Talk:Climate change mitigation/Archive 4

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Archive 4

Provide alternative term in first sentence?

From time to time I see people use the term "climate mitigation". I think it's a bit silly but perhaps it's here to stick? If so, should we add it to the first sentence (the redirect is already in place)?: "Climate change mitigation (or climate mitigation) consists of actions...". A colleague that I discussed this with wrote to me: ". If you google the two terms, you will find more hits for "climate change mitigation" than for "climate mitigation". But, the term "climate mitigation" is also used on the web by a number of respected institutions. Here are some examples:

• https://www.siwi.org/latest/why-water-is-crucial-to-climate-mitigation/
• https://www.wri.org/insights/5-strategies-achieve-climate-mitigation-and-adaptation-simultaneously
• https://www.giz.de/en/worldwide/28499.html
• https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/Departmental-Papers-Policy-Papers/Issues/2020/09/16/EU-Climate-Mitigation-Policy-49639
• https://www.bmwi.de/Redaktion/EN/Publikationen/technologies-and-services-for-climate-mitigation-and-adaptation-from-germany.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=2" EMsmile (talk) 13:34, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

And the same for "climate adaptation" where the same colleague wrote to me: "The use of the term "Climate Adaptation" seem even less problematic to me. If you google it, you will find more hits for "climate adaptation" than for "climate change adaptation". Climate adaptation is for example used on the following web pages:

• https://climate-adapt.eea.europa.eu/
• https://www.unep.org/explore-topics/climate-action/what-we-do/climate-adaptation
• https://www.wri.org/insights/key-points-climate-adaptation-new-ipcc-report
• https://www.cas2021.com/ EMsmile (talk) 13:34, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Makes sense. Femke (talk) 11:03, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Structure of the article and updating with IPCC AR6 WG3 report

Hello Sylvia.Noralez,

I was about to add a sentence or 2 from https://report.ipcc.ch/ar6wg3/pdf/IPCC_AR6_WGIII_FinalDraft_TechnicalSummary.pdf about pathways and got as far as a new section heading when I noticed your assignment above and decided to leave it to you if you wish. Your timing is very good with the report from https://report.ipcc.ch/ar6wg3/ just come out. As this is a big subject if you need any advice, for example about the structure of the article please ask here or at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Climate change But if only pages 120 and 121 of the tech summary above are relevant to your course you may decide to leave pathways to someone else and dig deeper into the full report for more detail on "Policies that increase the political access and participation of women, racialised, and marginalised groups, increase the democratic impetus for climate action". Hope you enjoy your course.

Chidgk1 (talk) 07:12, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Incorrect linkage

1. Under Fossil fuel substitution, The word Secured contains an incorrect link which takes you to a law enforcement wiki media page. I will be removing the incorrect link. ENPEREZ90 (talk) 22:38, 20 April 2022 (UTC) PEREZUCSD (talk) 15:34, 20 April 2022 (UTC). ENPEREZ90 (talk) 22:38, 20 April 2022 (UTC) Bergmanucsd (talk) 15:34, 20 April 2022 (UTC).

File:Incorrect linkage

2. Replacing incorrect linkage. The current link reverts to the industrial revolution and not the pre-industrial era like the article mentions. ENPEREZ90 (talk) 23:15, 20 April 2022 (UTC) PEREZUCSD (talk) 16:14, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Up to date findings.

Under the climate Change by country, in terms of the United States, The paragraph requires updates due to the fact that the Global warming solutions act of 2006 was again extended and strengthened for another decade in 2016. The state of California has raised its goal for green house emissions to 40% below 1990 level by 2030. ENPEREZ90 (talk) 23:36, 20 April 2022 (UTC) PEREZUCSD (talk) 16:36, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Removed Further reading section

I've removed the further reading section as I think it's not useful to have an arbitrary listing here on a topic that changes so fast. Also, the books tend to be focused on the U.S. and Europe. If they're important they should be used for inline citations instead.

• Paul Hawken (2021). Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation. Penguin Books.
• National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2019) Negative Emissions Technologies and Reliable Sequestration: A Research Agenda.
• E McGaughey, M Lawrence and Common Wealth, 'The Green Recovery Act 2020', a proposed United Kingdom law, and pdf
• Bernie Sanders, Green New Deal (2019) proposal in the United States
• Green New Deal for Europe (2019) Edition II, foreword by Ann Pettifor and Bill McKibben EMsmile (talk) 10:20, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
• Specifically describing different greenhouse gases seems to be unnecessary in the topic of mitigation. It could be eliminate to only CO2 since this is the main greenhouse gases contribute to climate change. Xiaojing Hu (talk) 06:45, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Improvements needed

Hello Shoefly

While you are certainly right that the article needs a lot of improvement I doubt Wikipedia:WikiProject Council would be able to find anyone more expert than you to fix the low quality structure. Hope you might have time to fix it. If you have any questions which need a subject expert please ask as there are plenty at Wikipedia:WikiProject Climate change. Also EMsmile is experienced with fixing structure if you want a second opinion before making changes.

Not quite sure what you mean by "fact-opinion mixture". If you are saying there are opinions not backed up by cites please could you tag the sentences with "citation needed" or "original research" or "opinion". For the sections you tagged "opinion" I am not quite sure which sentence(s) you are referring to - could you move the tags?

By "overloaded ambition and content" do you mean that some info should be in more detailed articles rather than here?

Re writing style we should maybe send it to the guild of copy editors once the other problems are fixed.

Chidgk1 (talk) 18:27, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

Carbon dioxide is one of the greenhouse gases, so the first sentence on second paragraph needs improvement. Xiaojing Hu (talk) 06:45, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

I agree. Instead of "Fossil fuels emit most carbon dioxide(CO2) and greenhouse gas as a whole.", it should be changed to "Fossil fuels emit most greenhouse gas as a whole, such as carbon dioxide(CO2). Zeyuanfu1 (talk) 05:57, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Disrupting the Status Quo- Social Justice in Technical and Professional Com

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 18 January 2022 and 2 May 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Sylvia.Noralez (article contribs).

Wiki Education assignment: Introduction to Policy Analysis

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 28 March 2022 and 30 May 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Jime7878, ENPEREZ90, Xiaojing Hu (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Xiaojing Hu, Zeyuanfu1.

How to shorten the article

I see there is a comment at the top of the article that it is too long. Sorry I don't have time but ways to shorten it could include:

Move some stuff to Climate change mitigation scenarios which is very short.

Move stuff to the main articles.

Delete all old stuff e.g. pre-2010.

Summarise, summarise, summarise.

I have just moved this unsigned and undated comment to the end of the talk page because I wanted to say the same thing: This article is very long (93 kB (14561 words) "readable prose size"). Is there any appetite to work collaboratively on shortening it? E.g. I would look for content that could be moved to sub-articles. EMsmile (talk) 10:57, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Neutrality in sentence

Under the "Energy conservation and efficiency" heading you talk about how,"improved energy efficiency could reduce the world's energy needs in 2050 by one third, and help control global emissions of greenhouse gases". I think that claims like this make the article seem bias towards the subject. The article should remain at a neutral state. J2ortiz (talk) 06:59, 26 April 2022 (UTC) J2ortiz

I don't understand what you mean. This sentence seems perfectly valid to me: "improved energy efficiency could reduce the world's energy needs in 2050 by one third, and help control global emissions of greenhouse gases" EMsmile (talk) 10:58, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Explain linkages with SDGs?

I've just removed this sentence from the section on buildings because I found it too vague and broad: "80% - 90% of their emissions can be cut while helping to achieve other Sustainable Development Goals." The reference given was IPCC AR6 WG III technical summary. Searching there for "sustainable development goals" does bring up a few statements, so we could perhaps clarify the linkage. Perhaps in a new sub-section under Society and Culture, global goals? EMsmile (talk) 11:15, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

Explanation/discussion of large edit

I just made a large edit to the article, which was reverted by User:NewsAndEventsGuy.

I know it's a lot of added text and references, but it contains a lot of essential info and is worth it. Instead of removing the entire thing or anything similar, I suggest that we discuss specific parts of it if you object to them and remove/shorten things from the post-expanded state of the article.

I'm pretty much done with the article after this edit which I could also have done through many small edits throughout multiple months so I think that now (but only now after the expansion) does the article provide sufficient info about (picture of) climate change mitigation. I tried to keep things as short as possible and many essential things simply were missing, some of the things I added as well as the prior content can probably shortened significantly. Basically, only now would I think of the article to be of version quality "1.0", shortening it (e.g. via moving content to subarticles like it was done for Effects of climate change) makes a lot of sense, but only after the essential topics and info are included.

For example, often many references are used where fewer would suffice too, the references make up a lot of the size in terms of bytes. I also didn't remove two references that a filter complained about so far: two references with a DOI starting with "10.4018" (I thought these two references were of sufficient quality and there are also other sources that state the same for the 2nd ref).

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An issue with climate change mitigation is that it's a complex topic and it's important we don't oversimplify it or rather exclude some of the most basic info. Especially for information about climate change mitigation in specific, an important subject, it's crucial that we maintain high quality, don't leave out major topics and aren't entirely outdated. Some of this is partly somewhat related to this, especially "Decision makers need constantly updated evidence synthesis". It's really important that the public can get high-quality information on this and educate themselves on CCM, not just because it doesn't make sense to delay inclusion of relevant content until the whole thing is over & decided. An important policy is WP:NOTPAPER and there's no requirement for edits to be small, especially when lots of basic info is missing.

To give a few examples of what I mean with basic info that was missing:

info about the "carbon budget",

about embedded emissions/carbon leakage

brief info on limitations on carbon pricing (why any kind of it isn't the entire solution to CC)

info on use of environmental revenues for CCM

a mention/wikilink to Agrivoltaics & Floating solar

the concept of "climate clubs"

mention of renewable heat

brief info on the purpose on climate change mitigation

degrowth (post-GDP economics)

an image showing emissions by region & industry

IPCC 6th assessment report

I was very surprised how much of this could remain missing for so long. Most or all of the added content is not less notable or longer than much of the content already included (example: Land-rights are important but are not the only measure against deforestation with the section previously nearly indicating so and missing "Addressing drivers of deforestation").

Headers can help a lot with navigation and readability. If there are issues with the TOC / navigation or with easily seeing changes in the diff, I'd suggest code changes and have always advocated to put up a banner for more volunteer developers and more focus on the many MediaWiki code issues.

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I already did some copyediting afterwards like merging a duplicate reforestation section and correcting a few typos. The section "Legal action" for example can probably get shortened by much too and section "Urban planning" better merge with other sections (deduplicate content). I will also try to shorten the content added to "Economic policy". And I'll try to shorten it further. I'd like to undo the revert and copyedit. Climate change mitigation is inherently a partly/somewhat recent issue as things are and need to be taking up pace now – hence there's also more content/sources and the article shouldn't be outdated, it's contemporary history and pointing to WP:Recentism makes as much sense as for any recent event articles. As for Wp:Notjournal: it was written in plain terms and concepts that can be understood by any literate reader of Wikipedia, maybe there were few exceptions to this which I'll try to copyedit. In terms of keeping the article well-readable, I think we should keep sections short, create subsections, keep paragraphs short and have a short summary at the top of every main section, people can easily skip sections they're not interested in too.

Please let us or me know what you think / if there are any specific content you'd like to be changed or improvements that should be made (note that you could always edit it directly afterwards anyway; issues could then be discussed here). Prototyperspective (talk) 12:38, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for starting a talk thread. I reverted because you dropped a mountain on our heads, and that does not make for good WP:CONSENSUS process. Some folks feel that the climate crisis is a true emergency and they may have a point. Editing Wikipedia, however, is not. Suggest you make the most important one or two tweaks and wait a few days, then do another. That will give others a chance to keep up.

(paragraph break)

Re sourcing.... Check out your list of contribs just to articles. It's approaching 100% additions of the latest and greatest from Science Magazine. Except for the literature reviews, most of Science reports original research, which we deem to be WP:PRIMARY sources. The best science articles on Wikipedia rely far more heavily on WP:SECONDARY or WP:TERTIARY sources. In short, I think you have it backwards. You're choosing a mostly primary source to push into our articles, instead of adopting an article and working through it to make it better, searching for secondary/tertiary sources first to accomplish that.

(paragraph break)

After posting my two comments above, which I have now combined, I realized there is a similar conversation underway at User_talk:Prototyperspective#Research_literature_is_very_large

NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 13:48, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

On general principle, the burden is on the editor wanting to post content, to justify its inclusion. This principle implies that huge and varied additions should generally not be made, and are properly reverted. A stepwise approach will save everyone a lot of time in the long run. —RCraig09 (talk) 14:23, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

I agree with NewsAndEventsGuy and RCraig09. Why would you make such a huge edit in one go? It makes it nearly impossible for all the other page watchers and editors to follow your thought process. I suggest you go back and make smaller edits and see how other editors react to those. I don't understand why you didn't do that in the first place? Also, you pointed out a lot of "missing" content. Some of that was probably not really missing but is available in sub-articles. Perhaps the linkage or short summaries of the sub-article was not good enough but not every single topic related to climate change needs to be spelled out in this mitigation article (which is already too long anyway, see previous discussion on this talk page). EMsmile (talk) 14:57, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

@NewsAndEventsGuy: This edit wasn't large because I feel like the climate crisis is a true emergency or anything of that sorts, but because lots of basic essential core information missing in the article that has accumulated and I managed to work it off now. I didn't think abut whether small-scale changes are preferred or not or could get checked better this way, so that's a good point. I have added a fraction of the changes starting from the top of the article.

My additions are not "approaching 100% additions of the latest and greatest from Science Magazine" at all. The journal papers appear in currently isn't even really part of my elaborate selection-process which I transparently outlined elsewhere. I don't understand why it would appear so either as there's at least as many papers from Nature...and that's basically because those two publishers are the two most prestigious...which also reflects in all of the scientific paper references in Wikipedia (see here). And scientific papers are WP:RS and at least as good as sources as the extensively used journalistic news articles. Most sources added to the article were not from the year in science articles and were for content very much missing in the article.

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@RCraig09: Alright, personally I prefer large all-at-once edits because it's not so intermixed with minor cosmetic edits that e.g. add reference-template parameters so I didn't think this was preferred. Will do so.

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@EMsmile: See above for why. Further reasons include that working off all the improvements to this article at once is more time-efficient and I'm severely lacking time because there's lots of work to do on Wikipedia. "Because I didn't have the time" isn't the reason though: it's because I didn't think that smaller changes are preferred and it's an exception that I find an article that lack this much critically core info and topics, so it's rather specific to this article and I found it surprising how it could miss so much info (why nobody else added it before despite the topic being arguably important).

Very little of that was contained in subarticles as far as I could tell and those also often weren't linked before. This is a good consideration but I don't think it applies here for most of the content. 100% agree that "not every single topic related to climate change needs to be spelled out" but the article was missing some of the most basic info, like the purpose of the whole thing. To give you an example of how brief info is kept: agrivoltaics and floating solar were just added as plain wikilinks, I think one word for each of these is warranted.

If one excludes info from an article for making it shorter if that's preferred imo one can't just say "now new content is added" no matter how due/warranted it is instead of excluding content that is not notable (in the given level of detail). I'd say if we start shortening the article, it would be good to start somewhere where basically all the core topics and info is included. Much of the byte-size is actually made up just of references, not the actual content. I also suggested moving some content to subarticles if needed, but afaik that also didn't usually/always start from the subarticles rather than the main Effects of climate change article.

Note: I was still busy with some copyediting that includes some shortening, I'd revisit the article and keep improving my additions.

So tl;dr: I exactly agree with you there except that I don't think this applies to the content which I added only some of which could be substantially shortened, also I tried to substantially increase the readability by adding subsections/headers and trying to make every section have a brief summary introduction at its top. Prototyperspective (talk) 22:19, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

Readable prose

Since this is a sprawling discussion, I thought a sub-subheading would help. See WP:SIZESPLIT, which says readable prose >100k bytes should "almost certainly" be split, and recommends usally doing that when its >60k bytes. Using WP:Prosesize on the current version, which includes Proto's raw byte addition >20k bytes, the readable prose is 96K. In my view, we need to pay more attention to sub articles. See WP:SPINOFF, and keep these top meta-articles brief, engaging, and easy for nonnerds to enjoy at first reading. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 23:01, 13 June 2022 (UTC) NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 23:01, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

I agree with you (NewsAndEventsGuy]) 100%. It baffles me why the sub-articles in the climate change realm are often still so poor. The only great one is climate change, everything below that needs a lot of further work... The article climate change mitigation is far too long now. I don't understand why you, Prototyperspective, made another huge edit (+22,816 bytes added in one go) here. Please don't do that! It adds only marginally more time to hit "publish" after e.g. adding a new paragraph, why do you insist to add 10 paragraphs at once and only then hit publish? I don't get it. I am tempted to revert this one again as I find it very hard to look at all the new additions in one go. I don't want to upset you though. But can you please stop making such huge changes in one go? It's not too much to ask to hit publish more often. It will also help you in case your internet connection becomes unstable or in case someone else wants to edit the article at the same time as you. EMsmile (talk) 13:37, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

Let's discuss the structure and relationship with sub-articles

This was the structure before the recent big edits, I've added comments below in brackets or after an arrow:

Possible new 1: Definition and terminology (I think it would be good to have a definition of the term "mitigation" here).

1 Goals of stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations  (should the word "mitigation" appear here? Goals of mitigation?)
1.1Needed emissions cuts
1.2Carbon reduction
1.3Calculations
1.4Effects

2 Drivers of global warming (wondering if this ought to be shortened and the relevant sub-articles be referred to? Relevant other articles Climate change#Drivers of recent temperature rise and Attribution of recent climate change)
2.1By sectors and countries --> sub-article is greenhouse gas emissions
2.2By greenhouse gas --> sub-article is greenhouse gas emissions

3Fossil fuel substitution --> sub-article is Fossil fuel phase-out
3.1Low-carbon energy sources

4Energy efficiency and non-fossil fuel storage (there are sub-articles for this, so it can be short!: efficient energy use, energy storage)
4.1Super grids
4.2Smart grid and load management
4.3Energy conservation and efficiency
4.4Research and development

5Carbon sinks and removal (consider sub-article which is carbon capture and storage and carbon sequestration
5.1Carbon storage in land ecosystems
5.2Carbon storage in water ecosystems
5.3Synthetic carbon dioxide removal

6Geoengineering (sub-article exists)

7Decarbonization by sector ---> sub-article exists and is called Low-carbon economy
7.1Transport
7.2Energy --> sub-article is Energy transition
7.3Agriculture --> sub-article is climate-smart agriculture
7.4Urban planning

8Governmental action --> sub-article is climate policy?
8.1Paris agreement and Kyoto Protocol
8.2Additional commitments
8.3Carbon pricing
8.4Montreal protocol
8.5Enaction of a state of emergency
8.6Costs and benefits
8.7Barriers to implementation
8.8Geopoliticial impacts

9Policies by country --> sub-article is climate policy?
9.1Middle and high-income countries
9.2Low and middle income countries
9.3Carbon neutral and carbon negative countries

10Legal action --> sub-article is climate justice?
10.1Requirements
10.2Of countries
10.3Of companies

11Societal responses  --> sub-article? Isn't the stuff above also "societal"?
11.1Investment
11.2Funding
11.3Economics
11.4Research
11.5Population planning
11.6Lifestyle and behavior
11.7Activism
11.8Media, education and arts

12 Overviews, integration and comparisons of measures
12.1 Mitigation pathways
12.2 Shape of mitigation
12.3 Tracking and monitoring

The structure after the recent additions:

1Goals of stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations
1.1Needed emissions cuts
1.2Carbon reduction
1.3Calculations
1.4Effects
2Drivers of global warming
2.1By sectors and countries
2.2By greenhouse gas
2.3By other characteristics --> new
3Fossil fuel substitution
3.1Unextractable fossil fuels
3.2Low-carbon energy sources --> new

(the rest is the same if I saw it right)

I think the article needs to be radically shrunk down. We need to give people a summary overview and then point them to the relevant sub-articles. "Less is more" in this case! EMsmile (talk) 13:54, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

Those are constructive notes and I agree that it should be brief in general. However only as brief as possible and not more and with at least as much focus paid to make things well-readable and well-navigable. Having proper headers and the content being structured is at least as important as the size imo as you can then easily see what a section is about just by the header and skip it or jump to it.

Basically, let's ask ourselves why we want the article to be short and then also address these reasons directly...such as making sure the article is readable and interesting to readers regardless, while also shortening it wherever it's possible and due.

I doubt most readers usually read entire articles (there's many long ones and this doesn't refer to noncomplex or stub-class topic articles) instead of:

• jumping/skipping (via TOC) and/or
• skimming through the entire article that stops/skips at specific parts of it depending on the header or image or bold text or short bulletpoints

I think most sections can be shortened somewhat but not by much in most cases if you look into it. I intended to get to condensing things a bit after adding the last major expansion, I think it's easier to work with all the info being there and then shortening it, if I had more than one person's time I may have done that right away.

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I think the most likely places where one can substantially condense or trim things is sections that are long without subsections, like "Agriculture" and "Urban planning". Then section "Policies by country" should probably not contain much content but only link to the relevant subarticles. Concrete examples of "Legal action" could be trimmed (subsections "Of countries" and "Of companies"...and note that many of these texts were just long barely readable texts without subheaders before I added some more structure). Moreover, the references take up a lot of the byte-size, often it wasn't actually much of text but lots of references – in some cases some of these could be trimmed off as long as there are no coding changes that somehow alter how references are displayed/loaded.

Other than that e.g. the sub-article for Agriculture isn't "Climate-smart agriculture", that's just an aspect of it. While "Attribution of recent climate change" is a good sub-article, that article is not about mitigation but about attribution (useful for things like compensations and understanding mechanistic causes etc). Another example is that "Low-carbon economy" is more about an end-state low-carbon economy rather than decarbonization of the economy (and also wouldn't take other GHGs into account). Prototyperspective (talk) 11:08, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

One of the reasons for wanting to keep the article a "normal" length (not overly long) is to avoid repeating the same content across several articles. This would be inefficient as we would have to maintain and update the same content in several places. The article is currently about twice the length that it should be (95 kB, compared with 53 kB which is the length of climate change). EMsmile (talk) 14:16, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

Legal action section

For example the section on "legal action" could likely be shortened. As per this edit, content was recently copied from climate justice. Why copy that content? I think we rather have a few summary style sentences and otherwise refer the reader across to climate justice and climate litigation. The same would apply to the other sections (see my listing above where I've indicated suitable sub-articles). It might help to go through this section by section which is why I have now created a sub-heading called "legal action section". EMsmile (talk) 14:16, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

Compare with structure of climate change adaptation

It might help us to compare this article with the one on climate change adaptation which is much better. It is succinct and fairly clear and 31 kB in length. This is its structure (only showing Level 1 headings here):

1 International policy context
2 Purposes
3 Categories of adaptation actions
4 Structural and physical adaptation options
5 Social adaptation options
6 Institutional adaptation options
7 Costs
8 By country
9 By city EMsmile (talk) 21:35, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

No criticism?

The entire article makes exactly zero mentions of any criticism raised to any and all of the policies discussed nor does it directly link to any other page that expresses criticism or disagreement with the various policies discussed in this article. Many of the things mentioned in this page have received ample criticism from both sides but this page makes no mention of any criticism. Such a long and detailed article must have a criticism section in order to be neutral, without it the reader is left to believe all things discussed here are absolute undisputable and non controversial truths when that couldn't be further from the truth.

tl;dr need a criticism section or at least a link to criticism of the policies discussed because many of them are highly controversial and the article makes no mention of that 37.162.108.133 (talk) 23:22, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

Such a long and detailed article must have a criticism section No. See WP:CSECTION.

If you have sources for "criticism", whatever that is supposed to entail, bring them. (But no climate-change-denying tinfoil hatters.) Without sources, there is nothing we can do. --Hob Gadling (talk) 07:31, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

While we avoid criticism sections, it could be appropriate to interweave more criticism throughout the article. You're free to do that - this is an article that anyone can edit. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 05:49, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

Culling content from the section "societal response"

I think the section on "societal response" is far too detailed and has become a place where just about anything about climate change can just be dumped. I plan to condense this and to move things to relevant sub-articles. For example, I think this section on "Fiction and culture" does not fit. I recommend that it be moved to a relevant sub-article but which one? Maybe to Politics of climate change or climate movement or Public opinion on climate change?

Fiction and culture

While there are some novels of climate fiction that are based on scientific projections of climate change impacts, some observers have wondered why cinema appears to "ignore" climate change. Culture – which includes norms, prevailing paradigms of thinking or zeitgeist, lifestyles, art, elements of identity and consumption-patterns – may be an important factor of climate change mitigation. A study suggests that the historical and ongoing "carbon lock-in" is an outcome of the "pervasive failure in industrial, modern societies to imagine desirable ways of living that are neither wedded to the carbon economy nor dependent on narratives of progress reliant on perpetual economic growth" in terms of GDP-growth. EMsmile (talk) 01:20, 12 November 2022 (UTC)

References

EMsmile (talk) 01:20, 12 November 2022 (UTC)

Taking a break now from editing this article until early next week. Let me know if you think I am generally on the right track here or if you have concerns about my approach? Page size still way too large: 86 kB readable prose. Should get it down to 40-60 kB, I would say. EMsmile (talk) 01:58, 12 November 2022 (UTC)

I appreciate the hard work you're doing but like I was mentioning above, I would've structured things differently. I thought having a section for demand would've helped and the IPCC report does have a section for demand, but I could be wrong. I don't think mitigation measures being 'land-based' is relevant enough to be at the section level but we could divide the subsections of carbon sequestration by land ecosystems and water ecosystems because then it does become relevant.

As for the paragraph that was about fiction and culture, it hardly said anything substantial and that could've just been summarized in fewer sentences. JustBeCool (talk) 01:06, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

If that paragraph says hardly anything substantial then why even try to summarise it? But if you want, go ahead and propose a summary. Keeping in my what User:Clayoquot said further down below though (I tend to agree with that suggestion): "Cut the Activism section. Activism is not mitigation - it's people talking about mitigation. Cut the Media, education, and arts section. This too is people talking about mitigation." EMsmile (talk) 08:15, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

I culled the section on education systems

I took out this section on education systems as I felt it didn't fit, was going into too much details, too focused on just wealthy countries / the United States. Should I move it to a sub-article - if yes which one?

