Talk:IPCC Sixth Assessment Report

Why the date? Sixth (2022)

Sixth (2022)

It came out today, which is 2021.--S Philbrick(Talk) 18:05, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

I do appreciate that the synthesis report is not due until 2022, but the lead statement includes the following (emphasis added)

234 scientists contributed to the final report.

--S Philbrick(Talk) 18:42, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

There are different "final" reports [1]

• report on The Physical Science Basis
• report on Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability
• report on Mitigation of Climate Change and
• the synthesis report. --Gunnar (talk) 11:52, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Concern regarding lead

The current wording of the lead section properly has a discussion of the nature of the report and how it was constructed. It also contains a single science related conclusion:

Working group 1 published The Physical Science Basis of Climate Change on 9 August 2021, which said that, if greenhouse gas emissions are halved by 2030 and net zero by 2050, global warming can be stopped.

There are several problems with this sentence.

1. If we are going to extract a single scientific statement from an almost 4000 page report, it seems like it ought to be the most important statement in the report. I don't think this statement qualifies.
2. I believe Wikipedia editors working in this area reached a consensus that statements about conclusions should be referenced to the report. This statement is referenced to a BBC article.
3. The sentence is quite clear that the conclusion comes from the report, which doesn't appear to be the case.
4. If the claim is in the report, it may be as simple as changing the referencing. However, the report is 4000 pages long and I haven't read it all, but I haven't found evidence that this conclusion flows from the report
5. The sentence doesn't even logically follow from the BBC article. See below for two relevant quotes from the article, which use caveats such as "hopeful" and "possibly"

While this report is more clear and confident about the downsides to warming, the scientists are more hopeful that if we can cut global emissions in half by 2030 and reach net zero by the middle of this century, we can halt and possibly reverse the rise in temperatures.

"But we now expect nature to be kind to us and if we are able to achieve net zero, we hopefully won't get any further temperature increase; and if we are able to achieve net zero greenhouse gases, we should eventually be able to reverse some of that temperature increase and get some cooling."

--S Philbrick(Talk) 18:39, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

I was rushing to get a "blurb" for "in the news" and the IPCC website was overloaded so I could not download anything. Anyway the "blurb" used eventually was very bland and said nothing about the report conclusions. So if you go ahead and redo the lead properly that would be great. Chidgk1 (talk) 18:46, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

Chidgk1, I understand, thanks for your timely response. S Philbrick(Talk) 19:24, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

My recommendation is to remove the sentence at this time. My understanding of best practices is that the nonlead sections of an article should be written first, then a lead should be written which summarizes the important points. I recognize that it is quite common to write the lead concurrently, but it's not ideal, and this is a good example where best practices make sense. I haven't yet read the entire report. It's 3949 pages, and unless editors received an advance copy, no one else has yet either. I think it's premature to be writing the summary on the substantive conclusions of this report although I do not have a problem with the rest of the lead which simply characterizes how it came to be. I'll hold off removing the sentence to give time for others to weigh in. S Philbrick(Talk) 21:03, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

I removed the sentence. As mentioned above, we really should write the main body of this article then have a discussion about what points along in the lead. S Philbrick(Talk) 13:15, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

I am not thinking of doing any more on this article - suggest you go ahead and see if anyone else joins in or objects Chidgk1 (talk) 15:03, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

אלכסנדר סעודה looks like you are keener to continue with this article than I am so maybe you would like to discuss here? Chidgk1 (talk) 09:59, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

I am open to listening to the proposed rewrite. I agree that the original sentence was lacking and should be rewritten. However, given the nature of the lead, a 4000 page report does need to be distilled into two or three sentences so the gist is trying to rewrite it to be more inclusive of the report and give an overview on what is covered. Jurisdicta (talk) 15:51, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

You are right, this should be written in other way.

--Alexander Sauda/אלכסנדר סעודה (talk) 10:36, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

Actually, the SRs and the MR which have been written in between AR5 and AR6 are not part of the AR6 series, which only comprise the analysis of WGI, WGII, WGIII and the synthesis at the end.

Three Special Reports (SR) and one Methodology Report were completed since the 2014 Fifth Assessment Report in 2018 and 2019. 

