Talk:Scientific consensus on climate change

Dissenting opinion

Who claims that since 2007 there has not been a dissenting opinion amongst scientists? Any reference available? This seems to be a rather bold statement and rather questionable without reference. —Precedingunsigned comment added by Dapa22 (talk •contribs) 16:03, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

The statement is clearly about "scientific bodies of national or international standing". This statement in the lead is merely condensing the fact that no such statements appear in the body of the article, because (since 2007) there are none to include.--Jaymax (talk) 23:27, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

...and that is supported by the reference in Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change#Statements_by_dissenting_organizations.--Stephan Schulz (talk) 23:36, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

This [[1]] reference was used in the lead as a citation for the line in question, "Since 2007, no scientific body of national or international standing has maintained a dissenting opinion". The reference is editorial in nature and not scientific and does not make the claim that there are no dissenting opinions. I have removed the reference. Voiceofreason01 (talk) 01:49, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't understand. The article says "AAPG aligns itself with Crichton’s views, and stands alone among scientific societies in its denial of human-induced effects on global warming" (emphasis added). After this was published AAPG -- the "lone" scientific society -- revised its statement from opposing the consensus to noncommittal. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 01:58, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Did you read the whole article? That comment is clearly not meant literally. The article is not a scientific article, it's an editorial article complaining that Michael Crichton got the award. They didn't do a poll or study on all the different scientific bodies in the world to see where they stand, that comment, stands alone among scientific societies is hyperbole. You cannot just hunt through articles looking for quotes that support your opinions, you must take into account the context (and tone) in which the article is written. Voiceofreason01 (talk) 02:15, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

How do you know it's "hyperbole"? What is your evidence for that assertion? Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 02:22, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

First, as I keep explaining but you don't seem to understand, this is an editorial article. Please notice that the author spends the whole time editorializing and there are no citations. The general tone of the article is outrage and it is far from unbiased. I will not be making further comments or edits tonight; so, before you make further arguments based on the content of the article please take this opportunity to reread the article, perhaps reviewing the content of this article will help you to understand my point of view. Much more important, [heartland institute], their opinion on climate change here, http://www.globalwarmingheartland.org/ conflicts with the human caused version of things. So that is at least 2 "scientific societies" that deny the "human-induced effects on global warming." Ergo AAPG does not "stand alone". Voiceofreason01 (talk) 02:49, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Are you saying that the Heartland Institute is a scientific society? Even they don't say that they're a scientific society. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 02:52, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

"Even they don't say that they're a scientific society." Where is your evidence for that? Their members conduct research and they publish a respected peer reviewed journal, what more do you want? Voiceofreason01 (talk) 16:13, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

You mean in social or political "science" journals? Count Iblis (talk) 16:29, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Heartland explains what they are on their About page: "a nonprofit research and education organization"...who's "mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems". Nowhere do they claim to be a scientific body. The fact that they conduct research doesn't make them a scientific body either. Anybody can conduct research. Research, as defined by Websters, is simply the gathering of information. And what "respected peer reviewed journal" does Heartland publish? Is it in the Science Citation Index or MEDLINE/PubMed? I think not. No, the Heartland Institute may incorporate a little science into their advocations for certain policies, but they are a think tank.--CurtisSwain (talk) 19:50, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm curious about this journal too; though of course the HI isn't a sci soc William M. Connolley (talk) 20:32, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

We've wondered off-topic. Is or isn't the [agu.org] source actually saying that "no scientific body of national or international standing has maintained a dissenting opinion." or is the author merely taking editorial liberties to prove a point. I would like to hear from some of the other editors. Voiceofreason01 (talk) 02:54, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, the AMQUA reviewed article quite clearly states that the AAPG (at the time) stood alone in disputing AGW - since the AAPG doesn't do so anymore, the equation is obvious (1-1 = 0). Furthermore there are no documented instances of a scientific body that disputes AGW, so it gets even more obvious. If you want to dispute this - then please find any scientific body that does so, and it obviously would change the intro. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 03:09, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, reference is valid. The statement, by a significant number of earth scientists, and 'presented by' AMQUA, is well positioned to be authoritative regarding the positions of scientific bodies. Being a 'scientific article' is not required to meet WP:RS. And calculating 1-1=0 does not constitute WP:OR.--Jaymax (talk) 22:34, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

If you want to try to find a scientific society that's issued a dissenting opinion, I recommend the Scholarly Societies Project. They have links to literally thousands of scientific and professional societies, unions, federations, associations, etc. You can search by subject, scope, country, or language. It’s very well organized, and easy to use. Good luck.--CurtisSwain (talk) 10:42, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

My point is not and never was that the AMQUA article is not wp:rs. Rather the article is not authoritative in saying that AAPG is the only dissenting scientific society and that claim is being misrepresented and used out of context in the wikipedia article. Show me where AMQUA did a survey or study of scientific societies about their views of global warming and this comment can be viewed in a different light; Otherwise these statements need to be represented only as the editorial opinion of AMQUA, to do otherwise violates wp:undue. Further, 1-1=0 is not wp:or but taking content from two different sources, and putting them together is wp:syn, and that ignores the point that, as I keep pointing out, the quote from the AMQUA article is taken out of context. Voiceofreason01 (talk) 12:40, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

You might have a point there about wp:syn. However, I don't see the AMQUA quote as being taken out of context. The whole point of their piece is not so much that Crichton's "distorted view of global warming" is wrong, but that the AAPG is wrong for "lending its stamp of approval" to his views. The bulk of AMQUA's piece points out flaws in Crichton's work in order to support the conclusion that AAPG "crossed the line" in honoring him. The "stands alone" line is in reference to the AAPG's own 1999 policy statement which refuted AGW. No, there's no indication that AMQUA did any kind of formal survey or study of scientific societies. There doesn't have to be. As Kim has pointed out, AMQUA is authoritative and knowledgeable enough to make that assessment.

However, I want to thank you for pointing out that there may be a Synthesis problem here. The article does kind of do that by taking A: "AAPG stands alone", adding B: AAPG revises their policy statement, and concluding C: "Since 2007, no scientific body of national or international standing has maintained a dissenting opinion." But, I'll leave it to more experienced editors then I make that determination.--CurtisSwain (talk) 22:23, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Further down WP:SYN "This policy does not forbid routine calculations, such as adding numbers, converting units, or calculating a person's age, provided editors agree that the arithmetic and its application correctly reflect the information published by the sources from which it is derived." The reference is perfectly suitable IMHO. Incidentally, WP:SYN is just a sub-type of WP:OR --Jaymax (talk) 22:34, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable. Thanks for clearing that up. I think we can consider this discussion settled.--CurtisSwain (talk) 03:01, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Just wanted to reignite that disscusion as you can see in this edit there are dissenting opinions from national stance scientific bodies. Please let me know why this edit was reverted, and if it shouldn't consider changing contents of 'Statements by dissenting organizations' so it does reflect reality. Forest001 (talk) 16:03, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Is there anything new compared to Talk:Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change/Archive_7#Polish_geologists? The committee is not only illiterate in climate science, it also is not a "scientific body of national or international standing" - the respective body is the PAS, which has issued a statement in support of the IPCC. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 16:11, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Well again as you can read here they are scientific body of national standing (i may translate it for you if you want) and there is no reason to not include theirs opinion or at least acknowledge it. And tell me please how is it more illiterate than European Geosciences Union for example? Is it because it has different stance?Forest001 (talk) 16:28, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

The page is about PAN, not about its Committee of Geological sciences. If you read the discussion I linked to, you will find plenty of evidence for their illiteracy of climate science. EGU has not given us a comparable sample of stupidity - and even if they had, they would still be a scientific body of international standing. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 16:39, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Sorry but what is your expertize to judge Committee of Geological Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences stance? And PAN is polish for PAS and site from my link explains that all Committees are national bodied. So why is Geological Society of Australia national body and ommittee of Geological Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences is not again? Because you think that they are stupid?Forest001 (talk) 16:49, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, this is an interesting discussion. Certainly, the question of weight comes into play, as well as the tricky problem of discerning what exactly is a scientific body of national or international standing. PAN definitely qualifies, and that's why their statement is included in this article. However, PAN's Committee on Geological Sciences is just one of 70 hard science committees within the larger body, and surely the statement from the larger General Assembly of PAN supersedes that of the smaller internal committee. Their dissenting statement appears to be theirs alone, and not even representative of PAN's Earth Sciences Division (of which the Geo. Sci. committee is just 1 of 10, others being Quaternary, Geophysics, etc). Now, I certainly don't consider myself to be an expert on the scientific community, but it seems to me that the Geo. Sci. committee can't be considered a scientific body of national or international standing, even though they may be comprised of "researchers from the whole country."[2]. As far as I can tell, they are not an entity unto themselves, but simply a sub group of a larger body. They're not at all on par with stand-alone organizations like the Geological Society of Australia or the EGU which maintain their own membership and publish their own peer-reviewed journals. So, giving them space here would most likely be a violation of WP:UNDUE. But wait...we do include a statement from the Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London, which is basically the same thing isn't it?...a sub of a larger body? Given that, I think we have only one of two choices: (A) If we keep the Stratigraphy Commission, we have to include PAN's Geo. Sci. committee...or...(B) don't include either of them. I believe (B) is best, that way we avoid giving undue space to little internal sub groups. Fair enough?--CurtisSwain (talk) 08:04, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

fair enough. this is reasoning that does make sense and i'm greatfull for that. will wait then for some other institusions to break 'consensus'. Cheers and have good day! Forest001 (talk) 09:34, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, good luck with that. And, we'll just wait a few days to see if anyone else has a good reason for taking a different course of action.--CurtisSwain (talk) 09:12, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Done.--CurtisSwain (talk) 22:10, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Hi, I was coming to the Talk page to say exactly what the first comment said. I've now read all of the above, and understand the logic behind the first statement, but am still concerned that to the average reader it sounds very much like an unreferenced fact. This concerns me because not only is that statement copied onto numerous other websites which pull content from Wikipedia but also because I use it in various conversations that I have and yet feel uneasy about having no source for it. I think if the statement is meant to be a summing up sentence of the below, then it should be clear that this is the case, either by at the minimum, appending an extra bit to the sentence which says something like "As evident in the list below, ..." or even better, actually including what you have written above that says that the AAPG used to be the only dissenting organisation [incl ref to article] but in 2007 changed their statement, and therefore there are no longer any dissenting orgs. To do that would make it much clearer to readers of the article that the statement is valid and can be trusted. Without some sort of reference/clarification it is too easy to engender distrust. Normally, I would just go in and make such a clarifying change, but given that I have not been involved in this article so far I hope that someone will take this suggestion on board. Cheers, JenLouise (talk) 10:44, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Good point. The reference for that is actually in the Statements by dissenting organizations section. So, I just inserted an internal link so readers can jump right to it. Thanks for the suggestion.--CurtisSwain (talk) 11:55, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

