Talk:Climate change

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Opponent Proponent

Well, it is my personal opinion but I find the opponent proponent introduction slightly unsuitable for an encyclopedia definition. I think (again, my opinion) that it is much better to just define what global warming is. From the description of global warming, one could deduce who is a proponent and who is an opponent.

(William M. Connolley 17:00, 2004 May 21 (UTC)) I have a lot of sympathy for this POV. Go blame Uncle Ed who did it

In summary, I think that defining global warming in the terms of proponents and opponents just does not sound very scientific. It sounds like this is an issue of taking sides rather than a scientific problem.

That's naive. It's both. (Comment by Lumidek: I fully support this viewpoint. Global warming is an unproved hypothesis that has its proponents, and it also has its opponents, as the article shows - much like any other scientific conjecture, especially any conjecture with clear political implications.)

Of course, this might have been already discussed but I have not bothered to check the archives (I take the blame). I know that it would be much better to write something when I criticize things but I don't have enough determination to do that... :)

Oddly enough, GW is somewhat contentious and does have a history. Check it.

Ed's eds

(William M. Connolley 17:08, 2004 Mar 12 (UTC)) Not too keen on Ed's recent changes, but I've made an attempt at a first section we can both live with.

But, w.r.t. the NH T graph, Ed is simply wrong. So: Ed wrote:

Previous quantitative reconstructions show temperatures as having fluctuated up and down over the last 1,000 years, correlating closely with variations in the amount of sunlight received by the earth.

and

In the late 1990s, the IPCC revised its presentation of the temperature record and began showing a "Hockey Stick" shaped graph

I suspect all this comes via Daly, but that doesn't matter. The graph that appeared in IPCC TAR (2001) was from Mann '98 (and others from about then) and was the *first* Quantitative hemispheric reconstruction. The graph Ed is thinking of from IPCC 1990 was a *schematic*. IPCC 1995 didn't use it, but did use a record from, I think China - not a hemispheric record.

Come on Ed, prove me wrong: find one of these "previous" reconstructions.

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(William M. Connolley 17:15, 2004 Mar 12 (UTC)) I knew I'd written this all before: from Temperature record of the past 1000 years:

"Skeptics complain that the IPCC had previously accepted a temperature record which showed large natural variations such as the medieval climate optimum and the Little Ice Age, but unaccountably selected a different set of data that fit its preordained conclusions. Such skeptics have presumably failed to notice that the graph used in the earliest (1990) IPCC report was a schematic (non-quantitative; as discussed above): the 1990 report further noted that it was not clear "whether all the fluctuations indicated were truly global". The graph disappeared from the 1992 supplementary report, and was replaced in the 1995 report by a northern hemisphere summer temperature reconstruction from 1400 to 1979 by Bradley and Jones (1993); this in turn was updated in the 2001 report to northern hemisphere warm-season and annual reconstructions from 1000 AD to present by Mann et al (1999), Jones et al (1999) and Briffa (2000) [5]. "

It's just not possible to have an edit war, if the "other side" won't play! Dr. Connolley, your geniality has cooled me off once again, just when I was getting warm to the subject.... --Uncle Ed 18:34, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

(William M. Connolley 19:20, 2004 Mar 12 (UTC)) Sorry. I too was looking forward (?) to a big fight :-) Now I'll have to go and do something useful on Wind/Atmos Circ. Well actually I'm oging to help Miranda do her puzzle, but after that...

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hypothesis vs theory

i'm not trying to start an edit war with hypothesis vs theory. Deciding whether something is only a hypothesis or a body of theory is not easy, and partly depends on what is accepted by the scientific community, also on whether there is a set of mathematical statements matching a whole lot of experiments which all fit nicely together.

(William M. Connolley 17:52, 2004 Mar 31 (UTC)) Yes, please lets not start a war on this.

But the previous version of the article had too much of confusion between theory and hypothesis - remember the latin origin of hypo thesis - a hypothesis is a little thesis, it's on the way to a theory, but not there yet.