I suggest to take this sentence out of the intro and put it somewhere below, e.g. a chapter in the framework on IPCC, explaining the historical development of AR1-AR6. --Gunnar (talk) 12:36, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

An errors about SSP

Firstly in the SSP 1.9 the temperature peak at 1.6 at the years 2041 - 2060, not at 1.5. It is clearly said in the article from Yale. This should be changed in the table also. I can not do it so give me the possibility to do it or change by yourself, please.

Secondly, the SSP in the report are not the same as are in the page Shared Socioeconomic Pathways. In those pathways a rise in 5 degrees (SSP5: Fossil-Fueled Development (Taking the Highway)) is considered as something that can be managed with geoengeneering etc., but I do not see this in the report of the IPCC. Probably there is no concensus about it. The 5 SSP in the page was developped only to help he IPCC. But they are not the SSP in the report. I think it should be explicitly said in the page.

--Alexander Sauda/אלכסנדר סעודה (talk) 11:20, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

@אלכסנדר סעודה: The SSPs are used in the Report, but they are specified in the SSPx-y.z style, where x is the SSP number, and y.z ist the radiative forcing (RF). As I understand it, 5 emission scenarios were selected and these 5 scenarios have a RF number similar to the RCPs and have been allocated to fitting SSPs. The two scenarios with the very low and low emissions were allocated to SSP1, therefore one SSP (#4) was not used in the IPCC AR6 WG1 report.

From my point of view, the weakness of the scenario family is that there is no plausibility check behind it. "In general, no likelihood is attached to the scenarios assessed in this Report." (Full Report, page 1-109). I am well aware that a scenario is not a prediction, but it should be a plausible sequence of events and actions, especially if used for policy consulting and not for entertainment only (e.g. a scenario for a broadway play in which felinae behave human like). What energy experts criticise is, that the RF-8.5 scenario (also widely known as baseline) burns much more fossil fuels than ressource specialists think are produceable. [2] expresses that also RF-6.0 is highly unlikely and that a plausible emission path is given in the RF-4.5 family.

Thus, the two low emission paths will with confidence not happen by itself and need significant climate policy support, but for the two higher emission paths there is simply not enough producible oil & gas and coal in the ground. Did you notice that UK and DE already finished their coal cycle, although there are gigatons of hard coal still lying at some depths, nobody bothers to dig it out by deep mining? --Gunnar (talk) 22:30, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

How to cite chapters?

We may want to reference sections or chapters in, for example, the WG1 full report, or its shorter technical summary. What is the correct template to use? {{cite report}} or {{cite book}}? Or just copy the full chapter citation from the IPCC download page and add a page or section number? Should we list all the chapter authors and all the editors? Give the URL of the chapter or the WG1 report? Should the 'work=' be the WG1 volume or the 'IPCC Sixth Assessment Report'? A section reference seems better than a page number because the pages are subject to revision before print. I presume any page numbers should be as printed relative to the chapter. --Cedders^tk 14:12, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

@Cedders: I suggest that {{cite book}} will be a lot easier to work with. Whichever template you use is not visible to visitors. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 12:22, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

If the URL is given, I assume that the copy-edited final version gets a different URL, so page numbers should be not a problem, and can be updated later. Please dont forget page numbers have the format x-abc with x the Chapter number. I'd like to suggest not to copy and paste the whole reference, but to reuse it and give page numbers with the rp-template. --Gunnar (talk) 16:17, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. {{cite book}} for the chapter makes sense so the chapter authors can be listed, and {{rp}} could be helpful. By 'cut and paste' I really meant use the recommended citation as opposed to any template. I used a section number and a page range within the chapter (which is messy and I can fix) and a URL to the full report. I'm not convinced the URLs will change after copy-editing.--Cedders^tk 11:54, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

Regarding the the 'cut and paste' approach of the recommended citation I think the use of the wiki-templates is better. This is structured meachine-readable data. The recommended citation gives a hint what kind of data should be reused and I don't think the publication pros at IPCC are sad about using a different kind of format, if the content is correctly represented. --Gunnar (talk) 16:28, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

