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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 19 January 2021 and 7 May 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Rchlanne00.
Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT ( talk) 23:35, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
A paragraph from this article is also temporarily used in a sandbox article in the Toronto Conference. Oceanflynn ( talk) 03:25, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
Editors active in this article may want to incorporate content from this Guardian article:
[1]
<ref name=Guardian_20210705>{{cite news |last1=Bell |first1=Alice |title=Sixty years of climate change warnings: the signs that were missed (and ignored) |url=https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jul/05/sixty-years-of-climate-change-warnings-the-signs-that-were-missed-and-ignored |work=The Guardian |date=5 July 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210709022437/https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jul/05/sixty-years-of-climate-change-warnings-the-signs-that-were-missed-and-ignored |archive-date=9 July 2021 |url-status=live }}</ref>
References
— RCraig09 ( talk) 19:58, 9 July 2021 (UTC)
Greetings folks, I was pinged to an article improvement discussion in user talk and chose to answer here as a good central location per WP:MULTI since what I have to raise touches on our whole series of (Year) in climate change articles. I won't mind if someone moves this to WikiProject talk.
I find the template to be an awesome idea since it helps laser focus team development and documentation of such criteria, and that will go a long way to ensure there's a minimum of drama when unknown WP:CIR-challenged trouble makers potentially pop up in the future. I don't think I knew about this template five days ago when I made the reverts on the climate list. If I had, I almost certainly would have shared this info then.
NewsAndEventsGuy ( talk) 00:27, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
Oops, above where I said WP:WEASELWORD I guess the section of "words to watch" I really meant to link is WP:PEACOCK. Notice that "notable" without a definition is listed as an example. "Significant" is not explicitly listed but seems like a synonym that belongs there. NewsAndEventsGuy ( talk) 13:17, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
The last paragraph of this article refers to “aerosols and other pollution” but seems to suggest that they are different from “humanity's production of greenhouse gases”. If that’s a statement that greenhouse gasses are not pollutants then a citation would surely be useful, and so I added a tag. The question of whether they’re pollutants, in a scientific sense, seems important.
I would like to suggest that this article address whether a current consensus of scientists consider greenhouse gasses to be pollutants, and if so when they became pollutants in the scientific (not legal) sense. Assuming that they are pollutants, they must have become pollutants at some point in time, by reason of doing more harm than good to the atmosphere. When did that happen? I note that in smaller quantities they were probably beneficial to the climate. For example, Joseph Sternberg wrote this in 2006:
“ | Urgent steps are needed to limit the rapid growth of CO2 in the atmosphere, which can be expected to have serious consequences such as an increase in the sea level. But preventing another ice age is also an important objective. It may well be that the intense worldwide exploitation of fossil fuel resources came just in time to provide a way to warm the Earth enough to delay, for a long time, the occurrence of another ice age. | ” |
Sternberg, Joseph. “Preventing Another Ice Age”, Eos Transactions American Geophysical Union Vol. 87, p. 539 (November 2006).
Likewise, as early as 1908, Svante Arrhenius realized that CO2 emissions could be beneficial:
“ | By the influence of the increasing percentage of carbonic acid in the atmosphere, we may hope to enjoy ages with more equable and better climates, especially as regards the colder regions of the earth, ages when the earth will bring forth much more abundant crops than at present, for the benefit of rapidly propagating mankind. | ” |
But at some point in time, they became excessive and started doing more harm than good, thus turning into pollutants. When was that? And when countries like China say the West has polluted the atmosphere with greenhouse gasses more than China has done, it would be interesting to know whether China is counting greenhouse gas emission before they became pollutants.
By the way, I’m not asking when scientists realized that greenhouse gasses are pollutants. I’m asking when scientists currently believe they became pollutants.
Anythingyouwant ( talk) 13:41, 26 July 2022 (UTC)
@
Anythingyouwant, your definition is
begging the question – see
Pollutant, noting
Pollutant#Fund pollutants "do not cause damage to the environment unless the emission rate exceeds the receiving environment's absorptive capacity (e.g. carbon dioxide .... )". Thus, human caused pollution is now known to have happened by 1900. The
timeline notes relevant points, by 1972 measurable harm to humans was occurring, but "the rise in dust pollution worked in the opposite direction from the rise in CO2, so nobody could say whether there would be cooling or warming".
