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The disproportionate coverage in the 1970s isn't well-explained at Quaternary_glaciation#Next_glacial_period. Eds here may want to look at that. NewsAndEventsGuy ( talk) 14:02, 15 September 2018 (UTC)
The statement in the lead is problematic in many ways:
The current scientific consensus on climate change is that the Earth underwent global warming throughout the 20th century and continues to warm.
The article is about a conjecture which has subsequently been rejected. It is quite appropriate for the league to start out with the discussion of the conjecture as it does, and comment on the current view of the conjecture. The sentence included presumably attempts to summarize the present view but it does so very clumsily.
The sentence is written as if it is a refutation of something like the following:
Global cooling was a conjecture that the earth was cooling throughout the 20th century.
If that had been the conjecture, the statement (if true) would be an appropriate rejoinder. But that wasn't the conjecture. The conjecture doesn't suggest that there was no warming in the early part of the 20th century. .The conjecture, simply stated, was that recent cooling had been observed and was projected to continue. the facts are that recent cooling had been observed, but the projection that this would continue turned out to be incorrect. Let's structure a sentence that makes that point.
I haven't checked to see if the sentence used is supportable by the reference, but the references to the 2007 report. Why use that when the 2014 report is available? there might be situations when use of an outdated report is warranted but this is not one of them.
The sentence as stated claims that global warming occurred throughout the 20th century. The literal meaning of this is that the temperature graph must be strictly increasing at every point. I don't wish to insist on an overly literal interpretation of the word "throughout". An example or two of a temperature decrease or even flat shouldn't be considered a rejection of the broad term. However an examination of the graph in the IPCC report makes it clear that the global temperature in 1975 was lower than it was in 1940 (I'm doing this by casual inspection of the graph, if this becomes an important issue we can track down the underlying data points). A 35 year period of cooling, while it doesn't reject the scientific consensus that the earth in general is warming, does reject the overly broad statement that warming occurred "throughout" 20th century.
It is entirely understandable that scientists observing 35 year period of cooling (recall that many scientists suggest that a 30 year period is an appropriate period of time to draw conclusions) would express concern about whether this trend would continue. It did not, but it should be understandable that such a concern would be expressed. I have no problem with stating that the conjecture is turned out to be false, but let's make that statement using a factual claim that can be supported by a reliable source, not a sloppily written claim.-- S Philbrick (Talk) 16:27, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
However an examination of the graph in the IPCC report makes it clear that the global temperature in 1975 was lower than it was in 1940That is the same rookie way of interpreting curves that has given us the Global warming hiatus bullshit. Drawing conclusions from comparing two data points that have been carefully selected to lead to a specific conclusion is a form of cherry picking. Use 1935-1975 or 1940-1973 instead of 1940-1975 and you get an increase instead. Competent scientists use linear regression, which is far less sensitive to outliers than comparing the endpoints, and they do not pick intervals which "happen to" start at one of the maxima of the curve and "happen to" end at one of the minima. Wikipedia uses the published conclusions of those experts, not the far less reliable original research of Wikipedia editors. -- Hob Gadling ( talk) 00:53, 1 January 2021 (UTC)
As I said, if the 1940-1975 interval was specifically used in RS, we can use it here. If not, we can't. Since your suggestion does not use that interval, it is fineto put this matter at rest. Nobody wants to use your WP:OR interval, so it stays fine.
SP reworked the sentence per his suggestion; I've very lightly re-worked that. There's a slight subtlety that my version hints at: the temperature series available then were not just shorter, they were of much lower quality; more recent series show much less cooling over the period they were looking at William M. Connolley ( talk) 20:16, 3 January 2021 (UTC)
In the beginning of this article:
Although the global temperature series available at the time suggested that the temperature had decreased for several decades up to the mid-70s, as additional data became available through time, the global temperature series demonstrated significant increases over the next decades, which falsified the conjecture.
This paragraph simultaneously claims that several decades of data confirmed (suggested) the global cooling conjecture, AND then several decades "falsified" it.
You cannot have both. Either several decades of global temperature series are enough to settle the claim, in which case both "accept" AND "falsify" are true – clearly a contradiction. Or they're not enough to settle the claim – in which case the conjecture is open.
I mean, maybe the global cooling conjecture has been falsified. I'd assume it has. But the reason given in the lede immediately stand out as nonsense.
Can anyone with knowledge in the field rewrite it, clarify its logic? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:8308:900A:BB00:DC3D:A32B:6B4E:72B5 ( talk) 12:44, 6 October 2021 (UTC)
Lack of accurate temp data from cold research station 66.74.187.181 ( talk) 04:43, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
Quit with the revisionism. Every one of the major news outlets at the time from the New York Times to the Los Angeles Times to Time Magazine to NPR...even Leonard Nimoy made hysterical claims about the 'coming Ice Age'. All these outlets cited as sources the contemporary 'scientific consensus'. 2603:8001:C200:1637:C095:D281:DBB8:516C ( talk) 23:08, 27 October 2023 (UTC)
This article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's
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The
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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. |
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This page has archives. Sections older than 90 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III when more than 5 sections are present. |
The disproportionate coverage in the 1970s isn't well-explained at Quaternary_glaciation#Next_glacial_period. Eds here may want to look at that. NewsAndEventsGuy ( talk) 14:02, 15 September 2018 (UTC)
The statement in the lead is problematic in many ways:
The current scientific consensus on climate change is that the Earth underwent global warming throughout the 20th century and continues to warm.