@Cedders@Gunnar.Kaestle@John Maynard Friedman we have a framework for citing IPCC reports at Wikipedia:IPCC_citation -- the best thing to do is use the citations mapped there and update them as you find that they have mistakes or gaps, Sadads (talk) 17:23, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

"AR^" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect AR^. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 August 24#AR^ until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 23:17, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

Effectuation

So far, the article focuses on the message how to obtain the 1.5 or 2.0 degree target and does not amplify the worst case scenario, which is highly unlikely, as there is not enough mineable coal, oil and gas to burn which are needed for the very high CO2 emission pathways (doubling and tripling of today's CO2 emissions). Jean Laherrere answered the question: "Are there enough fossil fuels to generate the IPCC CO2 baseline scenario?" with No!, "Only RCP4.5 is close to the most probable FF production." (p. 25).

Hausfather & Peters elaborated in 2020 on Emissions – the ‘business as usual’ story is misleading, writing: "RCP8.5 was intended to explore an unlikely high-risk future. But it has been widely used by some experts, policymakers and the media as something else entirely: as a likely ‘business as usual’ outcome. A sizeable portion of the literature on climate impacts refers to RCP8.5 as business as usual, implying that it is probable in the absence of stringent climate mitigation. The media then often amplifies this message, sometimes without communicating the nuances. This results in further confusion regarding probable emissions outcomes, because many climate researchers are not familiar with the details of these scenarios in the energy-modelling literature."

I would prefer if the Wikipedia article on the IPCC AR6 report could keep focused on the probable scenarios within the given bouquet. The high emission scenarios SSP3-7.0 and SSP5-8.5 are unlikely, as "RCP8.5 generally require an unprecedented fivefold increase in coal use by the end of the century, an amount larger than some estimates of recoverable coal reserves." (H&D 2020) BTW, a coal peak occured in 2013 which has not been surpassed in the following years. Energy Watch Group argued in 2007 that the growth in coal consumption will come to a halt due to limited reserves anyway.

SSP2-4.5 is plausible as a no-policy scenario (e.g. carbon price = zero), as this could be the outcome of burning all of the fossil fuel reserves. (See BGR Energy Study 2019, Table 4, Page 41). SSP1-2.6 and SSP1-1.9 seem to need significant climate policy support to keep the global warming below the 2 °C threshold, respectively the 1.5 °C limit. So that is the interesting range between the plausible baseline and the effectuation pathways.

Effectuation is a management principle that has been identified by observing successful entrepreneurs. It does not aim at predicting the future and following a master plan; it is aware that able and swift actions can shape the future and therefore we do not need to forecast it. Thus, it might be valueable to depict the plausible scenarios, because gazing like a mesmerized mouse to a snake on highly-unlikely worst-case scenarios "could lead to defeatism, because the problem is perceived as being out of control and unsolvable." (H&D 2020) --Gunnar (talk) 17:29, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

The section about the Working Group 2 report

I have some concerns about the section about the Working Group 2 report. What is the precise purpose of this section? Is it meant to provide a summary of the report (which would be next to impossible)? Is it meant to repeat some key findings? I think it should be briefer and be more about the report itself (and later about its reception) rather than about the findings. The report's findings should rather be added to other Wikipedia articles like effects of climate change or climate vulnerability and so forth. Otherwise it could become extremely long. Also, I don't agree with using so many newspaper articles (The Guardian, BBC etc.) as sources for the findings of the report. Shouldn't the sources used just be the report itself, unless the statement is about reception or criticism? EMsmile (talk) 16:49, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

I quite agree that the findings should be added to other articles. And as it is one of the most striking and important report of these years, it's good to give our readers good insights about the contents.Reneza (talk) 20:46, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

I think the current coverage is reasonable -- because the scope of the report is massive, and effects basically everything in the natural and human worlds, I don't think it would be reasonable to even try to summarize and give proper weight just by, say, pulling from the Summary for Policy Makers. I think it actually makes a lot of sense to use the news sources, to describe what is "of interest" -- this is how many of the non-fiction book areticles are covered. Sadads (talk) 21:53, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