Extended content

Societal responses Education systems Education about climate change and training of skills relevant to mitigation could be important for effective mitigation of climate change. As economies may partly start to orient towards sustainability, the number of "green jobs" may increase while other jobs are being lost. Such changes may make it more beneficial to develop education systems and establish ways of retraining. Increased expertise and awareness as well as a larger work-force may also facilitate further mitigation. Effectiveness of government regulation, a skilled work force and public awareness may be determinants of "mitigative capacity". Strengthening climate education has been described as one of six social tipping interventions that supports and amplifies norms and values and can quickly inspire behavior change among individuals and their cohorts.

References

EMsmile (talk) 12:47, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

A section for demand?

Hi User:JustBeCool, you wrote: "I thought having a section for demand would've helped and the IPCC report does have a section for demand, but I could be wrong." What exactly do you mean by demand? Do you mean energy efficiency (which we have in the article), do you mean greenhouse gas emissions reductions (which we also have), do you mean population control (which we may or may not have in the article, see discussion above). This is not clear to me. Note in the IPCC report at the main level, "demand" is mentioned in this chapter heading of Chapter 5 "Demand, services and social aspects of mitigation" and it's probably also in these chapters: 8 Urban systems and other settlements, 9 Buildings, 10 Transport, 11 Industry. I am just looking at chapter 5 now (https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGIII_Chapter_05.pdf) and there's some good content there that we can pull out. E.g. from the executive summary: "To enhance well-being, people demand 6 services and not primary energy and physical resources per se. Focusing on demand for services and 7 the different social and political roles people play broadens the participation in climate action." EMsmile (talk) 08:31, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

I've added a section on demand now. See new table of content. EMsmile (talk) 12:54, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

Land based and water based options (getting the weighting right)

Hi User:JustBeCool I disagree with the change you made here. Your justification was "I would've structured things differently. I thought having a section for demand would've helped and the IPCC report does have a section for demand, but I could be wrong. I don't think mitigation measures being 'land-based' is relevant enough to be at the section level but we could divide the subsections of carbon sequestration by land ecosystems and water ecosystems because then it does become relevant". With that edit you basically reverted my edit from last Friday and put it back to how it was. Rather than we reverting that again, let's see if we can find consensus. The IPCC report makes it very clear that land-based mitigation options are more dominant than water-based ones. See their chapter "Agriculture, Forestry, and Other Land Uses (AFOLU)". Where in the IPCC report do you see a high level chapter on water-base systems? And the wetlands and coastal areas can be lumped in with land-based systems (you can't have wetlands and costs without lands). Some people used to talk about oceans being a carbon sink but that is basically wishful thinking: I mean it does take up carbon but this leads to ocean acidification so this is not a mitigation option based on the definition of mitigation which is "Climate change mitigation consist of human actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and or to enhance carbon sinks that absorb greenhouse gases from the atmosphere". I've recently done a lot of work on the article ocean storage of carbon dioxide to make that clearer. Storage does not equal mitigation. So your proposed structure gives the so called "Carbon storage in water ecosystems" far too much weight. It is not following WP:DUE.EMsmile (talk) 08:24, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

I've reworked the section on "carbon dioxide removal" now accordingly. Some of it is still messy and overlaps too much with sub-articles. Still requires further work. EMsmile (talk) 12:55, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

Taking a break to allow people to catch up and comment

I've spent a few more hours working on this article today. Mainly re-arranging, adding content from the IPCC AR 6 WG III report, following the IPCC report's structure a bit more, moving content to sub-articles, deleting outdated content. The article size is now 75 kB. I still see a lot of potential for improving, streamlining, culling and condensing in various sections. The lead also needs further work of course (see suggestions by User:Clayqot above). I'll take a break now for a couple of days in order to let my changes sink in a bit and to collect feedback from others. Do you think I am more or less on the right track here? If any concerns or further suggestions please let me know. Also if you have time to help with the culling/condensing/moving please go ahead. EMsmile (talk) 12:59, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

Family planning section cut from article

I have removed the following because it is based entirely on primary sources (see WP:PRIMARY) and is also undue weight. One of the cited sources even points out that this topic is given little weight in the literature: "Since 1997, there have been more than 200 articles published in Nature and Science on climate mitigation, but just four of those discussed social justice, and only two considered population."[1] Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 05:44, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

Take one look at the citations below and you can plainly see that the section is not "based entirely on primary sources".--C.J. Griffin (talk) 15:36, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

Extended content

Family planning Main article: Human population planning Worldwide population growth is considered as a challenge for climate change mitigation. Proposed measures include an improved access to family planning and access of women to education and economic opportunities. Targeting natalistic politics involves cultural, ethical and societal issues. Various religions discourage or prohibit some or all forms of birth control. In a 2021 paper scholars demonstrate that "human population has been mostly ignored with regard to climate policy" and attribute this to the taboo nature of the issue given its association with population policies of the past, including forced sterilization campaigns and China's one-child policy. They take a different approach and argue that population policies can both advance social justice (such as by abolishing child marriage, expanding family planning services and reforms that improve education for women and girls) while at the same time mitigating the human impact on the climate and the earth system. They say that while overconsumption by the world's wealthy is responsible for 90% of GHG emissions, which can be redressed through eco-taxes, carbon pricing and other policies, the global human population of 7.7 billion contributes to climate change in myriad ways, including the consumption of natural resources and GHG emissions from transportation. In 2022, a group of scientists urged families around the world to have no more than one child as part of the transformative changes needed to mitigate both climate change and biodiversity loss.

I also had a problem with this section but I do think it needs to be included in some form somewhere. Otherwise it's the white elephant in the room, isn't it? I mean we all know that population degrowth would help immensely with climate change but nobody wants to say it for fear of seeming to blame those countries with currently larger families for a problem that they haven't caused? Even if little weight is given to it in the literature, it does deserve to be mentioned at least in a small section, I would say. And in any case, I feel that this topic is actually often mentioned in newspaper articles. I've fairly often seen the line of argument: keep girls in school longer, given them more education, this will result in delaying the birth of their first child, spacing out the births results in lower children per family and thus less pressure on natural resources eventually. I don't have specific publications at my fingertips but I think they would be easy to track down. So I don't think this issue should be completely removed. EMsmile (talk) 08:08, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

I am looking to see if Chapter 5 of the IPCC report WG III says much about population growth and family planning. See Chapter 5: Demand, services and social aspects of mitigation. It talks about reduction in demand but says little about family planning. My search so far only brings up this sentence: "Also, advances in female education and reproductive health, especially voluntary family planning, can contribute greatly to reducing world population growth". It cites this publication "Dodson, J. C., P. Dérer, P. Cafaro, and F. Götmark, 2020: Population growth and climate 15 change: Addressing the overlooked threat multiplier. Sci. Total Environ., 748, 141346, 16 doi:10.1016/J.SCITOTENV.2020.141346." It's interesting, I think the IPCC report is very careful to not highlight very much the potential that curbing population growth could have. There must be good reasons for that. It does mention it in passing though, so I think we also ought to do that in our Wikipedia article. EMsmile (talk) 08:43, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

I've searched for "population growth" in the entire WG III report pdf file now (not just in Chapter 5) and see it mentioned often, e.g.:

• "Globally, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita and population growth remained the strongest drivers of CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion in the last decade."
• "At a certain point in national development, affluence and associated diets thus override population growth as the main driver of AFOLU emissions"
• "Population growth has also contributed to emissions growth globally and in most 8 regions, particularly Africa, but the effect of population growth has been less than that of economic growth"
• "The dependency of mitigation within AFOLU on a complex 30 range of factors, from population growth, economic and technological developments, to the 31 sustainability of mitigation measures and impacts of climate change, was suggested to make realisation highly challenging"
• "Population growth along with rising incomes and changes in 6 consumption and dietary patterns, will exert immense pressure on land and other natural resources."

So what I can gather is that the IPCC report talks a lot about population growth being one of the problems but expects this to decline "on its own" with increasing wealth, so it stops short in recommending family planning approaches. EMsmile (talk) 08:54, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

The section is well sourced, and in some cases the primary sources, which are articles published in reliable academic journals, are buttressed by secondary sources discussing those very articles (e.g., citations 6 and 7 respectively). I can also include additional secondary sources such as this and this to the journal articles in the section that are not yet backed by secondary sources. I see little justification for the removal of this material, especially once additional secondary sources such as those I just linked to are included.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 15:59, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

I am finding this really interesting: the IPCC AR 6 WG III report talks a lot about how population growth and rise in wealth contributes to more GHG emissions. But it hardly anywhere says "therefore, family planning would be good in terms of climate change mitigation". I assume this might be partly due to political reasons, to be politically correct (?). We can either let our readers put two and two together (that family planning would be useful), or we say it explicitly, using sources other than the IPCC report (the IPCC report does say "Also, advances in female education and reproductive health, especially voluntary family planning, can contribute greatly to reducing world population growth" in the Technical Summary, so it does make the point in a relatively prominent location). So I think overall, it would be fair to put some content about this in. It fits well in the new section on "demand" which I added earlier today ("Demand, services and social aspects of mitigation"), especially if you have reliable sources at your finger tips. (I am not against primary sources if they are highly reputable). As long as we get the balance right, i.e. not huge chunks of text on family planning and the benefits for climate change mitigation, but a short, well written paragraph with sources, I think this should be fine. Following the IPCC report in general is good but we don't have to be a slave to it. EMsmile (talk) 16:15, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

I am all for including material from the WG III, but this should not supplant what was there previously, which in indeed reliably sourced with both primary and secondary sources (The Guardian, as another example). And it’s not like the material in question makes up a huge portion of the article. It’s literally just two relatively small paragraphs. We can discuss slimming down perhaps, but I strongly oppose outright removal of the material in question, especially given the strength of the sourcing. And if restored I will also include the additional secondary sources I mentioned above to further strengthen it. C.J. Griffin (talk) 16:46, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

Sorry I wasn't more clear: I should have said that what was missing was the type of secondary sourcing that enables us to assess the degree to which the primary research has gained acceptance in the scientific community. News articles indicate that the research is interesting, but they don't usually give you a good gauge of the level of scholarly consensus around the conclusions. At times like these I wish Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (science) had official status as a guideline because it explains quite well what kinds of sources to base science articles on. In WP:FA reviews, we use it a lot as the de facto description of what high quality reliable sourcing for science is.

I imagine it would be possible to find high quality secondary sourcing for the idea that individuals can make a difference to climate change by choosing to have fewer children. I wouldn't object to the article saying that if well-sourced. The concept of human population planning is of course totally different from individual action, and I doubt there is wide acceptance among experts that population control is a suitable CCM strategy. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 03:26, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

That's a good point that you made. I have now added a paragraph along those lines which I think is a good compromise. I've stayed close to what the sources say and focused on content from IPCC WG III report. In the report it does cite the paper by Dodson from 2020 (Population growth and climate change: Addressing the overlooked threat multiplier) so I think it's fair to cite that paper as well since it wouldn't have been included in the WG III report if it wasn't highly relevant. Looking back at the original text that you had (rightly) deleted, I think we have pretty much covered everything now that was in the original text. None of the sources from the original paragraph jumped out at me, needing to be included. I am not sure if that article "Scientists' warning on population" is that important that it would have to be included? I doubt it. It could rather be included in individual action on climate change. In fact, I think that entire paragraph could be salvaged and copied to individual action on climate change where it could complement what is already there about family size. EMsmile (talk) 10:05, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

I can live with that.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 15:15, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

OK, great. I've moved that text block to individual action on climate change and I see you are already making improvements there, so that's good. EMsmile (talk) 21:36, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

I haven't been fully following the flurry of recent changes, but it looks as if a statement about an individual action being "having fewer children" was added. This makes sense to me. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 05:59, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

References

Another attempt at looking for ways to shorten this article

This article keeps growing and growing, it's now at a whopping 101 kB. The recent edits by User:Prototyperspective on the deforestation topic prompted me to take another look. This is the current full table of content below (I took out the TOC limit temporarily). Any parts of the structure that go down to a Level 4 heading (or sub-heading 3) are too detailed in my opinion, e.g. things like "5.1.2.2Addressing drivers of deforestation". This kind of content surely needs to be move to the relevant sub-articles, But also many of the other sections are simply too detailed, and content needs to be moved to sub-articles and only summarised. What do you suggest to tackle this? Can we agree that our aim is to get it back down to say less than 60 kB? There was an unsigned comment on the talk page a little while ago with said: "Move some stuff to Climate change mitigation scenarios which is very short. Move stuff to the main articles. Delete all old stuff e.g. pre-2010. Summarise, summarise, summarise."

• 1Goals of stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations
  • 1.1Needed emissions cuts
  • 1.2Carbon reduction
  • 1.3Calculations
  • 1.4Effects
• 2Drivers of global warming
  • 2.1By sectors and countries
  • 2.2By greenhouse gas
    • 2.2.1Carbon dioxide (CO₂)
    • 2.2.2Methane (CH₄)
    • 2.2.3Nitrous oxide (N₂O)
    • 2.2.4F-Gases
    • 2.2.5Black carbon
  • 2.3By other characteristics
    • 2.3.1Generational
    • 2.3.2Wealth
    • 2.3.3Companies, investors and politicians
• 3Fossil fuel substitution
  • 3.1Unextractable fossil fuels
  • 3.2Low-carbon energy sources
    • 3.2.1Solar energy
    • 3.2.2Wind power
    • 3.2.3Hydro power
    • 3.2.4Bioenergy
    • 3.2.5Nuclear power
      • 3.2.5.1Nuclear fusion
    • 3.2.6Carbon neutral and negative fuels
    • 3.2.7Natural gas
• 4Energy efficiency and non-fossil fuel storage
  • 4.1Super grids
  • 4.2Smart grid and load management
  • 4.3Energy conservation and efficiency
  • 4.4Research and development
• 5Carbon sinks and removal
  • 5.1Carbon storage in land ecosystems
    • 5.1.1Afforestation
    • 5.1.2Preventing deforestation and desertification
      • 5.1.2.1Land-rights
      • 5.1.2.2Addressing drivers of deforestation
    • 5.1.3Preventing permafrost leaks
    • 5.1.4Reforestation
    • 5.1.5Proforestation
  • 5.2Carbon storage in water ecosystems
    • 5.2.1Wetlands
    • 5.2.2Coastal waters
  • 5.3Synthetic carbon dioxide removal
    • 5.3.1Direct air capture
    • 5.3.2Carbon capture and storage
    • 5.3.3Enhanced weathering
• 6Geoengineering
• 7Decarbonization by sector
  • 7.1Transport
    • 7.1.1Electric vehicles
    • 7.1.2Shipping
    • 7.1.3Air travel
  • 7.2Energy
    • 7.2.1Heating and cooling
    • 7.2.2Heat pumps
    • 7.2.3Cooling
    • 7.2.4Electric resistant heating
  • 7.3Agriculture
  • 7.4Urban planning
    • 7.4.1Building design
• 8Governmental action
  • 8.1Paris agreement and Kyoto Protocol
  • 8.2Additional commitments
  • 8.3Carbon pricing
  • 8.4Montreal protocol
  • 8.5Enaction of a state of emergency
  • 8.6Costs and benefits
    • 8.6.1Costs
    • 8.6.2Benefits
    • 8.6.3Sharing
    • 8.6.4Distributing emissions abatement costs
    • 8.6.5Specific proposals
  • 8.7Barriers to implementation
    • 8.7.1Carbon budgets by country
  • 8.8Geopoliticial impacts
• 9Policies by country
  • 9.1Middle and high-income countries
    • 9.1.1United States
    • 9.1.2China
    • 9.1.3European Union
    • 9.1.4New Zealand
    • 9.1.5Nigeria
  • 9.2Low and middle income countries
  • 9.3Carbon neutral and carbon negative countries
• 10Legal action
  • 10.1Requirements
  • 10.2Of countries
  • 10.3Of companies
• 11Societal responses
  • 11.1Investment
  • 11.2Funding
  • 11.3Economics
  • 11.4Research
  • 11.5Population planning
  • 11.6Lifestyle and behavior
    • 11.6.1Dietary change
    • 11.6.2Modal shift
  • 11.7Activism
  • 11.8Media, education and arts
    • 11.8.1Fiction and culture
    • 11.8.2Education systems
• 12Overviews, integration and comparisons of measures
  • 12.1Mitigation pathways
  • 12.2Shape of mitigation
  • 12.3Tracking and monitoring
• 13See also
• 14References
• 15Sources
  • 15.1IPCC reports
  • 15.2IRENA
  • 15.3Other sources

EMsmile (talk) 12:18, 13 July 2022 (UTC)

Re "e.g. things like "5.1.2.2Addressing drivers of deforestation"" – this is a new header mainly for two reasons: previously the entire section was almost exclusively about land rights and secondly because it makes it easier to read, skim, jump-to or skip. Instead of subheaders there could be bulletpoints like below and the text, especially for the land rights section, could be shortened somewhat.

• Land rights – Brief explanatory summary
• Addressing drivers/causes of deforestation – Brief explanatory summary

We should aim to keep it as short as possible but not shorter based on an arbitrary number and short summaries should be: a) in the lead b) at the top of each top-level section (and maybe all sections). Also note that references are a main source of article file size. I agree we should summarize more and also that there's probably still quite some potential for making the article shorter.

Previously named some sections that I think could be shortened. This full TOC may be useful here to find more places where one could shorten via trimming&summarizing. For example, the section "Policies by country" could be moved to a separate article (with a well-visible wikilink) as this one is not structured by administrative region.

Re "avoid repeating the same content across several articles" – whenever possible I'd recommend using {{Excerpt}} which prevents this issue. Content decisions shouldn't or typically aren't based on effort required by editors or alike but on policies and quality of the respective article. Sometimes, the content is not transcludable as is and highly due, even central, notable & relevant to multiple articles. In some cases the similar content should even diverge further and currently is only as similar as is because it wasn't yet adjusted more to the respective article. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:09, 13 July 2022 (UTC)

Just a correction: when I quoted 101 kB size this was prose size only: * Prose size (text only): 101 kB (15700 words) "readable prose size". This does not include the references list. You can check page size by installing a little add-on which appears on the left side of the articles (I added it a while ago so would have to look up how I did it). EMsmile (talk) 10:05, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

I think bullet point lists are less ideal than sub-headers. In general, prose is always preferred over bullet point lists.

I agree, I also like the excerpt function a lot, especially when it contains figures that change each year, like at sea level rise and ocean acidification.

I agree that "policies by country" could be moved to a sub-article. A new article or an existing article? Would it fit with "climate change policy" which redirects to politics of climate change which is perhaps not ideal. See also discussion here about "climate change policy": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Climate_change#Climate_change_policy_needs_an_article

I look forward to diving into this properly soon-ish. I hesitate to do it now as I have a holiday coming up. But at the latest in September I can involve myself more fully. Hopefully others can already go ahead in the meantime with moving & shortening text blocks. EMsmile (talk) 10:05, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

It was me who wrote "Move some stuff to Climate change mitigation scenarios which is very short. Move stuff to the main articles. Delete all old stuff e.g. pre-2010. Summarise, summarise, summarise." - if I remember right it was on a "too long" tag - maybe someone moved it to the talk page or if I forgot to sign it sorry.

Not promising to do anything at all on this as I will likely have lots to do on the country specific articles I am nominating for "good article", but may chip in occasionally if I see it rising into the top edited article list. Good luck with this very important article. Chidgk1 (talk) 11:37, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

Coming back to this earlier discussion about shortening this article. There was a similar, earlier attempt at doing this, under the heading "Article needs condensing and navigation and structure needs improving" (this is now in the talk archive here). Pinging @User:Hedgehoque as you had written about it in March 2020. Looking at the article now, do you think the discussion here, and rough plans for shortening would go into the right direction? Would you have time to help with this effort? (same question to anyone else who's watching this talk page) EMsmile (talk) 08:53, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

Planning the work of slimming down the article

In the next few weeks, I plan to devote some editing hours on slimming down this article, as I had suggested earlier on this talk page in June, and others have suggested before me (please scroll up). To summarise what was proposed there: "Can we agree that our aim is to get it back down to say less than 60 kB? Move stuff to the relevant sub articles. Delete all old stuff e.g. pre-2010. Summarise, summarise, summarise." - The article gets about 400-500 pageviews per day and it's an important topic, so well worth the effort. I'm going to ping some people who were involved in the main climate change article or whose names and edits on climate change topics I've seen around. I am asking the pinged people: do you have any opinions / suggestions / comments /concerns about this article and my plan of attack at this stage? @User:Femke, User:Clayoquot User:NewsAndEventsGuy, User:C.J. Griffin, User:Chidgk1, User:RCraig09, User:Dtetta, User:Efbrazil, User:Crescent77, User:Bogazicili (if anyone else should be pinged please go ahead). EMsmile (talk) 22:49, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

P.S. Step 2 of reworking this article would be to add new/updated content from the IPCC AR6 WG III report; this also needs doing soon. EMsmile (talk) 22:49, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

Yes. I agree that a good way to trim this article a bit would be to remove older material from before 2010, unless it is of particular significance.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 23:11, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

Changing the way the article sections are divided might help in making it concise. The same or similar content is rehashed from different angles because of the article's inconsistent structure. Perhaps a better way to organize would be to have each section and subsection by the biggest topic possible. I like how some years back there was the section 'demand side management' but now its contents have become subsections in different parts of the article. I would like to help summarize the article but was afraid of the blow back from angry editors. Instead of deleting any material, I can instead do the tedious task of sending details to each specific article and keeping the summarized version of it here. JustBeCool (talk) 00:13, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

Hi, sounds good, thanks for offering to help! I generally like to organise articles with "standard headings" (for the top level headings) as much as possible. With that I mean things like this as standard headings (not all of them, only the ones that are relevant here): Definitions (or terminology), Causes, Effects, Related concepts, Purposes, Impacts, Costs, Policies, Challenges, By country, Possible responses, Society and culture, History and alike. This way, a novice user can more easily find what they are looking for from the table of content. Compare e.g. with the structure of ocean acidification, climate change adaptation, effects of climate change on oceans. Each time, I try to use standard headings as much as possible for the top level headings. This could be Step 1 here to think about suitable generic/standard top level headings for this article. (it doesn't always work perfectly, e.g. the article climate change uses some top level headings that are "generic" and some that are not. It might be similar with this article but at least some of the section headings should be generic/standard). EMsmile (talk) 00:49, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

OK, so I've made a start today, focusing on the first quarter of the article:

• I've moved content about GHG emissions to greenhouse gas emissions (perhaps the content was included here before the time when the greenhouse gas emissions article was created 2 years ago (?)). I do wonder whether the bulk of content on "GHG emission reduction" should be here or in the article on greenhouse gas emissions. Something to ponder about.
• I've also replaced some of the background type content (about drivers of global warming) with several excerpts taken from other articles, e.g. the main climate change article which is an WP:FA article. Excerpts are useful so that we don't have to improve & update the same information in several articles but only in the source article.
• I've used the structure of the climate change article where it talks about climate change mitigation to provide a grouping of approaches by categories, using the same wording for the categories as used at climate change. EMsmile (talk) 12:29, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

I've continued today by taking out excessive detail about the various renewable energies - I moved that to the respective sub-articles. This is a high level overview article and does not need to go into detail on solar power, wind power etc. There is the article renewable energy for that. EMsmile (talk) 00:29, 12 November 2022 (UTC)

Using the structure of the Sixth Assessment Report WG III as inspiration

When thinking about a better structure for this article, we could get some inspiration (and guidance with respect to WP:DUE) by the structure of the IPCC AR6 WGIII Report which is all about mitigation. Its structure is as follows (for many of these chapters we could refer to the relevant sub-articles which we have in Wikipedia instead of building up material from scratch):

1. Introduction and Framing
2. Emissions trends and drivers
3. Mitigation pathways compatible with long-term goals
4. Mitigation and development pathways in the near- to mid-term
5. Demand, services and social aspects of mitigation
6. Energy systems
7. Agriculture, Forestry, and Other Land Uses (AFOLU)
8. Urban systems and other settlements
9. Buildings
10. Transport
11. Industry
12. Cross sectoral perspectives
13. National and sub-national policies and institutions
14. International cooperation
15. Investment and finance
16. Innovation, technology development and transfer
17. Accelerating the transition in the context of sustainable development EMsmile (talk) 00:35, 12 November 2022 (UTC)

This source is of course the most authoritative, but it also has very low comprehensibility for a general audience. Since we're trying to make the topic accessible to a general audience, for inspiration let's also consider how sources that are intended for a general audience are organized. For instance:

• The Royal Society's A net zero climate-resilient future – science, technology and the solutions for change
• The Royal Society's Climate change and land: the science of working with nature towards net zero

Can anyone suggest other good overviews of the topic? Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 06:27, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

Quotes from IPCC reports

You might wonder why I use quotes sometimes when taking info from IPCC reports. I do this when I can't immediately come up with "saying the same thing in my own words", in order to avoid copyright violation (I actually received another warning about this on my talk page...). Anyhow, can you come up with alternative wording for these sentences that are currently in quotation marks due to being copied from the IPCC WG III report? Do we need to use an alternative term for each key term of the sentence or only for some? You find them at the start of the "energy systems" section:

• In 2022, the IPCC found that "The global energy system is the largest source of carbon dioxide emissions."
• In the report, energy systems are defined to consist of "energy supply, energy transformation, and energy transportation and transmission".
• Those sectors include "agriculture, forestry, and other land uses, urban systems and other settlements, buildings, transport and industry".