The article is about a conjecture which has subsequently been rejected. It is quite appropriate for the league to start out with the discussion of the conjecture as it does, and comment on the current view of the conjecture. The sentence included presumably attempts to summarize the present view but it does so very clumsily.
The sentence is written as if it is a refutation of something like the following:
Global cooling was a conjecture that the earth was cooling throughout the 20th century.
If that had been the conjecture, the statement (if true) would be an appropriate rejoinder. But that wasn't the conjecture. The conjecture doesn't suggest that there was no warming in the early part of the 20th century. .The conjecture, simply stated, was that recent cooling had been observed and was projected to continue. the facts are that recent cooling had been observed, but the projection that this would continue turned out to be incorrect. Let's structure a sentence that makes that point.
I haven't checked to see if the sentence used is supportable by the reference, but the references to the 2007 report. Why use that when the 2014 report is available? there might be situations when use of an outdated report is warranted but this is not one of them.
The sentence as stated claims that global warming occurred throughout the 20th century. The literal meaning of this is that the temperature graph must be strictly increasing at every point. I don't wish to insist on an overly literal interpretation of the word "throughout". An example or two of a temperature decrease or even flat shouldn't be considered a rejection of the broad term. However an examination of the graph in the IPCC report makes it clear that the global temperature in 1975 was lower than it was in 1940 (I'm doing this by casual inspection of the graph, if this becomes an important issue we can track down the underlying data points). A 35 year period of cooling, while it doesn't reject the scientific consensus that the earth in general is warming, does reject the overly broad statement that warming occurred "throughout" 20th century.
It is entirely understandable that scientists observing 35 year period of cooling (recall that many scientists suggest that a 30 year period is an appropriate period of time to draw conclusions) would express concern about whether this trend would continue. It did not, but it should be understandable that such a concern would be expressed. I have no problem with stating that the conjecture is turned out to be false, but let's make that statement using a factual claim that can be supported by a reliable source, not a sloppily written claim.-- S Philbrick (Talk) 16:27, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
However an examination of the graph in the IPCC report makes it clear that the global temperature in 1975 was lower than it was in 1940That is the same rookie way of interpreting curves that has given us the Global warming hiatus bullshit. Drawing conclusions from comparing two data points that have been carefully selected to lead to a specific conclusion is a form of cherry picking. Use 1935-1975 or 1940-1973 instead of 1940-1975 and you get an increase instead. Competent scientists use linear regression, which is far less sensitive to outliers than comparing the endpoints, and they do not pick intervals which "happen to" start at one of the maxima of the curve and "happen to" end at one of the minima. Wikipedia uses the published conclusions of those experts, not the far less reliable original research of Wikipedia editors. -- Hob Gadling ( talk) 00:53, 1 January 2021 (UTC)
As I said, if the 1940-1975 interval was specifically used in RS, we can use it here. If not, we can't. Since your suggestion does not use that interval, it is fineto put this matter at rest. Nobody wants to use your WP:OR interval, so it stays fine.
SP reworked the sentence per his suggestion; I've very lightly re-worked that. There's a slight subtlety that my version hints at: the temperature series available then were not just shorter, they were of much lower quality; more recent series show much less cooling over the period they were looking at William M. Connolley ( talk) 20:16, 3 January 2021 (UTC)
In the beginning of this article:
Although the global temperature series available at the time suggested that the temperature had decreased for several decades up to the mid-70s, as additional data became available through time, the global temperature series demonstrated significant increases over the next decades, which falsified the conjecture.
This paragraph simultaneously claims that several decades of data confirmed (suggested) the global cooling conjecture, AND then several decades "falsified" it.
You cannot have both. Either several decades of global temperature series are enough to settle the claim, in which case both "accept" AND "falsify" are true – clearly a contradiction. Or they're not enough to settle the claim – in which case the conjecture is open.
I mean, maybe the global cooling conjecture has been falsified. I'd assume it has. But the reason given in the lede immediately stand out as nonsense.
Can anyone with knowledge in the field rewrite it, clarify its logic? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:8308:900A:BB00:DC3D:A32B:6B4E:72B5 ( talk) 12:44, 6 October 2021 (UTC)
Lack of accurate temp data from cold research station 66.74.187.181 ( talk) 04:43, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
Quit with the revisionism. Every one of the major news outlets at the time from the New York Times to the Los Angeles Times to Time Magazine to NPR...even Leonard Nimoy made hysterical claims about the 'coming Ice Age'. All these outlets cited as sources the contemporary 'scientific consensus'. 2603:8001:C200:1637:C095:D281:DBB8:516C ( talk) 23:08, 27 October 2023 (UTC)