This discussion seems like a fabulous waste of time by people who should have spent more time trying to find a dissenting opinion by a scientific body rather than arguing about the validity of the reference supporting the statement in the article. My non-scientific opinion? There's a reference listed. The burden of proof is on you now. Prove it wrong.Airborne84 (talk) 05:21, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Well said, Airborne84. We get that a lot here. I've actually found at least one other org. that holds a non-commital position, but I haven't added them in. I figured I'd just save that for the critics to do on a put-up-or-shut-up basis.--CurtisSwain (talk) 00:18, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't blame you. It finally occurred to me that the reason people are attacking references instead of trying to find a dissenting opinion is because they can't find one. In that sense, I understand the attacks on the article now.Airborne84 (talk) 03:10, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

The hatnote / disambiguation

I posted a query over at Wikipedia_talk:Hatnote#Appropriate_Hat_Note.3F that lead to the hatnote's removal, my semi-reinstitution, and WMC's subsequent edits. What I'm learning is that hatnotes are supposed to be excludable (eg: on mobile devices) without removing meaning from the article, but are supposed to disambiguate, and assist 'disambiguating' navigation.

So, I propose that we divide the current hatnote into two parts, one of which belongs in the article lead. The hatnote should refer on to the various articles as-far-as-possible that cover the stuff that many seem to think/expect should be here. The "This article is about..." line should be shorter, but still contain the essence of what we are saying (ie: only the serious stuff, not the chaff). And then the first para of the article lead should give the more fulsome and precise criteria for what the article does (ie: restating the "about ..." bit 'properly')

Proposal for the "For X see Y bits" template bits

• (added) (edit) - recent climate change generally - Global_warming
• the debate on whether there is a scientific consensus - Climate change consensus (likewise, I know this is resolved as far as many of us are concerned, but it is true that there is not general consensus on whether there is a scientific consensus, outside the scientific community) ((meta-meta-))
• opinions of individual climate scientists - List_of_climate_scientists (I know the page doesn't directly give opinions, the point is to send people looking for those in the right direction)
• individual scientists disagreeing with the mainstream assessment - List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming

 Done

What are your thoughts on "about ___", a non-hatnote 'companion' paragraph, or the approach. --Jaymax (talk) 05:33, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Good work, better than I would have done. Breaking out is fine with me. Thanks for finding the guidance. Is it appropriate to reference a category above or a template to help with navigation? Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 05:55, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I haven't seen any comment or examples of that, however Wikipedia:Disambiguation do's and dont's states: Link to a primary topic, if there is one, at the top - which should fill the same objective(?) --Jaymax (talk) 09:50, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Meanwhile, elsewhere on the Talk page...

::"This page is about significant published scientific opinion on recent climate change. For X see Y. (x4 as above)"

Scientific opinion on climate change is a collection of published scientific opinions. This article includes opinions which are

• contained within a synthesis report (needs tightening), or
• formally issued by a scientific academy or scientific society of national or international standing, or
• supported by a significant majority in a statistical survey of climate scientists.
• placeholder for 'consensus' list criteria if the section is retained

To ensure this article is representative, the innumerable opinions of individual scientists, individual universities, or individual laboratories are not included. Self-selected statements of opinion, such as petitions and letters, are also excluded.

Plenty more tweaking required ‒ Jaymax✍ 01:24, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I've started a page over at User:Jaymax/SO_Hatnote to develop this and think about the necessary considerations, and the various list criteria. Please join in if you think it's going in the right direction. ‒ Jaymax✍ 03:35, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

New section for NPOV issues with this article.

Preliminary discussion collapsed

Verbal claims that the discussion of the NPOV issues documented at [3] has run its course. I disagree, but just to satisfy Verbal I'll start a new section. I hereby assert that the issues I and others have raised in [4] have never been resolved and remain in need of attention. --GoRight (talk) 19:42, 10 December 2009 (UTC) Here ... Here ... orderly second the motion. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 19:51, 10 December 2009 (UTC) I think rather than asserting some vague following you should clearly identify those who you think support your POV. Apart from ZP5 (need I say more) I see no-one William M. Connolley (talk) 19:53, 10 December 2009 (UTC) It would appear that you feel the need to canvass [5]. This is hardly good faith William M. Connolley (talk) 19:54, 10 December 2009 (UTC) It is not canvassing to alert people to when they are being discussed. Boris made that clear in the Abd-Connolley Arbcom case. --GoRight (talk) 19:57, 10 December 2009 (UTC) NOTE: I will make an attempt to consolidate and summarize the key concerns from the above section(s) into this one since WMC is of the opinion that the discussion thus far has been "ill-disciplined". I apologize for any delays that this may cause because this effort may require a reasonable amount of time to accomplish and I have real-world obligations that I must attend to this afternoon. --GoRight (talk) 19:55, 10 December 2009 (UTC) Motion to start with disputed sources list. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 20:17, 10 December 2009 (UTC) I don't see any specific issues here. I'll remove the tag until some are presented. Verbal chat 20:24, 10 December 2009 (UTC) Object - the issues are being restated in good faith please. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 20:27, 10 December 2009 (UTC) What issues? Verbal chat 20:40, 10 December 2009 (UTC) This is an issue-free thread. Nothing to discuss here, except that two editors want to keep an old discussion going, without saying what new or potentially decisive evidence they bring to do so. --Nigelj (talk) 20:58, 10 December 2009 (UTC) SECOND NOTE: I wish to apologize for not getting this material summarized per my statement above by now, but my work was disrupted and so it will have to wait until tomorrow. Please bear with me. --GoRight (talk) 02:02, 11 December 2009 (UTC) Tag reads "Please see the discussion on the talk page." There is no discussion on this talk page. You've been asked to summarize your concerns, but apparently you can't do that while the article is protected. What is the timeframe by which you will have your concerns summarized? Hipocrite (talk) 03:58, 11 December 2009 (UTC) Unless some actual, specific, issues are presented here within a reasonable time (or Tedder reverses his editwarring and incorrect protection per WP:PROTECT) then I'll ask for the tag to be removed via editprotect. Verbal chat 11:54, 11 December 2009 (UTC) All of the issues have already been described. Go read the discussions already linked above. I am only planning to condense things for easier digestion. I plan to work on this today. In the mean time, Jaymax has provided a section below, [6], which goes a long way towards describing the primary issue. Discussion of the consensus is inherently editorial and open to POV which go beyond just the peer-reviewed opinions of scientists because people other than the scientists have opinions and perceptions that are specifically about that consensus. Those views and a discussion of them are being excluded in violation of WP:NPOV. I have no problem with this page existing as long as it is merely the list of scientific opinions positions that Jaymax discusses below, but in its current form it goes beyond that and discusses "the consensus". The problem is further confounded by the fact the WP:OWNers of this page continue to try and claim it is nothing more that a list of the scientific positions but then they insist that global redirects and wikilinks which are focused on consensus (as opposed to merely the list of positions) point to here. Once the reader here has been led here, they then use the claim that this is merely "a list of positions" as an excuse to exclude other discussion of "the consensus". You can't have it both ways. If you want a page to simply be a list of the scientific positions, that's fine I don't object in the slightest, but then you have to stick to that topic. A discussion of "the consensus" is out of scope for this article under the scoping that says this article is nothing more than a list of positions. So as I have said before, and as I showed in my proposal in the discussion linked to above, and as Jaymax has now pointed out below we need to separate the discussion of "the consensus" from the "list of scientific positions". Once that is done my issue will be properly located wherever the main discussion of "the consensus" is. I don't care if that is on this page or another, but I do care that all aspects of "the consensus" are covered in a WP:NPOV way ... and that necessarily includes a discussion of both the public views and perceptions associated with "the consensus" as well as a discussion of any public or scientific controversies surrounding "the consensus". --GoRight (talk) 16:41, 11 December 2009 (UTC) Wow you guys have been busy while I've been ill over the past couple of days! How an admin (Tedder, never heard of him till now) manages to get themselves into a situation like this is bizzare. But WP:AGF should still apply - especially after reading the discussions elsewhere regarding his actions. Still, Tedder should (and I imagine chooses to) have nothing further to do with this article - that includes undoing his earlier possible mistake, there are innumerable others who can do that if required. As someone who believes AGW is going to kill most of us unless we do something about it, and also believes this article MIGHT currently be subject to a vested-interest tactic to ensure it's tagged during Copenhagen, I say "so what"? - Giving up on the ideals of Wikipedia is analagous to giving up on the ideals of democracy. If the guidelines don't work, then work on improving the guidelines, rather than ignoring them just because the whole planet is at risk. And if your reply is that saving the planet is more important than EVERYTHING, including fairness, then what are you doing here giving skeptics ammunition and encouragement by being rude and/or dismissive towards them rather than helping? Rant over (till I get down vvv there to the next load of whatever) Jaymax (talk) 12:57, 11 December 2009 (UTC) Yes, I'm a bit baffled by Tedder. He said, "the POV tag is provocative and uncivil; it doesn't help the article at all. The article is very active- the {{pov}} tag is best for articles that need attention- this one certainly doesn't", then threatened to, and I think actually did, block a few people for a few hours for re-adding it. Then he started adding it himself, and finally fully-protected the article with the tag in place and cleared off. I missed the discussion where we discussed that change of viewpoint as to the purpose of a POV tag. Did someone hack his account? Was he abducted by aliens and brain-washed? --Nigelj (talk) 13:57, 11 December 2009 (UTC) (Copied from my Talk page - no need for you to try to make your comments personal to me only:) Dear editor, please keep your talk [7], [8],[9] on this article relevant to the points at hand within the thread. There are other active pages for discussing Tedder and the issues you raised. I find this talk to be out of order there. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 14:24, 11 December 2009 (UTC) --Nigelj (talk) 14:35, 11 December 2009 (UTC) Nigelj is out of order to Wikipedia:Talk#How_to_use_article_talk_pages. I protest and can not engage this disruption here. I motion to restart the thread. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 14:56, 11 December 2009 (UTC) ZP5 assuming you want to achieve some resolution, just ignore it and move on. I mentioned Tedder's getting himself in this situation. Nigel just expanded on his perception of that. And you can't motion to restart something for one action you think was out-of-order. Furthermore, article talk pages are TALK pages. You might be more comfortable with the official disputes resolution process. I wonder if we can use the coincident synchronicity with Copenhagen to request some sort of highly accelerated binding determination on NPOV. futile thought was futile Jaymax (talk) 15:35, 11 December 2009 (UTC) Interestingly enough, we have already agreed to accept a binding mediation, [10], it is the other side of this who abstain from that approach. --GoRight (talk) 16:46, 11 December 2009 (UTC) You're never going to get anywhere if you keep posting comments in the middle of the thread, and still avoiding stating what the alleged POV dispute is currently about. Is it a move request? Do you want to start a new article? --Nigelj (talk) 17:06, 11 December 2009 (UTC) Strange reading of that one. The only objection there, is to your expansion on issues that are outside of the scope of this article. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 17:31, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Background:

The primary discussions that lead us to this WP:NPOV dispute can be found here:

• This article needs a controversies section.
• Offensive to NPOV vs on topic
• Proposing solution to concerns
• Cease-fire on POV template
• NPOV issues with the hat notes

In addition, related discussions (but not directly included in the NPOV threads) which are nibbling around the edges of the core problem:

• Content fork
• Suggest removing the word "opinion" from the title, since the scientific process is about removing subjectivity and aiming for fact.
• Rename to "Scientific opinion on global warming"?
• Change title to "Official positions of scientific societies on climate change"
• Why the Consensus article is not this article.

--GoRight (talk) 20:49, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Key aspects that need to be addressed

I believe that the key aspects of the dispute from "our side" can be summarized as follows:

1. Readers are being directed to this page when they are seeking information on the "scientific consensus on climate change" or the "scientific consensus on global warming" but as we see the purported scope of this article is merely a list of the scientific positions on climate change / global warming. This is being accomplished through the use of redirects and wikilinks all over the global warming pages.
2. Readers seeking information on the "scientific consensus on climate change" or the "scientific consensus on global warming" should, per WP:NPOV be presented with information that covers all significant aspects and points of view associated with those topics.
3. This article is being systematically scrubbed of any information other than the scientific positions, which means that it is excluding legitimate points of view that readers should be made aware of such as, but not necessarily limited to, public opinions about the "scientific consensus", public and scientific controversies about the "scientific consensus", and any number of other legitimate perspectives or concerns about the "scientific consensus".

It would seem that the minimum changes required to address this dispute are focused on address the problems inherent in the points listed above. There are many ways in which these concerns could be addressed. And as has been stated previously, I am (and I assume others are) open to any and all possible options which could lead to the following:

1. When readers search for (or follow a wikilink for) finding information on the "scientific consensus on climate change" or the "scientific consensus on global warming" that they are directed to the primary source of information on those topics.
2. That source of information must be WP:NPOV in that it provides a discussion of all the significant points of view related to those topics (public and/or scientific) as defined in WP:RS and WP:V.

It should be obvious to all that the current state of affairs does NOT meet these two criteria and THAT is the source of the dispute. --GoRight (talk) 20:49, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Redirects to here:

• Scientific opinion of global warming (noredirect) links (one link zero links)
• Scientific opinion on global warming (noredirect) links (one link - actually 2 zero links)

  These I have not modified. I think the first should be deleted. --GoRight (talk) 21:56, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

• Global warming survey (noredirect) links (one link zero links)
• Global Warming Survey (noredirect) links (zero links)

  These I have not modified. I don't know why these exist so I would recommend fixing any links to them and deleting them ... unless there is some good reason to keep them, of course. --GoRight (talk) 21:56, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

• Scientific consensus on climate change (noredirect) links (one link zero links one link due to WMC's revert)
• Scientific consensus on global warming (noredirect) links (seven links zero links)
• Scientific Consensus on Climate Change (noredirect) links (zero links)
• Global warming consensus (redirect page) (noredirect) links (one link zero links)

  These I have updated to point to Climate change consensus since KDP argues that these are not really part of this dispute anyway. In addition I changed the link for Global warming consensus to point directly to Climate change consensus instead. I believe that the last two in this list should be deleted as being superfluous and any links to them changed to one of the remaining two, as appropriate based on context. --GoRight (talk) 21:56, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

(link counts) above exclude User, Talk, and Project pages. Jaymax (talk) 22:09, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for organizing this, Jaymax. --GoRight (talk) 21:56, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Wrong fix. I've reverted a few of these - since they are directly impacting other pages. You should take it up on the talk page of the articles that use these, and figure out which article they want to link to. Then make them use the non-redirected link instead - so we can possibly remove some of these redirects. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 22:03, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Unsurprising and predictable response. So much for your claim that these links are not related to this dispute. --GoRight (talk) 22:46, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Try reading again why i was reverting. You are impacting other articles - take it up where the links are used. - unilaterally changing them without notifying those that get impacted, is not very polite - they used that wl for a reason. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 22:57, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

In the interests of trying to move things along, I have stricken part of my prior comment.

I have been so WP:BOLD as to make a pass through the links on the other articles and to update them to instead point to one page or the other. Not to worry for those following along, both KDP and WMC were following along to make sure I wasn't stacking the results. After a few minor changes I believe that we have ironed them out. There is one last remaining issue where WMC reverted to one of the redirects but WP:3RR prevents me for correcting it. I have placed a request on the talk page to try an resolve the issue. If someone else wants to go change it, be my guest.

Once all of the originating pages have been suitably updated to remove links to redirected pages, I believe that this would address KDP's concern as stated above for my changes to the redirects. My question is now what is the consensus on what to do with the redirects in general? With nothing pointing to them should they simply be deleted? If not all, which ones? Which ones should stay?

To avoid confusion for the reader I would like to see that any redirects that actually use the term "consensus" be directed to Climate change consensus, and any redirects that actually use the term "opinion" or "positions" be directed to Scientific opinion on climate change. I would also like to see the ones for the survey's deleted unless there is some good reason to keep them. Thoughts? --GoRight (talk) 03:57, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Possible solutions

There has been much clamoring about that we must provide some specific actionable steps that need to be addressed to resolve the dispute. While I have, in fact, already done so in the interests of collaboration and cooperation I am not demanding that it be my way or the high way. We all know that's not how it works. I am sure that we are all open to alternatives for how to address the concerns.

Attempts to simply brush this issue aside or to disrupt the process are only going to result in more drama and more delays, IMHO. This issue needs to be addressed in some fashion. We need to agree on what that will be.

We had begun to go down the path of selecting which form of WP:DR to use when that process was disrupted. Unsurprisingly, the recommendation at ANI was that we engage in some form of dispute resolution. This requires a consensus on how best to proceed. Please make your position clear in the section for that purpose below.

I invite others to add subsections for proposals of their own within this subsection so that the alternatives can be clearly articulated and assessed in an orderly fashion. --GoRight (talk) 20:49, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

GoRight's Proposal

(Reproduced here from above for convenience.)

WP:NPOV indicates that IF the topic of the "climate change consensus" is to be covered in this article then it must be covered in a WP:NPOV way which mean criticisms and controversies must be addressed. Let me make the following proposal and see how others feel about it as a resolution to the current disagreement:

1. Move all of the "consensus" related content out of this article and merge it (there is a lot of overlap already) into the Climate change consensus article and I will then take my issue to that page. We can leave a small one or two sentence statement here and a pointer to that page for people looking for a discussion of "consensus" related material.
2. The Climate change consensus page seems to significantly overlap in content with this page as it tries to also describe the "scientific opinion" there as well. So I would similarly suggest that the "scientific opinion" related content from that page be likewise merged into this page with a small 1 or 2 sentence statement left there and a pointer to this article as the main article on what the "scientific opinion" actually is.
3. The Global warming consensus redirect which currently points to this page would then be changed to point to the other page that actually discusses the "consensus" which in turn then has a pointer to this article for the details on the "scientific opinion" associated with that "consensus".
4. I am also aware of numerous places where there are likely wikilinks of the form [[Scientific opinion on climate change|climate change consensus]] which should then be modified to instead use [[Climate change consensus|climate change consensus]] when they are encountered.

This seems to me to be a reasonable way to address the current dispute on this page and it has the extra benefit of reducing duplicated content between the two articles. Would other editors find this approach acceptable? --GoRight (talk) 20:49, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Which WP:DR to use?

For everyone's reference the initial discussions on this point can be found here as well as immediately before that section. Since we have moved the discussion here, let me invite everyone to express their opinions here so that they can be assessed in an orderly fashion:

• (Reproducing my previous comment here along with KDP's comment.) In the interests of time I lean towards binding mediation myself as some of the people involved have traditionally complained about things that look like a !Vote, and it is unclear what we would do if it fails to demonstrate a consensus either way. Then it would either go to mediation or Arbcom which only drags the whole thing out further, which I want to avoid. If the majority of people here prefer to start with an RfC I am fine with that but I reserve the right to appeal the result. --GoRight (talk) 16:52, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

  If we do an RfC it is not clear to me how this would be structured. We have multiple related but independent issues that need to be resolved:

  1. Where should the primary discussion of the "scientific consensus on climate change/global warming" be documented? In this article or the overlapping Climate change consensus?
  2. Should the primary discussion of the "scientific consensus on climate change/global warming" include a discussion of the controversies (whether public or scientific) with that consensus?
  3. Where should the "scientific consensus" redirects point the reader to? They currently point to this page but if the discussion of the consensus is moved elsewhere and this page remains should the redirects be redirected?
  4. Where should wikilinks for the "scientific consensus" be directed? There are many that point to this page but if the discussion of the consensus is moved elsewhere and this page remains should those wikilinks be updated?