(William M. Connolley 17:52, 2004 Mar 31 (UTC)) Lets keep the word games out it. Philospophical nicities distinguishing T and H aren't relevant here. In practice, there is little difference in whether a given thing is described as theory or hypothesis. But describing something as "a hypothesis because its not yet accepted as a theory" is unacceptable to me.

i disagree with the statement about practice, this is most likely a question of what social group is using the language. i happen to be a scientist (e.g. http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+roukema/0/1/0/all/0/1) and among my colleagues there is a big difference between theory and hypothesis. My perception of the use of the words is consistent with what's in the entries theory and hypothesis. Boud 14:49, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

(William M. Connolley 19:05, 2004 Apr 2 (UTC)) I've just had a quick look at the wiki articles on T and H. T is: In sciences, a theory is a model or framework for understanding but hypothesis is A hypothesis is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon - and I really don't see how, from that, you can unambiguously call GW one or the other: it fits both.

There's some danger for NPOV in claiming which statements, claims are hypotheses and which constitute theory. IMHO, the NPOV would be to state that anything controversial is a hypothesis,

(William M. Connolley 17:52, 2004 Mar 31 (UTC)) This is itself POV as far as I'm concerned.

unless it is uncontroversial that most scientists accept some body of statements as theory. This is in some sense a sociological statement, and that's what NPOV often is - we say that "X says A" and "Y says B" are uncontroversial facts, but A and B themselves cannot be presented as facts in the wikipedia.

Similarly, if "90% of scientists say that hypotheses A are well established according to experiments and constitute theory" and "2% of scientists say that B is true", it would probably be NPOV to say that A is theory and B is a hypothesis.

(William M. Connolley 17:52, 2004 Mar 31 (UTC)) This is spiffy but how are you going to know what 90% of scientists say? Don't you realise that argumetns about that precise point have afflicted this article in the past. Perhaps you'd be happier looking at scientific opinion of global warming.

i have to accept your point about arguments in the past, i don't feel like digging through them (and the people working on it clearly did an excellent job on the substantive part of NPOVing it, i am really impressed - congratulations to all - the hypothesis vs theory thing is IMHO like correcting some obvious grammar/spelling mistakes - useful, should be done, but not the tough part of the work). Anyway, the way to know what 90% of scientists say (well, at least somewhere in that direction) is to look at documents published by people who are formally recognised scientists.

(William M. Connolley 19:05, 2004 Apr 2 (UTC)) Thank you for that. I understand you not wanting to dig through the past... The problem is, I know I can write on these pages what 90% of climate scientists think. But I cannot prove that this is so, and people who don't like GW will just object on POV grounds.

However, given that the page scientific opinion on climate change does exist, it might be better to have non-ambiguous language on that page and leave the ambiguous language on the main global warming page. Confusing hypothesis and theory is ambiguous, because if both of them mean something which is a speculative statement, not yet widely confirmed by empirical evidence and not yet having obtained near consensus among the scientific community, then it is unclear when theory, in the scientific sense is being discussed. Boud 14:49, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

(William M. Connolley 19:05, 2004 Apr 2 (UTC)) If I were to assert that GW *has* achieved near-consensus within the scientific community (and hence entitled to be called a theory, by your defn), how would you know whether this was true or not?

Maybe some of this sort of discussion should go to an NPOV FAQ after it's sorted out?

(William M. Connolley 17:52, 2004 Mar 31 (UTC)) If.

It would probably be better that people who've been working on this article sort this out in this case, since you probably better can summarise what fractions of the scientific community are enough to decide what is theory and what is just hypothesis. BTW, in general i find the article very good, excellent in fact. :) But also :( because it's a sad topic.

Boud 13:45, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

(William M. Connolley 17:52, 2004 Mar 31 (UTC)) In accord with my comments above, I've reverted a fair bit. Also, its inappropriate to wiki every instance of the word "theory".

Sure, not all instances of theory need to be wikified, but since people don't seem to be aware of the meaning given to the word by scientists (and by wikipedia), i thought it might be good to encourage people to find out what it means. For example, general relativity (GR) is definitely a theory for scientists (i would be surprised if you can find any physicist or any other physical scientist who says that GR is not a theory); but it's also very definitely confirmed by experiment in many ways, it is definitely much, much more than a hypothesis. Anyway, if wikipedians interested in this page want it to look ignorant about basic scientific terminology to scientists who read the page, so be it. Boud 14:49, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

(William M. Connolley 19:05, 2004 Apr 2 (UTC)) I think you are coming to this with a somewhat different scientific background to me. My end point of this is that T and H are ambiguous words; its not possible to say definitively that GW should be considered one or the other. I think we are closer to agreement than all these words might suggest.