EMsmile (talk) 07:22, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

References

EMsmile (talk) 07:22, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Natural gas

@EMsmile I now realise my removal of the section was too Eurocentric thinking - thanks for fixing Chidgk1 (talk) 14:29, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

After I removed it the IEA issued https://www.iea.org/reports/coal-in-net-zero-transitions - see box 1.1 which says it is complicated Chidgk1 (talk) 19:40, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

That's pretty interesting. Should some of this content be added to sustainable energy#Fossil fuel switching and mitigation from where we are currently using an excerpt? Note that other article is FA, so perhaps suggest on the talk page first. Not sure. EMsmile (talk) 12:04, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Climate engineering should not be a Level 1 heading

I disagree with this change that User:JustBeCool made yesterday with the justification "Climate engineering is its own form of mitigation, whether effective or not. Not helpful it being the only topic under 'related concepts' in the introductory background section." When you look at the main climate change article, the term is not mentioned once. I see there Solar radiation management being mentioned but without calling it "climate engineering". The same can be observed when looking at the IPCC WG III report. The terms climate engineering is not used. The term geoengineering is mentioned once: "Some literature uses the term “geoengineering” for both CDR or SRM when applied at a planetary scale (Shepherd 2009; GESAMP 2019). In this report, CDR and SRM are discussed separately reflecting their very different geophysical characteristic". Chapter 12 on "Cross-sectoral perspectives" is where this content is located in the report. This box is really helpful "Cross-Chapter Box 8, Figure 1: Carbon Dioxide Removal taxonomy". (page 12-37) Chapter 12 also shows the very minimal role that ocean-based CDR methods could play, listing blue carbon management, ocean alkalinity enhancement and ocean fertilisation (and then explaining later how the latter two are just in their infancy and play no role yet). It also says "Afforestation, reforestation, improved forest management, agroforestry and soil carbon sequestration are currently the only widely practiced CDR methods" - Therefore, this needs to come out in our article's structure and should be visible already from the table of content. Putting "climate engineering" as a Level 1 heading in parallel with "Energy systems" is misleading. EMsmile (talk) 09:21, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

I think I've been able to solve this problem now by introducing a terminology section. This now explains that climate engineering = CDR and SRM. But only CDR is part of climate change mitigation. EMsmile (talk) 11:21, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

The idea that SRM is a form of climate change mitigation seems to be a minority point of view and should be presented as such, if at all. Is there a reliable source saying that SRM is a form of climate change mitigation? If not, SRM should not be in this article at all, except perhaps in a section on alternatives to climate change mitigation. Courtesy ping to JustBeCool (talk · contribs). Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 16:39, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Yes there is a reliable source that says SRM is a form of climate engineering and not a form of climate change mitigation (see lead of climate engineering which I recently reworked and also Climate change mitigation#Supplementary options). SRM is included in the WG III report as a "supplementary measure" in Chapter 14 even though it's not a CCM measure. That's why I have now put it here:Climate change mitigation#Supplementary options. I think it doesn't hurt to have it there at the very end, very briefly, since they did include it in the WG III report for a reason, and to explain to our readers what SRM has to do with CCM. EMsmile (talk) 21:56, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Global Carbon Budget 2022 (open access)

This is a useful publication to take info on latest greenhouse gas emissions reductions from (in particular Section 4 Tracking progress towards mitigation targets): Global Carbon Budget 2022. It's very handy because it's under a compatible licence. It'll be handy for the greenhouse gas emissions article, too. EMsmile (talk) 22:15, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

References

Comments on the lead and organization

Thanks EMSmile for the ping above. I went through the lead and made some comments below, including some ideas for what to take out.

I think the current state of this article is one of the rare cases that merits a WP:TNT. If anyone is looking for consensus to do a complete rewrite, I think it should be seriously considered for reasons of accuracy and neutrality in addition to the length problem. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 03:47, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

Paragraph-by-paragraph comments on the lead

Climate change mitigation consists of actions to limit global warming and its related effects. Climate change is mostly caused by the greenhouse gases that are released when burning coal, oil, and gas. Fossil fuel use can be reduced through energy conservation and by switching to clean energy sources.

Switching to clean energy sources should come before energy conservation. I think this is the order given in most of the top-quality sources. The world's energy needs are growing. Energy conservation is also essential but will get us only a fraction of the way there.

Done. EMsmile (talk) 00:03, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Wind power and solar photovoltaics (PV) are increasingly becoming cheaper than fossil fuels,

This is a huge oversimplification. Given current technologies, fossil fuels are far and away the cheapest way we know of to melt glass or to fly airplanes, and often they're the cheapest way even to heat water for a shower. Even if you look at solar/wind vs coal for electricity generation, it's an oversimplification - if it were as simple as this, market forces alone would make coal-burning power plants go away.

Well, increasingly, as documented by IEA, EIA, Fraunhofer and Lazard. Summarized for the lead but not oversimplified. We could add "...in electricity production". Hedgehoque (talk) 23:06, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

Have changed it, please check. Do we need to add a reference? If so, Hedgehoque, please add IEA, EIA, Fraunhofer and Lazard (??). EMsmile (talk) 00:03, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

...though these require energy storage and improved electrical grids.

This is another oversimplification. There are multiple ways to handle the variability in wind and solar output: energy storage, grid and transmission improvements, long-distance electricicity transmission, demand management, diversification of renewables, and (very importantly), "firm" energy sources such as natural gas with carbon capture and storage.

OK to add "demand management". CCS could have an additional sentence pointing out that it is only an option for industrial processes where fossil combustion cannot be avoided. Hedgehoque (talk) 23:06, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

have changed this, please cehck. EMsmile (talk) 00:03, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

As low-emission energy is deployed at large scale, transport and heating can shift to these mostly electric sources.

Climate change may also be mitigated by reducing greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, forest-management (by reforestation and preservation), waste management, buildings, and industrial systems.

Two different systems for classifying emissions are being mixed up in the lead, resulting in energy emissions being double-counted and some important sources of emissions being left out. Most emissions from buildings and industrial processes are due to their use of energy. Production of steel, cement, and certain chemicals are important sources of direct emissions in addition to their energy-related emissions. Fossil fuel extraction also releases enormous amounts of greenhouse gases as fugitive emissions. We really need to get the accounting of emissions right, and to do this it might be helpful to stick to one system throughout the article. The most understandable emission classification system I know of is from OWID, here: https://ourworldindata.org/ghg-emissions-by-sector.

Methane emissions, which have a high short-term impact, can be targeted by reductions in dairy products and meat consumption.

Have improved this, I hope. Will need (brief) clarification in main text, too. EMsmile (talk) 00:03, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

One of the things that adds bloat and complexity to this article is statistics about where specific greenhouse gases are coming from, e.g. "The largest source of anthropogenic methane emissions is agriculture, closely followed by gas venting and fugitive emissions from the fossil-fuel industry. The largest agricultural methane source is livestock." There are widely-used GHG accounting methods that convert volumes of methane, nitrous oxide, etc. to carbon dioxide equivalents so that we can make statements like "Livestock and manure are 5.8% of all GHG emissions" as OWID does.

Depends on the time horizon. Using the global warming potential for 20 instead of 100 years, livestock would reach around 20%. This is an important distinction, not too complex.Hedgehoque (talk) 23:06, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

Have made some changes. The issue about the bloat is something that I have written about further down below on the talk page, where I talk about overlap with greenhouse gas emissions regarding the "by sector" section... EMsmile (talk) 00:03, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

In addition to reducing emissions, expensive technologies can remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere,

These technologies are not necessarily expensive, and not necessarily more expensive than reducing emissions from certain sources. More importantly, IIIRC, AR6 says large-scale carbon dioxide removal is necessary to reach climate targets. We should not be making it sound scary.

You're right. "Expensive" is not neutral. Maybe "technologies in development"? Hedgehoque (talk) 23:06, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

Have change it. EMsmile (talk) 00:03, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

climate engineering may be needed to reduce heating of the atmosphere,

Have removed climate engineering sentence for now as this term is no longer in favour. Could add something about solar radiation management but not yet sure how we want to include this in the main text. It's included in the WG III report although I am confused as I don't think it fits with the definition of climate change mitigation, strictly speaking? It neither reduces GHG emissions nor does it enhance carbon sinks. EMsmile (talk) 00:03, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

I'm OK with this for now.

"May be needed" is too positive. I'd think about something like "CE is debated controversially as it comes with environmental risks."Hedgehoque (talk) 23:06, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

I don't think we need this in the lead for now. By the way, check out the work I recently did to improve the climate engineering article. EMsmile (talk) 00:03, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

and adaptation will be needed to adjust to climate change.

Out of scope.

Deleted. Although, since mitigation and adaptation are often mentioned together, perhaps it's worth mentioning it also in the lead? EMsmile (talk) 00:03, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Almost all countries are parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The ultimate objective of the UNFCCC is to stabilize atmospheric concentrations of GHGs at a level that would prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system.

Too much detail for the lead and probably for the body as well. We should try to condense everything about international agreements to at most three or four short paragraphs.

Moved to main body. Will need further work on condensing later. EMsmile (talk) 11:27, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

In 2010, parties to the UNFCCC agreed that future global warming should be limited to below 2 °C (3.6 °F) relative to the pre-industrial level. With the Paris Agreement of 2015, this was confirmed.

This is out of date. What about 1.5 degrees??

Deleted. EMsmile (talk) 11:27, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Current policies are estimated to produce global warming of about 2.7 °C by 2100, well above the 2 °C goal. Political and economic responses to date include forms of carbon pricing by carbon taxes and carbon emission trading, reductions of fossil fuel subsidies, making national promises and laws, clean energy subsidies, simplified regulations for the integration of low-carbon energy, and divestment from fossil fuel finance.

There is a lot of overlap between the things on this list and some weird wikilinking. I'm not sure how to sort it out though.

I've improved this but the list is a bit arbitrary and will require further work, also in the main article where the section on policy is weak (am thinking of moving content about policies from the article economics of climate change mitigation). EMsmile (talk) 11:27, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 03:47, 14 November 2022 (UTC) Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 03:47, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

I broadly agree with everything you said here. What's the best way forward: do you want me to try and address your changes by editing the lead or is it better if you edit the lead yourself? Or would you propose deleting the lead and starting from scratch as per your WP:TNT suggestion? (I like that TNT link, wasn't aware of it until now). EMsmile (talk) 08:13, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

I probably won't get to this anytime soon, so please go ahead with whatever path you're most comfortable with. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 02:43, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

I've started the work on the lead, haven't yet reached the bottom three points yet. Will add my detailed comments above. Your changes and comments were very useful and will help us guide in the main article as well. EMsmile (talk) 00:03, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

All the changes in the lead are now implemented. It's better than before but will require further work to make it into a good summary of the article. Thanks again for your valuable inputs on this, Clayoquot. EMsmile (talk) 11:27, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

The changes contained much more than discussed here. Totally OK, but so did I, hoping that the result now has become the best of both worlds. Hedgehoque (talk) 23:03, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Yes, they were but I had tried to justify each change through my edit summaries plus through comments on this talk page just above. Your changes were also fine but I disagree with this statement that you had added Of all mitigation options, wind power and solar photovoltaics (PV) have the highest potential. The reference that you provided (the important Figure SPM 7 here) does not say that at all! Wind and solar are only the highest potential within the group of energy systems but not across all mitigation options. The correct statement, and interesting statement, would be this (and I've added this to the lead and to the main text now): Of all mitigation options, the top five with the highest potential contribution to net emission reduction are (in order of descending potential contribution): solar energy, reduced conversion of forests and other ecosystems, wind energy, carbon sequestration in agriculture, followed by the group of ecosystem restoration, afforestation, reforestation. And this is exactly what I have been argueing all along: that the land-based systems are really important. Note that the overfocus on solar and wind as topics is also a bit Global North centric. It's probably what we in the Global North focus on the most at present. EMsmile (talk) 08:30, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

Please note also that my suggestion would be to use the long ref style and to convert short refs to long refs. I've done that now for the refs that were imported from the climate change article. (oh, I just see that I hadn't mentioned this on the talk page previously, will add a new topic on that now). EMsmile (talk) 08:30, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

References

Aerosols?

So what do we do about the aerosols in the list of drivers? I think they should be in the bullet point list as they are also included in the main climate change article in that way. User:Hedgehoque wrote: Sorry to remove aerosols again. But as commented earlier they are no driver for temperature rise. Quoting the excerpt: "aerosols having a dampening effect". If you want to include them, we need a separate list for this kind. See here which explains that it's not so straight forward (can lead to cooling or warming): [Climate change#Aerosols and clouds]]. If not, we could have a separate list, I guess.EMsmile (talk) 21:52, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

I might also ask on the talk page of climate change because it does seem a strange setup that aerosols is mentioned second as a driver even before land surface changes. EMsmile (talk) 22:09, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

I have just inserted the drivers image which gives a good answer. Hedgehoque (talk) 20:57, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

Does the forest section need further shortening?

I've done some work on the forest section today, condensing it a bit. Do you think it needs to be shortened further? I'm sure. What it will need are some more recent figures. Or perhaps they should mainly be in the sub-articles. The main sub-article is perhaps this one: Reforestation#For climate change mitigation, so if we collect any updates, we should perhaps update that section at the same time or streamline them (or use an excerpt maybe, not sure). EMsmile (talk) 10:59, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

As far as mitigation goes, it is not just about reducing current emmissions but about decreasing CO2 levels which are already dangerously high and so carbon sinks are due weight considering the size of the other sections and the size of the overrall article. And considering carbon sinks, forests and deforestation are the weightiest issues. If anything, the forests sections are succint as they are. JustBeCool (talk) 04:10, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

I think the restoration section can be cut by 1/3. It's overly long paragraphs and sentences make it very difficult to digest. The overall article still needs to be cut by at least 1/3 too to bring it below 10,000 words (I'd rather see this article at 7,000-9,000 words for more easy maintenance). —Femke 🐦 (talk) 11:47, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

More ideas on what to cut

• Cut material that does not cite a reliable WP:SECONDARY source
• Cut opinions from activists
• Cut the Activism section. Activism is not mitigation - it's people talking about mitigation.
• Cut the Media, education, and arts section. This too is people talking about mitigation.

Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 05:59, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

I agree with your points 2-4 but not fully with point 1. I think this needs to be looked at at a case by case basis. In most cases yes, secondary sources are the way to go but there could be some cases where a primary source is still better than nothing (given that this is not a featured article yet). - When you say "cut", do you mean completely delete or to move content to sub-articles on activism? If yes, which one(s)? I wasn't sure between Politics of climate change or climate movement or Public opinion on climate change or Individual action on climate change? EMsmile (talk) 08:11, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

I've now removed the sections on activism, media and arts. I tried to find relevant sub-articles to move content to but only succeeded in a few cases (where I moved it to climate movement. Some of the other sentences didn't strike me as worth keeping, not even in a sub-article. I think we can probably still cut or condense the section on legal action and education systems. - And I see better now what you mean with the problem of over-reliance on primary sources. There are generally a lot of primary sources being used in this article and they can distort the weighting of content (WP:DUE). EMsmile (talk) 10:59, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

I would reduce the GHG section to about 1/3 or 1/4 the size. It's not the topic of this article. The first two sections can be merged. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 19:46, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Emphasis on renewable energy

Thank you EMSmile for all the work and for pinging. Before setting up a new structure it would be worth to consider how to weight the different mitigation approaches and their prominence in the article. As the IPCC points out (AR6 WG3 SPM p50), wind and solar energy have the highest mitigation potential at lowest cost. 89% of CO2 emissions and 32% of methane come from fossil fuels. So mitigation is all about replacing them. Efficiency, land-use (forest management), agriculture and CDR are important but play a minor role.

The logic should be:

• Where do GHG come from? => Mostly fossil fuels
• How can emissions be stopped? => Emphasis on renewable and low-carbon energy

For this reason I think it is necessary to restore the essential parts about energy sources, not only summarizing. This article offers a chance to focus on the specific mitigation potential of wind, solar, bioenergy, nuclear, gas etc individually. Can they be deployed fast enough to meet the goals? How do costs develop? When costs are lower: Which regulations or system limitations prevent deployment? Which disadvantages must be considered? Given this background, the removed 0.5K about wind energy as one of the two key technologies are rather too short.

Looking at CO2, methane, nitrous oxide and F-gases separately is also essential to understand the problem. For the fist 25 years, methane has a GWP of more than 80. Given that, new methane emissions in total have almost the same impact as CO2 for the next two decades. That's why I would restore the GHG section, too, accepting overlaps with the categorisation by sector. The bullet-point style offers quick orientation.

Some additional remarks with current lengths:

• 2K lead
• 8K Overview (the lead should be the overview, I would start with GHG caption)
• 6K Demand, services and social aspects of mitigation (confusing heading - "social aspects" would do, to be moved down)
• 22K Energy (still to be improved, parallels to energy transition)
• 14K CDR (6K forestry)
• 5K Transport
• 6K AFOLU (mostly agriculture, forestry overlaps with CDR)
• 7K Urban planning (too much)
• 14K Investment and finance (please condense, too much economy theory)
• 3.5K Barriers to implementation (important but needs a rewrite with focus on RE deployment and geopolitics)
• 6K Policies
• 6K by country (now is "by world region", should remain but urgently needs an update)
• 6K Overviews, integration and comparisons of measures (unstructured. skip most of it?)

About the structure: I would see GHG and energy on top and restore the former by-sector heading with transport, buildings, agriculture. Urban planning does not seem to be relevant enough to maintain as an own headline - it fits under "social aspects".Hedgehoque (talk) 22:20, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

Hi Hedgehoque, I'll ponder over how to address your comments but just quickly:

• I agree that we need to add a bit more on the other GHG gases, other than CO2, in the framing section. But not as much as what was there before.
• I hesitate to bring much of the moved content about energy system back because I really think we should not have more overlap across articles than absolutely necessary. If we have an article on greenhouse gas emissions then that's where the bulk of information on greenhouse gas emissions should reside. Note that when the climate change mitigation article was set up we didn't have the separate greenhouse gas emissions article yet. We also have a very good article on renewable energy and on sustainable energy so let's be very mindful about overlap.
• Secondly, I wonder if you put too much emphasis on the GHGE reduction aspect of climate change mitigation. The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report defines climate change mitigation as "A human intervention to reduce emissions or enhance the sinks of greenhouse gases". Therefore, those chapters about enhancing the sinks are equally important.
• Regarding weighting of content, I agree with you but I was guided to some extent by the structure of the IPCC AR 6 WG 3 report (I copied that structure above, here on the talk page). E.g. the section "Demand, services and social aspects of mitigation" is the same wording that they used (but admittedly, it's not that clear). However it's mainly about demand and services, I would say.
• I agree with you on the section "11Overviews, integration and comparisons of measures" - it's a mess at this stage. (if anyone can help, please go ahead)
• I also agree with you that the section "Investment and finance" needs shortening and condensing. (if anyone can help, please go ahead) EMsmile (talk) 23:22, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

Hej, EMsmile. As you probably noticed with subsequent edits, I have changed the structure a little as suggested. I'm not happy with the GHG excerpt but will come back to that later. Hedgehoque (talk) 10:21, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

Yes, User:Hedgehoque I noticed, thanks. My initial reaction was confusion but now I am trying to come around and see if I can understand your new logic. I do think that the word "demand" ought to be visible in the Level-1 heading so I have changed that one now to "demand management and social aspects" (not sure if it should be split into two). Also not sure if urban planning really fits under "social aspects". My biggest problem with your recent change is that you have re-inserted the Level-1 heading "by sector". I don't think this works. Firstly, the transport sector is very much related to the section on fossil fuels, isn't it? Secondly, if we had a section "by sector" then it would have to be more complete. There are many more sectors than just those 3. But then it would overlap with greenhouse gas emissions. There we have it like this:

5 Emissions by sector
5.1 Agriculture
5.2 Aviation
5.3 Buildings and construction
5.4 Digital sector
5.5 Health care
5.6 Steel and aluminum
5.7 Electricity generation
5.8 Plastics
5.9 Sanitation sector
5.10 Tourism
5.11 Trucking and haulage
5.12 Deforestation

So therefore, I think we don't need a section called "By sector" here. We need to find a better solution. EMsmile (talk) 10:30, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

The main sectors in literature and statistics are usually buildings, transport, agriculture and industry (this one still missing). We could a create a top level heading for each of them if you prefer. The OWID link Clayoquot posted above provides some inspiration where sub-sectors could be put. Where exactly do you see significant overlaps regarding the transport sector? In the energy section, vehicles are only mentioned once. Hedgehoque (talk) 21:15, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

Re the issue about carbon sinks, I probably don't know the literature as well as you do. From my reading of the WG III report so far, I didn't get that impression as the content about carbon dioxide removal is also very detailed. Do you have a reference at hand that we could use for a statement on "a strong consensus in the literature that transforming the energy system is far more important than enhancing carbon sinks"? E.g. isn't stopping the cutting down of the Amazon Rainforest also of extremely high importance? EMsmile (talk) 18:10, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

This is why a few numbers would help. Global land-use-chance accounts for 4.5 GtCO₂ per year with high uncertainty (see the content now in greenhouse gas emissions). Rödig et al "identified the Amazon rainforest as a carbon sink, gaining 0.56 GtC per year". This is high importance, with additional implications on biodiversity. But emissions of fossil fuel reach a multitude of this. Most of the 57 GtCO₂-equivalents per year of total emissions come from fossil fuels. Hedgehoque (talk) 21:15, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

Hedgehoque said it better than I would. I'd also add that stopping the cutting down of the Amazon Rainforest is not an example of enhancing carbon sinks. It's an example of reducing emissions. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 03:48, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Yes, sure, some high level numbers are OK, especially those that don't change much from year to year. I was against including the more detailed numbers e.g. what %-age PV systems currently have in one particular country and things like that. About the Amazon rainforest if it's a carbon sink then preventing its destruction helps to preserve that sink. Is preserving not the same as enhancing? Either way, forestry management falls under the CDR group. So then if we do reforestation in the Amazon area, then it falls into the CDR category... Either way, I think we probably need to condense and reduce the amount of space the whole forestry thing (or the CDR topic in general) is taking up in our article, right? EMsmile (talk) 07:27, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

No, preserving is not the same as enhancing, and I'm concerned that you think it is. Also, "reforestation" and "preventing deforestation" do not mean the same thing. Please make sure you are using these terms correctly. W.r.t. condensing the forestry section, I'm not as concerned by the length at this time as I am about the lumping together of all land-based mitigation options under "Enhancing carbon sinks". That's just completely wrong. I'll try to find some time to sort this stuff out. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 17:33, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

The issue of overlap with other articles

Re we should not have more overlap across articles than absolutely necessary, I disagree. A Wikipedia article on a topic is supposed to give a 360 degree overview of the topic and "strive to treat each aspect with a weight proportional to its treatment in the body of reliable, published material on the subject." (WP:DUE). A reader skimming through the article should come away with a general impression of what the topic is about. The article on a general topic like climate change mitigation should overlap significantly with articles that focus on a major aspect of the topic, like Sustainable energy.

Re those chapters about enhancing the sinks are equally important., I see a strong consensus in the literature that transforming the energy system is far more important than enhancing carbon sinks. The relative importance needs to be conveyed to the reader. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 14:29, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

Maybe we need to define what we mean by "overlap": content-wise, sure the same broad statement could be in sustainable energy and in climate change mitigation. When it comes to numbers and details (those numbers which have to be updated regularly), that kind of content should reside in the specialised article. E.g. the percentage share of PV systems amongst all renewable energies: this should be in renewable energy but not in climate change mitigation (or only via the excerpt tool). Otherwise we create extra work for ourselves as we would have to update the numbers regularly in several articles. - This is also how the main climate change article is structured: it provides an overview but it does not go into details and numbers for sub-topics. EMsmile (talk) 18:10, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

I think we'd all agree that many of the details in Sustainable energy don't belong in Climate change mitigation. My main issues are that 1) Decisions about what goes into Climate change mitigation should be driven by WP:DUE and not by concerns about overlap with other articles, and 2) Decisions about what goes into Climate change mitigation should reflect the fact that energy is 73% of emissions. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 15:49, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

I am all for adhering to WP:DUE but what does this now mean in practical terms? I think that the WG III report provides some rough guidance on the issue of weighting of sections. If I interpret it right then it's like this:

• these six chapters focus on GHGE emission reductions: Emissions trends and drivers; Energy systems; Urban systems and other settlements; Buildings; Transport; Industry.
• This one chapter focused on carbon sink enhancement (but also a bit on GHGE): Agriculture, Forestry, and Other Land Uses (AFOLU) (it's only one chapter but as the issues are complicated so I think it would be wrong to only devote a tiny amount of space to it; but I did ask further below if the section on forests needs further culling or not).
• And these ten chapters are overarching: Introduction and Framing; Mitigation pathways compatible with long-term goals; Mitigation and development pathways in the near- to mid-term; Demand, services and social aspects of mitigation; Cross sectoral perspectives; National and sub-national policies and institutions; International cooperation; Investment and finance; Innovation, technology development and transfer; Accelerating the transition in the context of sustainable development.

In general, we should not be too focused on just describing technology solutions; our article is currently lacking in the area of policies - which is why I asked further below on the talk page if we should move the policy section that is currently at economics of climate change mitigation to here? With regards to GHGE, I think we should focus on "how the emissions get reduced" rather than listing numbers for the GHGE amounts (those amounts should mainly be in greenhouse gas emissions, although a clean border will be difficult to establish. How to talk about reductions without talking about the current emissions...) Note the article on GHGE also has a section on mitigation which we should streamline with: Greenhouse gas emissions#Reducing greenhouse gas emissions / make sure it's up to date and succinct.EMsmile (talk) 22:10, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Also, I'd like to repeat here something that I just wrote further up on the talk page: The important Figure SPM 7 here) gives a great overview of the potential of different mitigation options: Wind and solar are only the highest potential within the group of energy systems but not across all mitigation options. The correct statement, and interesting statement, would be this (and I've added this to the lead and to the main text now): Of all mitigation options, the top five with the highest potential contribution to net emission reduction are (in order of descending potential contribution): solar energy, reduced conversion of forests and other ecosystems, wind energy, carbon sequestration in agriculture, followed by the group of ecosystem restoration, afforestation, reforestation. And this is exactly what I have been argueing all along: that the land-based systems are really important. EMsmile (talk) 08:33, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

Theoretically, AFOLU has a high potential, in total even bigger than energy. But this comes at higher costs, lowering the chance of implementation. That's why I wrote "wind and solar have the highest mitigation potential at cheapest costs." The image even shows costs lower than reference for about 4 GtCO₂ per year. Hedgehoque (talk) 08:56, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Apart from some other changes, I have restored the small paragraphs about the types of renewable energy because of their high relevance in the mitigation context, in order to provide a better overview. In this case, excerpts are not optimized. Some numbers are cut. Length has not grown. There is still much potential to condense or rewrite the "Investment and Finance" section which is very abstract, vague and difficult to read. However, I think we should not be dogmatic about the 60K target as long as there is quality content. Hedgehoque (talk) 16:52, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

Clarification on energy system definition

I think we ought to be more precise when we introduce the term "energy system" for the first time. In this edit you (User:Femke) changed it to The energy system, which includes the use and delivery of energy, is.... Before it was energy systems are defined to consist of "energy supply, energy transformation, and energy transportation and transmission". In the article energy system it says The IPCC Fifth Assessment Report defines an energy system as "all components related to the production, conversion, delivery, and use of energy" (however I cannot find this in the reference given there, the Annex Glossary to the WG III report). Overall, I think the current wording is now misleading for laypersons as it only talks about use and delivery.EMsmile (talk) 11:41, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

My intention was to remove the definition of energy system altogether, and give a rough explanation instead. I thought this was clear from the word include (rather than is/comprise). Feel free to amend or simplify it further. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:03, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

For me as a layperson, it as actually not clear what "energy system" stands for, so I think a quick definition is useful. I can't really think of a different definition though than the IPCC one ({tq|energy systems are defined to consist of "energy supply, energy transformation, and energy transportation and transmission"}}) and this would be inelegant because it would be using quotation marks? Should I find an alternative word for each so that I can drop the quotation marks? Or find a different definition in another publication, maybe one that is open access? I am unsure. EMsmile (talk) 18:31, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

Excerpts

Please, please, please do not add excerpts from other articles unless you are sure that that the excerpt 1) Does not duplicate content that is already in this article, 2) Is of appropriate length and level of detail for this article, and 3) Doesn't contain content that ought to be in other sections. If you've added an excerpt that nobody else has removed yet, could you please check for these issues and fix them by removing the excerpt? Thanks. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 21:37, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

I agree! Length on 7 March: 288,176 bytes. Length now: 248,890 bytes. "Culling" has been somewhat successful, but excerpting runs the risk of bloating this article when the source material is supplemented. —RCraig09 (talk) 22:58, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

Yes, those would be ideal criteria for using excerpts. In some cases, the work also involves improving the paragraphs of the lead of the articles that are being transcribed, making them better. For me, excerpts are sometimes just "placeholders", to be replaced later when someone has time to take a closer look. But in some cases, I think excerpts are just perfect. For example in the case of the natural gas issue. This has been worked out really well in the sustainable energy article so I think transcribing that content by using an excerpt is the right way to go (especially given that this content is likely dynamic and will be updated at sustainable energy regularly). I mean the section that is currently called "Natural gas for fossil fuel switching". Can we agree that this excerpt at least is justified and efficient? EMsmile (talk) 10:43, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

In general I like to take excerpts from articles that are of a very high quality. E.g. I think the excerpt from the main climate change article about mitigation is useful: Climate change § Reducing and recapturing emissions. (However, there is one drawback with this as the main climate change article uses short ref style whereas we mainly use long ref style in the article.) About the excerpt from climate finance I am not yet sure about. Probably the lead of that article needs further work and improvement but either way, the content about "climate finance" should be mainly at climate finance and then we could excerpt it; or we could rewrite it from scratch, I am not sure. EMsmile (talk) 10:43, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

I agree with Clayoquot that these issues with excerpts should be resolved by the person who added them. To me, excerpts are 3D chess. It is quite rare that text can be reused without creating more problems than it solves.