  I am not sure how we would try to put all of that into one RfC and be able to discern any reasonable interpretation of the results. So do we run independent RfCs for each, or what? I lean towards independent RfCs to keep the results clean but I can understand if others disagree. Do we use the standard BOT implemented 30 days for the RfC or something else? I see no reason to use anything other than the standard period but I expect others will have differing opinions. Which RfC categories do we put these in? I lean towards both science and politics. --GoRight (talk) 17:29, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

  Can I safely assume that the lack of response here, especially from the GW regulars and everyone knows who you are, is an indication that some editors intend to simply edit war over the template rather than to engage in WP:DR as we are supposed to? Seems like we have a serious problem with this article if we cannot even discuss which form of WP:DR to pursue. --GoRight (talk) 22:31, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

  People have responded in the section "discussion" below, wasn't that the reason you created it?. So - No, you can't. (and there are plenty of responses) --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 22:42, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

  "wasn't that the reason you created it?" - No, actually, that would have been Jaymax who created it. And none of the discussion there addresses the issue of which form of WP:DR we should use, so your point is erroneous. In fact, both of WMC's proposal's below are designed to enable exactly that, edit warring on the tag. We all know what's planned for when the protection is lifted. I see a whole lot of focus on removing the tag and not so much on trying to actually resolve the dispute. This is only creating disruption and delays. --GoRight (talk) 05:27, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Just for clarity - I inserted the header above others comments when I added my own. ‒ Jaymax✍ 05:42, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Discussion

I'm objecting. You are not singling out the problematic issue - but instead seem to be expanding it with what you think it should be. Focus please on This article. The issue as i've seen it is that you and ZP5 want to include a discussion on public views about the scientific opinion, and thus also a change of the hat-note. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 20:03, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

With respect, I am not altering my view at all. I have never been focused on the hat-note, that was ZP5, and when he was doing so he was attempting to describe a potential solution to the problem not to article the core issue. At least that was my interpretation. Either way, it is not like ZP5 and I are the same person with exactly the same views. Our views in the case are synergistic in the sense that they deal with the same structural problems that lead us to this page. Hopefully the discussion above clarifies things a bit, but the short answer is that if the page is merely a list of the scientific position statements as Jaymax argues then the discussion on this page related to the consensus is out of scope for this page as well and needs to be removed, and the global redirects related to the consensus and any wikilinks that say consensus but point here are inappropriate as well. The only reason I am raising the issue on this page is because this is where those redirects and wikilinks take me. Move the links somewhere else and my concerns go with them leaving this page to remain as a simple list of the scientific positions. --GoRight (talk) 20:49, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

I still object: All of these points are things that this article doesn't address, and has never been intended to. The whole issue on what external articles should link to, has absolutely nothing to do with a discussion here - that is a concern on those articles. These are not POV problems with this article. And thus this discussion is not about the POV tag. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 21:51, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Kim, while I agree with your key points, have you ever seen an active discussion on the TALK page of a REDIRECT article? - it's not unreasonable to have the discussion here, providing we know that that is what we are discussing. Jaymax (talk) 22:02, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, i have. But the issue at hand is that GoRight says that this article is POV - and that is what the POV tag means and is used for. Redirects and what other articles link to are not POV problems on this article. One issue at a time - and the current one is the POV tag. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 23:30, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

This article IS POV because of the reasons I have cited, and this is true even if you DO NOT take the redirects into consideration. However the redirects do AMPLIFY the issue by, in effect, making this article the "main" article for discussing "the consensus". In the interests of time, what is your position on the redirects? Are you opposed to changing them to point to Climate change consensus? --GoRight (talk) 00:46, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

GoRight, I am concerned an enlightened by your points 1-3 in #Key aspects that need to be addressed relate not to this article per se, but to other article topics (alternate names if you like) that re-direct here. WP:NPOV deals with article content, including the title in some circumstances, but I'm not sure that an article can be NPOV because of a redirect. How do we get a list of all the topics that redirect to here? Would you be ameniable to alllowing the POV tag to be removed (while the article remains locked) if we start a good-faith effort to identify which redirects should be re-redirected? Jaymax (talk) 21:50, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

You can check "what links here". But it really is an issue that should be taken up on other articles. As i said before: Focus on this article. This is where the POV tag is, and if GoRight's problem is with other articles - then he should take his business there, instead of circumventing consensus at those articles. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 21:55, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

See reply above. Also, added list of REDIRECT backlinks above Jaymax (talk) 22:10, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) To the extent that this article already discusses "the consensus" it must be presented in a WP:NPOV manner which means that discussions of the points of view that I describe regarding "the consensus" must be allowed on this page if that material remains. I see no way around this. But of course the argument will then remain that those points of view are not scientific points of view and must therefore be removed. The fundamental objection underlying this dispute and many of the conversations I point to above is that this article is, in effect even if not by intent, a sort of "safe haven" where controversial aspects of "the consensus" can be systematically scrubbed away. This is fundamentally against the spirit and intent of WP:NPOV.

I am amenable to removing the POV tag as soon as we have worked out a way to address the concerns I articulate above which must include how to resolve the sections on this page related to "the consensus". You yourself have argued that this page is NOT "the consensus" page. This is why I have recommended an approach that will move the main discussion of "the consensus" to some other page leaving a brief overview here with a note pointing to that main discussion. It is also why I support your position that "the consensus" is a separable concept from "the list of scientific positions". --GoRight (talk) 22:17, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

To clarify, by sections on this page you mean section 5 only? (I'm not having a go, just wanting exactness). That section is already duplicated at Climate_change_consensus#List_of_position_statements (hopefully still identically). If section 5 was removed from here, for now, and the REDIRECTS that mention consensus repointed, that would allow removal of the POV tag, for now? (I am aware that some would like to recombine the two articles, and that might yet be the consensus, hence the 'for now'Jaymax (talk) 22:38, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, the (current) section 5 titled "Scientific consensus" is the current focus of this dispute as it pertains specifically to this page. I had high hopes for this proposal. I was merely waiting for confirmation from ZP5 that his issues had been addressed before I responded. Alas, it appears that other notable editors seem to have rejected (or ignored) this proposal below so a response seems moot at this point. --GoRight (talk) 19:52, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

I think this whole revelation proves that there is not a POV problem with this specific article, but that some editors in the last few days have come to these pages because they are frustrated with the whole WP:RS policy and that we have not and will not give any realistic weight to blogs, rumours and fringe views. In the light of the CRU e-mail hack, there has been an outburst of these views recently. This led some people to think it would be easy enough to get some of this anti-scientific stuff into Wikipedia, alongside the science. We can't change the policies and the whole slant of several articles in the light of such a request. We don't discuss anti-scientific fringe views alongside settled science anywhere in WP. --Nigelj (talk) 22:22, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

I want to make it clear that I am not just being self-opinionated here by referring to 'settled science' vs 'fringe views'. We are currently half way through the COP15 conference. This is not an international conference of world leaders trying to work out if there is such a thing as man-made global warming - they are solely there to work out what to do about it, and very urgently too. They can't all have been hoodwinked by 3 - 4 rogue scientists in East Anglia surely? Even the Kyoto conference in 1997 was held over the same settled science - only the US at the time (under Bush) maintained the non-scientific view that there was any fundamental doubt about the whole scientific business. It's not just me and a few friends who hold with scientific reality. --Nigelj (talk) 22:37, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't find these types of comments to be particularly "helpful" in trying to find a consensus on how to resolve the current dispute. --GoRight (talk) 00:46, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Nigelj, I suggest looking above the scientists, to the IPPC mission statement, does it really set them on a fair course for a NPOV? The NPOV pendulum is swinging back to balance the overaggressive mission the IPCC undertook, in my opinion. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 22:54, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, there you go. Proof that I'm right. When a single notable authority, scientific or governmental, starts to swing with your personal pendulum, we'll have a discussion. --Nigelj (talk) 23:01, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

The proof is you ignored the mission statement comment and focused on me.Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 03:16, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

By the way Nigelj, Bill Clinton was President in 1997, not Bush. --Tjsynkral (talk) 04:17, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Please refer to Kyoto Protocol#United States if you're not sure how that panned out, or Bush's role in withholding the US's ratification. It's not what we're discussing here so I didn't elaborate, assuming those who cared would already know. --Nigelj (talk) 15:39, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Remove tag

{{editprotected}} Please remove the POV tag. It has failed to be justified with specific issues that haven't already been discussed, and was editwarred on and then imposed by protection by an admin who flagrantly and with prior warning broke the 3RR and WP:PROTECT, without at any point entering into discussion. In addition, the majority of editors are against the tag (only two support it, both have failed to justify it). Please remove the tag. Verbal chat 10:08, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Comment: the admin that reviews this request should probably wade through the discussion Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Scientific opinion on climate change - review of Tedder's actions. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:31, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Further comment: Verbal rather disingenuously neglects to point out that this matter has already been reviewed by an independent administrator who has agreed that the protection level as well as the tag should not be altered without a consensus. See [11]. Please consult Beeblebrox (talk) before taking action to preserve continuity of oversight in this matter. --GoRight (talk) 20:00, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

That is untrue, Beeblebrox limited himself (by admission and request) to the protection only - which is not under dispute here. Verbal chat 23:09, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

It is regrettable that GR has reduced to direct obvious lying on this issue. GR: please correct your statement above William M. Connolley (talk) 23:14, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Who's lying? Not me. I give you:

"If there is a consensus established here to remove the tag, you can request it with {{editprotected}}. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:40, 11 December 2009 (UTC)"

I don't know what that means to you, but to me it means he heard your request for a review of the tag and decided not to remove it without consensus having been established here first. Please strike your PA or may the evil eye be upon you. --GoRight (talk) 03:32, 13 December 2009 (UTC) (Disclaimer for the levity impaired: the evil eye part was a joke.)

Cherry picking and misrepresentation of sources seems to be a habit. What you have said is clearly untrue, as Beeblebrox himself refused to look at the NPOV tag. Verbal chat 12:17, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Here is the diff where Beeblebrox clearly states he was only looking at the protection, which was justified by Tedder and GoRight's actions. Verbal chat 13:39, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Without having checked his user page before now, my take was much inline with GoRight's - I can see why he (and I) assumed BB had some administrative interest in the POV tagging. Verbal, please at least make a token effort towards WP:AGF, being abusive will just help ensure both the tag and the protection remain. ‒ Jaymax✍ 14:03, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Ha. Verabl's diff is comical. Like Jaymax I had not even visited BB's page until now. Even so, given BB's blunt response I still stand by my original assertion, BB has indicated through his words and actions that the TAG should stay until there is a consensus here to edit through protection. I repeat, there is no such consensus.