[3]
[4]
Re "just came here to talk about the history",
WP:NOTFORUM, but this has led to article improvements, the 1970s shift looks worth a mention, and the timeline suggests directions for further work. Thanks, .
dave souza,
talk
08:54, 5 August 2022 (UTC)
I propose to merge the bloated Scientific consensus on climate change into here. Obviously the consensus is not going to change, and it might be more likely future editors will condense and summarize the content if it is here. Chidgk1 ( talk) 13:36, 8 November 2023 (UTC)
I am wondering if we should move some content from elsewhere to here to show how the science developed and sometimes got it wrong at first and things were later corrected? Basically, some of the content that is current here: Global warming controversy#Debates around details in the science. These are things that were perhaps hotly debated by scientists for a while in the past but which are now regarded as settled and to be wrong (in hindsight) or insignificant. One example is the Iris hypothesis, I guess. Others are around sunspot activity, Antarctica cooling controversy and alike. NB it would be important not to create new overlap with other articles. EMsmile ( talk) 14:31, 21 November 2023 (UTC)
There was a huge amount of text in a long quote which I think is not adding value. I've selected only one paragraph to remain. Here is the quote that I removed (in bold the part that I decided to keep (still too long?)):
++++++++++
Previous advocacy of an atmospheric hypothesis, – The general doctrine that the glacial periods may have been due to a change in the atmospheric content of carbon dioxide is not new. It was urged by Tyndall a half-century ago and has been urged by others since. Recently it has been very effectively advocated by Dr. Arrhenius, who has taken a great step in advance of his predecessors in reducing his conclusions to definite quantitative terms deduced from observational data. .. The functions of carbon dioxide. – By the investigations of Tyndall, Lecher and Pretner, Keller, Roentgen, and Arrhenius, it has been shown that the carbon dioxide and water vapor of the atmosphere have remarkable power of absorbing and temporarily retaining heat rays, while the oxygen, nitrogen, and argon of the atmosphere possess this power in a feeble degree only. It follows that the effect of the carbon dioxide and water vapor is to blanket the earth with a thermally absorbent envelope. .. The general results assignable to a greatly increased or a greatly reduced quantity of atmospheric carbon dioxide and water may be summarized as follows:
*a. An increase, by causing a larger absorption of the sun's radiant energy, raises the average temperature, while a reduction lowers it. The estimate of Dr. Arrhenius, based upon an elaborate mathematical discussion of the observations of Professor Langley, is that an increase of the carbon dioxide to the amount of two or three times the present content would elevate the average temperature 8° or 9 °C. and would bring on a mild climate analogous to that which prevailed in the Middle Tertiary age. On the other hand, a reduction of the quantity of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to an amount ranging from 55 to 62 per cent, of the present content, would reduce the average temperature 4 or 5 C, which would bring on a glaciation comparable to that of the Pleistocene period.
*b. A second effect of increase and decrease in the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide is the equalization, on the one hand, of surface temperatures, or their differentiation on the other. The temperature of the surface of the earth varies with latitude, altitude, the distribution of land and water, day and night, the seasons, and some other elements that may here be neglected. It is postulated that an increase in the thermal absorption of the atmosphere equalizes the temperature, and tends to eliminate the variations attendant on these contingencies. Conversely, a reduction of thermal atmospheric absorption tends to intensify all of these variations. A secondary effect of intensification of differences of temperature is an increase of atmospheric movements in the effort to restore equilibrium. Increased atmospheric movements, which are necessarily convectional, carry the warmer air to the surface of the atmosphere, and facilitate the discharge of the heat and thus intensify the primary effect. ...
In the case of the outgoing rays, which are absorbed in much larger proportions than the incoming rays because they are more largely long-wave rays, the tables of Arrhenius show that the absorption is augmented by increase of carbonic acid in greater proportions in high latitudes than in low; for example, the increase of temperature for three times the present content of carbonic acid is 21.5 per cent, greater between 60° and 70° N. latitude than at the equator.
It now becomes necessary to assign agencies capable of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at a rate sufficiently above the normal rate of supply, at certain times, to produce glaciation; and on the other hand, capable of restoring it to the atmosphere at certain other times in sufficient amounts to produce mild climates.
When the temperature is rising after a glacial episode, dissociation is promoted, and the ocean gives forth its carbon dioxide at an increased rate, and thereby assists in accelerating the amelioration of climate.