• The excerpt from climate change overlaps with other text. It may be resolvable, but it should be resolved by the person who created the overlap. For instance, the text includes something about solar radiation management. We already have a section about that (which should probably be removed, as it is undue. SRM plays a very role in the literature, so that we should not dedicate more than two sentences to it)
• The excerpt from climate finance is unsuitable, as it's 1) a definition 2) a definition that includes adaptation. Climate finance needs to be about both mitigation and adaptation, which makes it very difficult to create text to excerpt. If people are interested in a definition, they will go to the main article. In this article, there are way more likely to be interested in actual finance at part of mitigation.

I've also found low quality sourcing in some of the excerpts. When adding text directly, you would not add a personal websites of unclear origin. This should not be acceptable behaviour for adding text via excerpts either. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:14, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

OK, you have convinced me. I've taken out all the excerpts except for this one which I find exceptionally good: Sustainable energy § Fossil fuel switching and mitigation. Can we keep this one or do you also want to see it gone? Instead of the excerpts, I have copied some of the important sentences from the other articles across. Please help me to figure out if those sections are now too long in each case and if they need to be condensed? I wasn't sure in each case. Later I will also convert those refs that are short refs into the long ref format.EMsmile (talk) 18:20, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

The natural gas excerpt is OK. In the other cases, the excerpts did not convince me either. Hedgehoque (talk) 19:19, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

Took out confusing section on agroforestry

I've been working on the agriculture section today, trying to split it cleanly into GHGE reductions in agriulture and those carbon sequestration options through the way the soil is handled. This will need further work but it's a start. In the process I have removed this section on agroforestry as I think it's unclear and perhaps too simplistic.

Agroforestry is one way to achieve sustainable intensification, which is farming method that can both boosts yield to supply the growing population and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Agroforestry is the practice of integrating trees and shrubs into crop and animal farming systems, creating environmental benefits. Trees can absorb carbon dioxide from the air, leaves from the trees can enrich the soil, manure from livestock can nutrient crops and trees. Nitrogen can also be fixed by trees, which benefits crops. This method intensifies agriculture productivity while prevents deforestation, which all largely contribute to rising of CO₂. EMsmile (talk) 21:37, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

In the IPCC WG III report agroforestry is not mentioned often but e.g. in this statement: "Agriculture provides the second largest share of the mitigation potential, with 4.1 (1.7–6.7) GtCO2-eq yr-1 (up to USD100 tCO2-eq-1) from cropland and grassland soil carbon management, agroforestry, use of biochar, improved rice cultivation, and livestock and nutrient management."

References

EMsmile (talk) 21:37, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

Took out the section on permafrost thawing prevention

I've taken out this section based on advice by content expert Peter Alexander (he's also sent me further feedback which I will post soon or he might post it himself). His comment was: "Preventing permafrost leaks – is a weird one. The tipping point described is well known, but the rest is all new to me and seems very odd. Basically this isn’t really related to mitigation, or at least none of the citations seem to be. I would delete it in entirety from here." EMsmile (talk) 21:13, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I agree 100%. That section jumped out at me too. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 21:33, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

Deleted section: Preventing permafrost leaks

The global warming induced thawing of the permafrost, which stores about two times the amount of the carbon currently released in the atmosphere, releases the potent greenhouse gas, methane, in a positive feedback cycle that is feared to lead to a tipping point called runaway climate change. While the permafrost is about 14 degrees Fahrenheit (−10 °C), a blanket of snow insulates it from the colder air above which could be 40 degrees below zero Fahrenheit (−40 °C). A method proposed to prevent such a scenario is to bring back large herbivores such as seen in Pleistocene Park, where they keep the ground cooler by reducing snow cover height by about half and eliminating shrubs and thus keeping the ground more exposed to the cold air, although these proposals have also been criticized as likely to be ineffective.

References

EMsmile (talk) 21:13, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

That it is new to someone and feels odd should not be a reason to delete it. In the same logic that preventing deforestation is climate change mitigation, preventing methane leaks from the permafrost would also be climate change mitigation. I added it back but to make people happy I summarized it a little more. JustBeCool (talk) 23:00, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

I think one sentence under "Soils" about permafrost thawing might be OK but the sentence about the herbivores is not reliably sourced and not a mainstream method. I've deleted that sentence. If it's such an important method it should be in the sub-article on permafrost. (Peter Alexander is an expert so I think his statement above is rather relevant by the way). Otherwise, can you find a more reliable, recent source, not just one journal article from 2006? Is it included in the WG III report as a potential option? I couldn't find anything on herbivores in the WG III report on mitigation and also only saw permafrost mentioned twice. Permafrost is mentioned a lot in the WG II report however (the one on effects and adaptation). EMsmile (talk) 23:34, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

I had planned to take out that section too. At the moment, it contained nothing about mitigation. If we want to talk about climate tipping points, we should do so more generally, and only insofar as they inform the goals set for climate change mitigation. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:02, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

I agree with you (Femke). I don't think we would have to say much on tipping points. This is well covered in other articles, e.g. the main climate change one. Looking through the WG III report for "tipping points" I find e.g. these statements:

• "The future impacts of climate change on land systems are highly uncertain, for example, the role of permafrost thaw, tipping points, increased disturbances and enhanced CO2 fertilization" (page 7-122) and
• "In particular, evidence suggests that investment in low-carbon development measures and re-investment based on the returns of the measures even without considering substantial co-benefits can provide tipping points for climate mitigation action and reaching peak emissions at lower levels while decoupling emissions from economic growth, even in fast-growing megacity contexts with well-established infrastructure" (page 8-90) and
• "The literature cautions that, if current policies and trends continue, the Amazon may reach an irreversible tipping point beyond which it will be impossible to remediate lost ecosystems and restore carbon sinks and indigenous people knowledge" (page 4-92) and
• "Research is required into what happens if the sequestration capacity of the ocean and marine ecosystems is damaged by climate change to the tipping point until the sink becomes an emitter, and on how to manage blue carbon" (page 4-104)

I am not sure if any of these could be translated into plain English and then utilised? EMsmile (talk) 11:58, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

And I also checked the Emission Gap report but it does not mention tipping points. EMsmile (talk) 11:58, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

Move the policy section of Economics of climate change mitigation to here?

I'm trying to improve the section "Investment and finance" and therefore I looked at the sub-article Economics of climate change mitigation to see if I could take an excerpt from there. That article is really a mess though, so we need to think about how the two articles should streamline with each other. I am even wondering if Economics of climate change mitigation should be drastically culled down and then merged into effects of climate change? If not, then at least it should only focus on the economic side, not on the policy side. To this end, I am proposing to move the section "Policies to reduce emissions" from Economics of climate change mitigation to climate change mitigation (it will need culling and condensing as well). What do you think? One could also ponder over creating a new sub-article called Policies for climate change mitigation eventually (or perhaps that would overlap too much with Politics of climate change?). EMsmile (talk) 11:20, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

And we also have this section which will also overlap: Economics of climate change#Mitigation. EMsmile (talk) 11:21, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

I am currently checking what is at Economics of climate change mitigation that should actually be here rather. For example the section about policies (it's a bit outdated, I know but some of it is likely still valid)? To this end, I have just moved the section "Emissions and economic growth" to here. I know this is using a 21 year old ref so perhaps a bit outdated but I see it more as a placeholder (in need for updating). Also I am undecided if this kind of content should be here or at greenhouse gas emissions? What's our rationale for putting which content about GHGE at the GHGE article and which here? E.g. should anything about reducing GHGE be there or be here, or a bit both? The overview here and the details there? EMsmile (talk) 07:52, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

I have moved my question to the bottom of the talk page because it might have been a bit lost up there. Hoping to get some responses this way. Specifically, I am thinking of moving the entire policy section from Economics of climate change mitigation to here and then in a second step improving and updating it. Do we agree that "policies" should be mainly in climate change mitigation rather than in Economics of climate change mitigation even if some of those policies are perhaps "economical policies" (aren't most of them?)? EMsmile (talk) 11:08, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

I would be against adding any text until we get a handle on the article length. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:16, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

I think both could be done in parallel: At present, the article has far too little on policies and is therefore WP:UNDUE and if a reader reads it right now, they'll get the wrong impression about what climate change mitigation is all about. If we added content on policies, yes it will become longer but then perhaps those people who resist shortening the "technology" section would then see our point? E.g. User:Hedgehoque with whom I disagree with regarding the level of detail we need on solar and wind power as well as on emissions by sector. I have a big problem with the section "Sectors of GHG emissions". I've just moved it to be closer to the other info on GHGE but it's too long and detailed, isn't it? EMsmile (talk) 18:25, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

Also, it's a structural question if "policies" should be in climate change mitigation or in Economics of climate change mitigation. I think they should be (mainly) in climate change mitigation. EMsmile (talk) 18:25, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

I would appreciate to have a good policy section. But this should be told straightforward, mentioning Kyoto, Paris, the COPs, climate justice, carbon pricing, ways to subsidize and energy security - just to name some key points. Theoretical considerations are wrong in place here. The complete economics paragraph appears to me as impossible to digest for an average reader in the current state. I would recommend a complete rewrite of this part. Hedgehoque (talk) 07:40, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

I've now brought across some content from the Economics of climate change mitigation and merged it with the existing bullet point list. I think it's fairly understandable in this current state and also not too detailed (does anyone think it needs to be shortened further?). I think we need to clearly group it by national policies versus international agreements. Regarding your list:

• Kyoto is already mentioned in the new history section that I created a few days ago.
• For Paris we have that in the "international agreements" section (could possibly replace that with an excerpt of the first paragraph of the Paris Agreement article).
• We haven't mentioned COP27 yet (where should we mention it?).
• Climate justice is not a national policy instrument as such (we are currently mentioned it once under "barriers"), not sure if we need to mention it in another place?
• Carbon pricing and the issues of subsidies is already included now.
• Energy security we haven't mentioned yet. Not sure where and how this should be mentioned. Perhaps as a co-benefit for mitigation measures that involve renewable energies, could lead to higher levels of energy security. EMsmile (talk) 11:05, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

Too much detail on heatpumps

I disagree with this change where User:Hedgehoque put the information about heatpumps back in which I had deleted. Why should this particular technology be singled out and given more space than others? Just because it's "all the rage" in e.g. Germany right now? Isn't it a bit Global North-centric to give all this space to heatpumps? Apart from that, the section has no references. This is the text in question - I would delete it:

Heat pumps[edit | edit source]

Heat pumps are an example of electrified heating with high efficiency. A modern heat pump typically produces around two to six times more thermal energy than electrical energy consumed, depending on the coefficient of performance and the outside temperature. It uses an electrically driven compressor that extracts heat energy from outdoor air or ground sources and moves that heat to the space to be warmed. In the summer months, the cycle can be reversed for air conditioning. EMsmile (talk) 22:25, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

EMSmile, while I agree that this is undue weight for heatpumps, speculating about the motives of people you disagree with is most unhelpful. Back to the content, I'm very tempted to either copy or excerpt the entire section on "Energy system transformation" from Sustainable energy over to this article. It mentions heat pumps in balance with other tools. What do people think of that? Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 23:25, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

I wasn't trying to be mean. Just wondering why Hedgehoque is insisting on putting certain content back in that had been removed. But OK. - Do you mean this section?: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_energy#Energy_system_transformation I think an excerpt is better in this case than copying an entire section. However, that section does not mention heatpumps? And which of our current content would you replace then? Maybe it's just easiest if you go ahead and show us what you have in mind? EMsmile (talk) 00:10, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

It does mention heat pumps (with a space between the words). I'll look into excerpting/copying the section. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 19:18, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

This article should focus on presenting solutions. The central challenge for the buildings sector is how to replace oil and gas for heating. Apart from insulation, heat pumps are among the main approaches, offering a high efficieny of 400%. They can be used in houses and also at large-scale for the generation of district heat. In spite of the high relevence, this sub-section is already extremely brief with only 0.5K. Other debated solutions are the use of green hydrogen or methane. But this comes with high conversion losses or agricultural impacts and is barely deployed yet (bio-methane in Denmark is based on excessive meat production), while heat pumps are widely available (even without F-Gases now). Firing wood is controversial. If it was overweight - which other solutions should be included then? Hedgehoque (talk) 07:07, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

A single paragraph is definitely needed for heat pumps. It's the main technology for decarbonising heating. Other alternatives around hydrogen are considered unfeasible. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 11:10, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

Should waste management and/or steel production be mentioned in lead?

Although waste management is a small percentage now it is an IPCC category. As electricity generation and gas well leaks are relatively easy to fix presumably waste will become a larger percentage in future? So I tend to think it should be linked from the lead. Or is waste management also easy to fix?

In the country where I live some steel plants are dirty and some clean. Whereas I understand clean iron production is a bit beyond us yet and only in Sweden. So maybe we should link to Blast furnace or is that too technical? Chidgk1 (talk) 13:50, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

I took out the waste management from the lead as I don't think this is so important that it needs to be in the lead (we also don't have it in the lead of climate change). But in the main text, it would be worth including, as well as steel production, somewhere. I guess with waste management they mean wastewater treatment plants and solid waste management. Those could quite easily be modified to have lower greenhouse gas emissions. No real technical difficulties there, unlike with cement production. E.g. anaerobic digestion from sludge treatment can produce biogas which can substitute 2/3 of the energy requirements of an activated sludge treatment plant (from memory; this used to be my area of expertise about a decade or two ago...). The trucks used for waste management could be electrified. The methane that is escaping from landfills could be captured. This kind of content is (partly) available in the greenhouse gas emissions article. So if we include it here, we just need to be mindful of not doubling up too much (or we could copy some sentences from there to here). I find it difficult sometimes to decide what should be at greenhouse gas emissions and what should be here exactly. EMsmile (talk) 14:01, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

What is the IPCC's definition of the "waste management" category, and what do they say are the relevant mitigation options? We should not try to guess what they mean. Alternatively, we could use OWID's categorization system.[2] Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 19:16, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

Surprisingly “waste management” is not in the AR6 glossary - but at https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/figures/chapter-6/figure-6-3 they say “waste management (solid waste, including landfills and open trash burning, residential and industrial waste water)”. Chidgk1 (talk) 16:33, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

I cannot find AR6 WG3 about waste management - maybe it is spread through the report Chidgk1 (talk) 16:39, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

I agree with @Hedgehoque that “ This article should focus on presenting solutions.” Chidgk1 (talk) 16:11, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

Regarding steel, steel is not yet mentioned in the body. Let's add it to the body first, keeping in mind that steel production is both energy-related emissions and direct emissions from the chemical reactions in making steel. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 19:20, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

Started cement and iron and steel subsections - anyone please expand Chidgk1 (talk) 17:12, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

I am just wondering how we'll manage to keep this succinct and not let it blow out too much. I mean we could write loads about all the different sectors that all have GHGEs and write about their specific options to reduce their GHGEs. It would be interesting but has the potential to really bloat up this article. We should somehow (I don't know how exactly) keep it very brief and point people to the relevant sub-articles, e.g. with regards to cement production, there is a section about this in another article, i.e.: Environmental impact of concrete#Carbon dioxide emissions and climate change. The same is probably true for any other sector and industrial process. We need to somehow keep this mitigation article as a high level article that does not go into too much detail for anything but touches on everything and points people to the key issues and the key sub-articles. So maybe we decide that we'll only talk in some detail about those sectors that contribute more than xx% of emissions? xx could be e.g. 10%? 5% EMsmile (talk) 22:44, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

Yes you are right the reader should be pointed to sub-articles for details. According to Climate Trace estimates for 2021 at https://climatetrace.org/inventory a 4% cutoff would include waste but not F gases. Even if you use their toggle from 100 years to 20 years F gases only get up to 3% Chidgk1 (talk) 14:12, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

So my choice would be 5% on the 20 year toggle - that way both waste and buildings are included Chidgk1 (talk) 14:15, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

Working on the section "investment and finance"

I am currently working on the section "investment and finance". I am starting by culling some content and moving it to the sub-articles economics of climate change and economics of climate change mitigation (I still wonder if those two should perhaps be merged). I do like the separate article economic impacts of climate change which I only discovered recently. After culling and moving, the next step would then be to build it up with some relevant up to date content. If we want to use the WG III report as guidance, then the sub-headings in this section could be similar to this (from Chapter 15):

• 15.3 Assessment of current financial flows
• 15.4 Financing needs
• 15.5 Considerations on financing gaps and drivers
• 15.6 Approaches to accelerate alignment of financial flows with long-term global goals

EMsmile (talk) 22:39, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

We still have to simplify the structure of this article, so I wouldn't like to have more than two subsections. I think we can limit this section to 4 paragraphs, so that we do not need any subsections. The first paragraph would be about the gap in financial flows/the need, and the following three paragraph would be around mitigation policy from governments and banks in the finance domain —Femke 🐦 (talk) 08:05, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

Are we allowed to upload this image from the IPCC report?

Hi User:Hedgehoque I see you uploaded the image from the WG III report "A comparison of the cost and potential of various climate change mitigation options by 2030" but I'm surprised you were allowed to do so? As far as I can see, it's not open access. Here's the file in Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IPCC_AR6_WG3_SPM-50_Mitigation_Options.png. You wrote there "This work was published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). According to the legal notice, "for media use it is sufficient to cite the source while using the original graphic or figure. In line with established Internet usage, any external website may provide a hyperlink to the IPCC website or to any of its pages without requesting permission."" Perhaps you misunderstood what they meant with "media use"? I think they meant the mainstream media? - I'm glad to have this image available but I suspect it's a copyright infringement. I hope I am wrong... Pinging also User:RCraig09 as they might have additional insights, having worked with graphs and data a lot. EMsmile (talk) 09:08, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

I notice that Hedgehoque himself created the { { ipcc } } template at Commons. I'm skeptical that Wikipedia, whose content is determined by thousands of self-appointed non-professional editors, constitutes what the IPCC intended as "media". However, this question could be pursued at Commons Village Pump—Copyright. —RCraig09 (talk) 15:56, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

Separately, I think that this particular diagram is much too detailed for a lead image. —RCraig09 (talk) 15:56, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

Yea, I think "media" is probably meant as journalists and alike. I dare not ask at Commons because I don't want this file to be deleted. :-) And yes, the image is a bit on the busy side. It could either be condensed a bit (I've never worked with modifying or creating images for Wikipedia though), or we could replace it with an image collage, see my suggestion on the talk page just below. - You've done a lot of work on creating graphs from IPCC report data, right? If I wanted to try and learn that skill what starting point would you recommend? My only available tool is Excel and I doubt that I could create a pretty graph with that. EMsmile (talk) 16:33, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

No doubt Wikimedia is media. The IPCC should have highest interest that the reports are shared, especially in a non-commercial, educational environment like Wikipedia. Restrictions are usually set up to prevent that content is thrown out of context ("original") and to avoid commercial exploitation. But this is exactly the reason why I uploaded the whole image. We had the readability discussion before. I would also propose to leave it in the lead as it appears to be the most relevant image to introduce the climate change mitigation topic. Btw I raised the copyright question in the Climate change talk in June 2022 without any responses. Lateron I discovered that User:DeWikiMan uploaded MitigationOptions_costs_potentials_IPCCAR6WGIII_rotated-de.svg tagging it with a GNU Free Documentation License. Good work to allow translations but I am not sure if this is in line with the IPCC licence. Hedgehoque (talk) 20:03, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

I am by no means an expert in copyright, but by Commons:Threshold_of_originality#Charts there does not seem to be a problem with it. Please also note, that there is an important difference between File:IPCC_AR6_WG3_SPM-50_Mitigation_Options.png and File:MitigationOptions_costs_potentials_IPCCAR6WGIII_rotated-de.svg: the latter isn't simply an upload of an IPCC image, but is a new plot based on IPCC-data. BTW, if it would help, I could also make a plot with English labels. --DeWikiMan (talk) 11:57, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean with "No doubt Wikimedia is media."? I wish you were right but I don't think you are. A few months ago, I tried to get permission from IPCC for another image and the response from the legal officer was "The IPCC is not currently licensing its figures under CC licenses. Figures in the report are licensed on a case-by-case basis. All figures in the IPCC reports are deemed to be under IPCC copyright." The problem is not that the IPCC would have a problem with their images being used. The problem is that once we upload it then it automatically becomes CC BY SA image which means other people could take it from the Wikipedia article and modify it. I overlooked your questioned on the CC talk page. I suggest you repeat your question at the talk page of WikiProject Climate Change: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Climate_change . You can also see there on the talk page and archive that this has been discussed before. We would all love for IPCC reports to be under a compatible licence but sadly they are not. - I think the only solution in this case would be to redraw the image using the data from their report. The underlying facts and numbers are not copyrighted, right? EMsmile (talk) 21:01, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for explaining. Where can I find the information about the automatic licence shift? The image is attributed with a the restriction only to use the original. Why shouldn't this be sufficient? What would happen if the IPCC complains? Anything else but a request to remove it? But anyhow - what about the SVG then? I wouldn't mind to exchange the image, though any conversion opens the door for manipulation and errors much more. Hedgehoque (talk) 05:28, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

OK, just came across the copyright discussion on your talk page with the harsh warnings - irritating and demotivating really, this could have been proposed in a much friendlier manner. The issue seems serious, though. Maybe I was too naive about that. Hedgehoque (talk) 06:52, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Hi Hedgehoque, yes, I also felt it was rather demotivating to be honest. I was told "This is a warning, not a threat" but I read it as a threat of being blocked from editing (what's the difference between a warning and a threat in this context?). Well, I guess the end result is that I am now super scared of making a copyright infringement mistake which was perhaps the intention. :-) EMsmile (talk) 12:52, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

I've just posted at Commons:Village_pump/Copyright#Graphics_published_by_the_IPCC. —RCraig09 (talk) 00:40, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Just to close the loop: A good discussion at Village Pump resulted (thanks to all involved). I've also created a related or spin-off thread here on the talk page below. EMsmile (talk) 11:35, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

History section

Last week, I created a small history section which I think is useful, as it also provides links to other relevant Wikipedia articles on history aspects. I am now wondering (prompted by this change by Femke which I agree with) whether it would be useful to have some of those older "needed emission cuts" estimates in the history section. The deleted text compares 2018 with 2022 estimates which is not so great but how about taking a statement from one of the older IPCC reports (e.g. 2001) and including their needed emission cut prediction? I haven't checked yet but I am pretty sure it would say things like "By 2020 we need to have seen a significant reduction of the GHG emissions otherwise it'll be bad...". I know it would make for depressing reading that we keep failing on those targets but I think it would be useful to have it visible. Unless this is already nicely summarised in another Wikipedia article? EMsmile (talk) 10:48, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

I was planning to merge this section into the international agreements section after condensing it. We now divide the article into semi-overlapping sections. We talk about mitigation by type of greenhouse gas, by sector (strangely overlapping sectors, rather than the standard four), by time, by country, but policy type and so forth. This makes the article really vulnerable for duplicating text, and makes it difficult for readers to find what they're looking for. History in particular can be about many aspects of the history, which I'd rather put into the section about that aspect.