Hopefully people can appreciate the irony in WMC and Verbal disingenuously and self-servingly accusing one admin of being involved for deciding the tag should be changed while at the same time browbeating another to do exactly the same thing (only in their favor, of course). --GoRight (talk) 17:18, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

There is no consensus to edit through protection to remove this tag. I object to it's removal until the current NPOV dispute has been resolved. --GoRight (talk) 19:55, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

There is clear consensus below (and above), and you have not provided the justifications required for the tag. There is no dispute. Verbal chat 19:58, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Please be serious. That proposal is less than 1 hour old. People must be given reasonable time to respond. I believe that 24 hours is the norm for such things. --GoRight (talk) 20:03, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Object - Why does it feel like the tag removers want to force an edit fight. This kind of unreasonable escalation is why the tag is on in the first place. I dispute removing the tag while edits and sources are being prepared. Please follow Wikipedia:NPOV_dispute in good faith. These unsettled tag tag disputes [12] are disrupting progress in this article. Peace out eds so we may proceed. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 22:18, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

• No justification has been presented, the tag was added in contravention of clear policy, and the consensus of editors is against inclusion. Unless you bring a topic to discuss, there is nothing to discuss. Verbal chat 23:08, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
• Remove tag (or, at the very least, find some admin with at least the guts to review the tag). Better yet, support proposal 3 below William M. Connolley (talk) 23:14, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
• Keep tag. The tag simply informs readers that a dispute exists as to POV. Removal would imply that no such dispute exists. Reading this page implies to me that, indeed, a dispute exists involving a significant number of editors. That reason alone is sufficient to keep the tag. Collect (talk) 15:52, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

A dispute will always exist on this article. Are you proposing that we keep it tagged forever? Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 16:01, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Answered elsewhere. Tags are intended to inform readers, and are not damaging to an article. Is there a current dispute as to POV here? If not, then no tag would be warranted. "Forever" is, however, a loaded question as I pont out. Collect (talk) 16:35, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

No content dispute, then no tag. No content has been disputed since the protection has been enforced. The only dispute is over the tag and level of protection. That doesn't warrant a tag. Verbal chat 17:14, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Request change (editprotected after 24h)

Over at Global warming controversy this same text appeared (seemingly WP:OR with no cites or explanation anywhere in the article):

Since 2007, no scientific body of national or international standing has maintained a dissenting opinion. A small minority of organisations hold non-committal positions.

Consensus there was to improve it by deleting the above two sentences and inserting what you see in the current version:

With the release of the revised statement by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists in 2007, no remaining scientific society is known to reject the basic findings of human influence on recent climate change.

I propose making similar changes here.

First, I propose deleting the above two sentences from the lead and replacing with this brief summary:

No scientific society is known to reject the basic findings of human influence on recent climate change.

Also, I propose deleting this text under the "Statements by dissenting organizations" section (which includes a reference improperly hotlinked instead of a footnote):

With the release of the revised statement by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists in 2007, no remaining scientific body of national or international standing is known to reject the basic findings of human influence on recent climate change.

...and replacing with the same text used on GWC:

With the release of the revised statement by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists in 2007, no remaining scientific society is known to reject the basic findings of human influence on recent climate change.

Since the people who WP:OWN the GW articles are capable of reverting changes they disapprove of within 5 minutes, 24 hours of discussion should be ample before I put up editprotected. Of course if there's support from both "sides" for this change already, someone could put it up sooner. --Tjsynkral (talk) 17:54, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm not really in disagreement with the above, i just think that the non-committal part of the lede should stay (with a rewrite to "a few" possibly?). --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 18:03, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

"Some" is acceptable, "few" is not. And for God's sake make the spelling of "organizations" consistent through the article. --Tjsynkral (talk) 22:29, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Basic principal sounds good, however I worry about "no remaining scientific society is known to" on two relatively minor and one major point. (1) Grammer wise, 'no remaining' makes it sound like the societies are dissapearing. (2) There are (I'm sure) scientific societes who do hold such opinions - I don't think we can leave out the words about their standing. (3) known implies someone is doing the knowing, but the source doesn't support this approach. The source states there is one, one-minus-one=zero=no, not no known. WP:OR specifically permits this kind of math, but does not support the use of "no known" - the word should simply be removed.

"With the release of the revised statement by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists in 2007, no scientific society of standing rejects the basic findings of human influence on recent climate change."Jaymax (talk) 18:15, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

No. GWC is a bit of a dodgy article; you can't import stuff from there to here William M. Connolley (talk) 18:26, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Agree with WMC. I think you guys have done a great job sourcing and tidying that tiny bit of the other article, but this is the article where that sentence in the lede perfectly summarises the essence of the whole article that follows. And the sourcing here is fine, as you found when you used it to help you with the other one. --Nigelj (talk) 18:32, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Good point about the "hotlink". Yes, that should be replaced with a footnote or ref if for nothing more than aesthetic reasons. But, the other suggested changes aren't so good. What we have here is more precise, and, as Kim said, we need to be up front and keep the "non-commital" bit in the lede.

Re: Jaymax. (1) "no remaining" refers to the disappearance of dissent which has occurred over time. (2) Agree. There might be some little, insignificant organization somewhere that disagrees. Additionally, there's Dissenting opinion above with the whole discussion about sub-groups within scientific bodies. (3) "no known" is important, because it recognises that some notable scientific organization somewhere might hold a dissenting opinion but just hasn't issues a position statement, or no wiki-editor has found it yet. It's kind of a can't-prove-a-negative sort of thing. --CurtisSwain (talk) 21:44, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

How about "No listed ..."? - accurate summation, listing criteria already stated, and doesn't imply some sort of WP:OR based 'knowing'. Also, to get really pedantic, an editor might know of one, and choose not to contribute it for POV. Also, perhaps suitable for Tjsynkral's point below. Is there any problem saying eg "seven listed" rather than subjective "small minority"? Jaymax (talk) 22:50, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

"Known" is fine, as in known to the rest of the world. We, the royal "we", don't know of any. For the non-coms, I don't think we should use a specific number, because there may be more out there that haven't been added in. In fact, I know there is:)--CurtisSwain (talk) 09:35, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Except that the language doesn't match the source. That is utterly unacceptable. Where does "small minority" come from? I hope you aren't going to try to justify this language by synthesis?? --Tjsynkral (talk) 22:27, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

I totally agree that "small minority" is inappropriate. That sentence has been changed numerous times throughout the history of this article: "a minority," "some," "a few," "five," etc., I think "tiny" was even used for a short time. Although WP:OR does allow for Routine calculations, and when comparing 5 non-commital orgs. to over 70 concurring orgs., saying "a minority" or "a few" would be accurate and allowable. However, this is such a hotly contested topic, I think it's best to use completely neutral language. Just say "some" and let the readers do the math. And...if any editor changes it, we can whack 'em with a Wet Trout.--CurtisSwain (talk) 09:35, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Here's what I think we should do. All community members should improve the below text however they would if it was on the main article and unprotected. However, do not violate WP:OR, WP:SYN, WP:AWW, or WP:A on your edits! Any edit that adds claims such as "small minority" must be sourced to be included, and I should not have to explain why. However I would accept full deletion of the section/sentences in question as an edit (but I can think of a few WP:OWN who won't). --Tjsynkral (talk) 04:09, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Proposed revised text #1 (Lead)

No scientific society is known to reject the basic findings of human influence on recent climate change.

Proposed revised text #2 (Dissenting Organizations)

With the release of the revised statement by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists in 2007, no remaining scientific society is known to reject the basic findings of human influence on recent climate change.

Editprotected request

It appears we've reached consensus on the above edit, admin please make the above change. {{editprotected}} --Tjsynkral (talk) 03:35, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

This does not seem to have made it through the recent window of unprotection. If there is still consensus for the above edits, please reactivate the editprotected template. - 2/0 (cont.) 19:30, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

That discussion above does not look like a consensus to me. I was not persuaded to change the lede: who was? --Nigelj (talk) 19:39, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

protection

Tedder asked me to review his protection of this article. As there was edit warring going on and the issues that led to it do not appear to have been resolved yet, I have elected to uphold the protection. Tedder has expressed that he does not plan to take further admin actions here, so you can consider me the "protecting admin" for the duration of this protection period. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:50, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Tedder has evaded the main issue, which is the POV tag. Please review that William M. Connolley (talk) 19:02, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

So the POV tag remains throughout most of the COP15 conference? Neat. --Nigelj (talk) 20:31, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Why does that matter? ATren (talk) 20:45, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Let me know when we've got the right wrong version

Well, the new section demanding an explanation has only been up a few hours. I don't think the protection level of this article is going to influence the outcome in Copenhagen. If there is a consensus esablished here to remove the tag, you can request it with {{editprotected}}. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:40, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Because I share the urgency felt by some to get the POV tag removed, and in the interests of finding some middle road, I suggest we try proposing solutions with quick straw polls one-by-one until some set of actions seems like it might be generally acceptable. Please add significant related discussion to the relevant place(s) in the copious sections above rather than here. Jaymax (talk) 23:40, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

I believe your urgency should be to have the article unprotected as soon as possible. It's unacceptable to have an article in full-protect this much on Wikipedia. --Tjsynkral (talk) 03:59, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

A request for a pointer to the best guideline to read up on criteria for article protection and/or durations. Ta.-Jaymax✍ 10:18, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

WP:PROTECT is the protection policy. Basically it says to lock an article iff it is likely to be disrupted without it, and for only as long as necessary. - 2/0 (cont.) 19:10, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

If that's what it says, then I believe keeping the article fully protected until the 19th is well inline with policy! However, I accept the futlity of this achieving consensus after reviewing the outcomes below. ‒ Jaymax✍ 04:43, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

---

Proposal #1 straw poll

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

No chance of consensus, superceeded by Proposal #6

---

• Repoint the REDIRECT articles Scientific consensus on climate change, Global warming consensus, Scientific consensus on global warming and Scientific Consensus on Climate Change to Climate change consensus
• Admin to remove Section 5 after checking that Climate_change_consensus#List_of_position_statements, fully reflects its content.
• Admin to remove the POV tag from this article
• Admin to leave this article protected until 19th December.