A study of the life of the geological periods seems to indicate that there were very notable fluctuations in the total mass of living matter. To be sure there was a reciprocal relation between the life of the land and that of the sea, so that when the latter was extended upon the continental platforms and greatly augmented, the former was contracted, but notwithstanding this it seems clear that the sum of life activity fluctuated notably during the ages. It is believed that on the whole it was greatest at the periods of sea extension and mild climates, and least at the times of disruption and climatic intensification. This factor then acted antithetically to the carbonic acid freeing previously noted, and, so far as it went, tended to offset its effects.
In periods of sea extension and of land reduction (base-level periods in particular), the habitat of shallow water lime-secreting life is concurrently extended, giving to the agencies that set carbon dioxide free accelerated activity, which is further aided by the consequent rising temperature which reduces the absorptive power of the ocean and increases dissociation. At the same time, the area of the land being diminished, a low consumption of carbon dioxide both in original decomposition of the silicates and in the solution of the limestones and dolomites obtains.
Thus the reciprocating agencies again conjoin, but now to increase the carbon dioxide of the air. These are the great and essential factors. They are modified by several subordinate agencies already mentioned, but the quantitative effect of these is thought to be quite insufficient to prevent very notable fluctuations in the atmospheric constitution.
As a result, it is postulated that geological history has been accentuated by an alternation of climatic episodes embracing, on the one hand, periods of mild, equable, moist climate nearly uniform for the whole globe; and on the other, periods when there were extremes of aridity and precipitation, and of heat and cold; these last denoted by deposits of salt and gypsum, of subaerial conglomerates, of red sandstones and shales, of arkose deposits, and occasionally by glaciation in low latitudes. [1]
The term " greenhouse effect" for this warming was introduced by Nils Gustaf Ekholm in 1901. [2] [3] EMsmile ( talk) 08:01, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
References
|
This
level-5 vital article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Daily pageviews of this article
A graph should have been displayed here but
graphs are temporarily disabled. Until they are enabled again, visit the interactive graph at
pageviews.wmcloud.org |
The
contentious topics procedure applies to this page. This page is related to
climate change, which has been
designated as a contentious topic. Editors who repeatedly or seriously fail to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, any expected standards of behaviour, or any normal editorial process may be blocked or restricted by an administrator. Editors are advised to familiarise themselves with the contentious topics procedures before editing this page. |
This article links to one or more target anchors that no longer exist.
Please help fix the broken anchors. You can remove this template after fixing the problems. |
Reporting errors |
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 19 January 2021 and 7 May 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Rchlanne00.
Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT ( talk) 23:35, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
A paragraph from this article is also temporarily used in a sandbox article in the Toronto Conference. Oceanflynn ( talk) 03:25, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
Editors active in this article may want to incorporate content from this Guardian article:
[1]
<ref name=Guardian_20210705>{{cite news |last1=Bell |first1=Alice |title=Sixty years of climate change warnings: the signs that were missed (and ignored) |url=https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jul/05/sixty-years-of-climate-change-warnings-the-signs-that-were-missed-and-ignored |work=The Guardian |date=5 July 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210709022437/https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jul/05/sixty-years-of-climate-change-warnings-the-signs-that-were-missed-and-ignored |archive-date=9 July 2021 |url-status=live }}</ref>
References
— RCraig09 ( talk) 19:58, 9 July 2021 (UTC)
Greetings folks, I was pinged to an article improvement discussion in user talk and chose to answer here as a good central location per WP:MULTI since what I have to raise touches on our whole series of (Year) in climate change articles. I won't mind if someone moves this to WikiProject talk.
I find the template to be an awesome idea since it helps laser focus team development and documentation of such criteria, and that will go a long way to ensure there's a minimum of drama when unknown WP:CIR-challenged trouble makers potentially pop up in the future. I don't think I knew about this template five days ago when I made the reverts on the climate list. If I had, I almost certainly would have shared this info then.
NewsAndEventsGuy ( talk) 00:27, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
Oops, above where I said WP:WEASELWORD I guess the section of "words to watch" I really meant to link is WP:PEACOCK. Notice that "notable" without a definition is listed as an example. "Significant" is not explicitly listed but seems like a synonym that belongs there. NewsAndEventsGuy ( talk) 13:17, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
The last paragraph of this article refers to “aerosols and other pollution” but seems to suggest that they are different from “humanity's production of greenhouse gases”. If that’s a statement that greenhouse gasses are not pollutants then a citation would surely be useful, and so I added a tag. The question of whether they’re pollutants, in a scientific sense, seems important.