Hmmm well but keeping in mind that journalists also don't always get it right. So an over-reliance on news sources could be tricky unless one really double checks that it's an accurate reflection of the report itself. I think there should be at least a balance: sometimes citing from the report itself, sometimes citing from news sources EMsmile (talk) 12:03, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

Potential news sources (Vox) that could be used

This was under "further reading" but shouldn't be there:

• The devastating new UN report on climate change, explained, article at Vox website ^{[needs working into main text]} EMsmile (talk) 12:03, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

The section about Working Group 3 report

Hi Reneza thanks for your timely work on the section about the Working Group 3 report! I am just not sure if the long bullet point list is ideal here. Should we perhaps summarise is a bit and use wikilinks? Or can we convert this to prose perhaps? I am just not sure. Compare with the sections on Working Group 1 and 2 reports. EMsmile (talk) 16:42, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Hello EMsmile, no problem, go ahead, it was just a way to give an idea about the contents of the report. Now it's time to change this and share the main conclusions as stated in good-quality coverage of the report. Reneza (talk) 19:47, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

How can robust evidence lead to only medium agreement?

WG3 page 13-47 says "Reducing fossil fuel subsidies would lower CO2 emissions, increase government revenues (Dennis 2016; Gass and Echeverria 2017; Rentschler and Bazilian 2017; Monasterolo and Raberto 2019; Jakob et al. 2015), improve macroeconomic performance (Monasterolo and Raberto 2019), and yield other environmental and sustainable development benefits (Solarin 2020; Rentschler and Bazilian 2017; Jakob et al. 2015) (robust evidence, medium agreement)."

I don't understand economics - how could any economic studies disagree with that? Chidgk1 (talk) 20:11, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions of energy sources

I cannot find any values to add to the article - did they not provide any this time or did I miss them Chidgk1 (talk) 19:18, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

Intro - second paragraph

"...3,949-page report, which was then approved by 195 governments..." - as far as I know, this is incorrect - governmental/country representatives approve only the SPM, the rest is done only by scientists. See Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change#Review process for assessment reports. Jirka Dl (talk) 16:37, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Hi, the process is that the government representatives "approve" the Summary for Policymakers line by line in a dialogue with the authors of the report. They then "accept" the work of the scientists in preparing the whole report. So it is fair to say that the report is endorsed by all governments.Jonathanlynn (talk) 17:21, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Well, maybe in English speaking countries this is not so sensitive now, but for my country (Czechia) such formulation supports very much deniers, who say, that all IPCC reports are political reports, not scientifical reports. Jirka Dl (talk) 17:32, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

SYR - AR6 Synthesis Report

You can safely download (without going through Cloudflare) this archive of the 'summary for policymakers' (36pp) https://web.archive.org/web/20230320135908/https://report.ipcc.ch/ar6syr/pdf/IPCC_AR6_SYR_SPM.pdf

This should go into the article sooner or later - maybe once the full report is public? Boud (talk) 21:29, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

Key statements from synthesis report

I have a problem with this block of text (key statements from synthesis report) which had been added by Alexander in April 2023 in this edit. It is not clear to me which sentences are direct copies (which would cause copyright issues) and which are paraphrased and how well they are paraphrased. I assume the source for all of them is this website. For example the source says "There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all" and the Wikipedia sentence says "There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure Sustainability". Is that close paraphrasing? - I think we should cull this down and include only some direct quotes and not even try to paraphrase this. This is the text block in question (note: no in-line citations):

+++++

• Climate change is a threat to humans and planet. There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure Sustainability. Climate action is enabled by international cooperation (including access to required financing, particularly for vulnerable groups), inclusive governance and coordinated policies. Clear goals, diverse knowledge, finance, technology are enablers for climate action. For achieving climate goals, financing need to increase many-fold. There is sufficient global capital, but there are barriers for redirecting it to climate action. Choices made in next years will have impacts for thousands of years.

• Humans, mainly through emissions of greenhouse gases, certainly caused global warming. Those emissions continue to rise, coming from unsustainable energy use, land use, consumption, with unequal contributions between regions, countries, and individuals. Global temperature rose by 1.1 °C from 1850–1900 to 2011–2020. Human-caused climate change caused widespread and fast changes all over the world, what has led to severe negative impacts on nature and people. Communities who have contributed the least to climate change are disproportionately affected.