I do agree we should talk about historical trends, but not by synthesising (using old sources and comparing them to modern data). There should be modern sources talking about how we failed the targets (or in some cases met them). This can be put in the emissions section. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 19:07, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

I am also concerned about some overlap with the "by sector" heading (have written about it above on the talk page) but couldn't come up with a better structure yet. The "by type of greenhouse gas" should be very short as the bulk of that should be at greenhouse gas emissions. The others I find OK though: by time, by country, by policy type. Those are fairly useful sub-headings so that people can easily find what they are looking for (from the table of content). I think a brief history section has its benefits as a standard heading that some readers might like to jump to, in order to get a quick overview. If the history section is only about the history of international agreements then OK, that could be merged together. But the history section might also be about the way our approaches to mitigation have developed over time (with regards to frameworks). Also, the history section is useful to provide links to the other history sub-articles, doesn't it? For me, "history" is a standard heading that many Wikipedia articles have and that is often useful to have. In some cases it's also useful to describe how the meaning of a term has developed. EMsmile (talk) 20:43, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

Shortening the section Policies by country

I am planning to shorten the section "Policies by country". At present, we single out the US, China and Europe and then the LMICs. I think this needs to be condensed while still helping readers to realise that there are relevant sub-articles for all the countries ("mitigation" is included as a section in the "climate change by country X" articles, e.g. climate change in Europe). Or perhaps the information on those regions that are particularly progressive on mitigation (maybe European Union?) should still stay in some detail? And those that are doing particularly little with regards to mitigation policies at present (China?) should also still be mentioned. I am undecided. EMsmile (talk) 17:48, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

I've shortened it a bit now. Should it be shortened further? EMsmile (talk) 20:44, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

Length

@User:RCraig09 You mentioned length on 7 March as 288,176 bytes. I personally think a better metric is this one: Prose size (text only): 85 kB (on 7 March) because we do have guidelines about that parameter here: Wikipedia:Article_size#A_rule_of_thumb. Current pose size (text only) is 72 kB (I think excerpts are not included in this count). I agree with User:Femke who wrote above that the articles needs further shrinking. Maybe 50 kB would be a good aim for now, or even less. EMsmile (talk) 10:48, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

We seem to be in agreement: 50 kb corresponds roughly to 9,000-10,000 words (which is a way more intuitive metric than what is given at article size) —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:30, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

You (Femke) and I are in agreement, but are the others as well? I hope we can convince them. Could you please indicate where you see the biggest potential for culling & condensing at present? For me, it's the section "Sectors of GHG emissions" that I find needs to be compressed the most. I would also compress the content under "renewable energy" (why should each of them have their own sub-heading? Why should the section on solar power even have a bullet point list? I also wonder if these sections could be compressed: "Smart grid and load management" and "Energy conservation and efficiency". And the section on "Investment and finance" probably has a lot of room for compressing, and a need for updating. EMsmile (talk) 18:29, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

Energy is the #1 mitigation issue. Please condense anywhere but not here. 70% of climate change mitigation is about the question how to replace the fossil fuel system with low-carbon types of energy. The biggest players will be solar and wind energy. With the bullet points, this is already extremely condensed. Obviously, there are overlaps with energy transition, renewable energy and sustainable energy. But policy and societal issues of mitigation cannot be understood when it is not clear what we are talking about: A new energy system. I would strongly recommend to place the energy section back where it was - just after the GHG emissions. The "By sector" section, which has been moved up today, is not about GHG emissions but about mitigation approaches. The buildings and transport sections are implicitly about the question how renewable energy can be used in these areas. How RE is produced should be explained first. Hedgehoque (talk) 19:58, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

Update: I followed your advice and move the "by sector" section and also changed its name to "Mitigation approaches by sector". I still worry a bit that this can become very large. Maybe it should eventually be split off to a sub-article. EMsmile (talk) 23:29, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

Good news, the article size is now "only" 67 kB (10444 words) readable prose size. This is after I did some cutting, moving and condensing today in the "economics" section, you can see in the revision history if you agree. We need to cut more though, given that we also want to add more (e.g. needs updated information about the carbon sink improvement options, investment and finance, and probably also about the "barriers" (and the Mitigation approaches by sector, I guess). EMsmile (talk) 23:29, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

We're now at 63 kB which is good but a bit more cutting is probably still needed. Where is there still potential for cutting and condensing? I still think the information on renewable energies can be condensed, as it's overly detailed in parts (see elsewhere on this talk page). Femke said below in another section that we should condense the section on "investment and finance" further. Anything else where there is scope for condensing? EMsmile (talk) 10:35, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Suggestion to convert to long references style

I'd like to convert this article to long ref style to make it more consistent, easier to move content from one article to another, easier for newcomers. Also the long ref style works better when articles use excerpts from other articles. Does anyone object? See also a previous discussion at WikiProject Climate Change here. I've made this conversion already for a few articles, e.g. sea level rise, ocean acidification, ocean heat content, IPCC. See also short discussion here. (Note I am not saying to convert the main climate change article of course - that one has so many refs and is optimised to work with the short ref style). EMsmile (talk) 08:40, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

Using the WP default editor, short ref is much clearer to edit. In the sources section you have it all well structured. And when refs are named ":1" and alike, it remains a little complicated to move long ref content. So I would prefer short ref, especially for all IPCC sources. With the Wikipedia:IPCC_citation templates, it's all prepared. Thank you for your contributions there. Hedgehoque (talk) 20:49, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

What do you mean by WP default editor? I use the cite > automatic tool (or "basic form" or "reuse" with the visual editor). The automatic tool just requires a DOI and spits out the correct ref in long ref style straight away. (sadly the DOI numbers for the AR 6 report don't work yet!). The naming of refs is easy to change in source editor, if needed. My main consideration is how to make it easier for new people: every new editor whom I've ever worked with (and it's quite a lot through my previous online edit-a-thons) gets terribly confused about the short ref style. They are far more comfortable with the long ref style (the cite > automatic tool is so great for anything that has a DOI or ISBN). And I think it's better to be consistent: either all short ref style or all long ref style, not a mixture. Currently we have a mixture where e.g. the IPCC reports use the short ref style, whereas most others are the long ref style. Also, the refs easily get broken when people who are not so familiar with this move content from one article to another: they take the refs with them but might leave the sources behind... But does anyone else have a preference for this? My proposal is: only the climate change article in short ref style, the other sub-articles in long-ref style. EMsmile (talk) 21:59, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

What I mean is the wikicode that appears when you click on edit. I must admit I am not too familiar with editors. Compatibility issues are to be considered of course. It is a question concerning the whole climate change project. Ask there first? Hedgehoque (talk) 06:04, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

I've already posted about it on the WikiProject Climate Change page here. And also here. Not sure if there is a need to post about it again? I can if you think I should. EMsmile (talk) 11:03, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

I've now completed the change-over from short ref to long ref style. I think as a side benefit, the IPCC reports now don't stand out so prominently anymore. EMsmile (talk) 10:36, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Proposing to spell out the abbreviation GHG

I am proposing to replace the 31 times that GHGs is used in the article with spelling the term out. Note in the main climate change article, the abbreviation GHG is only used twice. I think for science communication purposes, fewer abbreviations are generally better. If someone reads the article not from the start but from somewhere in the middle, they might come across the GHG abbreviation and are then left puzzled as to what that stands for. EMsmile (talk) 11:39, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

I've now replaced GHG with greenhouse gas in most instances, since there seemed to be no particular objection. Could also replace it for all instances but thought perhaps every now and again GHG could remain as an abbreviation. EMsmile (talk) 23:22, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Creating a new graph on mitigation options from IPCC data

This is in relationship with the graph about mitigation options (which will likely be deleted soon from Wikimedia Commons due to copyright infringement; it's Figure SPM.7 in the WG III report here). I am really keen to get a workable solution for this graph. E.g. I was wondering if it would help to break the big graph into separate graphs (one for each sector) - would that perhaps help to reduce our copyright problem that comes from the "grouping" of the data by sector? Pinging User:DeWikiMan as they have indicated a willingness to help with this. - (for full background, see related full discussion here on the Wikimedia Commons Village Pump page); see also here on this talk page for earlier discussion). EMsmile (talk) 11:33, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

My full support for this. The copyright discussion is very complex. The chances to keep in in Commons are low. But if we could have at least the - let's say - Top 5 in a reduced graph it could really improve this article. By the way: No response from the IPCC yet. Hedgehoque (talk) 12:54, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

Ah I had not seen that graph before. I like the idea of keeping as much as possible. Also has the silver lining that ours will be svg so easy to translate. Also “coal mining” should be “coal mines” I think as they continue to emit even after the mining has finished. Chidgk1 (talk) 17:28, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

I looked at section 7.4.5.1 in the full report to try and figure out why the bar for ‘sustainable healthy diet’ is grey all over rather than blue at least at the beginning, but there was no mention of cost. It seems obvious that if governments in rich countries stop subsidizing cattle that would both improve health and save money. Chidgk1 (talk) 18:57, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

Have to use part of the savings for a just transition. I found an interesting paper https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/just-transition-meat-sector.pdf and will maybe get round to putting it in one of the detail articles Chidgk1 (talk) 19:10, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

There is a German SVG-plot that is very close to figure SPM.7. I am convinced that it is a routine expression of "Data for figure SPM.7" and there is no copyright violation, but this is still under discussion. In particular, the "grouping" by sector is discussed. When it is kept, I could put English labels on it. But a similar plot would be simple. Any suggestions? One could re-order the bars by total potential. In order not to loose the information about potential per sector, we could create a separate panel, where aggregate potentials per sector are shown, maybe in a horizontal bar chart, or perhaps a pie chart. --DeWikiMan (talk) 22:32, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

Please see my comments in the "Concern about the IPCC image comparing mitigation options" section below. I am against including this graph in any form. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 16:33, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Exerpting/copying the "Energy system transformation" section from Sustainable energy

I looked into exerpting/copying the "Energy_system_transformation" section from Sustainable energy. The full section is 2208 words. There are a few things in it that are not specifically about GHGs, and by removing them I could get down slightly, to 2034 words. This section would replace the following sections which are currently in the article, which make up 1604 words:

• Energy storage
• Energy grids
• Electricity demand management
• Buildings
• Heat pumps
• Cooling
• Energy in the form of transport
• Electric vehicles
• Shipping
• Air travel
• Co-benefits (just the paragraph on air pollution)

I pasted all these sections into a sandbox here.

I strongly recommend replacing these sections with an excerpt of "Energy system transformation" It would bring in highly up-to-date, Featured-Article-quality text and give a coherent overview of the the critical concept of system transformation. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 06:18, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

I am a bit confused. You would want to excerpt the entire "Energy system transformation" including all its sub-headings? Each of the sub-headings will require their own expert if I understand the excerpt tool correctly. I think this would duplicate too much text from one article to another. Maybe just excerpt the front part of the "Energy system transformation" section, i.e. this?:

Extended content
This section is an excerpt from Sustainable energy § Energy system transformation.[edit] Bloomberg NEF reported that in 2022, global energy transition investment equaled fossil fuels investment for the first time.

EMsmile (talk) 12:39, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

And maybe the details on the buildings, heat pumps, cooling, shipping, air travel etc. should be moved to greenhouse gas emissions? The GHGE article could include info on emissions and also on reducing those emissions perhaps? EMsmile (talk) 12:39, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Ha ha, I didn't know the tool worked this way - I assumed the tool always brought in subsections. Yes, I do think this article should excerpt or copy all of the subsections of "Energy system transformation". (In the three years that I've been aware of the excerpt tool, this is the first time I'm proposing using it. It is rare that a section that works in one article also works in another.)

Since Climate change mitigation is about reducing emissions and Greenhouse gas emissions is about producing emissions, I think the reader would expect solutions such as heat pumps to be in Climate change mitigation. Wikipedia should have an article that gives a full, balanced, and succinct picture of what it will take to get to net zero. This article should overlap substantially with Sustainable energy because roughly three quarters of what it will take to get to net zero is changing how we do energy. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 15:21, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

References

I think it would be odd to have such a huge chunk of text transcribed from another article (and an excerpt would be better than copy & paste because if copy & paste then any future updates would have to be made in both articles). If net zero is what we wanted to focus on for the mitigation article then we should also streamline our article with the one on Carbon neutrality ("net zero" redirects to there). For me, it would be OK to transcribe the starting section from the "Energy system transformation" section but not all the sub-sections as well. And I do think some of the content that we currently have in this article about the energy system could be condensed. Note that with regards to number of words: the words from excerpts are actually not counted in the "page size" data. EMsmile (talk) 17:06, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

(as an aside, I think "clean energy" would be a more intuitive article title and term than sustainable energy; somewhere in the lead we had linked to "clean energy" but someone changed it to "sustainable energy". I am saying this after spending weeks and months on getting the sustainability article just right; sustainable means more than just carbon neutral, it also talks about social aspects; I guess we talked about this 18 months ago here). EMsmile (talk) 17:06, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Alternative definitions?

I think we could provide some clarification on "alternative definitions" of climate change mitigation in the definitions section. I see that with this change, User:Chidgk1 has already done a bit of that although I do wonder if this now gives too much weight to SRM (which is not the topic of this article but mentioned at the end under "supplementary options". User:RCraig09 wrote above The only relevance of your favored narrow (IPCC) definition versus a broad (literal) definition of climate change mitigation [...] I don't fully get what you are getting at with that. The IPCC definition in my opinion is the one that we need to go by. Any "other" definitions can be mentioned in the definitions section of the article (but not in the lead). So which publications (reliable sources) can we cite which provide the so called "broader or literal" definition of climate change mitigation? If it was indeed (which is currently our first sentence which I disagree with): "Climate change mitigation consists of actions to limit global warming." then which reference would you like to cite for this? And doesn't it then include everything, i.e. also all the stuff that is in individual action on climate change, climate movement, climate action? I think maybe you're in fact now mixing up climate change mitigation with climate action. But if there are good reliable sources which do say that, then let's include those in the definitions section to provide a good overview of the different definitions. EMsmile (talk) 11:08, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

I think Chidgk1's recent bold revisions to the lead are generally good.^{I'll make tiny changes.} Going forward, we must distinguish how we approach (a) the lead (which most laypersons read), versus (b) the body's Definitions section (included for academic completness). Here, the lead should use Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing of concepts from all sources (includes literal interpretation of the words in the title), whereas the Definitions section may quote specific definitions from scientifically authoritative sources. The first definition will be broader; the second (presumably IPCC) definition is narrower and not universal—both are "correct". Much like the Climate change article distinguishes CC from GW, it is possible we can mention in the lead that the IPCC adopts a narrower definition, though I don't think that additional verbiage is necessary. —RCraig09 (talk) 18:54, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

Yes sounds good Chidgk1 (talk) 19:29, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

So then where are the sources that you want to cite in the definition section which support the "alternative/broader" definition of climate change mitigation that you have in mind (and which you want to push for in the first sentence of the lead)? I am all for including such alternative definitions for completeness reason, however they need to be mentioned in a way that it meets WP:DUE. I think it would not be easy to find a source that is on the same level as the IPCC reports when it comes to defining key terms. - And I don't think the comparison with the climate change article is all that relevant here. In that discussion, a lot was about "common use" of the term "climate change". I don't think there is a "common use" definition for "climate change mitigation". Maybe you're confusing it with climate action. (which used to redirect to climate change mitigation until 2020, see here). EMsmile (talk) 20:36, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

— Some of the content you have added to the "Definition" section was improper editorial commentary. I have amended it. The odi.org reference says "Solar radiation modification (SRM) ...is part of a set of climate mitigation technologies that may be used to protect the earth from the advanced stages of global warming (IPCC 2021)" and c2g2.net includes SRM "As a climate risk reduction strategy". So, literally: it mitigates climate change. There is apparently no basis for your editorial commentary that SRM is "almost never" "described" as climate mitigation.

— The fact that the "Definitions" and "Supplementary options" section already distinguish the narrow IPCC (GHG-related) definition from Solar geoengineering (incl. SRM) shows that both definitions fit the broader description in the lead—which, again, is based on the literal, ordinary, common meaning of the title's words, "climate change mitigation". And separate sourcing is not required for literal, ordinary, common meaning of words, especially in leads. —RCraig09 (talk) 23:48, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

I've made further changes to the "definitions" section and rolled the content that was in "supplementary options" into it. I hope you agree with this. I don't think it's ideal as it gives SRM far too much space and emphasis as this early point in the article. But you seem to be quite adamant about including SRM here, so perhaps we can compromise on this. (What do others think, by the way?) Personally, I think IPCC is more important here than ODI or c2g2.net (never heard of them) but it's good to show that there are alternative definitions, as long as it's clear who says what. By the way, I am surprised you keep stressing "literal, ordinary, common meaning of the title's words" - for me the term "mitigation" in the context of climate change has no "ordinary meaning". Perhaps that's because I am not a native English speaker. Is "mitigation" a very clear, common and ordinary word for native English speakers? The Wikipedia article on mitigation says "Mitigation is the reduction of something harmful or the reduction of its harmful effects". So this fits for the IPCC definition, i.e. the reduction of GHGs and the reduction of the harmful effects of GHGs. EMsmile (talk) 10:48, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

And I sill maintain, as I wrote above (in the section about the first two sentences in the lead), that the current first sentence is too similar to the first sentence of climate action. It needs to be made more specific. Let's hear also from others about this? If I am the only one with this concern then I'll shut up and let it be. EMsmile (talk) 10:48, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Note also that IPCC words it like this "Mitigation in the context of climate change is...". they don't say "climate change mitigation is...". In their Annex, they include it under M, not under C and say "Mitigation (of climate change) A human intervention to reduce emissions or enhance the sinks of greenhouse gases." Maybe this helps. I am thinking of mitigation in the context of climate change and not mitigation "in general". EMsmile (talk) 11:08, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

In English, the term mitigation is somewhat formal, but is not technical. To readers newly arriving at this article, the term mitigation "in the context of climate change" is not the issue; they will begin by applying its literal, ordinary, common meaning: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mitigation. The "Definitions" section, which I think can be moved down, clarifies. —RCraig09 (talk) 16:27, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Re The Wikipedia article on mitigation says "Mitigation is the reduction of something harmful or the reduction of its harmful effects", this is a good summary of what the general public might expect climate change mitigation to be about. Climate change terminology is different from everyday English because actions that reduce the harmful effects of climate change, like planting drought-resistant crops so that climate change doesn't cause starvation, are called adaptation. In the climate change field, mitigation is only about the reduction of something harmful, i.e. reducing the harmful changes that are happening in the climate itself. Most literature for the general public uses terms like "stopping climate change" to mean what academics mean when they say mitigation. Given the difference between what this article is about and what "mitigation" means in everyday English, I'm planning to add a WP:hatnote explaining this. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 17:06, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

"Approaches" section

Most of the Approaches section states what is in other sections. I suggest moving statements to more specific sections if they add anything to those sections, and deleting this section. I'm concerned about this section not just because of duplication/length but because of its framing. The framing implies that people can choose between four equivalent "approaches" to get to the end goal. This just isn't true. The four things listed here have to all be done, and they all have to be done at the same time, i.e. now. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 05:46, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

I understand your concern but I think this kind of overview section is useful. I've changed this section in an attempt to address your concerns. I think it's important to give this kind of overview before we dive in the specific options. We probably need even more info here (or elsewhere) to compare the different options, using that IPCC graph that we are discussing about copyright issues (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IPCC_AR6_WG3_SPM-50_Mitigation_Options.png). Without this overview & comparison section we risk that everyone just thinks in silos. With that I mean that the renewable energies people just focus on that, the people interested in biochar focus just on that etc. We need to pull this together and show how it needs to all work together. EMsmile (talk) 10:57, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

I agree it's important to give this kind of overview before we dive in the specific options, and I also think the changes you made just now are good. I don't think we need a separate section for this kind of overview - the WP:LEAD section should provide the overview.Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 15:38, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

in my opinion the lead is a summary of the article, much like the abstract of a paper, or the executive summary of a report. Therefore, an explanation on the overview belongs in the main body as well as in the lead. Having it in the main body also makes it easier to find from the table of content. Overviews are super important EMsmile (talk) 17:09, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

I agree that overviews are generally duplicating the effort of the TOC/lead. In this case however, it works well with the goals and definition section, but poorly with the "Overview of categories". It's a vague heading. We should simplify and improve our structure/TOC so that readers can get this information purely and simply from the TOC. We're going in the right direction with the removal of the cryptic "Supplementary options". —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:19, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Concern about the IPCC image comparing mitigation options

I'm alarmed that the figure at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IPCC_AR6_WG3_SPM-50_Mitigation_Options.png is being proposed again as a source for comparing the different options. We discussed this at Talk:Climate change months ago. This figure compares the potential of various options for mitigation in the very short term, i.e. what can effect a reduction in emissions by 2030. An option that would have higher cost/benefit overall but whose benefits don't come until 2040 will not rank highly on this figure. When taken out of its intended short-term context, this figure is systemically biased against systemic change and against investing in R&D. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 15:38, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

I wasn't aware of that earlier discussion. Thanks for pointing it out. Couldn't this problem be solved by putting the figure into context, i.e. making it clear in the figure caption that this is about relatively short term options (2030). It's an important image and it speaks to lay persons I would say (at least I found it useful) so to sideline it completely would be a pity, wouldn't it? Unless it is completely wrong. I tried to find the earlier discussion that you mentioned and came across this one in the talk archive - is this the one you had in mind? EMsmile (talk) 17:15, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

I love the figure myself. A lot of mitigation needs to happen in the next 10 years (like 50% reduction for 1.5C scenario), and it's good to show the short-term possibilities. Of course, we should emphasize the fact that it's short-term, possibly by including that in the title of the remade graph as well as the caption. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:21, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

If we were to add a section on short-term possibilities for mitigation, this figure would belong in it. Should we have a section on short-term possibilities for mitigation? I don't think so because just getting the big picture on mitigation across will make for a long article, but I don't feel strongly about this. If we do have such a section, it should be closer to the bottom of the article than the top.

As for including this figure outside the context of short-term possibilities for mitigation, I think it would confuse most readers. Most readers will think this is the IPCC's list of the highest-impact things we could do in the next 8 years. Life would be so much easier if such a list existed, but it doesn't. Excellent books have been written containing lists like that, but none of those books were written by the IPCC.

Probably the closest thing we have to the IPCC's views on the highest-impact things to do in the next 8 years is this press release. It has some overlap with SPM Fig.7 but not all that much, with much more emphasis on electrification and urban planning. The press release doesn't mention dead ends such as switching from coal to natural gas, or things with high trade-offs like biofuels. SPM Fig 7 includes these things fairly prominently because it only looks at two kinds of data (GHG emissions by 2030 and cost) with no nuance.

@EMsmile, yes thank you for finding the link in the Talk:Climate change archive. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 18:08, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Balance on land base mitigation options

I reviewed the "Preserving and enhancing carbon sinks" section a few days ago, and have since been discussing via email with EMsmile (apologies for the delay in posting). My comments on the current structure

• Very odd hardly mention of soil carbon, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-till_farming and https://4p1000.org/?lang=en .
• Related this is different is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar. This isn’t mentioned anywhere (and the biochar page looks weak too).
• BECCS (and bioenergy) isn’t covered either.
• For forest related activities a short summary with links to other pages might keep it tighter.
• Preventing permafrost leaks is a weird one. The tipping point described is well known, but the rest is all new to me and seems very odd. Basically this isn’t really related to mitigation, or at least none of the citations seem to be. This sections has now been deleted, which I think is the correct action.

If I were asked me to quickly to list the key land based mitigation options I’d have said:

• Forest - but it’s slow and has trade-off with food prices and potential confounding spill over effects on climate from indirect land use change.
• Wetland restoration - important, as a moderately big mitigation potential on limited land area (with low trade-offs/costs)
• Increasing soil carbon - lots of different measures, that makes it complex and hard to measure, but again less trade-offs (than BECCS or affoestation). Perhasp biochar in here or separately.
• BECCS – the typically forms a big part of achieving climate targets beyond 2050 in modelling, such as by the Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) associated with the IPCC process, but many (including me) are very sceptical due loss of biodiversity and increases in food prices that the areas involved imply.

Rather than AR6 WGIII report, I think a concise summary might be the SRCCL, and in particular https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/4/2021/07/05_Chapter-2-V6.pdf PAlandus (talk) 20:52, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

This is very helpful. Thanks PAlandus! Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 23:14, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

Thanks PAlandus. I'm trying to get my head around how to address your comments exactly. The one on permafrost leaks was easy: this section has now been removed. The others will be a bit harder to do. I hope someone will find the courage and time to give it a go. I could also give it a try next week maybe. But another aspect that I find challenging in this is how to not repeat / overlap more than necessary with the article on Carbon sequestration. EMsmile (talk) 11:11, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

As you noted this page changes quite rapidly, so there have been improvements in just the past couple of days.

I think it's good that "Soils" and "Farming methods" have been added. However, at least wrt "Preserving and enhancing carbon sinks" these are the same thing, i.e., the current content of "Farming methods" all relates to soil, so I would combine. Still think biochar deserves a mention, but it's not critical.

The biggest point where no process has yet been made is BECCS (Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage). The potential for this is highly contested (e.g. due to issues of loss of biodiversity), but some see it as critically important as a CDR technology (for example up to ~10 GtCO2 yr–1). It certainly deserves some coverage. PAlandus (talk) 22:47, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

Hi User:PAlandus, I've now tried to address your comments in the article. Could you please take another look? Please forgive me if I've introduced any mistakes, this is not my area of expertise but I look forward to learning. * I've added some of your comments from the talk page as overview sentences into the article as I felt they were very useful. Could you please check those and then also propose suitable references to use for those statements?