--Jaymax (talk) 23:40, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Neutrals and undecided's (or whatever) from others (with a concise reason) would help here to determine if this is even approximates consensus. -Jaymax✍ 10:24, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

• Support--CurtisSwain (talk) 00:55, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose any proposal that leaves this article stuck in full protect --Tjsynkral (talk) 03:56, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
• Support: not 100% sure on the section 5 thing, but this proposal seems certainly to be progress. Awickert (talk) 08:41, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

There can still be a one sentence mention and wikilink to the consensus section as it is pertinent. --CurtisSwain (talk) 10:48, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose per Tjs. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 19:25, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose protection is not a good thing^TM - note also (in case this goes through) that changing the redirects should have an accompanied notice to articles where these are used, so that they can take a stand as to whether to change wikilinks or not. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 19:33, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose as I support proposal 2 below. Verbal chat
• Support seems reasonable, although I think the article should include a link to consensus article and the title should reflect that it is an article about Scientific Organizations's opinions. --Blue Tie (talk) 03:20, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
• Support, having thought about it, agree this would be a definite step in the right direction. Alex Harvey (talk) 08:15, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Proposal #2

Counter proposal:

• Article down to semi
• 1RR limit for all
• Removal of NPOV tag

William M. Connolley (talk) 19:09, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Support

1. William M. Connolley (talk) 19:09, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
2. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 19:24, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
3. CurtisSwain (talk) 19:28, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
4. Kim D. Petersen (talk) 19:30, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
5. Verbal chat 19:54, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
6. Guettarda (talk) 19:59, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
7. Count Iblis (talk) 21:04, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
8. Ratel ► RATEL ◄ 05:07, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
9. Nigelj (talk) 12:09, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
10. Why are we voting on this? We don't vote. Just do it. --TS 21:25, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
11. Tjsynkral with the caveat that 1RR shall not apply to obvious WP:OR --Tjsynkral (talk) 03:39, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
12. Apis (talk) 13:45, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Oppose

1. --GoRight (talk) 19:32, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

   Brittainia (talk) 20:43, 12 December 2009 (UTC) This editor has been blocked for sockpuppetry, advocacy and edit warring. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 03:32, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

2. NPOV tag should remain until dispute is settled ATren (talk) 20:44, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
3. Silly proposal, last I saw these eds where ignoring a NPOV dispute. Are they now agreeing to a dispute? If so, then under wiki rules not there own. That's another issue with WP:OWN, like they can set the rules for a page. I yield no consent to rules from heavily interested parties. Mediators may help set rules. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 22:26, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
4. Agree with semi, but do not agree with the other standards. Although I am not aware of what the NPOV issues are, I suspect that if the article were renamed to describe "Scientific Organizations stated opinions" or something like that, it would be less subject to NPOV disputes. It would be kind of a sister article to the individual scientists opposing list.--Blue Tie (talk) 03:22, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
5. We still have an absurdly pointless set of tags on the Anthony Watts (blogger) page, which I'm told need to stay there in perpetuo, because a AfD resulted in stalemate. The same editors arguing that the NPOV tag on this article is pointless edit-war to keep the Watts tag in place. Let it not be thought that a small group of Wikipedians are disingenuous & hypocritical; the tag needs to remain in place until the discussion resolves. Alex Harvey (talk) 05:40, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

   Agree - Yes ... right on ... renaming (without a single "Opinion" category) and following the structure set out in Wikipedia:NPOV_tutorial#Space_and_balance would be simple help here for me and to balance better with the other articles. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 04:30, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

6. Removal of the tag has nought to do with imposing a 1RR restriction. As long as there is a dispute about POV, the NPOV tag is not a stigma on the article, it is only a notice that some people disagree. Which appears to be a fact of life. Collect (talk) 15:21, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

   Do you think that every controversial article should be tagged indefinitely? Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 16:03, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

   You appear to misread my comment -- which is that where there is apparently substantial active disagreement, that a POV tag is not onerous to an article. It is intended to inform readers, and not be a stigma for the article. In the case at hand, there appears to be substantial and continuing disagreement, which has nought to do with "indefinitely" at all. Is there, in fact, current substantial disagreement as to POV for this article at all? Do you believe that the POV tag damages the article at this point? Collect (talk) 16:32, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

   The NPOV comment requires a reason. You cannot assert that the dispute over the tag is a valid reason for the tag, we need some actual dispute about the content of the page. Pages cannot be tagged indefinitely for no reason. Verbal chat 17:05, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

It is not I that needs to point out that there have been a number of discussions on these topics regarding POV. I only point out that where such discussions exist, that the POV tag is proper. Indeed, this section on "proposal 2" is not the one in which to discuss whether POV exists, or what the POV might be. Collect (talk) 17:19, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Discussion of Brittainia's block.

[indef blocked for Persistent WP:ADVOCACY, edit warring, and abuse of multiple accounts - Kim D. Petersen (talk)] You can't undue someone's vote retroactively. They obviously weren't blocked when they made it. --GoRight (talk) 01:12, 13 December 2009 (UTC) By that standard if one individual voted 100 times using sockpuppets the duplicate votes couldn't be removed if the socks were later discovered. This comment shows more about your editing philosophy than you may intend. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 01:18, 13 December 2009 (UTC) I have raised the issue here. If this is indeed a confirmed case of an abuse of a sock I will remove my objection. --GoRight (talk) 01:26, 13 December 2009 (UTC) Updated: "This comment shows more about your editing philosophy than you may intend." - Aren't you the one that has been complaining so much about people impugning you with things that you did not state? Please return to your glass house.

abstain

1. While I would be okay with this, I am cognizant of it failing to address the concerns of others that led us here (concerns which, to me, seem at least partly valid, but which do not constitute POV, especially not on this page.); and I see no reason why we can't resolve those issues, while also simultaneously achieving the outcomes in proposal #2. ‒ Jaymax✍ 14:30, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Proposal #3

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

no chance of consensus, less support than similar Proposal #2

---

OK, this was my original idea but it got hijacked.

• Prot down to semi.
• 1RR for all.

William M. Connolley (talk) 23:10, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Support:

1. William M. Connolley (talk) 23:10, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
2. Prefer proposal 2, but result would be the same due to clear consensus. Verbal chat 23:31, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
3. Slightly lower pref than #2. Kim D. Petersen (talk) 23:33, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
4. Second choice, after #2. Guettarda (talk) 02:03, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
5. Second choice, after #2. Ratel ► RATEL ◄ 05:09, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Move:

1. Suggest moving this to Proposal 7. Two in row demonstrates no calm to a reasonable resolve. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 00:39, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Oppose:

1. Only because this is obviously only going to lead to edit waring the tag again which is what got us here in the first place. --GoRight (talk) 01:15, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
2. Note - WMC has indicated he (actually, "they") will remove the NPOV tag as soon as prot is removed [13]. So this may look different than proposal #2, it is actually the same proposal couched in "wacko"-friendly terms. ATren (talk) 01:54, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
3. see Proposal 2. I agree with Semi, I disagree with 1RR. --Blue Tie (talk) 08:18, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
4. Per Atren - proposal appears disingenuous ‒ Jaymax✍ 04:50, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

(post-boxing addition) For clarity, by "appears" I meant "To seem or look to be". I do not know whether the intent was disingenuous, but given ATrens vote comment, it appeared as such. I apologise to WMC accordingly for any inference or implication made as to his intent, by using 'appears' I thought I was being clear I did not know, but apparently I was not clear enough. ‒ Jaymax✍ 21:32, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

1. Per ATren. Alex Harvey (talk) 05:43, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Proposal 5

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

No chance of consensus

---

Yes, I meant 5 ... by ZP5 with regards to WP:5. (Some else can be 4 ahead of me.)

• Mediation

a) non-binding

b) WMC abstains per ArbCom elect. declaration (prevents escalation)

c) WP:BLP applies to this article. Because of subjective title with single category of "opinion" (Post Note: Meaning we agree to apply BLP as if the article itself were a BLP subject.Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 00:42, 13 December 2009 (UTC))

Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 00:07, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Support either binding or non-binding mediation:

• --GoRight (talk) 02:54, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Oppose:

• Until there is something presented to discuss, I fail to see the point of mediation - especially when banning an active editor. BLP applies here already, when pertaining to information about a living person. I suggest you read it. Verbal chat 00:16, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
• as above. Whatever does (b) have to do with anything, and the article is not about living persons, so (c) is simply nonsense. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 00:23, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
• I agree with what Verbal and Kim said.--CurtisSwain (talk) 01:56, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose; mediation would merely add another nonproductive step to the WP:DR process, so that the badge-of-shame NPOV tag would stay up longer. I realize that some people may not consider that a bad thing. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 02:57, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose. would support if I ever saw mediation do anything of value here and if the issues were first clearly stated.--Blue Tie (talk) 03:25, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose as non-binding, and as unnecessarily time consuming. With a bit of consideration, I believe we will soon have a proposal that can be immediatly implemented with near-total consensus. ‒ Jaymax✍ 05:46, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose, sorry ZP5; BLP does not apply to this article. That's not helpful. Alex Harvey (talk) 05:48, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Proposal 5 questions

Is taking down the tag really the number one issue for folks, seems to be persistent in the talk and prior proposals? Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 03:33, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Probably. From what I can tell, you want some other links in the article to make your concerns go away. But I find your issues to be a bit unclear. --Blue Tie (talk) 04:02, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Proposal #6

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

No chance of consensus

---

• Repoint the 'consensus' REDIRECT articles 1, 2, 3 and 4 to Climate change consensus
• Admin to remove Section 5 after checking that copy at consensus article, fully reflects its content.
• Admin to remove the POV tag from this article.
• Admin to place this article into semi-protected, at least until 19th December
• All editors to adhere to 1RR
• Re-adding POV tag for issues already covered to be regarded as vandalism. ‒ Jaymax✍ 04:33, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Support

1. as proposer - compromise, because acceptable compromise will be needed to move on ‒ Jaymax✍ 08:23, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
2. This is the best propsoal of them all, but it would be a good idea to restate which POV issues have already been covered. There's been a lot of rapid-fire discussion around here recently.--CurtisSwain (talk) 08:19, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Oppose

1. first 4 points seem ok. Last two points seem totalitarian. --Blue Tie (talk) 08:22, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