§ I have another understanding of these two words. One of the requirements for a theory is that it be a logically coherent system. If someone proposes a theory and someone else finds a logical flaw, then the theory is shot down (or perhaps the logical flaw is corrected). A hypothesis, according to my understanding, can be nothing more complex than an idea, such as, "I think I know why the glaciers are disappearing...." [P0M]

(William M. Connolley 16:52, 2004 May 12 (UTC)) OK, thats nice, then GW is a theory not a hypothesis...

§ One other thing needs to be understood by people reading this article: It is never possible to prove a theory because you may examine all the swans in England, expand your range to Eurasia, and offer the theory that "All swans are white." You may wander over thousands of square miles of swan territory and never find a swan that is not white -- until you go to Australia, where the first swan you see will very likely be black. Theories are required to be falsifiable. In the above example, the theory is falsified with the discovery of just one non-white swan. This understanding is important because people are very frequently put off by scientists who announce that their old theory was wrong. People think there is something wrong when this happens, when in fact it is what is supposed to happen, what needs to happen to advance knowledge.

(William M. Connolley 16:52, 2004 May 12 (UTC)) Stuff like that belongs in philosophy not science.

§ Actually, the discussion of "what is a scientific truth" belongs in the philosophy of science. It's not an idle fancy either. For instance, the development of the modern concept of space can be traced back to Leibniz and from there to Kant and then to Einstein. Tidying up our ideas about what we mean when we say something like "at x, y, z, t such-and-such takes place" can be very productive sometimes.

§ The more complex the phenomena being investigated, the more difficult it is to find out the truth about it. So maybe the article needs a paragraph about "substantiation." P0M 21:53, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

(William M. Connolley 16:52, 2004 May 12 (UTC)) ?

§ Newtonian physics has been tested over and over again and so people have very good reason to trust its predictions when planning a battleship or whatever. It has been very well substantiated over the scale of operations that people had experience of up to that time. But, when used in deal with, e.g., velocities up to a substantial fraction of the speed of light, it can give incorrect predictions. So Einstein developed his Special Theory of Relativity to make correct predictions over velocities up to C. Basically, by "substantiation" I meant the process by which one begins with a hypothesis, e.g., "I'll bet the globe is warming up because we're putting so much extra carbon dioxide into the air," builds it into a coherent account that jibes logically with the other things we think we know about the world (e.g., carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas), emends it when the "gotchas" appear (e.g., when carbon dioxide is added to the atmosphere, trees grow faster therefore removing some of the excess), challenges it with alternative explanations (e.g., the world is really getting warmer because of increased ensolation), and finally arrives at a set of empirical generalizations that allow one to make dependable predictions (e.g., tell what the temperature of the world will be at some time in the future given the current and projected rates of carbon dioxide production). P0M

§ But it is also possible that an otherwise satisfactory theory falls apart when variables go out of the range that had been experienced prior to developing the theory. When the temperature of the world reaches a certain point something might "flip" and the theory would no longer make accurate predictionjs. So it is important to know that substantiation never really ends, unless the process comes up with an unambiguous negative result. P0M

Intent of IPCC

Cut from article:

The reports are intended to reflect the consensus of the published science.

It's not clear at all what the IPCC really intends. Some people believe that it is sincerely dedicated to objective analysis of scientific data. Others hotly contend that it has been completely biased from the start and exists only to promote the Kyoto Protocol.

Indeed, there is some evidence that the IPCC has frequently ignored scientific objections to the GW theory. --Uncle Ed 13:57, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

(William M. Connolley 15:17, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)) Ed, Ed, Ed: are you having a bad day and feel the need to take it out on the GW article? I (I think) wrote the sentence above as a deliberate sop to you and those like you, instead of "the reports reflect the consensus". And why do you go back over the quant recon stuff still without finding an example of your POV?

If you want to give me anything, how about some neutrality? Say that the IPCC claims (or asserts) that its reports reflect the consensus of the published science. --Uncle Ed 00:53, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

The Ed Poor wars (cont)

(William M. Connolley 15:36, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)) This is mostly addressed to Stevie, wh thought Ed's comments were OK.

Ed added:

Scientists universally agree that, until the twentieth century, every period of global warming has been followed by a period of global cooling and that for all of human history the average yearly temperature has remained within a range of a few degrees (Centigrade).