• Also, please help by condensing some of the content, e.g. in the section on forestry we probably have too much detail for some aspects but I wasn't sure what to removed.
• Also for the biochar and BECCS, I have probably now added too many sentences (and not enough recent figures), could you help with that?
• And the new structure looks like this, do you think this is workable?:

5 Preserving and enhancing carbon sinks
5.1 Terminology
5.2 Forestry
5.3 Increasing soil carbon
5.4 Wetland restoration
5.5 Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage
5.6 Ocean-based options
5.7 Technologies to capture carbon dioxide EMsmile (talk) 12:28, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

Let's get the first paragraph of the lead right

I think we need to get the first paragraph of the lead right. It's probably the most important paragraph of the entire article. Many people won't read further than this. It might be transcribed to other articles. And when you search on Google, it will be displayed and also assistants like Amazon's Alex might read this out to you if you ask "Alexa, what is climate change mitigation?". I just made some changes today because I felt the first paragraph of the lead was too short and it was too focused on repeating the numbers on greenhouse gas emissions. I think we should talk more about actual mitigation approaches that are available to us. For now I have moved the sentence about policies to the first paragraph. We could add another sentence that summarises the whole section on "Preserving and enhancing carbon sinks" (it would take second place to the info on energy systems but it needs to be included in the first paragraph, in my opinion). - Note a previous discussion about the (old) lead was here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Climate_change_mitigation#Comments_on_the_lead_and_organization (I think most of that has now been resolved). EMsmile (talk) 12:34, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

I agree we should talk more about available mitigation approaches, so I've cut/rephrased the sentence about physics from the first paragraph. I'm okay with a short sentence (<10 words) on forests in the first paragraph. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:29, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

It's taking shape. Feeling tempted to install the "Please don't touch" sign. Hedgehoque (talk) 20:07, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

Nah, it's far too early for that. :-) Once we have sorted out the main body of the article we'll likely come back to the lead for more improvements (and for lengthening it). I like leads to be in the range of 450 to 600 words. EMsmile (talk) 21:04, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

Hi User:RCraig09: I see you are currently working on the lead. Can we please agree that the first paragraph of the lead should have a decent length (4-6 lines), see above? Also I think this first paragraph should include information about policies not just about emissions and technologies (also see above). EMsmile (talk) 23:49, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

I'm not as concerned with length per se as much as with clarity and conciseness, as I think substance should trump form. I consider my work today to be preliminary: it will be easier to re-arrange clear and concise language than to re-arrange unclear and unconcise language. I'm not trying to make a final version now. —RCraig09 (talk) 00:00, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

Though I think each sentence is now clearer, and the paragraphs are now better organized, I think that the lead as a whole does not "flow" as well as it could. As the article-as-a-whole takes shape, I think the lead can follow. —RCraig09 (talk) 04:07, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

I see that the first paragraph is now again only one sentence long. I think this is unsatisfactory, like I said above on 21 Nov. But before changing it back to be a "proper first paragraph" I'd like to see if consensus can be reached on what should be in the first paragraph as we'll otherwise be changing it backwards and forwards several times. We can be guided by this: WP:OPEN. I think the content of the first paragraph should be the definition (i.e. what's currently in the first sentence), then some key facts about the two broad approaches (i.e. about the GHG emission reduction and about the carbon sink enhancement) and also a sentence or two about policy instruments and perhaps even the main international agreement (Paris Agreement). EMsmile (talk) 13:16, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

Secondly, I disagree with the first sentence. It is now: Climate change mitigation is limiting global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, or by removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Previously is was this which I think was better: Climate change mitigation involves limiting global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions or by enhancing carbon sinks that remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. I don't think that "carbon sinks" is terribly techy. Also, if we use the IPCC report as a source for this definition we should stay closer to the source. Their exact wording is "A human intervention to reduce emissions or enhance the sinks of greenhouse gases". Let's also compare with the wording used in the main climate change article: Climate change can be mitigated by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and by enhancing sinks that absorb greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.. So there it uses "sinks" and wikilinks that to carbon sinks. If that's good enough for the climate change article then why can we not mention sinks in our first sentences? EMsmile (talk) 13:16, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

I'm OK with adding a tiny number of concise sentences to the first paragraph, as that's a formal matter. I strongly object to using carbon sinks in the lead of Wikipedia articles—this or any other. It's definitely a techy term that will make lay readers' eyes glaze over. That the term is used in a section in the body of the CC article, or in a scientific (IPCC) publication, is not reason to place it in front of lay readers in a lead. Separately: I've changed "is" back to "involves" as the subject and predicate are not co-extensive (I couldn't readily trace any reason for someone else changing it to "is").—RCraig09 (talk) 16:31, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

Why only a "tiny number of sentences"? I think however many sentences it takes to make it into a "proper" first paragraph. With proper I mean 4-6 lines and the content which I outlined above. I really don't think that "carbon sinks" is any more difficult than the word "mitigation" itself! And we cannot use the IPCC definition as a reference for this first sentence then if we have changed their wording to "by removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere". Let's hear from others what they think about this first sentence now? EMsmile (talk) 08:31, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

And you asked about the change from "involves" to "is". It was User:Chidgk1 in this edit. Justification was "copyedited first sentence as the cite does not use the word “involves”". I think "is" is actually better than the more complicated "involves" and it's closer to the source. I don't understand what you mean with "as the subject and predicate are not co-extensive". - Why don't we simply use the definition by IPCC which is short and sweet: "A human intervention to reduce emissions or enhance the sinks of greenhouse gases". Nothing overly techy there. And then we don't add our own interpretations here. EMsmile (talk) 08:31, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

I am happy to compromise on simply using the IPCC definition Chidgk1 (talk) 14:42, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

@RCraig09 By commenting that “the subject and predicate are not co-extensive” you seem to be implying that we editors understand English much better than the readers who cannot understand “carbon sink” - thanks for the complement but "sink" is a pretty common word at least for native speakers of British English so even those who have not heard of a "carbon sink" would probably succeed with a rough guess. However I agree when you say that "As the article-as-a-whole takes shape, I think the lead can follow." Chidgk1 (talk) 14:54, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

I just asked a non-native speaker with advanced (C1) level English if he understood the IPCC definition without looking up any words and he said he did not. But he did understand the word “sink” to mean “reduce” which is close enough I think. He did not understand “mitigation” “intervention” and “enhance” Chidgk1 (talk) 15:24, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

We are talking about the opening sentence of an encyclopedia article—which should give a clear definition of a term (mitigation) to lay readers without confronting them with a second techy term whose special meaning they must figure out. (Compare to dictionary definition of "sink".) Again: that a scientific (IPCC) publication uses "carbon sink" does not make it readily understandable to lay readers in the first five seconds they start reading an article. Further, "enhance" and "sink" are like opposites of each other. The IPCC was writing science for scientists, not an opening sentence of a layperson's encyclopedia article. —RCraig09 (talk) 16:48, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

So what makes you think “the subject and predicate are not co-extensive”? As far as I can see from the IPCC definition they are. Chidgk1 (talk) 17:29, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

@Chidgk1: Mitigation would also include, for example, spraying sunlight-reflective aerosols in the upper atmosphere. This proposed technology is separate from greenhouse gas control. Related grammar issue: "mitigation" is a noun, whereas limiting/reducing/removing are verbs/participles/gerunds, so it's at least awkward and maybe wrong to join them with the word "is". 20:41, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

No, those solar radiation modifications are NOT a mitigation method. They are included in the WG III report but under "supplementary measures". See also here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_mitigation#Supplementary_options. And I agree with Chidgk1 and disagree with you (RCraig09): "Sink" is not an overly difficult word. I would prefer accuracy here thann "simplicity" (I can't think of a much simpler word than "sink"). For comparison, the Emissions Gap Report 2022 defines climate change mitigation as: "Mitigation: In the context of climate change, mitigation relates to a human intervention to reduce the sources or enhance the sinks of GHGs. Examples include using fossil fuels more efficiently for industrial processes or electricity generation, switching to solar energy or wind power, improving the insulation of buildings, and expanding forests and other ‘sinks’ to remove greater amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere." Why are we trying to be smarter than these reliable sources and come up with our own definition, currently "Climate change mitigation involves limiting climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, or by removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. I don't even recall when the "involves limiting climate change" was added? The sources don't say that. Our earlier first sentence was Climate change mitigation consists of human actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or to enhance carbon sinks that absorb greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. - that one was better in my opinion. EMsmile (talk) 21:54, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

— A. The fact that even NASA puts "sink" in quotes and has to explain the term demonstrates that sink is not a commonly used word. It is technical. Nothing in the dictionary definition makes the term carbon sink accessible to laypersons. If you're dead set on including the term, you can do so in the body of the article, with a sourced explanation.
— B. Per WP:PARAPHRASE, "editors should generally summarize source material in their own words, adding inline citations as required by the sourcing policy". I wasn't "coming up with my own definition". We need not—and especially in the first sentence of a layperson's encyclopedia article—should not slavishly copy techy verbiage from scientific publications. And per WP:EXPLAINLEAD, "It is particularly important for the first section (the "lead" section, above the table of contents) to be understandable to a broad readership", where it defines "the general reader" as one who "has no advanced education in the topic's field, is largely unfamiliar with the topic itself, and may even be unsure what the topic is." We're not defending our doctoral dissertation here; we're trying to communicate.
— C. The fact that the article even has a /* Supplementary options */ section suggests that it should be covered by the lead, or possibly even mentioned in the lead if that technology develops. The only relevance of your favored narrow (IPCC) definition versus a broad (literal) definition of climate change mitigation, was whether to use "involves" versus "is" in the first sentence. I see the issue has been mooted by yet another edit.
— D. I folded the previous sentence "As such, mitigation limits the amount of global warming" into the first sentence (changing global warming to climate change per 2020's article renaming and to comport with the article title "Climate change mitigation". This is basic paraphrasing, and it's not surprising that "limiting climate change" is accomplished by the "Climate change mitigation" that is the title of the article. —RCraig09 (talk) 06:04, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

Haven't read the entire discussion, but I agree that the word sink is jargon and should be explained if it is used in the lead. It may be better to explain the term without using it if somebody comes up with good wording. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 10:00, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

Revisiting the first two sentences (again)

I am getting really frustrated with your big changes to the lead, User:Hedgehoque. I mean this change. We've been discussing here on the talk page how to get it right and I felt it was now a pretty good compromise but now you've changed it again without any discussion or explanation on the talk page. I would say "revert" and discuss on the talk page first. The first two sentences that you've just deleted were actually good and accurate: Climate change mitigation involves reducing greenhouse gas emissions or removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. The main goal of climate change mitigation is to limit global warming. We are wasting our time if everyone simply overrides previous discussions about this first sentence. Your new first sentence (Climate change mitigation consists of actions to limit global warming. is NOT backed up by the IPCC definition. See also our own definition section in this article. EMsmile (talk) 10:55, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

With IPCC terminology, we moved away from the requirements of the lead. And after the percentages had been removed, fossil fuels (73%) appeared on the same level as all the minor drivers making it appear like one out of many reasons. We do not neccessarily need the numbers but we should be clearer about that. Having the whole discussion in mind, I just gave it a try. The modified version of the lead starts with the most important solutions in a language which should be easy to read. Please take a look at my considerations:

• The paragraph structure is now: Intro, energy, agriculture, policies.
• Intro starting with CO₂ as the main GHG
• Coal / oil / gas as the main cause. No brackets. I would like to avoid to start with the technical term fossil fuel.
• ...released when burning... is simpler than by the combustion of. But we can discuss that.
• Cheapest reduction by wind and solar power. Sourced by the IPCC graph (AR6 WG3 SPM-50).
• CDR mentioned as an equally potent approach in the first paragraph. Enlarging forests links to carbon sinks. Open for suggestions here.

Hedgehoque (talk) 10:56, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

I disagree with your reasoning on the first sentence; I think I've explained my position perhaps better now in the new section further down on this talk page called "alternative definitions". Please see there. And I also don't agree with your "over focus" on just CO2. Please take a look at the main climate change article's first paragraph of the lead. This paragraph has been optimised in a very very long process. I think we should be following a similar wording which is how we had it before your most recent changes. (I do agree with having CDR in the first paragraph, so that’s an improvement. I think "fossil fuel" is nowadays a term that everyone understands. But I have no strong opinion whether it should be included at this point or not). EMsmile (talk) 11:14, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

I admit, the change was bold. But I've followed the discussion which convinced me that we must use simpler words. A definition like "consists of actions to limit global warming" is just a way to explain it in our own words (see alternative definitions discussion below). The rest of the article explains well enough that we do not mean activism. Starting with CO2 is a well-sourced focus, not an "over focus". It is still the most potent GHG with more than 2/3 impact (depending on the GWP reference). Still, methane reduction is a very relevant CCM issue. Having it later on comes with the advantage to address agriculture alongside with N₂O. In addition to that, methane has a different causality: It is not a product of combustion. And "methane removal" such as CDR is not an option. That made me consider that grouping it with CO₂ might just be the second-best solution. This is certianly not final stage but maybe we can build on it. Hedgehoque (talk) 11:59, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

I still disagree on the first sentence. It needs to be on the exact topic that the article is about and not be vague. The way it is currently worded it would include "everything", including all the activism stuff. I keep stressing that the first paragraph is mega important as this is what people see when they search for it with Google, it's what Alexa reads out to them. A lot of people won't even read further than the first paragraph. Can we please make it closer again to how it was? I liked how we first gave the definition (in line with the IPCC definition). Followed by a short sentence about the overall goal. Let's hear also what others think about this. EMsmile (talk) 15:06, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

On the whole, I think that Chidgk1's Hedgehoque's recent bold changes organize ideas into separate paragraphs, and make the lead read much more smoothly. I also like the initial sentences since the Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing is clear for general readers per my paragraph "B." above. I'll be adding to the /* Alternative definitions? */ discussion below. — 18:54, 28 November 2022 (UTC) ... (strikeout added —RCraig09 (talk) 17:26, 1 December 2022 (UTC))

As an aside, it wasn't Chidgk1 who made those bold changes to the lead (basically reverting a lot of stuff that we had discussed earlier about the first two sentences!) but User:Hedgehoque, see here (unless we are talking about a different set of bold changes, perhaps I got confused now). Either way, I am really unhappy with the first sentence now: "Climate change mitigation generally refers to actions to limit climate change." To me this could have been the same/similar first sentence for climate movement or climate action. Climate action starts with Climate action (or climate change action) refers to a range of activities, mechanisms, policy instruments and so forth that aim to reduce the severity of human induced climate change and its impacts. Climate movement starts with The climate movement is a global social movement focused on pressuring governments and industry to take action (also called "climate action") addressing the causes and impacts of climate change. Our article's first sentence is so lame and non specific now! It used to be better: Climate change mitigation involves reducing greenhouse gas emissions or removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. The main goal of climate change mitigation is to limit global warming. Am I the only one who thinks this way? EMsmile (talk) 20:29, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

How about creating an image collage for the lead image?

Concentrated solar power with molten salt heat storage in Spain

Pine reforestation west of HeHo. Shan State, Myanmar [Burma]

Haiti reforestation nursery

I am proposing that we create a 2x2 image collage as a lead image. Similar to how it's been done for sustainable energy and climate change adaptation. (or Co-benefits of climate change mitigation, marine biology). I think photos just always work better than graphs to quickly identify that "I've landed at the right article" and this is what it's all about. If there is an appetite I could start with collecting and proposing some images. There would be 1-2 images showing renewable energy of course but also some (1-2) showing land-based mitigation options. EMsmile (talk) 09:12, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

I'm okay with that. I'd say 1-2 renewable, 1-2 demand reduction/greentech like bikes or insulation, and 1 land-based option. We can then make the 6-photo collage smaller or remove it. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 08:12, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

Good idea. I also thought about creating a multiple image introducing the energy section. The solar / wind / hydro images on the right do not correspond with the text layout - the passages are too short. But if we put it all on top, it could be a good solution. Hedgehoque (talk) 09:54, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

OK, so I have selected four photos for now. Two are the same as at sustainable energy. Fire away with your comments for improvements! :-) EMsmile (talk) 10:09, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

Looks good. I think you should put it in the the lead right now and people can improve it over time. Chidgk1 (talk) 18:26, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

OK, will add it to the article shortly. I've now replaced the rainforest image with one of peatland as that's perhaps more interesting and specific to mitigation. The old image if we want to reinstate it is here on the right.

Ecuadorian_Amazon_rain_forest,_looking_toward_the_Andes

Also replaced the solar power image as it looked to similar (with the snowy mountains) to the peatland image. I also like that the new image has wind power in it as well.

Wondering if an image of bicycle traffic would be better than the image of the electrified train? EMsmile (talk) 12:53, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

I think the images should be clear immediately, so I prefer the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest. Only a tiny percentage of people will know that peatlands have anything to do with mitigation. A reforestation project might be even better as it would be an example of negative emissions.

I'm okay with either the train or the bicycle.

I have a weak preference for the meal over the ingredients, for aesthetic reasons.

Do you want to have a go at making the WP:CAPTION more succint per the guideline? —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:11, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

I like where this is going. Thanks EMsmile for taking the initiative. I have a preference for File:Plant-Based_Dishes,_Raw_Food_(29103285347).jpg over File:Vegan and vegetarian grocery shopping and cookery books.jpg. The former shows more cultural diversity and looks less expensive.

I'd prefer a forest picture that shows some beautiful wildlife, as wildlife protection is a key co-benefit of forest preservation. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 23:23, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

Thank you, EMsmile, good contribution. The train combines the public transport and the electrification aspects. However, you do not realize the electrificaton aspect at first glance. Could be the battery electric bus from the transport section could be a better eye-catcher? Unfortunately, it is not in landscape format. The peatlands are not self-explaining until you read it. The rainforest could be the better choice. Hedgehoque (talk) 08:31, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

I'm glad people like the general idea. I've now replaced the photo that is meant to show a plant-based diet with the one that has the ready cooked dishes. EMsmile (talk) 11:25, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

I agree with Femke that a reforestation photo would be better than just a general forest photo. There are loads of them on Wikimedia Commons. Do we prefer one with people or without? I am leaning to with people as it shows the human action aspect. If we want one without, there is this one from Mynmar as an option, see on the right:

Here is one with people in Haiti: EMsmile (talk) 11:25, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

Regarding the caption, do you think it's still too long? I've modelled it on the caption used at sustainable energy. EMsmile (talk) 11:25, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

Electric bus in Montreal

I've replaced the Singapore train photo with one from France which shows the electrification aspect more clearly and also hints at the city aspect better, I think. (now we have two photos from Europe though). That bus photo that you meant, Hedgehoque is the one from Montreal (see on the right towards the bottom). I find that one strange, I don't really know what I am looking at with that overhead thing. I guess it's during charging? EMsmile (talk) 11:35, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

Must be charging. The collection looks good now. Hedgehoque (talk) 05:29, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

Caption looked good. I've further tweaked and condensed it. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 09:03, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

The first sentence

I'm starting this new section to pick up on something that we have discussed earlier (we being mainly me and RCraig09) because I'd like to hear from more people, too. The first sentence is currently Climate change mitigation is action to limit climate change. I find this sentence very sub-optimal, it doesn't even sound right. Compare this with the short description text of the article which is better: Actions to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions to limit climate change. In my opinion, the word "greenhouse gas emissions" must be included in the first sentence. In an earlier version we had it like this which was better in my opinion: Climate change mitigation involves reducing greenhouse gas emissions or removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. The main goal of climate change mitigation is to limit global warming. Am I the only one who thinks this way? I know RCraig09 is a proponent of the first sentence as it is currently but I am curious to hear from others as well? EMsmile (talk) 11:36, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

You might find it easier to get more editors' attention on this a bit later. Right now there is a lot of discussion going on and lots of improvements being made that are using up editors' attention. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 23:35, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

The advantage of the short form is its simplicity. You mentioned Alexa before - and this is exactly the point. If we start with greenhouse gases, it will already kick out many readers. Most people only have a vague idea about GHG, if at all. Having GHG in the 2nd sentence is fair enough. Sure, there could be some initial confusion with climate action and activism. Would an adjective help? Something like "qualified", "targeted", "practical", "outcome-oriented", "solution-oriented" action? Hedgehoque (talk) 07:55, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

I would also prefer greenhouse gas emissions to be in the first sentence. The current sentence is too vague I think Chidgk1 (talk) 16:07, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

The short sentence is broad; it is not vague. The short sentence concisely covers both the IPCC (GHG-centered) definition and other definitions (literally, climate change mitigation techniques including Solar geoengineering/Solar radiation management). —RCraig09 (talk) 16:21, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

I'd like to propose a compromise solution. From the (few) comments so far, I sense that Chidgk1 would be in favour of changing it. RCraig09 and Hedgehoque like the first sentence as it is but Hedgehoque has also proposed an adjective (I couldn't think of a suitable one though). Here's my compromise proposal: Climate change mitigation is action to limit climate change, for example by reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. This way you get your very short, "broad" first part of the sentence but we also make the sentence more tangible by adding the main example action that is being taken for mitigation. By the way, is it correct English to say "... is action to"? I would change it to Climate change mitigation consists of actions to limit climate change, for example by.... If a reader is "turned off" when they see "greenhouse gases" in the first sentence then they would also be turned off if they saw it in the second or third sentence. After all, people come to Wikipedia to learn about something. Otherwise they could just put into google "what's climate change mitigation" and they don't need a Wikipedia article at all. EMsmile (talk) 21:32, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

“is action to” is correct in British English Chidgk1 (talk) 16:04, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Another way to get inspiration is to look at the other language versions in Wikipedia. I looked at several and none of them have a sentence as short as "CCM is action to limit CC". Here are some examples (using Google translate to translate it back to English):

• French Wikipedia: "Mitigation of climate change or “ mitigation of global warming” (in English, climate change mitigation ) includes actions aimed at mitigating the extent of human- induced global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions or capture and sequestration of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. (= very similar to what I would propose).
• Spanish Wikipedia: "Climate change mitigation is the set of actions aimed at reducing the intensity of radiative forcing in order to reduce the potential effects of global warming ." (surprising that they talk about radiative forcing)
• German Wikipedia: "Climate protection is the collective term for measures that counteract human-caused global warming and mitigate (mitigation) or prevent possible consequences of global warming" (so they use climate protection instead of climate mitigation)
• Portuguese Wikipedia: "The mitigation of climate change takes place with actions that limit the magnitude or pace of global warming and its consequences"
• Swedish Wikipedia: "Climate change mitigation is measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or to increase the amount of carbon sinks that absorb greenhouse gases from the atmosphere" - same as how we used to have it - ah, interesting, it was only translated and created from the English version on 26 November 2022; so no wonder.

So some do mention GHGEs in the first sentence, some don't. None of them is trying to be as short as "is action to limit climate change" but they all make it more nuanced. I like the French Wikipedia version the most, and my proposal is basically a shortened version of it. EMsmile (talk) 21:32, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

I'm OK with citing GHG-related approaches as an example, per your Climate change mitigation is action to limit climate change, for example by reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. —RCraig09 (talk) 21:36, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

OK, I've added that example to first sentence now as per mild consensus on talk page. Not sure if we want a comma before "for example" or not? I still think that "is action" sounds strange. Could we rather say "consists of actions"? Or "is a set of actions" (like in the Spanish version)? Or "includes actions" (like in the French version)? EMsmile (talk) 11:37, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

In British English “is action” is fine for a native speaker of my generation. Maybe it sounds strange in other versions of English. Chidgk1 (talk) 16:07, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

“Main” in the first sentence

Is it possible to limit temperature rise to 2 degrees with an equal amount of reducing emissions and enhancing sinks?

If not then surely by the Paris Agreement and IPCC definition reducing emissions is the main approach. Chidgk1 (talk) 15:04, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

I think you are referring to this change of mine where I changed your "mainly" in the first sentence back to "for example". I had explained in the edit summary: "putting this back to "for example" because I feel that this is what we achieved mild consensus for on the talk page. "Mainly" includes a form of judgement also it's less clear that the content that follows is an example out of many examples (for non-English native speakers)." I felt that after it had taken us so long to reach a kind of consensus, we shouldn't just change it again from "for example" to "mainly". Also, by picking out this particular example we do imply that it's the most important option out of all the options anyhow. EMsmile (talk) 18:20, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

As an aside, I personally thought that the first sentence should follow the IPCC definition (like you, I am guessing). But I have come to accept that RCraig09 and others see it differently. So for now, I am trying to get used to this "broad" explanation in the first part of the first sentence which is later followed in the article with more precise definitions. EMsmile (talk) 18:20, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Cheesy fact for DYK hook for “barriers” section if this is ever made a GA

Production and sale of vegan cheese has been banned in Turkey since 2022. Chidgk1 (talk) 19:39, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

I don't understand what you're getting at exactly? Yes, a vegan diet would be good for CC mitigation but this article seems to be more about trade labels? We have the same in Germany where "oat milk" cannot be called that but needs to be called "oat drink" (i.e. milk substitute made from oat). OK so the label thing is a barrier against switching to a vegan diet and hence a barrier against mitigation. Hmmm... a bit "indirect"... EMsmile (talk) 23:59, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Some countries have just banned the label ‘vegan cheese’ but here the actual product is banned!

Cheese is allowed but plant-base cheese is banned

Cigs are allowed but ecigs are banned

Milk is allowed - oh the officials have not noticed yet that shops sell plant-based milk Chidgk1 (talk) 07:00, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

Ah, I hadn't appreciated that fact. That's pretty crazy. Officially, it's to protect the "health" of the Turkish customers, I guess; but unofficially it's to protect the companies who make the conventional cheese, conventional cigarettes etc. Still, as a DYK hook it's a bit far-fetched to make the link to climate change mitigation. EMsmile (talk) 10:29, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

References

2nd (now first) sentence is too complicated

“ This would slow the rate at which human activities increase concentrations of these heat-trapping gases in the air.”

The reader has to think too much about slowing the rate of increase. But I don’t have a great idea (yet!) how to improve it.

I suspect “net zero” should be in it somewhere and it should be later in the lead and apply to sinks too.

If nobody else comes up with something maybe I will get an idea eventually Chidgk1 (talk) 18:46, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Let's delete it. It's clear from the first sentence. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 19:37, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

I hope my bold change concisely captures the basic concept as it applies to the situation in 2022. "Net zero" is a concept for the future, and can be added lower in the lead. —RCraig09 (talk) 20:14, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Hmmm, I'd say let's put it back to how it was. The new version "for example by reducing the rate of increase in the concentration of heat-trapping greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the air" is again far too complicated for a first sentence. I thought the way we had it before was pretty good and clear: "Climate change mitigation is action to limit climate change, for example by reducing emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs). EMsmile (talk) 20:46, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

"Reducing emissions" (though correctly cited as an example) excludes carbon capture and geoengineering. Referring to GHG concentrations is more comprehensive, with minimal addition of verbiage. I've just deleted "in the air" as possibly being implied by "gases", though I'd prefer to have kept it in. —RCraig09 (talk) 21:01, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

I thought we wanted to keep the first sentence simple? Earlier on you were adamant that a word such as "carbon sink" was too complex for our readers. But now you want this wording in the first sentence: "reducing the rate of increase in the concentration of heat-trapping greenhouse gases (GHGs)". I find that a bit ironic. "Reducing the rate of increase" is not straight forward to understand. Why not just the simple wording and the simple example of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. I think most readers could grasp that concept. There is no need to somehow include that aspect of geoengineering in the first sentence - a concept that has far less potential than GHGE reductions do and which IPCC does not even include in its mitigation definition. It can be mentioned somewhere but no need to include it in the first sentence already and making it therefore more complicated than necessary. - Just my opinion, let's see what others think. EMsmile (talk) 10:29, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

"Carbon sink" is jargon; "reducing the rate of increase in the concentration of heat-trapping greenhouse gases (GHGs)" may be longer but is not jargon. "Reducing greenhouse gas emissions" is only part of mitigation, and omits carbon capture. I've argued to have a broad definition in the first sentence. —RCraig09 (talk) 16:30, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

I've simplified it, as there seemed to be a rough consensus against the wordy example. Reducing emissions is a more concrete example (disregarding negative emissions). —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:23, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

I agree with Femke's edit. I've just now removed "heat-trapping" from the first sentence because: I don't see why "heat trapping" would have to be here. It makes it sound like there are two different type of GHGs: those that trap heat and those that don't, and mitigation only reduces those GHGs which trap heat.. If we think heat trapping needs to be here because we try to explain the greenhouse effect also in this first sentence then I would say let's not overload this first sentence. The sentence was: {{tq}|... for example by reducing the emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases (GHGs)}}. If we really need heat trapping in the first sentence (I don't think we need it), then make it maybe {{tq}|... for example by reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) which trap heat}}. Or leave it short like it is now: Climate change mitigation is action to limit climate change, for example by reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs). (but I would make the wikilink to greenhouse gas emissions rather than to greenhouse gas). EMsmile (talk) 23:15, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

I don't understand how a gas can be a "greenhouse" gas if it doesn't trap heat; I thought heat-trapping was in the definition of greenhouse gas. Separately, for readers who don't already know what a greenhouse gas is, "heat trapping" concisely explains. Greenhouse gases are mentioned regularly on U.S. newscasts, so I think it's OK to use the term greenhouse gas in the first sentence, but prefer to include "heat-trapping" to draw the concept to global warming which is also an often-used term. —RCraig09 (talk) 00:28, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

I too like “heat-trapping” as concise and easy to understand Chidgk1 (talk) 06:49, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

Here are my reasons why I am against including "heat-trapping" in this first sentence (at least in its current position as an adjective before the word GHG, rather than as an explainer after GHG):

1. Having "heat-trapping" as an adjective reduces the readability of the sentence for non-native speakers. It's not a normal adjective like "dangerous" or perhaps "additional" but it's a combination of a noun and a gerund which together forms an adjective. It can also lead to confusion as it seems to narrow it down to a particular type of GHG (of course you and I know that all GHGs are heat trapping but not every reader would know that; hence the wording "heat-trapping GHGs" could be understood as "only those GHGs which trap heat but not all GHGs").
2. It makes the sentence unnecessarily wordy. Like you said the term GHG is often in the news nowadays and people know that a greenhouse has something to do with the greenhouse effect and thus increased heat. So saying heat-trapping GHG is pretty much a double whammy, like "warm heat", "wet water" or something like that.
3. It places an over-emphasis on the heat aspect of GHGs but e.g. CO2 causes other problems, not just heat. The mere presence of too much CO2 in the atmosphere is a problem because it gets absorbed in the oceans where it causes ocean acidification. So why do we want to emphasise heat here at this point when it's the GHGs themselves that are problematic, at least in the case of CO2. Overall, temperature won't be our own problem, it's the energy balance that is out of whack and that will cause us so many problems, think also intensification of the water cycle and so forth. EMsmile (talk) 10:15, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

Good analysis. I agree with removing heat-trapping as it's unnecessary verbose.