• Adaptation has increased, but adaptation gaps exist, and will continue to grow at current rate of action. Some ecosystems and regions have reached their adaptation limits. Maladaptation can be avoided by good planning and implementation, with co-benefits. Current financing is insufficient for adaptation, especially in low income countries.

• Mitigation has increased, but even if NDCs announced by October 2021 will be met, warming will likely exceed 1.5 °C in the 21st century and it is hard to limit warming to 2 °C. There are gaps between really implemented policies and NDCs. Financing is insufficient to meet mitigation goals.

• More greenhouse gas emissions will cause more global warming, reaching the 1.5 °C limit in the near term. More warming will intensify many concurrent negative impacts. With more warming, long-term negative impacts are many times higher than current, there is more likelihood of abrupt and/or irreversible changes, risks, low-likelihood events with very large negative impacts, losses and damages, climatic and non-climatic impacts, increasingly interacting, compound and cascading, more complex and difficult to manage. Adaptation options will become less effective, more human and natural systems will reach adaptation limits.

• Projected CO2 emissions from currently existing fossil fuel infrastructure would exceed the carbon budget for 1.5 °C. For limiting warming to 1.5 °C and to 2 °C, we need rapid, deep, in most cases, immediate GHG emissions reductions in all sectors by 2030 and reaching net zero CO2 emissions in the early 2050s and around the early 2070s, respectively.

• If warming exceeds 1.5 °C, it could be reduced again by negative emissions, but this would require additional use of carbon dioxide removal, with bigger feasibility and sustainability problems. The overshoot would result in negative impacts, some irreversible, additional risks for human and natural systems, all growing with the magnitude and duration of the overshoot.

• Fast, far-reaching system transitions in all sectors and systems including significant upscaling of mitigation and adaptation options (that are available) are necessary to secure sustainability. Climate action in the needed scale in this decade would reduce losses and damages for humans and ecosystems, and deliver many co-benefits. Near-term actions need potentially disruptive changes but they can be softened by enabling policies.

• Accelerated and equitable climate action is critical to sustainable development and have more synergies than trade-offs with it. Equity, climate justice, social justice, inclusion and just transition enable climate action. Adaptation requires increased support to people vulnerable to climate change. There are many possibilities for reducing emission-intensive consumption, including through lifestyle changes, with co-benefits.

+++++++

Pinging User:InformationToKnowledge as this has some relevance for the text at scientific consensus on climate change and pinging User:Femke because we've had previous discussions about paraphrasing from IPCC reports. EMsmile (talk) 11:55, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

It seems like the main issue here is that whatever the copyright status of this summary is, it just does not seem to be very effective at communicating with the people most likely to be reading this article (as opposed to, say, reading the report directly.) It's a lot of long, run-on sentences written in maximally vague language with the absolute minimum of specifics. I feel like most readers would bounce off halfway through, and those who actually would stick with it would most likely respond with something like "we already knew this".

I think we may need to be bold and effectively turn the first sentence of each of those dotpoints into a subheading, with the remaining sentences backed up by more specific examples from the preceding reports to back up those points. I.e. "Current financing is insufficient for adaptation, especially in low income countries." - regardless of whether we keep this or rewrite it to avoid paraphrasing, we then we cite one of the reports for whichever examples of shortfalls they choose to provide. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 14:41, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Ugh, that would be a lot of work though. We would effectively be doing the kind of work that IPCC should have done themselves: communicating the outcomes of AR6 to the general public... Not sure if it's really "our job" to do this. Would you have the time / energy for that? I think for now I would trim down that long bullet point list to just say 6 key messages which I would put in quotes, i.e. not try to paraphrase for fear of losing any of the nuances. EMsmile (talk) 23:43, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

For now, I've replaced the long bullet point list that was mostly closely paraphrased with three bullet points with direct quotes (as per talk page). I think this is "safer" and better. - Perhaps later someone can do the work that you had suggested above about summarizing "in our own words" what the report said but I actually think it would be rather difficult and error prone. (those IPCC statements have been honed to the n-th degree...) EMsmile (talk) 11:55, 12 January 2024 (UTC)