   Can other's give examples of other artcles where 1RR is inforce by consensus? I also encourage reading WP:1RR and WP:3RR. I can't see how the last point is totalitarian, to me I'm stating for clarity what is common sense. If we can get broad consensus that a set of measures has met the NPOV concerns, then retagging again for those same concerns without new arguments is not good faith, but just disruptive. ‒ Jaymax✍ 08:33, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

2. Point 1 too far-reaching and disruptive, based, as this whole thing is, on POV complaints by just one to two editors, supported at the last second by one admin. --Nigelj (talk) 14:35, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
3. POV tags are for the benefit of readers, and should be retained if there is current discussion about any POV issues. They do not harm an article, hence when in any doubt, retain. Collect (talk) 17:05, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
4. Object to Point 1; the article isn't just about "consensus." Point #2, "consensus" is so closely linked to (and indeed fundamentally depends upon) the academy and society statements that there are strong arguments for not splitting. Point 3; mais oui, there are lots and lots of controversial articles and we don't tag them in perpetuity -- why this one? Point 4; semiprotect should be indefinite (Scibaby, etc). Point 5, OK. Point 6, "vandalism" is going too far; see WP:VAND. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 17:12, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
5. No William M. Connolley (talk) 20:11, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Abstain

1. I agree in principle that it is rather ridiculous for all these different articles to exist. I would favour AfD for all of them as a the better solution. Alex Harvey (talk) 05:52, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Proposal #7

• Continue with Bold, Revert, Discuss
• Take the sources to the Reliable Source notice board for inclusion. Wikipedia:RSN

Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 16:39, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Q: are you calling for a removal of the page protection? William M. Connolley (talk) 20:15, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Here is what I called for: Requesting peer review on Climate Change Opinions as a Social Science topic:

1. WP:STRUCTURE and Wikipedia:NPOV_tutorial#Space_and_balance as necessary to balance the article with other sources and sections.
2. Wikipedia:OC#OPINION and WP:OC#SUBJECTIVE as applies to changing article title because its a single category of "opinion" and doesn't include other reliability sourced categories, from newspapers, religions or organizational members.
3. WP:HATNOTES as being used to WP:OWN and enforce the single category of opinion.

Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 20:25, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Incoherent, as usual. I'm not asking for a review of your endless discussion, I'm asking you what your proposal, above, actually *means*. BRD is obviously incompatible with page protection, which is why I asked you, explicitly, are you calling for the removal of the protect. Please answer William M. Connolley (talk) 21:17, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes ... incoherent with your declared COI, you may wish to abstain so we may proceed peacefully without personal attacks or waring rules. The proposal means the content will address the guideline issues I've stated to make a NPOV article. The NPOV tag is non-negotiable now, just like NPOV is non-negotiable. (See WP:NPOV) Why do you wish to negotiate these items? Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 21:33, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

• oppose - incoherent William M. Connolley (talk) 22:02, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Note: This ed neglects to address NPOV and extends waring to changing this section title [14], [15], [16] The protect is on because of his behavior, yet he want us to agree to removing it? This is irresponsible. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 01:03, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

A note about polling

• Some of these proposals contain a provision to reduce the protection prematurely. Polling on the protection issue misses the point. The purpose of debating here is to resolve the underlying issues that led to the article being protected. It's plain silly to poll on what the protection level should be, that's not really how it works. The protection expires tomorrow, discussion here should be focused on finding consensus on the NPOV tag and the issues that led to the edit war over it, that is the path to the article remaining unprotected in the future, not a majority vote, which is clearly not working out anyway.If edit warring recurs once the protection has expired, that will increase the chances of further protection periods and/or user blocks, which is not the outcome any of us want. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:15, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
• I would add that calls to reduce the protection to semi seem misguided as well. The edit war was between well-established users, and there is very little vandalism in the page history, so what semi-protection would accomplish is not at all clear. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:42, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

  I have been pursuing things in good faith. I have asked people to come to a consensus on which WP:DR we should pursue to resolve the underlying issue. Notable editors refuse to even discuss it and some have even apparently threatened to edit war the template as soon as the protection is lifted. I have also pursued some structural changes targetted at addressing the underlying dispute. Certain notable editors saw fit to try and thwart that progress by reverting my changes back to a state which hinders rather than enhances progress. In some cases these are the same editors who apparently intend to continue the edit war over the template.

  While I do not have any particular desire to see this article protected, indeed I would prefer that it NOT be protected, I do have an interest in seeing that the POV tag is not edit warred off the page. Since edit warring is disruptive and the intent of some is plainly clear, I would ask that you consider extending the protection until we have some good faith discussion here by those who wish to continue the edit war rather than acknowledge and address the core issues, or there is at a minimum an agreement that the POV tag should remain until the underlying dispute is resolved. --GoRight (talk) 18:38, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

  I'm still waiting to find out what these "underlying issues" are. It is clear from the polls above that the tag isn't supported by a consensus of editors, and as it hasn't been justified it should be removed. Verbal chat 19:50, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

  I suggest that you go back an review the prior discussion on this point. You have obviously not understood the points being made and perhaps some repetition would clear things up for you. Repetition appears to be a core component of your mental processes. --GoRight (talk) 19:54, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

  "It is clear from the polls above that the tag isn't supported by a consensus of editors, and as it hasn't been justified it should be removed." - No, the polls above demonstrate exactly the opposite. --GoRight (talk) 19:57, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

  It is clear, all the supports and opposes for the various polls that included removing the tag show that there is no consensus for the tag, and still the content under dispute hasn't been disclosed. I'll stop repeating the question when it is answered rather than avoided, and the same goes for the clear admin abuse encouraged by you. Verbal chat 20:32, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

  "I'll stop repeating the question when it is answered than avoided" - I've answered it multiple times now. What is it you think is missing?

  "the same goes for the clear admin abuse encouraged by you" - What is that supposed to mean? What the heck is admin abuse and how have I encouraged it? I'm just a lowly editor for heaven's sake. --GoRight (talk) 06:05, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

  Tedder abused his admin tools breaking both 3RR and PROTECT, which you repeatedly encouraged him to do on his talk page, coming close to meatpuppetry. You haven't answered the questions, you keep deflecting. Feel free to answer them. Verbal chat 07:48, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

  I'm not sure it makes sense to talk about requiring consensus FOR having a POV tag. Consensus should be required in order to remove a POV tag, I think. ‒ Jaymax✍ 22:19, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

  You are correct. --GoRight (talk) 06:05, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

  No, the consensus is against, clearly, and the tag has still yet to be justified. Verbal chat 07:48, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

You got very shouty on your talk page and said quite explicitly: 'I'm not going to get involved in this dispute other than reviewing the protection and watching for further edit warring or disruption after protection expires. Please stop pestering me about this. Have you now changed your mind? Based on your getting very shouty on the your talk page, I'm doubtful you are a calm and neutral party in all this William M. Connolley (talk) 20:17, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Do you see me getting involved in the actual content dispute? No, you do not. I got "shouty" because you would not let up in insisting that I get involved in it, despite my repeated "non-shouty" indications to the contrary. My concern here is that these "polls" are not going to alleviate the problem, and that edit warring will resume when the protection expires tomorrow. I honestly do not care at all about the outcome, as long as it is supported by consensus here and edit warring does not continue. Let's keep this debate focused on the issues not the editors. And I'm not just talking to William either, there are some rather uncivil, ad hominem arguments being posted here. Personal insults are the last refuge of those who have run out relevant, logical arguments. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:20, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

(misc disagreemtns glided over; continuing: ) My concern here is that these "polls" are not going to alleviate the problem, and that edit warring will resume when the protection expires tomorrow - in this you are certainly correct. This was why I proposed a 1RR limit - it won't make the problems go away, but it will make the edit wars more manageable William M. Connolley (talk) 22:44, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Please put down the stick ... --GoRight (talk) 22:45, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Is this helpful? Verbal chat 07:48, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Certainly, the polls failed to draw out any consensus solution - I thought we could find something that at least everyone could live with. I event thought (and still do) 1RR was a good idea, despite it being raised in a "counter proposal". Incidently, writing this, I acknowlege that's perhaps what your Proposal #3 was about, but given that #2 was introduced as a counter proposal to #1, and #3 echoed #2, I (and perhaps others) took it to be in the context of the broader issues raised there. I would support 1RR as a stand-alone issue ‒ Jaymax✍ 23:00, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

The substance of the dispute here

I, for one, cannot see what the basis of the alleged POV dispute is as of today. I see that some editors now think that the POV dispute is now simply about whether the article should have a POV banner on it, or not. I think this is true.

User GoRight is the acknowledged owner of the reason for the dispute, making comments like, "I am amenable to removing the POV tag as soon as we have worked out a way to address the concerns I articulate". The other day we waited some hours for him to articulate them, which he eventually did at huge length, but to my reading, very little substance related to the actual wording of this article. His points centred on his speculations as to what a reader coming to this article may be "seeking information on", that we don't discuss unscientific views with equal weight to scientific ones, and that indeed, we remove unscientific speculation and fringe theories from this page if people add them. The rest of his proposals were about other articles, redirects, the visible wording over wikilinks in other articles and which dispute resolution mechanisms he would prefer to apply here. --Nigelj (talk) 18:25, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

I believe that my summary of the issues was clear, but let me summarize them again: as long as this article is being utilized as the "main article" for a discussion of "the consensus", as evidenced by the fact that redirects and wikilinks referring to "the consensus" are bringing users to THIS article, then the discussion of "the consensus" on THIS article must include discussion of viewpoints other than purely peer-reviewed ones. The fact that the peer-reviewed argument is being used to prevent those other points of view from being included is the source of the NPOV dispute on THIS article. So, one of two possible options for resolving the dispute are possible, IMHO, namely:

1. Move the discussion of "the consensus" to a page where the peer-reviewed argument won't be used to eliminate discussion of otherwise valid points of view, or
2. Allow those points of view to be expressed on this page as WP:NPOV demands.

I have been pursuing the first approach as this will enable those who prefer to have a place that describes only the peer-reviewed opinions, although the term positions would be more appropriate, to continue to do so. The dispute is not over the listing of the scientific positions of the various organizations represented here. The dispute is not over attempts to undermine the scientific credibility of the positions articulated on this page. The dispute is over the exclusion of the legitimate points of view concerning "the consensus" which currently occurs on THIS article.

