team.
  • The IPCC uses the word critical on p. 28: ...as well as in cement and chemicals production, where it is a critical mitigation option. Later on p. 104 it says that for industry, alternatives to CCS are difficult to represent in models therefore the need for CCS may be overestimated. This may be justification for using a softer phrasing. We could copy from the WRI since it's CC-BY and say "could have a critical but limited role" - would that work?
  • Regarding 44 plants and the share of power produced by them, it's even worse than you think. Most of these plants are not power plants; the number of power plants using CCS is 5 (until this year it wavered between 1 and 2, and then China went and opened 3). Maybe instead of giving a number of plants we should say that CCS currently captures one thousandth of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions - is this clearer?
  • Regarding the fact that CCS usually means enhanced oil recovery, yep. And this is yet another reason to doubt the idea of CCS playing a significant role in limiting CO2 emissions by mid-century.
Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 19:06, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Much better, yes! Only a prose quabble left: I'd try to avoid the word anthropogenic. Instead, we could leave it out or say "human-made". —Femke 🐦 (talk) 19:24, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Done, thanks! Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 20:25, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ IPCC SR15 Ch4 2018, pp. 326–327; Bednar, Obersteiner & Wagner 2019; European Commission, 28 November 2018, p. 188
  2. ^ Bui et al. 2018, p. 1068.
  3. ^ "Executive summary – The Oil and Gas Industry in Net Zero Transitions – Analysis". IEA. Retrieved 2024-09-19.Text was copied from this source, which is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
  4. ^ IPCC (2022). Shukla, P.R.; Skea, J.; Slade, R.; Al Khourdajie, A.; et al. (eds.). Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change (PDF). Contribution of Working Group III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press (In Press). doi:10.1017/9781009157926. ISBN 978-1-009-15792-6.
  5. ^ Lebling, Katie; Gangotra, Ankita; Hausker, Karl; Byrum, Zachary (2023-11-13). "7 Things to Know About Carbon Capture, Utilization and Sequestration". World Resources Institute. Text was copied from this source, which is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
  6. ^ IPCC (2022). Shukla, P.R.; Skea, J.; Slade, R.; Al Khourdajie, A.; et al. (eds.). Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change (PDF). Contribution of Working Group III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press (In Press). doi:10.1017/9781009157926. ISBN 978-1-009-15792-6.
  7. ^ IPCC (2022). Shukla, P.R.; Skea, J.; Slade, R.; Al Khourdajie, A.; et al. (eds.). Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change (PDF). Contribution of Working Group III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press (In Press). doi:10.1017/9781009157926. ISBN 978-1-009-15792-6.
  8. ^ "Global Status Report 2024". Global CCS Institute. pp. 57–58. Retrieved 2024-10-19. The report lists 50 facilities, of which 3 are direct air capture facilities and 3 are transport/storage facilities


Carbon sequestration section

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The Carbon sequestration section has contents that describe carbon dioxide removal and carbon capture and storage. These three concepts are often confused. The vast majority of carbon sequestration happens through spontaneous, non-anthropogenic processes that have been going on for hundreds of millions of years and will continue if we just leave the forests alone. Most of the content in this section is about human activity that aims to increase the amount of carbon that is sequestered, i.e. carbon dioxide removal. There is also some content on carbon capture and storage, which technically involves sequestration but is usually deployed in processes that desequester more carbon than they sequester.

I propose 1) Retitling this section as "Carbon dioxide removal" and 2) Moving the two sentences on CCS to the end of the first paragraph in the "Clean energy" section. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 20:11, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 20:36, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Paper about our work & suggestions

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A paper by Olivia Steiert came out on the work we do here, analysing how our group dynamics and our interpretation of policies and guidelines resulted in the current article.

The paper analyses whether we consider climate change as an event (vs process), and if we call it a crisis. It's somewhat critical of us doing neither sufficiently clearly. The paper doesn't give that many pointers how we could achieve this however. We've made progress over the last 6 years in changing the article to be more about climate change now, rather than climate change in the future, but I wonder if there is more to do here. (changing the crisis framing is a discussion I won't reopen). If there are no objections, I might send Steiert an email asking her to join us. In the meantime, I'm suggesting two changes in the lead

The current rise in global average temperature is primarily caused by humans burning fossil fuels since the Industrial Revolution -->

Amplified warming in the Arctic has contributed to thawing permafrost, retreat of glaciers and sea ice decline --> something in the present tense. I'd suggest leaving out polar amplification too. The quote doesn't fully capture this sentence anyway, and the source doesn't make the connection between polar amplification and these specific impacts. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 19:44, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for sharing this, interesting article. The study uses the May 2022 version of this article, I wonder what she'd think of the current version.
As for the sentence, The current rise in..., I believe we had added "since the Industrial Revolution" to clarify what is meant by current. Bogazicili (talk) 17:50, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Upon reflection, I'd like to keep since the Industrial Revolution. One of the criticism in the article is that we are vague in terms of our tenses. When things happened, are happening, or will happen. (Why is it so hard to arrive at a clear understanding of when climate change is happening and why do temporal constructions of this event vary so broadly)
since the Industrial Revolution gives precision and clarity to that sentence. I think it accurately describes rough timescale of human-induced climate change.
Other overview sources might say things like The industrial activities that our modern civilization depends upon have raised atmospheric carbon dioxide levels by nearly 50% since 1750[1]
If you click Industrial Revolution, it largely matches with above: Beginning in Great Britain, the Industrial Revolution spread to continental Europe and the United States, from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. Bogazicili (talk) 14:44, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My thinking here is that "since the industrial revolution" may be a bit misleading, in the sense that most warming really happened in the last 50 years, rather than over such a long period of time. I'm also appreciating the simplicity of the POTD description below, and would like to move away from a WP:seaofblue in terms of number of links. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:13, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's a very good point, but I think we should add that (in the last 50 years part) into the lead, instead of removing "since the Industrial Revolution" part. I know you value conciseness but I think this time precision beats conciseness.