I would like to suggest that this article address whether a current consensus of scientists consider greenhouse gasses to be pollutants, and if so when they became pollutants in the scientific (not legal) sense. Assuming that they are pollutants, they must have become pollutants at some point in time, by reason of doing more harm than good to the atmosphere. When did that happen? I note that in smaller quantities they were probably beneficial to the climate. For example, Joseph Sternberg wrote this in 2006:
“ | Urgent steps are needed to limit the rapid growth of CO2 in the atmosphere, which can be expected to have serious consequences such as an increase in the sea level. But preventing another ice age is also an important objective. It may well be that the intense worldwide exploitation of fossil fuel resources came just in time to provide a way to warm the Earth enough to delay, for a long time, the occurrence of another ice age. | ” |
Sternberg, Joseph. “Preventing Another Ice Age”, Eos Transactions American Geophysical Union Vol. 87, p. 539 (November 2006).
Likewise, as early as 1908, Svante Arrhenius realized that CO2 emissions could be beneficial:
“ | By the influence of the increasing percentage of carbonic acid in the atmosphere, we may hope to enjoy ages with more equable and better climates, especially as regards the colder regions of the earth, ages when the earth will bring forth much more abundant crops than at present, for the benefit of rapidly propagating mankind. | ” |
But at some point in time, they became excessive and started doing more harm than good, thus turning into pollutants. When was that? And when countries like China say the West has polluted the atmosphere with greenhouse gasses more than China has done, it would be interesting to know whether China is counting greenhouse gas emission before they became pollutants.
By the way, I’m not asking when scientists realized that greenhouse gasses are pollutants. I’m asking when scientists currently believe they became pollutants.
Anythingyouwant ( talk) 13:41, 26 July 2022 (UTC)
@
Anythingyouwant, your definition is
begging the question – see
Pollutant, noting
Pollutant#Fund pollutants "do not cause damage to the environment unless the emission rate exceeds the receiving environment's absorptive capacity (e.g. carbon dioxide .... )". Thus, human caused pollution is now known to have happened by 1900. The
timeline notes relevant points, by 1972 measurable harm to humans was occurring, but "the rise in dust pollution worked in the opposite direction from the rise in CO2, so nobody could say whether there would be cooling or warming".
[3]
[4]
Re "just came here to talk about the history",
WP:NOTFORUM, but this has led to article improvements, the 1970s shift looks worth a mention, and the timeline suggests directions for further work. Thanks, .
dave souza,
talk
08:54, 5 August 2022 (UTC)
I propose to merge the bloated Scientific consensus on climate change into here. Obviously the consensus is not going to change, and it might be more likely future editors will condense and summarize the content if it is here. Chidgk1 ( talk) 13:36, 8 November 2023 (UTC)
I am wondering if we should move some content from elsewhere to here to show how the science developed and sometimes got it wrong at first and things were later corrected? Basically, some of the content that is current here: Global warming controversy#Debates around details in the science. These are things that were perhaps hotly debated by scientists for a while in the past but which are now regarded as settled and to be wrong (in hindsight) or insignificant. One example is the Iris hypothesis, I guess. Others are around sunspot activity, Antarctica cooling controversy and alike. NB it would be important not to create new overlap with other articles. EMsmile ( talk) 14:31, 21 November 2023 (UTC)
There was a huge amount of text in a long quote which I think is not adding value. I've selected only one paragraph to remain. Here is the quote that I removed (in bold the part that I decided to keep (still too long?)):
++++++++++
Previous advocacy of an atmospheric hypothesis, – The general doctrine that the glacial periods may have been due to a change in the atmospheric content of carbon dioxide is not new. It was urged by Tyndall a half-century ago and has been urged by others since. Recently it has been very effectively advocated by Dr. Arrhenius, who has taken a great step in advance of his predecessors in reducing his conclusions to definite quantitative terms deduced from observational data. .. The functions of carbon dioxide. – By the investigations of Tyndall, Lecher and Pretner, Keller, Roentgen, and Arrhenius, it has been shown that the carbon dioxide and water vapor of the atmosphere have remarkable power of absorbing and temporarily retaining heat rays, while the oxygen, nitrogen, and argon of the atmosphere possess this power in a feeble degree only. It follows that the effect of the carbon dioxide and water vapor is to blanket the earth with a thermally absorbent envelope. .. The general results assignable to a greatly increased or a greatly reduced quantity of atmospheric carbon dioxide and water may be summarized as follows:
*a. An increase, by causing a larger absorption of the sun's radiant energy, raises the average temperature, while a reduction lowers it. The estimate of Dr. Arrhenius, based upon an elaborate mathematical discussion of the observations of Professor Langley, is that an increase of the carbon dioxide to the amount of two or three times the present content would elevate the average temperature 8° or 9 °C. and would bring on a mild climate analogous to that which prevailed in the Middle Tertiary age. On the other hand, a reduction of the quantity of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to an amount ranging from 55 to 62 per cent, of the present content, would reduce the average temperature 4 or 5 C, which would bring on a glaciation comparable to that of the Pleistocene period.