I missed the discussion before, but why are we not giving the full definition? The Met Office does it without jargon (Mitigation describes efforts to reduce or remove emissions of greenhouse gases). Now, we've got the words "for example" twice in one paragraph. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:29, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Hi Femke, yep, I'd also prefer that Met Office definition (which is almost the same as the IPCC definition). At this stage, I've "lost" that argument though but you can find it above in the section on "Let's get the first paragraph of the lead right" (here). I'd be happy to re-open that discussion, perhaps you have good arguments. Some of the others (e.g. RCraig09) insisted that - whilst we put the IPCC definition in the section "definition" in the main text - we should start with a "broad / literal" explanation in the first sentence ("action to limit climate change") which would then also include solar radiation management (which the IPCC definition excludes). That's why the GHGE reduction is worded as only an example in the first sentence, instead of being the defining aspect of climate change mitigation. EMsmile (talk) 19:42, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

I'm speculating here: This difference in opinion might have something to do with the fact that the word "mitigation" has a different connotation for an English native speaker than for a non-native speaker (outside of climate change I (as a non-native speaker) had hardly ever heard of the term "mitigation" before). See also above where I listed the definitions from different Wikipedia language versions (for comparison & inspiration). EMsmile (talk) 19:39, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

(A) Yes, my reasoning was that a broad, comprehensive definition of "CC mitigation" would broadly cover (1) reducing GHG emissions, (2) capturing CO2, and (3) geoengineering.

(B) Adding "heat-trapping" does clarify what lay people hear on the news ("GHG") but they don't really understand... but the "heat trapping" wording is much less important than having a broad, comprehensive definition (A) even if it's not what the IPCC chose. —RCraig09 (talk) 22:38, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

The SRM part of geo-engineering is typically not part of the definition of mitigation (it makes climate change worse in some aspects, while mitigating the heating). Let's take a few highly reputable sources:

• IPCC -> Just covers (1) and (2)
• Met Office -> Same
• NASA: "Reducing emissions of and stabilizing the levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere"
• WMO: can't find any definition after 5 mins google
• UNEP: Climate Change Mitigation refers to efforts to reduce or prevent emission of greenhouse gases. (so only (1))
• EEA: Mitigation means making the impacts of climate change less severe by preventing or reducing the emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) into the atmosphere.

I see no support for a definition that includes the SRM part of "geoengineering". Do you agree a definition with (3) is at most a minority definition? —Femke 🐦 (talk) 09:03, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

As an addendum, we now use a think tank to say that SRM is considered a part of mitigation. They cite the IPCC Ch4 report to support that claim, but a quick search through the 53 mentions of SRM shows nothing of the kind. Hence, I don't think we can consider this a reliable source. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 09:28, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

I'm aware that authoritative sources follow the IPCC definition. But for purposes of an encyclopedia, there is a difference between

(i) affirmatively claiming SRM etc in the lead, versus

(ii) including a broad (literal) definition in the first sentence that is broad enough to cover SRM etc.

I'm OK with a broad definition ii, possibly followed with a few words implicitly distinguishing the IPCC etc definition from the literal definition (example: "The formal definition of climate change mitigation involves..."). The "Definitions" section can clarify this entire issue specifically. —RCraig09 (talk) 13:21, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

Having reread this three times, I don't understand. Could you rephrase much simpler? I see no (HQ)RS that state SRM is (sometimes) considered part of climate change mitigation. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 13:46, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

Sorry I was unclear. I've now added paragraph breaks to my 13:32 post.

My first Google search result, to the Wilson Center, states: "If SRM is to be used, it must be utilized alongside traditional emissions abatement (mitigation), adaptation to climate change effects, and, perhaps, carbon removal." That phrasing (traditional emissions abatement), plus the description in "Box 1" (lower in the page), show how the various terms haven't been precise over time. This is mainly why I think we should convey to new readers that the definition of climate change mitigation—as a literal term—isn't the same as the "formal" IPCC definition, but that both have been used. I suggest my 29 November example was "The formal definition of climate change mitigation focuses on reducing or at least stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations..." —RCraig09 (talk) 19:56, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

You can't say that the IPCC is the formal definition. IPCC is the most authorative scientific source, while the UNFCCC is the most authorative political/legal source. That doesn't make them formal. They agree on the definition of mitigation (UNFCCC says "Efforts to reduce emissions and enhance sinks are referred to as “mitigation”.)

In the Wilson think tank source, "traditional emissions abatement" contrasts with carbon removal, not with SRM. Which means it does not contradict any of the more authoritative sources. I'm getting the impression that there is quite a good consensus on excluding SRM from the definitions of mitigation. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 14:41, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

I agree with Femke on this 100%, and have argued along the same lines earlier on this talk page (although not as succinctly formulated as Femke did!). I think the article needs to follow WP:DUE and this means that also the first sentence needs to follow WP:DUE, I would say. Actually, especially the first sentence as this is what everyone reads and what Google provides as a search result. So there is no need to make the first sentence into something that enables are broad/literal or whatever definition versus a so called "formal" definition later. Such nuances can be explained later in the article under "Definitions". There you can explain "minority views" on alternative definitions with corresponding sources, after the majority view with corresponding sources (IPCC) has been explained.

Maybe we could agree on this as a first sentence (i.e. similar to the current one but without the "for example"): Climate change mitigation is action to limit climate change by reducing anthropogenic-caused emissions of greenhouse gases or removing those gases from the atmosphere).. I realise anthropogenic-caused is not ideal but it occurred to me that there are also natural GHGEs (like those from wetlands) which we would not want/need to reduce, or would we? And I am still not a very big fan of "is action to" (I think the wording by Met Office "describes efforts to" is potentially better), but I can also live with "is action to".

For comparison, an earlier version from 26 November had the first sentence as "Climate change mitigation is about reducing greenhouse gas emissions or removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere". EMsmile (talk) 17:16, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

Anthropogenic already means human caused, so anthropogenic-caused is a tautology. More importantly, it's not necessary as reducing natural greenhouse gases would actually help with mitigation. Furthermore, none of the six definitions I cited clarify this. It's still a bit difficult, but I'm happy with: "Climate change mitigation is action to limit climate change by reducing emissions of greenhouse gases or removing those gases from the atmosphere". —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:27, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

At this point, I'm OK with Femke's 17:27 proposed wording.

To explain: in English, the word formal has different connotations; it's not a bad word. Formal distinguishes over informal=colloquial and is "better" in that respect. Formal can be the same as scholarly or even scientific. My main concern is that readers arrive here with a literal understanding of the three words climate change mitigation, and we should acknowledge—even if it's only in the "Definitions" section—that SRM falls under the literal meaning though not under the widely accepted scientific definition. I see it's becoming too complex a situation for the lead. —RCraig09 (talk) 20:39, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

If you finally decide to use a term in the lead, maybe "the scientific definition..." is best. Just a suggestion. —RCraig09 (talk) 20:51, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

Mild consensus reached for now

OK, so I think we could say that a mild consensus has been reached for now. Thanks to everyone who involved themselves in the discussions. So I have now made the first sentence this: Climate change mitigation is action to limit climate change by reducing emissions of greenhouse gases or removing those gases from the atmosphere. EMsmile (talk) 11:38, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Small remaining questions:

• Do you agree with the wikilinks that I have placed? in particular "removing those gases" going to carbon sink?
• Do you agree with the source that I have added to the sentence? My reasoning for that is: now that we are closer to the IPCC def we could put this ref back in. Whilst refs are not theoretically needed in the lead, they do serve a purpose in particular when the excerpt is transcribed elsewhere or when someone copies this to another article.EMsmile (talk) 11:38, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

References

— I'm OK with the lead as you've just amended it. I think the "Definitions" section deals adequately with the literal interpretation of the words "Climate change mitigation" that incoming readers will expect.

— Similar to the beginning of the Climate change article: as a suggestion, we could concisely imply that we're using the IPCC definition by starting the lead with "The scientific definition of Climate change mitigation is action...", but I'm not insisting on this change. . . . I'm OK with the internal links. . . . I don't think a source is needed for such a general description, unless the words "The scientific definition of..." is added. —RCraig09 (talk) 14:53, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

OK, great, I'm happy that we've reached a good consensus on this. - I wouldn't add "The scientific definition of..." to the start of the first sentence. You could add this to pretty much any Wikipedia article which would make it rather boring and repetitive. Readers of an encyclopedia can expect that the content that is served to them is a "scientific definition" in most cases...

Regarding adding the source, it's not strictly needed but because of the new tool of excerpts (where the same content is transcribed to another article), I feel that nowadays, adding sources to the lead might be wiser than in the past. And it's not just for the excerpts, it's also handy for when people copy content from the lead to another Wikipedia article. So I would have a mild preference for keeping the reference for the first sentence in this case. EMsmile (talk) 15:21, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Text block about rationale for mitigation - does it fit?

I am moving below a text block that had been added to effects of climate change on 13 October here by User:Prototyperspective but which I don't think fits there. Does it fit here into the mitigation article? I am not sure. To me it reads a bit essay-like and speculative.

Human impacts as rationale for mitigation

There is a misconception that climate change mitigation primarily is about conservation of nature (e.g. due to "love of nature") or the protection of the planet (which has experienced several mass extinction events) or an external environment – instead the primary rationale or intended effects and purpose of climate change mitigation is suggested to be protection of humans (from suffering, reduced quality of life and earlier death) and of sustained human civilization (e.g. national security) or, broadly, to enable a just future for all on a thriving planet which humans not only often value but also depend upon. It has been described as protection of humanity rather than protection of the climate. EMsmile (talk) 09:04, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

Although Prototyperspective has written an interesting and thought provoking paragraph I think you are right to remove it - partly because the cite about the ‘misconception that climate change mitigation primarily is about conservation of nature’ is from 2017. A lot has happened since 2017 (very significant change of govt in US, Greta and extreme weather making people more aware of climate change, Putin turning energy market upside down, COVID messing up renewables supply chains, suspicion of China nuclear power builders etc etc) so I am not sure what people think about climate mitigation nowadays. I guess most likely they don’t understand the question as they don’t understand the word “mitigation”. Chidgk1 (talk) 09:35, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

References

EMsmile (talk) 09:04, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

Question about integration section

I have a question about this edit by Femke where the integration section was moved to be within the renewable energy section. I've changed the structure to this as I felt that "electricity demand management" was not specific to renewable energy or perhaps I am wrong?

3.1.4Integration
3.1.4.1Energy storage
3.1.4.2Energy grids
3.2Electricity demand management

Also, if the info on integration refers only to renewable energy then should we perhaps shorten this as it gives too much weight & detail here? Move that content to renewable energy if it's not already there? EMsmile (talk) 22:52, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

It's definitely too much weight. Electricity demand management is important for reducing costs of the energy system in general, but in the context of mitigation it is always mentioned when talking about the integration of variable renewables. I'm copying the text from sustainable energy, but we may want to further reduce the text. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:15, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

Is our structure now too deep?

I've temporarily made the TOC more detailed so that we can check on the depth. I wonder if we have too much depth in some areas of the article. I would suggest that Level-4 sub-headings should perhaps be avoided? A Level-4 sub-heading is this one for example: "9.2.2.1 United States". The current TOC is like this:

1Overview
1.1Definitions
1.2Goal, benefits and risks
1.2.1Co-benefits
1.2.2Risks and negative side effects
1.3Categories of mitigation measures
1.3.1Timescales

2Greenhouse gas emissions
2.1By type of greenhouse gas
2.2Needed emissions cuts
2.3Emissions and economic growth

3Energy systems
3.1Renewable energy
3.1.1Solar energy
3.1.2Wind power
3.1.3Others
3.1.4Integration
3.1.4.1Energy storage
3.1.4.2Energy grids
3.2Electricity demand management
3.3Other low-carbon energy sources
3.3.1Nuclear power
3.3.2Natural gas for fossil fuel switching
3.4Energy conservation and efficiency

4Mitigation by sector
4.1Buildings
4.1.1Heat pumps
4.1.2Cooling
4.2Transport
4.2.1Land
4.2.2Sea
4.2.3Air
4.3Agriculture, forestry and land use
4.4Industry
4.4.1Methane leaks
4.5Waste

5Preserving and enhancing carbon sinks
5.1Forests
5.1.1Conservation
5.1.2Afforestation and reforestation
5.2Increasing soil carbon
5.2.1Biochar
5.3Wetland restoration
5.3.1Peatlands
5.4Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage
5.5Ocean-based options
5.6Technologies to capture carbon dioxide
5.6.1Direct air capture
5.6.2Carbon capture and storage

6Demand reduction
6.1Actions by individuals
6.1.1Lifestyle changes
6.1.2Dietary change
6.1.3Family size

7Investment and finance
7.1Investment
7.2Funding
7.3Carbon pricing
7.4Cost estimates
7.4.1Distributing emissions abatement costs
7.4.2Avoided costs of climate change effects

8Barriers
8.1Specific barriers for developing countries

9Policies and actors
9.1Municipal policies and urban planning
9.2National policies
9.2.1Phasing out fossil fuel subsidies
9.2.2Examples
9.2.2.1United States
9.2.2.2China
9.2.2.3European Union
9.3International agreements
9.3.1Paris Agreement
9.3.2Additional commitments

10Monitoring

11History

12Society and culture
12.1Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic EMsmile (talk) 22:56, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

I absolutely agree that we go to deep and too long. I think we have around 70 headings, whereas a typical FA has somewhere between a 8 and 20 headings. There are a few things in my mind still that we can easily remove or merge (we don't need monitoring, and we can merge barriers into the correct location). But yes, we need to think radical. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:13, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

Is the content in the section on "Integrating variable renewable energy" maybe too detailed? Should it rather be moved to renewable energy if it's not there already, or summarised more? I think the overall length of the article is not too bad now (65 kB), although we probably have to lose about 15-20% of that. I am more concerned also about the complicated structure with quite a few sub-level-4 headings. I guess mitigation is a huge topic so it's hard to decide what to keep and what to condense more... Then again, the article climate change is an even bigger topic but managed to stay within 53 kB which is pretty amazing actually. EMsmile (talk) 23:22, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

We can further condense that section, and it can be expanded and renewable energy.

I would like to move the article to 7,000-8,000 words (now 11196 words). For a fast-evolving topic, aiming below the "max" of 10,000 words makes it feasible to ensure the article is maintained. For me, it's more important that we keep the article accurate and that we are super complete (and that the article is so long that nobody can find what they're looking for). —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:22, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

Why should the sub headings be a problem if they are not displayed? About length: Only very few people will read it through anyway. Additional condensing would not make much of a difference. We risk to lose valuable content. Please be careful. Hedgehoque (talk) 10:39, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

I agree about being careful not to delete valuable content. But for such a high level of article as this it is also important to avoid too much duplication of info which should be in the very many sub-articles. I like the EMSmile technique of sometimes copying deleted subsections to the talk page when unsure Chidgk1 (talk) 15:32, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

I'm trying to be careful about deletions, always, even if that's a slower way of working than starting from scratch. I'm doing small edits that should be easy to revert if you disagree.

The subheadings are displayed. The new vector, which is to be deployed in January, breaks the TOC limit template. The new skin is less forgiving of overly long heading titles and TOCs imo, as it dedicates less space to it (it'll be sticky on the left). It's a bit difficult to distinguish level 3 and level 4 headings in the new set-up. In general, I think we don't need many level 4 headings. As used in the article now, they often put undue emphasis on one or more solution (f.i. biochar, or fossil-fuel subsidy phase-out).

I think we can lose another 1000 words by removing within-article duplication, paraphrasing quotes, removing overly difficult or trivial things. None of that loses valuable content. To get to 8,000 words, we may need to look at between-article duplication. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:27, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Does the “Emissions and economic growth” subsection belong in this article?

It seems not to be about mitigation? Perhaps it should be moved to another article - maybe Economics of climate change? Chidgk1 (talk) 15:37, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

I agree it's not that on-topic in its current form, and may have undue weight. The IPCC dedicates 2 pages to the concept in its Emission trends and drivers chapter. decoupling needs to be described in our article. We may make a 'drivers' subsection in 'emission trends and plegdes' (first subsection), describing multiple drivers of emissions trends (similar to 2.3/2.4 in AR6 WG3). —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:37, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Explanation about content in the barriers section

Hi User:Chidgk1 regarding this question of yours, you had questioned something about the role of government that I had added from a book by Christian Berg. It's a great book but sadly behind a paywall. I could e-mail you the pdf file or it's available from Amazon for the Kindle as well. Anyway, I thought those statements were valuable because they were looking at the barriers from a different perspective and adding content that was not yet covered in the other paragraphs or sections. This is the original quote from the book which I tried to summarise in those two sentences under barriers: "Huge investments in infrastructure and new technologies are needed and the inertness of the current carbon-based subsystems is enormous. The German energy transition (“Energiewende”), which is particularly challenging because Germany will phase out both nuclear energy (by 2022) and coal (by 2038), demonstrates some of these difficulties. Those negatively affected by such a transition (e.g. coal workers) will have to be sufficiently compensated by the public (e.g. investing in new job opportunities) to secure societal peace and stability. Decarbonizing societies will therefore require the state to play a predominant role. It is the state which has highest obligation to facilitate this transition, simply because it requires a substantial coordination effort which nobody else could provide. A strong state role, however, will require social cohesion, political stability and trust in society, which evidences that the climate crisis is so closely related to crises in other areas." My summary two sentences in my own words were: "In order to "decarbonise societies" the state (government) needs to play a predominant role because this requires a massive coordination effort. This strong government role, however, can only work well if there is social cohesion, political stability and trust." (I hope my paraphrasing was OK) If there are other publications that contradicts this, we could add that (unless it deviates from the main topic too much). EMsmile (talk) 23:17, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

Ah thanks for explaining and citing Chidgk1 (talk) 11:13, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

@EMsmile: could you add citations at the end of your additions? While the way you cite is perfectly acceptable, it is less clear than the default. Given the fact that this article has horrible text source integrity, and we will likely need to check each source that we don't remove, it would be easier for me if I don't have to guess what text a source covers. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:08, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

@User:Femke: Sure, I'll try but which sentences are you referring to? The ones in the barrier section that I had added now already have the Berg source at the end of each sentence. Or perhaps I've overlooked a sentence that still needs to have a source added? - By the way, how would you go about checking the content of a source that is behind a paywall, like the book by Berg ()? I haven't yet checked if it's available through Libgen or Google Books but I doubt it. Are there other methods or what would you do in that case (I could send you the pdf file but this doesn't seem a very sustainable method in case other reviewers in future also want to re-check); just wondering. EMsmile (talk) 17:44, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

I was referring just in general, no sentences spring to mind besides the one Chidgk1 noticed. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:47, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

In general, we assume good faith for offline sources. If people want to check it WP:resource exchange (which may include sending pdfs) is one way to go. I'll probably have access via the uni library. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:48, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

References

EMsmile (talk) 23:17, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

Mitigation technologies

Hello everyone.

Since February 2022, I work part time as WIR for WIPO (Wikipedia:WikiProject United Nations/WIPO. During the year, I have worked with a dozen different teams to get new info, or to update info on various topics related to IP rights.

I am currently in touch with a new team, who recently published a green technology book. They would like to write something to enrich Climate change mitigation, but on the specific case of climate change mitigation technologies (there is no article on the topic).

Last week, we had a meeting to discuss this, and when I looked at the article history, I found out that you have been super super super active recently, to improve the article, and from what I read in the discussion here (I did not read it all... too long ;)), one of the goal was to synthesize :)

So I wanted to know if the specific case of technologies had been discussed and how you felt about it ? My suggestion to the team was to first propose a draft on a separate document so that I could give them my first feedback (experience told me that in most cases, they are aligned with the Wikipedia writing style, but in one or two instances... it was not at all the case and I had to be very firm in my feedback...). Then I will suggest that we publish their proposition in a user sandbox for further review and improvement.

And at this point, I would really like to get your feedback about how the content would fit best. Could it be part of this specific article ? Or should it be the meat of a brand new article, with a summary here ? Or any other option that would be best ? I trust you know the context well enough to give some advice once the text is written (which it is not yet as far as I know...). But I wanted your feedback on the strategy : first writting out of the wiki, second moving to sandbox to refine and third getting your advice on how to best integrate content. Would that be good ? Who would be volunteer to help me review the input ?

Thanks

Anthere (talk) 14:49, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps you have accidentally commented at the wrong article or linked to the wrong book? The title of the book at your link above is about adaptation not mitigation. Or perhaps I misunderstood something? Chidgk1 (talk) 19:21, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

Ah I see in the conclusion it says “Many technologies effectively blur the dichotomy between mitigation and adaptation.” So I suppose it means for example that heat pumps can keep people cool (adaptation) as well as replacing gas heating (mitigation)?

When I raised the topic, the expert insisted that both were not the same thing. And that she thought of content related to mitigation, not adaptation. So no, no mistake. Anthere (talk) 22:02, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

If I understood right then you could make that point in the heat pump article and in other articles on such co-benefit technologies Chidgk1 (talk) 19:39, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

Hi User:Anthere, I also wonder what you mean with "climate mitigation technologies"? This article here is a high level overview article which does mention all known mitigation technologies/approaches, as far as I know, and most of them have their own dedicated articles, e.g. carbon sequestration, renewable energy etc.. So it's not really clear to me what kind of content you or the team would want to add?

This article would benefit from additional brain power but not to add more detail but to help in the overview and summary style content of all the different approaches. For example, the section that involves land use, wetlands etc. (the land based mitigation options) still requires more work, see on the talk page a bit higher up. I wish we could pull in some experts on mitigation who can help to make this article much better. Our recent improvements (compared to the version of say last October) were great but more work is still needed. So if you have access to experts that would be useful. Can they read and review this article for us? Overall, it probably still needs to be made shorter, more concise, not longer EMsmile (talk) 21:55, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

I think the most important mitigation technology is solar power. The article used to be rated “good” but in 2021 I demoted it as not enough people were available to update it and bring it up to current “good” standard. If any of your experts could take a look at that article it would be really useful I think Chidgk1 (talk) 07:34, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Alright. This is noted. Well, I will first have to see what they are willing to work on, and what they will have time to actually do. Always a gamble. But I keep in mind those first elements. Anthere (talk) 11:40, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

On another related note... I wanted to give you a first head-up on this project m:Africa Environment, which we will launch early March. I will post on the WikiProject talk page about it today or tomorrow. Anthere (talk) 11:40, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Hi Anthere, I am still a bit confused what you mean with "climate change mitigation technologies" and why you think there is a lack of a Wikipedia article for it? They all have their separate pages, e.g. solar power, but also carbon sequestration, carbon dioxide removal and so forth, whereas this higher-level article is trying to pull it all together and summarise them. But perhaps you mean something else with "climate change mitigation technologies"? EMsmile (talk) 10:22, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

The section on risks

What do people think of my recent change for the section on risks? I've moved the risk section as I don't see why this should come directly after co-benefits, let alone be in the same Level-1 heading (the Level-1 heading was "Co-benefits and risks"). I think it works to have this as part of the society section. If not, it could be its own Level-1 heading but I think it's not justified to have this early on in this article. Having it just after "barriers" might work better? EMsmile (talk) 22:52, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

Seems fine. It's now a bit hidden (as the article has too many sections/subsections), but then, it's not the biggest topic here. It could possibly be integrated into the relevant section (f.i. solar energy), rather than being discussed separately, but this is also fine. (fyi, a level-1 heading is the title, the first true heading is called level-2). —Femke 🐦 (talk) 18:13, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

Questions regarding discussion of blue carbon

In one of my previous edits I revised the Blue carbon management sub-sub section within the Ocean based options subsection. The earlier version was just a single sentence that defined what Blue carbon management referred to. In my edit I summarized information from the Blue carbon article, took a blue carbon reference from elsewhere in the Ocean based options subsection, and then created a distinct paragraph at the end of the Ocean based options subsection. Having done that, I now see that blue carbon is also mentioned in the Wetland restoration subsection. Not sure what is the best approach is to address those somewhat redundant discussions. Citation 175, which refers to Chapter 12, p.12-51 in the WGIII report, lists it as an ocean based method. Any thoughts? Dtetta (talk) 06:00, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

I would like to reorganize those subsections a little. Enhanced weathering is in the 'ocean-based options' even though it is only partly ocean-based and so I would make it its own subsection. Analogous to how 'forests' is listed as a subsection, I think the subsections should be 'wetlands' and 'marine ecosystems' or 'deep ocean'. Blue carbon is mentioned once in the wetland section as "Mangroves, salt marshes and seagrasses (collectively called "blue carbon")" but that is not true as blue carbon would also include the deep ocean so I would take that mention out. JustBeCool (talk) 15:19, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

JustBeCool - I think your edits are a general improvement - thanks for doing that:) The one suggestion/comment I have is that the Forest subsection now has more sub-subsections than it needs, and exacerbates the overly complicated heading structure that Femke mentioned earlier. Aforestation/reforestation seems to work better together, particularly since the second paragraph in the newly created reforestation sub-subsection really applies to both concepts. Proforestation, as far as I can tell from reading about it, applies to conservation methods, and I think that the small proforestation paragraph would work better as a part of the conservation sub-subsection, perhaps with a little rewording to show how it’s a distinctive feature of forest conservation. Dtetta (talk) 15:11, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

Fair enough. JustBeCool (talk) 16:41, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

"Enhancing carbon sinks" wording

I recently started a discussion at WT:Climate regarding the term "enhancing carbon sinks". In the discussion, people were comfortable using the term "removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere" instead. I would like to use that wording in the hatnote of Climate change mitigation to make it more understandable to the general reader. Thoughts? Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 23:59, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

Agree - "removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere" is a more understandable term. Maybe say “reducing greenhouse gas emissions and removing them from the atmosphere”? Dtetta (talk) 14:13, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

Done, thanks :) Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 17:10, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

I think those changes are good but then I wondered if we should also drop the term "carbon sink" later in the main text or keep it but explain it. I opted for keeping and explaining (in the section called "preserving and enhancing carbon sinks") as I feel the term is important and readers should be informed about it (it also appears in the news often and it's also used by the IPCC report). Feel free to remove the explicit mention of the IPCC report that I've added - I wasn't totally sure on that. EMsmile (talk) 11:06, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

Hatnote too long?