This is a combination of the vacuous (warming follow cooling follows warmings) with the dodgy (avg T within a few degrees C - are we forgetting the ice ages?).

The place for discussion (discussion? err description?) of the temperature record is Historical temperature record

Ed added:

A 1998 article in Natural Science sums up the generally accepted observation of climatologists: Mean temperatures rose steeply in the decades before 1940 and dropped from 1940 to about 1975. [1]. This is tendentious: SEPPs views are a small minority.

Wait a minute, William! Are you saying it's not generally agreed by climate researchers that temps climbed up to 1940 and fell somewhat afterwards? If there's a contrary view, please add it!! --Uncle Ed 00:56, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

And so forth.

I don't give a whiff about the specifics. Only address in Ed's changes those that are POV and delineate the changes you want. Reversing all his efforts is tantamount to vandalism and suggests you have a personal beef with him. -- Stevietheman 15:58, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

(William M. Connolley 16:33, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)) If you don't care about the specifics, go somewhere else. Ed put the above in. You said it looked OK to you. I pointed out what was wrong with it and removed it. You... well, what *do* you think about the points above?

First of all, full reverts are done all the time, and do not amount to vandalism. People make large, junky edits quite often, and I've reverted them wholesale quite often without significant complaint from anybody.

In this case, most of Ed's edits were definitely POV and clearly written to be skeptical. The sources he quotes and the definitions he choses are highly biased. I think a full revert was fine, since the incidental changes that weren't POV were not really that important. Graft 16:55, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Revert only the bits that you disagree with, not the whole thing. It can't all be wrong. Stop the personality war you have with Ed and care more about the interests of the Wikipedia. -- Stevietheman 17:07, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Actually, I can't find anything in Ed's text that I would want to keep. It's just not appropriate text. This has nothing to do with Ed Poor's personality, it has to do with the fact that the edits are simply POV. I don't know why you have to be such a jerk about this.

His major edits were including text about periods of warming and cooling and average temperature variance, which WMC discussed above; a discussion about disputes over temperature trends, where he overemphasizes the skeptics and implies that a vehement debate still continues, including for example Singer's urban heat island dispute, which has LONG since been corrected for. Finally, he has a dubious bit about terminology, where he says that 'climate change' is supposed to be the neutral usage, which is something i've never heard before. The only usage of 'climate change' i've ever seen is by people who wish to emphasize that "warming" does not accurately reflect the full range of possible effects current worldwide warming trends might have in the future. So... what exactly should I retain? Graft 17:38, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

You both are displaying rogue behavior. I give up. Can't fight two persons obsessed with destroying people's work. I never said Ed's work was 100% accurate or perfect NPOV, but wholesale rollbacks are mean-spirited and amount to spitting on people's efforts. I will not discuss any specifics until you guys decide to adhere to better behavior. -- Stevietheman 20:34, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Chill out, Stevie. Graft and William believe global warming is a (1) real (2) proven (3) danger, and they are up in arms at any attempt to minimize, dismiss or discredit their concerns. I respect that.

Don't worry about the wholesale reversions. Graft made several specific suggestions which I am beginning to incorporate. It's all part of the give and take of editing a work in progress. Dr. C. and I made our peace long ago; we actually get along quite well! --Uncle Ed 15:04, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Protection discussion

I'm sad that William M. Connolley's wholesale reversions of Uncle Ed's work led to this protection. All he and his cohort Graft needed to do was analyze the changes and select those that were POV and modify them. Note that I am not an ally of Ed with regards to his changes, but rather am defending the best interests of the Wikipedia. Wholesale reversions of what is at least partially good work is just indefensible. -- Stevietheman 13:55, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Stevie, I don't know how long you've been on Wikipedia, but please don't make yourself it's Caped Avenger. I am not WMC's cohort, I was merely attempting to step in and end what I thought was an unreasonable revert war. I justified my reversion above: Ed's edits added nothing to the article. There was no way to salvage them, since they were so extensive. They merited reversion. The appropriate behavior on YOUR part would be to salvage what YOU think to be at least partially good work; this would provide grounds for discussion, which is what I believe is the appropriate way to defend the best interests of Wikipedia. You, on the other hand, are eschewing discussion of the text itself and insist on turning this into a personality conflict (which it is not), which is precisely the wrong way to go about things. Please reconsider, so that the page may be unprotected. What do you want to salvage from Ed's text? If nothing, then what is the issue? Graft 16:22, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