Again, the study was up to May 2022 version of this article. This is the 31 May 2022 version of the article. I think the current version of the lead is much more precise, as we define since when the current climate change has been happening. Industrial activities (NASA source) started with industrial revolution. Of course it was limited in 18th century. In 19th century it was few countries (UK etc), with coal etc. With technology (oil etc) and more countries industrializing, warming increased in 20th century, which is your point.

Also note that many cumulative emissions graphs go back to 1750 Our World in Data. I'll check few more sources tomorrow, including WP:Tertiary sources, to see how they cover it. Bogazicili (talk) 17:38, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The prose quality of the first paragraph was definitely better in that version at least. I don't think "adding to greenhouse gases" is correct English. If I can find time, I might suggest a new version of our opening in a separate discussion section.
My guess is that many sources don't talk about "industrial revolution" in their first paragraph, instead only use that when they go into the weeds of the topic.
—Femke 🐦 (talk) 18:03, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Article housekeeping

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Thanks Femke for removing unused references and other tidying. I could pitch in to help with that kind of thing for an hour or two this week. What else needs to be done? Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 02:26, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Just to let you know, I intend to clean up after myself, but got sidetracked. For the areas I edited, some of the citations aren't to chapters but to overall IPCC reports. I'll be fixing those. Bogazicili (talk) 16:54, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Bogazicili!
In terms of housekeeping, I try to do the following every one/two years:
  • See if overcitation has slipped in, which is often a red flag for text-source integrity issues. One example is overcitation after "Smaller contributions come from black carbon, organic carbon from combustion of fossil fuels and biofuels, and from anthropogenic dust", which has 6 sources. (I you could help here!)
  • Check if jargon such as anthropogenic has slipped back in, and reword using plain English
  • Reread the article, and check if there is text-source integrity for surprising statements
  • Reread the article, and update numbers which need updating.
—Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:19, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Not that big of an issue, but the source formatting is also slightly messy and inconsistent in places (e.g. Harvnb is used for most things but not all, some things are missing various fields, etc). Sgubaldo (talk) 19:17, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Wow, that's a lot of work that you've been doing regularly! I'll take on the overcitation thing. Will indicate here when I've finished checking. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 19:42, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'll have much more time to work on this tomorrow (Sunday). I think I added most of the AR6 citations. I'll be fixing those tomorrow. And then I can also pitch in with the rest of the housekeeping. Bogazicili (talk) 17:18, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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Hello! This is to let editors know that File:1880- Global surface temperature - heat map animation - NASA SVS.webm, a featured picture used in this article, has been selected as the English Wikipedia's picture of the day (POTD) for November 12, 2024. A preview of the POTD is displayed below and can be edited at Template:POTD/2024-11-12. For the greater benefit of readers, any potential improvements or maintenance that could benefit the quality of this article should be done before its scheduled appearance on the Main Page. If you have any concerns, please place a message at Wikipedia talk:Picture of the day. Thank you!  — Amakuru (talk) 10:18, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Contemporary climate change involves rising global temperatures and significant shifts in Earth's weather patterns. Climate change is driven by emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane. Emissions come mostly from burning fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas), and also from agriculture, forest loss, cement production and steel making. Climate change causes sea level rise, glacial retreat and desertification, and intensifies heat waves, wildfires and tropical storms. These effects of climate change endanger food security, freshwater access and global health. Climate change can be limited by using low-carbon energy sources such as wind and solar energy, forestation, and shifts in agriculture. Adaptations such as coastline protection cannot by themselves avert the risk of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts. Limiting global warming in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement requires reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. This NASA animation shows global surface temperature changes from 1880 to 2023. The colour blue denotes cooler temperatures and red denotes warmer temperatures.

Video credit: NASA; visualization by Mark SubbaRao

Suggestions for the first sentence

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The first sentence is awkward, and I'd love to craft a new first sentence before we get to be on the main page. The "in common usage" is especially jarring, and may fall slightly foul of WP:REFER. I have two suggestions:

  1. Climate change encompasses global warming—Earth’s ongoing temperature increase—and its wider effects on Earth's climate.
  2. Current climate change is the ongoing rise in global average temperatures and the resulting effects on Earth's climate.

It's a common thing that more text gets bolded than the title alone, to clarify immediately to the reader what the topic is where there is some need for disambiguation. I think this may release us from the need to be a bit pedantic in the introduction. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 19:26, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]