User talk:Jaymax/SO Hatnote

Considerations

• Hatnote not displayed in some circumstances - does not form part of the 'article proper', and is primarily for disambiguation navigation
• Need to move 'list criteria' into the article proper. List criteria should be summarised, can be more detailed under top-level section headings and Talk page / FAQ
• Need to accomodate that there are not just society positions, but also synthesis reports, surveys, (and consensus statements)
• Reason for excluding individuals needs to be expounded.
• Need to identify what ties all these opinions together (they are about whether the listee is in support, neutral, or opposed to the theory of anthropogenic cause of recent global warming.
• Need to consider the criteria for each list

Criteria

Synthesis report conculsions

ideas?

Societies' Opinions

• What is a society? (fellowship, academy, etc)

  Suggest meets defn at Learned Society

• Should it be notable, or is the current 'standing' better? Why?

  I think notability is more wiki-friendly

• Once the organisation reaches the 'listible' threshold, are there any other concerns?
  • Relevance of the society to global warming issues.

Surveys

• Representative (ie: reasonable effort to obtain indiscriminate sample)
• Either from published work, or from direct questioning of individuals
• Must in either case have strong focus on those involved in climate research
• Opinion must be that of a significant majority to be listable.

  is the majority thing a mistake? (removed the majority thing)

Proposed

Hatnote

This page is about scientific opinions on the causes of recent climate change held by notable scientific societies and from surveys of opinion among climate researchers. For recent climate change generally, see Global warming. For debate on scientific consensus, see Climate change consensus. For opinions of individual climate scientists, see List of climate scientists and List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming.

First article paragraph

Scientific opinion on climate change is the collection of formalised, published, scientific opinions which consider the cause of recent climate change, specifically whether this is due to human influences. The article includes opinions from:

• synthesis report conclusions, and
• formal statements of position issued by notable scientific societies, and
• surveys of climate scientists.

Self-selected statements of opinion such as petitions and open letters, are not scientific and so are excluded. To ensure this article is representative, the innumerable opinions of individual scientists, individual universities, or individual laboratories are not included, but in many cases may be found by via List of climate scientists.

Refs supporting topic notability

• Scientific opinion on climate change, as expressed by the United Nations-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has repeatedly stressed that global warming is a serious problem and that governments need to respond to this challenge promptly. While the scientific agreement that global warming is taking place and that its consequences will be severe has been growing, it is not a universally held position among experts. Consequences], p3-4
• p4 "surveys of how scientists view the status of climate change research, conducted in 1996 and 2003, demonstrated a significant shift in scientific opinion regarding global warming, though there remains some disagreement about whether humans are responsible"

  American Political Science Association, Toronto. September 2009,

• According to the Union of Concerned Scientists backgrounder on the IPCC "Who Are They and Why Do Their Climate Reports Matter", representing the range of scientific opinion on climate change fairly is critical to scientific credibility and political legitimacy.