It's not my job to determine that. It's William's, as it was he who did the wholesale reversion. He should present in an honest manner what is salvageable, then we can discuss it. I want William to correct his mistake and say he won't do any more wholesale reversions of people's work. You can call me any label you like, but I don't like rogue behavior, and I'm not going to stand by and just let it happen. -- Stevietheman 18:31, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I also did the wholesale reversion, and I imagine William's reasons were the same as mine. I don't believe anything in Ed's text is salvageable. It is impossible for me (and probably for William, but since he hasn't explicitly said this I can't speak for him) to present in an honest manner what is salvageable, since I don't believe there is any salvageable material. With that in mind, how is a reversion not justified? Your continued insistence that this is "rogue behavior" are not call to keep this page locked up. I have given a clear list of reasons why I believe a wholesale reversion was justified. Please give a concrete reason (not a general one) for why you feel this specific act of reversion was unjustified; otherwise there's no point in continuing this discussion. Graft 19:28, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

For convenience during editing, here is the last pair of changes: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Global_warming&diff=4669589&oldid=4667581

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Disputed text

Below is the disputed new text as a starting point. Unsheath your pens. (SEWilco 07:12, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC))

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The term global warming usually refers to the view that the world's average temperature has been increasing since the Industrial Revolution, due to "pollution" from carbon dioxide and similar "greenhouse gases". The term has also been used to refer to other increases in average atmospheric temperature which have occurred in history, regardless of cause.

Rephrasing is needed to remove the awkwardness of the "pollution" term. Also when discussing temperature change events of the planet, "global" does not tend to be used repeatedly after the global context is introduced. I think the last sentence which tries to claim an alternate meaning should instead be a reference to the adoption of the phrase by GW "proponents". (SEWilco 07:28, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC))

Para. 1: Use of terms in scare quotes has made the second version hazy from the get go. Its second sentence carries it completely off the intended topic because it makes the term "global warming" include all instances of amelioration of ice age conditions. P0M

Scientists universally agree that, until the twentieth century, every period of global warming has been followed by a period of global cooling and that for all of human history the average yearly temperature has remained within a range of a few degrees (Centigrade).

Scientists universally agree that during recorded history the average global temperatures have varied by a small percentage. The rates of change and amounts of change continued to be studied. (SEWilco 07:28, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC))

Para. 2: The second paragraph of the second version implicitly asserts that global warming is not a problem. It assumes that increases and decreases of temperature will remain within the range of "a few degrees" as though the earth's behavior during historical times is some kind of standard for all future times. An increase of temperature of comparable magnitude to the decrease in temperature during the so-called Little Ice Age would not even be inconsequential. A quibble: mention of "degrees (Centigrade)" gives a gratuitous sense of precision. P0M

In the 1970s it was unclear whether global warming or global cooling were more likely in the near future (next 100 years). By 1980 much opinion was in the warming camp, though uncertainties remained large. Since 1990, the prospect that the earth's surface might become dangerously overheated captured public attention, and it has been a hotly debated topic ever since.

Para. 3: The use of "warming camp" and "hotly debated" in a serious discussion of global warming sets up a kind of uncomfortable semantic reverberation. P0M 15:22, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I removed the rest of the disputed text from here, as the main article is no longer Protected and edits can continue there. Whoever wants to discuss text will copy it here...as usual. (SEWilco 15:21, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC))

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Climate Change

Ed, I don't understand why you want to include a passage where you emphasize what you yourself admit is a little-known usage of the term 'climate change'. It seems as if Wikipedia is advocating for that usage over the more widely-accepted one. In fact, I've never even heard of your usage before - climate change is, as far as I can tell, a more biased term than global warming. Graft 18:27, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I include that passage to dismiss the term as misleading propaganda: I don't think we should use it. It's not "my usage", and I agree that it's a biased term. --Uncle Ed 14:26, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Some comments

I just started reading this article, and I would strongly sggest to move the temperature trends section somewhere lower down. The Terminology section is a much better, and less controversial introduction to the topic. Even stronger, I suggest to remove it from the article and incorporate it in the "scientific opinion of global warming" page. It seems more apropos there

--Frank.visser 22:45, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)