*b. A second effect of increase and decrease in the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide is the equalization, on the one hand, of surface temperatures, or their differentiation on the other. The temperature of the surface of the earth varies with latitude, altitude, the distribution of land and water, day and night, the seasons, and some other elements that may here be neglected. It is postulated that an increase in the thermal absorption of the atmosphere equalizes the temperature, and tends to eliminate the variations attendant on these contingencies. Conversely, a reduction of thermal atmospheric absorption tends to intensify all of these variations. A secondary effect of intensification of differences of temperature is an increase of atmospheric movements in the effort to restore equilibrium. Increased atmospheric movements, which are necessarily convectional, carry the warmer air to the surface of the atmosphere, and facilitate the discharge of the heat and thus intensify the primary effect. ...
In the case of the outgoing rays, which are absorbed in much larger proportions than the incoming rays because they are more largely long-wave rays, the tables of Arrhenius show that the absorption is augmented by increase of carbonic acid in greater proportions in high latitudes than in low; for example, the increase of temperature for three times the present content of carbonic acid is 21.5 per cent, greater between 60° and 70° N. latitude than at the equator.
It now becomes necessary to assign agencies capable of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at a rate sufficiently above the normal rate of supply, at certain times, to produce glaciation; and on the other hand, capable of restoring it to the atmosphere at certain other times in sufficient amounts to produce mild climates.
When the temperature is rising after a glacial episode, dissociation is promoted, and the ocean gives forth its carbon dioxide at an increased rate, and thereby assists in accelerating the amelioration of climate.
A study of the life of the geological periods seems to indicate that there were very notable fluctuations in the total mass of living matter. To be sure there was a reciprocal relation between the life of the land and that of the sea, so that when the latter was extended upon the continental platforms and greatly augmented, the former was contracted, but notwithstanding this it seems clear that the sum of life activity fluctuated notably during the ages. It is believed that on the whole it was greatest at the periods of sea extension and mild climates, and least at the times of disruption and climatic intensification. This factor then acted antithetically to the carbonic acid freeing previously noted, and, so far as it went, tended to offset its effects.
In periods of sea extension and of land reduction (base-level periods in particular), the habitat of shallow water lime-secreting life is concurrently extended, giving to the agencies that set carbon dioxide free accelerated activity, which is further aided by the consequent rising temperature which reduces the absorptive power of the ocean and increases dissociation. At the same time, the area of the land being diminished, a low consumption of carbon dioxide both in original decomposition of the silicates and in the solution of the limestones and dolomites obtains.
Thus the reciprocating agencies again conjoin, but now to increase the carbon dioxide of the air. These are the great and essential factors. They are modified by several subordinate agencies already mentioned, but the quantitative effect of these is thought to be quite insufficient to prevent very notable fluctuations in the atmospheric constitution.
As a result, it is postulated that geological history has been accentuated by an alternation of climatic episodes embracing, on the one hand, periods of mild, equable, moist climate nearly uniform for the whole globe; and on the other, periods when there were extremes of aridity and precipitation, and of heat and cold; these last denoted by deposits of salt and gypsum, of subaerial conglomerates, of red sandstones and shales, of arkose deposits, and occasionally by glaciation in low latitudes. [1]
The term " greenhouse effect" for this warming was introduced by Nils Gustaf Ekholm in 1901. [2] [3] EMsmile ( talk) 08:01, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
References