I think the hatnote was too long and have removed the mention of climate change adaptation. Wondering if it should be shortened further? Currently it says this (do we need the last sentence?): This article is about limiting climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions or removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. For supplementary climate technologies such as solar radiation management, see solar geoengineering. For actions focusing on politics and society, see climate movement. EMsmile (talk) 11:06, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

How far away are we from a GA nomination?

I am wondering how far away we would be from a GA nomination? Are we still miles away or getting closer? Does anyone have the interest / energy to go through this process in the near or mid-term future? EMsmile (talk) 11:09, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

Thought on additional edits needed?

As part of the “Improving communication of climate change knowledge through Wikipedia” project , I have been asked to spend a few hours editing this article. I was going to focus my time on the “Investment and finance” section in order to integrate that more closely with the “Climate finance”, "Economics of climate change", and "Economics of climate change mitigation" articles. I may also spend some time on the “Preserving and enhancing carbon sinks” section. But if there are other areas that you think need work, I'd be happy to consider that as well. More information on my involvement in this project is available on my user page. Dtetta (talk) 16:19, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

Great you're doing this. Two few quick thoughts:

• The heading structure is a bit too complicated still; we could f.i. get rid of blue carbon

Revised co-benefits section and moved lower down in the article. Re-organized sections to have emission reductions sections and carbon sinks section together rather than interspersed. Eliminated blue carbon subsection and created replacement text for that topic within Ocean based options section.Moved BECCS subsection into newly titled and revised section "Other methods to capture and store CO2". It seems to fit better next to CCS text, as both are related.Dtetta (talk) 14:50, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

• I'm not sure if it's a NPOV violation to call it 'Cost estimates'. A majority of models indicate that there are net costs to decarbonisation (excluding 'externalities'), while a minority indicates that there are net benefits (f.i. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243512200410X). 'Investment needs' may be better, as that includes all economic POVs, but doesn't quite fit the text under it.

Tried to look at ways of revising this particular language and including the concepts in your paper, but got stymied by the overall issues with this section. IMO The section needs a major rewrite, perhaps along the lines of Chapters 13.6 and 15 of the WGIII report. The Way 2022 paper that you cite, with it’s concepts of model estimates overestimating future renewable energy costs (as well as some scenarios describing lower costs than baseline), would be good to include, and in fact the IPCC report does talk about costs for RE decreasing faster than predicted.Dtetta (talk) 14:50, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

—Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:30, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

Excellent - Weighted average cost of capital important enough to be mentioned in the section? Chidgk1 (talk) 20:52, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

As I mentioned in my comments to Femke, I think this section needs a rewrite. The concept you mentioned could be included as part of the discussion that touches on pages 15–6 and seven of the WGIII report.Dtetta (talk) 14:50, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

Brilliant! I will post a wishlist tomorrow. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 05:41, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for asking! Here are a few things I'd love to see:

1. "Climate change mitigation might also lead to less inequality and poverty." - We should either explain how this would work or remove it. Currently it's neither persuasive nor NPOV, as mitigation can also lead to more inequality and poverty depending on how it's done.
2. "Demand-side" is jargon. It should be reworded in plainer language and/or defined on first usage
3. Duplication in the Health section: "Mitigation measures may have many health co-benefits – potential measures can not only mitigate future health impacts from climate change but also improve health directly... The health benefits (also called "co-benefits") from climate change mitigation measures are significant: potential measures can not only mitigate future health impacts from climate change but also improve health directly."

Revised co-benefits section to address your first three bullet points. Dtetta (talk) 14:50, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

I've also made some small edits to address the concern about the sentence on poverty and also removed this as it was unclear and probably copyvio from the WG III tech summary: "Addressing inequality and many forms of status consumption63 and focusing on wellbeing supports climate change mitigation efforts" (page 36)

1. The "Emissions and economic growth" section seems very biased to me. Climate change mitigation is an economic opportunity, but you wouldn't think that from reading this section.

Was not able to address this in the time available, as I think it includes reviewing the underlying references. EMsmile, I see you had mixed feelings about adding this text back in November. Would you be ok with removing it? Chapter 1.6 “Achieving mitigation in the context of sustainable development” of the AR6 WGIII report seems to provide a more balanced perspective, and maybe could be used to build the text for that subsection. Dtetta (talk) 14:50, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

I agree with both of you. Have kept two sentences from that section (but moved them to demand reduction) and have deleted the rest as it seemed outdated, biased and not fitting for a high level article of this nature. Perhaps later we could add content from the WG III report as you have suggested, Dtetta. EMsmile (talk) 10:36, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

1. The concept of "time horizon", e.g. "using a 30-year time horizon" is not explained.

Used simpler text in first instance (Emission trends), eliminated the text in the Agriculture forestry and land use subsection, as it did not seem to help the flow of ideas in the paragraph. Dtetta (talk) 14:50, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

1. Mitigation options for reducing the greenhouse gas emissions from livestock seem extremely optimistic. Toilet training? Really? It would be good to check IPCC reports to see what the consensus is around the maturity/feasibiility of these ideas.

Eliminated reference to toilet training as it provided no info to justify inclusion as an “important” mitigation option. Made minor readability edits and citation update to paragraph. Did not address the issue of excess optimism, as I think it includes reviewing the underlying references. EMsmile - could you look at the other references as see if they justify the text as representing important mitigation options? Also, there seems to be a bit of hypercitation in this paragraph, but I did not have time to vet each of these methods and supporting references in terms of how they are characterized in the WGIII report. Broader input from others would be helpful here, as Clayoquot points out. Dtetta (talk) 14:50, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

Hi Dtetta: I see you pinged me here - I tried to look into this matter but couldn't find the overcitation occurrence anymore. Maybe this has already been addressed in the meantime? EMsmile (talk) 11:08, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 05:33, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Thanks everyone! WIll make sure to address those points as part of the edits. Dtetta (talk) 13:24, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

So I’ve spent (actually gone a good bit past) my allocated time on editing the article. Tried to address the comments above, but only made it part way through. I listed in italics above what I was able to do in response to each suggestion. In addition, below are some thoughts on additional edits that are still needed. I can try to get to these on my own time over the next month or so. Or, if someone else want to take on any of these suggestions, that would also be great.

Definitions and scope section

• Take the categories of mitigation measures out of this section and integrate them into the lead. Focus more on simply distinguishing between IPCC defined mitigation and SRM techniques.

Emission trends and pledges>emissions and economic growth subsection

• As Clayoquot mentions, this section represents a limited viewpoint, and should be rewritten. Section 1.6 “achieving mitigation in the context of sustainable development”, might be a more useful approach. Clayoquot’s point about mitigation as an economic opportunity would fit in with these ideas as well. A brief mention of the growth and emissions from the current article could be included, but it seems like these concepts are no longer as dominant.
• Since the overall section is about emissions, maybe it would be best to just remove this subsection, since it seems somewhat tangential to the idea of future emissions.

Agreed, and I've made that change now (deleted the section "emissions and economic growth subsection", kept two sentences but moved them under demand side management) EMsmile (talk) 11:34, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

Mitigation by sector - Ag and land use subsection

• Double check validity of mitigation options listed for ag sector. Reduce hypercitation.
• Rewrite section to more closely match page XXV of UN Emissions Gap Report 2022

Investment and Finance section

• As I mentioned in my response to Femke’s comment, this section needs a major rewrite. One approach might be to reflect the concepts discussed in Chapters 13.6 and 15 of the WGIII report. The Way 2022 paper that Femke cites, with it’s concepts of model estimates overestimating future renewable energy costs (as well as some scenarios describing lower costs than baseline), would be good to include, and in fact the IPCC report does talk about costs for RE decreasing faster than predicted. Chidgk1’s mention of capital costs would fit in with a brief mention of interrelation of cost, investment and financing that is discussed on IPCC page 15-6 and 7. Including an implementation challenges perspective, in line WGIII SPM Section 3.6 - “All mitigation strategies face implementation challenges, including technology risks, scaling, and costs” might also be useful.
• The ideas in the carbon pricing subsection are worth keeping. Needs to have some text that relates current carbon market prices and estimates on the social cost of carbon.
• Despite their limitations, the overall cost estimates in the third paragraph of the cost subsection are probably useful to keep in.
• This section currently reads like a somewhat scattered list of concepts; editing to provide more focus would be helpful.
• The discussion in this area seems to have moved on since the Stern review in 2006. More recent sources then this would probably be better for this section.

I've condensed the content about investment and finance now and moved it to be under "Society and culture" (but I have kept the section on "Cost" and made it a main header). My rationale is that this is a high-level article and we cannot cover each and every concept in depth. That's what the other Wikipedia articles are for. We have to give people orientation and some broad ideas and then point them to the relevant sub-articles. The existing content on finance and investment was rather outdated, too. I have not yet investigated what content of the WG III report could be added, would be great if someone could look into that at some stage (but it needs to be kept brief). EMsmile (talk) 11:40, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

Policies and actors section

• The structure of this article could probably be simplified - another example of the complicated structuring that Femke mentioned.
• Seems like it would be better to have more complete explanations of fewer concepts in this section rather than a long list of different ideas.
• The Paris agreement subsection needs to be expanded. The mitigation commitments and market mechanisms should be explained more fully. How Paris differs from Kyoto should also be described. The status of NDC agreements, and the extent to which countries are meeting their commitments, should be mentioned.
• Revise the “Additional commitments” subsection. What has been going on in the past couple of years doesn’t seem to be reflected here. New EU and UK programs, corporate Net Zero pledges, and the US Inflation Reduction Act could all be discussed. The effect of the Montreal Protocol could be discussed more fully, and it’s overall effect on limiting warming to date could be mentioned.

History

• This is another section that could use a significant rewrite. The text here seems fairly scattered. Perhaps focusing on incorporating and distilling content from the History of climate change policy and politics,Paris agreement, and Kyoto protocol articles (that are referenced in the hat note for the section) would be a good approach.

Citations

• Some of the IPCC report citations don’t follow the traditional citation format (e.g. Citations 4 and 13 in April 13 version of the article) . It would be nice to revise those as some point to provide proper attribution to the authors.
• There a couple of instances where long reports (like IPCC) don’t have page numbers. Dtetta (talk) 15:31, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for your hard work on this. And thanks everyone who's been working on this over the past few months. It's been hugely improved. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 19:27, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

Glad to be able to help. And I agree, the article has been greatly improved by all the work folks have done over the past few months:) Dtetta (talk) 23:07, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

Co-benefits with health?

I'm undecided how best to deal with the content on co-benefits with health. I dislike that we have the same/similar content spread over several articles - which we than all have to maintain, too. At the moment, I have added a full excerpt from the effects of climate change on human health where there is a section on co-benefits with mitigation. But not sure if people agree with this. Options:

1. Shorten that excerpt to just the first two paras.
2. No excerpt at all, only a link to the other article.
3. Move the current para about health aspects to the effects of climate change on human health and then bring it back via an excerpt.

Overall, I think the content about health benefits is fairly important but I am also mindful that it shouldn't take up too much space (with or without an excerpt). EMsmile (talk) 22:50, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

There is also an ongoing discussion on the talk page of the article co-benefits of climate change mitigation. See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Co-benefits_of_climate_change_mitigation#Proposing_merger_or_name_change The question is whether that sub-article is needed and should be expanded or if its content should be merged into here. See also this draft: Secondary impacts of climate responses draft by User:InformationToKnowledge. EMsmile (talk) 11:15, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

Yes very important as may be easier to get votes for health benefits. Seems that as no one replied you made a decision - what was it? Chidgk1 (talk) 17:17, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

No real decision or consensus has been reached yet. I guess the question remains, how much space should the content on co-benefits (health and others) take up in this article (is the current amount of space the right level)? And do we think that a sub-article on co-benefits of climate change mitigation is warranted. If it is warranted then would it be better to make the lead of co-benefits of climate change mitigation really good and then bring the content back from there through using an excerpt? (noting the reluctance of some to use excerpts for this kind of high level article) EMsmile (talk) 07:45, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

Took out the EU example

I propose to delete the EU example (and probably the other two country examples as well). It would need continuous updating and the info is better off at climate change in Europe. Also, it would be hard to choose which countries or regions to feature here, and to not be Global North centric. Perhaps keeping US and China makes sense (as the biggest emitters; but then again, how about the per capita emissions...) but then the China info needs to be fleshed out. Perhaps better to just delete those two as well (?). Here is what I deleted so far:

European Union:

Further information: Climate change in Europe and European Green Deal

The European Union state that their policies are in line with the goal of the Paris Agreement, and has targets for 2030 and 2050.

• Targets for 2030: Reduce greenhouse gas emission by 55% from the level of 1990, produce 42.5% of energy from renewables, and increase energy efficiency by 11.7% compared to 2020.
• Target for 2050: become climate neutral and have net zero emissions.

EMsmile (talk) 15:39, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

References

EMsmile (talk) 15:39, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

Additional commitments

I removed the below as it seemed rather vague and a bit dated:

+++++

In addition to the main agreements, there are many additional pledges made by international coalitions, countries, cities, regions and businesses. According to a report published in September 2019 before the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit, full implementation of all pledges, including those in the Paris Agreement, will be sufficient to limit temperature rise to 2 degrees but not to 1.5 degrees. After the report was published, additional pledges were made in the September climate summit and in December of that year.

In December 2020 another climate action summit was held and important commitments were made. The organizers stated that, including the commitments expected in the beginning of the following year, countries representing 70% of the global economy will be committed to reach zero emissions by 2050. Chidgk1 (talk) 17:24, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

I agree with you. I've now dissolved the rest of the section as well (moved content to elsewhere) as a section on "additional commitments" could have become a long unwieldy list in the end and a mixture of pledges and binding or non binding targets etc. EMsmile (talk) 08:20, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

References

Should the Paris Agreement section be an excerpt?

I think yes as it is a good article Chidgk1 (talk) 18:09, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

I agree with you. Have made the change now. Have opted to transcribe the first three paragraphs (too many? Only take one or two?). EMsmile (talk) 08:35, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

What is the mitigation timescale to keep warming under 2 degrees?

In other words roughly (say nearest number of human generations from now) when will scientists know this has been achieved or is impossible to achieve?

I ask for 2 degrees rather than 1.5 to give @C.J. Griffin a chance to argue that it will be many generations of people as is the premise for the Wynes & Nicholas paper (actually I think they used infinite generations but lets say many) which is used as a cite for ‘having fewer children’. This paper is certainly not a mainstream view. Chidgk1 (talk) 09:13, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

It is not my place to make such arguments. We go by what the sources say. And there are numerous peer-reviewed papers, from prestigious scholars and scientists, which discuss the issue of population size and growth and its impact on environmental issues, including biodiversity loss and climate change. There is no undue weight being given to these sources, as those who hold a different view are also mentioned in the following sentences. I see no reasons to tag this material in the way you have done, which is nothing but OR.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 13:46, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

I specifically object to Wynes & Nicholas, as I believe have many scientists too. A source which implies less than 2 generations for holding well below 2 degrees is https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2023/05/17/the-coming-years-will-be-the-hottest-ever

I haven’t yet looked at the two sources you added recently - I may comment on those later in this same comment thread or another. Chidgk1 (talk) 17:37, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Well, personally I wouldn't put an unabashedly neoliberal rag like The Economist on par with a peer-reviewed academic paper, but I digress. The paper received widespread coverage in mainstream media, including coverage in Science magazine. Moreover, we are talking about a sentence fragment in which this is included - literally three words - not a whole section, or paragraph or even a complete sentence, so undue weight issues hardly apply here. All of this seems pretty unreasonable to me and looks like a clear case of WP:JUSTDONTLIKEIT. Regarding the other sources, I actually consider them far stronger on the issue, especially the warning on population which is the most up to date. I mean if resolving the issue would only involve removing the Wynes & Nicholas source (from this article only, I would object to a Wikipedia purge of it for sure) and retaining everything else I might not object to that.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 18:03, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

OK I am removing the tag I added and ‘Wynes & Nicholas’ (and the associated paper 87.6.35.129 just added). Hope someone else might look at the other cites. Chidgk1 (talk) 16:12, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

@87.6.35.129: - please see Talk:Individual_action_on_climate_change#Should_statements_ultimately_based_on_Murtaugh_and_Schlax_(2005)_be_deleted? for what I think is wrong with the cite you added Chidgk1 (talk) 16:28, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Section about fungi

I've removed this recently added section about fungi because I think it's not written in an encyclopedic way. I guess it would be good to have a mention of fungi somewhere but I think it should be less detailed, more from a secondary source and not necessarily have its own section heading? Or maybe it's better off in a sub-article like carbon sequestration? This is the text in question:

++++++++

Fungi

A study published in Current Biology estimated that fungi can fix (remove from the atmosphere) the equivalent of ~36% of global fossil fuel Greenhouse gas emissions. One of the authors, professor Katie Field stated: “More needs to be done to protect these underground networks - we already knew that they were essential for biodiversity, and now we have even more evidence that they are crucial to the health of our planet.” EMsmile (talk) 21:30, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

References

EMsmile (talk) 21:30, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Needs clarification in section of Cost

One 2018 estimate stated that temperature increase can be limited to 1.5 °C for 1.7 trillion dollars a year. According to this study, a global investment of approximately $1.7 trillion per year would have been needed to keep global warming below 1.5°C. I find it difficult to treat "1.7 trillion dollars a year" and "investment of approximately $1.7 trillion per year" as 1 matter or 2 matters. Can anybody help? Thanks. ThomasYehYeh (talk) 08:09, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps we should just remove those sentences as too old? A lot has happened since 2018. Chidgk1 (talk) 14:27, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

I agree with you and have removed that sentence now. Also removed a bit more from that section, see edit summaries on the history page. EMsmile (talk) 21:38, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm wondering why using Ocean acidification for ocean alkalinity enhancement？

The arrangement happened in the section of ===Deep ocean===. Thanks for your attention. ThomasYehYeh (talk) 02:29, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

@ThomasYehYeh Sorry I don’t understand your question - can you explain in more detail? Chidgk1 (talk) 07:07, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

It looks that the author seems to mean ocean alkalinity enhancement and ocean acidification are the same. But is it right? ThomasYehYeh (talk) 09:14, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

@ThomasYehYeh Still can’t see it. Exactly which sentence(s) need clarifying please? Chidgk1 (talk) 14:25, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

In sentenses of "These options focus on the carbon that can be stored in ocean reservoirs. They include [[ocean fertilization]], [[Ocean acidification|ocean alkalinity enhancement]] or [[enhanced weathering]]." The expression of [[Ocean acidification|ocean alkalinity enhancement]] looks like the author tried to mean Ocean acidification equals ocean alkalinity enhancement. ThomasYehYeh (talk) 23:37, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

I think I understand what you mean now. I have corrected the wikilink now: from ocean alkalinity enhancement there is a redirect to the section of "ocean alkalinity enhancement" within ocean acidification. So they are not the same thing. But when you hover over ocean alkalinity enhancement it look as if the wikilink is going to ocean acidification (but it's going to a particular section within that Wikipedia article). EMsmile (talk) 21:45, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Unit missing from energy consumption graph?

Coal, oil, and natural gas remain the primary global energy sources even as renewables have begun rapidly increasing.

This graph on the right, which is part of this article, doesn't seem to have a unit for the y-axis, neither is the unit mentioned in the caption. Is that on purpose? Pinging User:Efbrazil. The graph is quite popular and appears in the following English Wikipedia articles, apart from this one: Renewable energy, Climate change, Energy transition, World energy supply and consumption. EMsmile (talk) 11:58, 11 September 2023 (UTC) EMsmile (talk) 11:58, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Lack of Y axis is on purpose, as the measurement is exajoules, which isn't going to mean anything to people. I clarified the description on the graphic (not here, but on wikimedia). Efbrazil (talk) 16:06, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

References

Usage of the term "we"?

I noticed that the article uses the term "we" quite often now, about 19 times. I believe some of the "we"'s were added by User:Jonathanlynn in an effort to convert passive voice to active voice. I just wonder if "we" is really suitable for encyclopedic articles? Who is "we"? Is it too casual? Should it not be "citizens", "people", "decision makers" etc. Example sentences that are now in the article (bolding added by me) "We can conserve energy by reducing wastage and losses. We can improve efficiency by upgrading technology, and improving operations and maintenance.", "How we produce, transport and process a fuel has a significant impact on lifecycle emissions", "As we integrate larger amounts of solar and wind energy into the grid, we must change energy system to ensure that the supply of electricity matches demand." What does everyone and Jonathanlyann think about this? EMsmile (talk) 21:48, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Agreed. In most writing, active voice is considered preferable. But here, passive voice is acceptable, and it is preferable if it is more objective. —RCraig09 (talk) 22:35, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

This is tricky, as all the tools for measuring readability penalise use of the passive voice. Of course, these tools may not be the last word, and they may not apply in every case, but presumably they are based on research that shows greater difficulty in understanding text in the passive. Unfortunately English cannot use an active construction with the subject "one" to avoid the passive, as French does with "on" and German with "man" etc. It sounds stilted and unnatural in English. "we" is a more colloquial alternative here in English. (For what it's worth, in current colloquial French "on" is starting to replace "nous" to mean "we" as well...) We could replace the mentioned examples with passive constructions, but it will certainly reduce the readability score, and probably the actual readability. Jonathanlynn (talk) 10:14, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for these inputs. I am against passive voice (if we can avoid it). Would it work to replace "we" with specific nouns such as "citizens", "consumers", "politicians", "decision-makers" and so forth (choosing in each case which noun would be the most correct)? And is there any Wikipedia policy about the usage or non-usage of "we"? I haven't found one yet. EMsmile (talk) 10:49, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

While not strictly policy, MOS:WE states that "we" is acceptable in scientific writing, but also notes passive voice may be preferable. I enjoy the readability of the article, though it does seem that some of the substitutions suggested by EMsmile can be used to preserve active voice. I don't feel too strongly about the use of we in general, but there are some cases that could be weaselly or otherwise vague. For example, in "As we integrate larger amounts of solar and wind energy into the grid...", might this generalized "we" imply perhaps erroneously that all grids globally (wherever the reader may be reading from) are integrating larger amounts of solar/wind energy? –TheAustinMan^{(Talk ⬩ Edits)} 16:46, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

I've now changed all the "we" sentences to other wording, without changing to passive voice. This might have lowered the reading ease scores a little bit (because in some instances I now used multi-syllable nouns) but I think it's better. Interestingly, there are 7 instances of "we" remaining but they are all in the titles of the references. EMsmile (talk) 09:37, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Wildfire prevention

Totally agree with this edit summary by EMsmile. Not ″hiding″ it in see also, I didn’t add it just because I’m no expert in climate change and I don’t want to mess things up :) Please add the details to the article, thanks! --Dustfreeworld (talk) 17:18, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

We are basically all non-experts but that doesn't stop us from editing Wikipedia articles. ;-) A good starting point would be to look for how "wildfire" is mentioned in the IPCC Sixth AR WG 3 report. I see it more often framed as an effect of climate change but not so much as a mitigation thing, e.g. "With climate change, wildfires will probably become more frequent". (which is then more in the Working Group 2 report). Anyhow, there might be a mention in the WG 3 report on how wildfire prevention counts towards climate change mitigation, or in another publication. Once we find that, we can easily add it to the article. EMsmile (talk) 17:31, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Searching for "prevention" in above mentioned report I found only this so far "In some ecosystems, fire prevention might lead to accumulation of large fuel loads that enable wildfires". EMsmile (talk) 17:31, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the search and the info. The “fuel loads” seems to be talking about this:

https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/fires-destroy-forests/

“... fire-scarred trees. By cutting a cross-section of a tree stump, Parks points out how trees can carry scars from long-ago fires that were set every 10 to 30 years by the ... tribe that lived here. And yet those trees survived. You can see curls in the wood that show where the tree was scarred and started to regrow around that scar. Those scars, research shows, are evidence that Indigenous Americans successfully controlled wildfires by regularly setting smaller fires to reduce the buildup of fuel. After the U.S. removed the tribe from the land and began the practice of excluding fire from the forest, many trees didn't see a fire for a century or more … bears no fire scars for 100 years ... All around it, fuel built up unabated during those years, feeding future fires that today burn hotter and are more lethal, Parks says”

IMO it’s more related to “vanishing of prescribed burning” (small controlled fires) than “wildfire prevention” (uncontrolled large fires), which are probably two different concepts (that are easily mixed up) …

And then we have:

• https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-04033-y Surge in extreme forest fires fuels global emissions
• https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/ffgc.2022.925480 Forest fire emissions: A contribution to global climate change

But as things are still somewhat unclear, I think just a brief mention (one or two sentences) like you said would be more than enough. Or maybe we would just leave it for now and I’m happy as long as the wikilink is present in the article :) --Dustfreeworld (talk) 10:40, 14 January 2024 (UTC)