If those who are obviously more concerned over the POV template than they are about acknowledging and addressing the underlying dispute would simply have worked here in a constructive manner as Jaymax has been trying to do the matter would have been resolved long ago. --GoRight (talk) 19:03, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

A point of clarification in case there is any confusion on this point, I have no objection to there being a small section in this article that provides a brief overview of "the consensus" but I would want to see that section indicate that the "main article" for a discussion of "the consensus" is located elsewhere and that the reader be directed there for the details which, obviously, would be where those other points of view would be appropriately included. --GoRight (talk) 19:15, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

But whether or not greenhouse gasses are causing dangerous, man-made global warming is not a matter of opinion. Matters of opinion include issues like whether to drive on the right or the left, whether we raise money by taxing the rich or the poor, whether we go to war to protect freedom or not etc. This is not something we can decide by a public vote. Peer-reviewed science is all we have on a complex scientific issue like this. You might discuss what proportion of the population misunderstands the issue, and what they are confused about, but not whether they might be right. If there was any doubt about this science, world leaders would not, at this very moment, be gathered in Copenhagen to discuss what to do about it. They are not there discussing whether it is true or not. It is settled science, and world leaders are acting on that basis, and have been since at least the Kyoto agreement in 1997 (admittedly all except for the US, which went though an anti-science phase and backed out of that). You cannot seriously maintain that the POV dispute is over the fact that we discuss peer-reviewed science here without balancing it with a discussion of hocus-pocus and wishful thinking? --Nigelj (talk) 19:21, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Of course, your preconceived and some might say narrow-minded notions of what the specific points of view I am discussing might be are quite evident by this comment. Although, even your comment provides one such example for us:

"You might discuss what proportion of the population misunderstands the issue, and what they are confused about, but not whether they might be right."

The last bit is debatable, actually, since the entire concept of there being "a scientific consensus" is inherently tied to it being nothing more than "a public vote" only amongst scientists. Being a scientist doesn't make you right. Scientists do make mistakes ... even in large groups.

But even if we set that point aside and only focus on the first two parts of your statement you are actually proving my point. Those are legitimate topics of discussion related to "the consensus" which would be excluded from this page. For example, [17], [18], [19], [20] might all be suitable sources for just such a discussion ... only NOT on this page based on the peer-reviewed argument.

Another such discussion might include sources such as [21] and [22] which articulate the public views of the topic as expressed by editorials from major news media (note that these are the editorial views of the newspapers, not simply one author). In any event, this should establish that there ARE legitimate points of view concerning "the consensus" which are currently being excluded because of the structural issues within the articles and the peer-reviewed constraints being imposed here. This is why there is a NPOV dispute on THIS page. --GoRight (talk) 19:50, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Nigelj, Please look WP:BRD in page history [[23]] to see substance. As you have pointed out to me, this talk page is not a forum. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 19:42, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

So, the essence of your dispute is that, "Being a scientist doesn't make you right. Scientists do make mistakes ... even in large groups" and so you want to include the unscientific hunches of joe-public, politicians and journalists (mostly from the US, I see, nothing there from Europe) into the mix of Wikipedia sources to provide a more balanced view? --Nigelj (talk) 20:04, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

As my response above more than adequately demonstrated, not at all.

However I do note that your response focused NOT on the parts where I said the dispute lies, but precisely where I said they do NOT: "The dispute is not over attempts to undermine the scientific credibility of the positions articulated on this page." Your response focused not on the parts of my statement that clearly addressed the points pertinent to this discussion, but precisely on the part I said we should avoid: "But even if we set that point aside and only focus on the first two parts of your statement ...".

So, to be honest, I find your response to be rather disingenuous and a stark reflection of the problem that exists on this article. Care to try again and address the actual points I raised rather than the ones I discounted? --GoRight (talk) 23:04, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

I want to include other categories of opinion for a NPOV. The "scientific opinion" is the result of consent to a narrow POV mission of the IPCC.Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 20:35, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Having read the objections and the problem with the POV, I find that I agree with GoRight, the scrubbing of scientific opinions that disagree with the main thrust of the article is contrary to WP:NPOV.--Blue Tie (talk) 20:38, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

So what is going on in Copenhagen? Did you guys think they were there to help decide if the IPCC science is right or not? --Nigelj (talk) 20:42, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

What scrubbing of Scientific Opinions? What is scrubbed have been non-scientific opinions about consensus, non-scientific opinions about GW, and scientific opinions from ANY angle that do not come from a body with standing, however, on reading through a ton of stuff again, I am almost coming around to seeing a prima facie case for POV re the consensus section only. This is a change of stance for me, and I'm not sure if I'm quite there yet. This issue may be exaggerated and exacerbated by the referral pages, but I feel those pages should not affect a determination of POV here. ‒ Jaymax✍ 21:12, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

GoRight: "The dispute is over the exclusion of the legitimate points of view concerning "the consensus" which currently occurs on THIS article"

I urge GoRight to drop this point. Because if this article is going to say anything about claims that a consensus does not exist, it can only do that by debunking such claims, as that is the prevailing POV in the literature. There are no two equal sides on this issue. A NPOV wiki article will have to say that the sceptics are wrong when they say that there is no consensus. I'm sure that this is not what GoRight wants to see.

Another issue is that the sceptic POV should be mentioned here on Wikipedia. But because this is a such a minority opinion, you could hardly mention that the Global Warming article without violating WP:Weight. That's why we have the Global Warming Controversy article. There is plenty of room to write about claims and counter claims on the scientific consensus there. Count Iblis (talk) 21:23, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Alas, you still don't understand the thrust of the problem. There is an entire body of topics, debates, and controversies surrounding "the consensus" that exist entirely within the public (as opposed to the scientific) domain and they have absolutely nothing to do with "debunking such claims". In fact, my core argument here specifically relies upon the fundamental assumption that such a "scientific consensus" does in fact exist. To provide but one such example, a discussion of the public opinion trends associated with "the consensus" is a perfectly valid topic of discussion that is wholly unrelated to "debunking anything" and doesn't rely upon peer-reviewed anything. My NPOV issue is that this article, which given the current configuration of the redirects and wikilinks is the de facto "main article" on any discussion of the consensus, is systematically blocking any discussion of those public domain points of view. So either allow them to be expressed here, or move the "main article" for the discussion of the consensus elsewhere. Climate change consensus would appear to be a natural choice for such an alternate location. --GoRight (talk) 00:30, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I do understand you, but if you include public opinions on the consensus, then everything that is written about the public opinion, including criticisms of some sceptical opinions is fair game. That will then likely open the door to far more editing disputes which will be fought with wiki policies like WP:Weight, WP:Undue, WP:RS. That's why content forking to move sceptical opinions to separate articles were they can be discussed in greater detail is better. Count Iblis (talk) 15:36, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

It's well enough covered in the denialism article, to my mind. We don't need to go into it specifically at all, really. --Nigelj (talk) 21:35, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Nigel, up a bit you say: "But whether or not greenhouse gasses are causing dangerous, man-made global warming is not a matter of opinion. Matters of opinion include issues like (list)" - I would add to your list: "whether or not there is scientific consensus that greenhouse gasses are causing dangerous, man-made global warming" as a matter of opinion. As evidence I would offer your local talkback radio station. This is the nub, I think, of GR's concern, and touches on ZP5's key concern I think. Proper coverage, not of AGW science (nominally factual) per se, but of the debate around consensus, is stifled - only one side of the debate around consensus is permitted on this page, despite the debate around consensus being a hot topic with strongly held and strongly disagreeing opinions held my many. Why can we not cover the consensus issue (both sides) over at Climate Change Consensus which appropriatly kicks off strongly with the (overwhelming) majority scientific view - the contested section here is ALREADY duplicated there. ‒ Jaymax✍ 22:01, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Also, per Scientific Consensus "Scientific consensus is not by itself a scientific argument, and it is not part of the scientific method." - so is it appropriate to cover it in any depth on a page where inclusion criteria is largely driven by the sceintific method? ‒ Jaymax✍ 22:01, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Also, per NPOV#Neutrality_disputes_and_handling, "there is probably not a good reason to discuss some assumption on a given page, if an assumption is best discussed in depth on some other page. Some brief, unobtrusive pointer might be appropriate, however." ‒ Jaymax✍ 22:25, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Would GoRight be happy with a link back to the Global Warming Controversy article? Alex Harvey (talk) 00:29, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

No, because there is already a spinoff from that article specifically dedicated to this topic, it is Climate change consensus. The solution I would prefer is that this article simply include a brief statement and a pointer to that article as the "main source" for this topic, at which point it only makes sense to update the consensus related redirects to point there as well. --GoRight (talk) 00:34, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Rm joke Peer review banner: why

ZP5 nominated this article for peer review. As the Wikipedia:Peer_review page sez Articles must be free of major cleanup banners and since ZP5 is currently insisting on the POV banner, the article is disqualified. So I've removed the banner from this page. I think that ZP5 may have wanted a content RFC William M. Connolley (talk) 22:15, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Good call, a peer review obviously would not be appropriate at this time. I think an RFC is a good idea as well, more eyes on these problems might help resolve this matter. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:23, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Apologies, it was no joke, just a misguided dispute resolution attempt. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 00:39, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your good faith input, though. Alex Harvey (talk) 00:45, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Another Idea

(Moved from the RfC section by request of Jaymax)

• Another Idea. Suppose this article were renamed "Scientific Organization's Statements on Global Warming". It would be a kind of enlarged list. Then the only things that would be allowed would be statements by Scientific Organizations and there would not have to be any argument about whether the statements were "pro" or "con" but only if the reference was valid and correctly quoted. Statements by individual Scientists would not be included (but would of course, be in included in the page on "Scientists who disagree" or whatever that page is called. As a list of scientific organization's statements it could be referenced in the main article as part of the idea of consensus as long as the list of individual scientists was also referenced nearby. That would be NPOV. --Blue Tie (talk) 03:39, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Not seeing how this allows balance and space for the sources that represent other opinions. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 03:49, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

By renaming the article it makes its purpose clear -- it is not by implication ALL Scientific opinion of "Climate Change" but is, instead, very specifically the statements made ONLY by Scientific Organizations (those would have to be defined and I would be willing to define it as "Formal Organizations with legal standing composed chiefly of scientists or with a focus on scientific research"). This allows balance and space for all organizations that that represent what ever opinions that they have. If there are absolutely no organizations that hold opinions against global warming, then so be it. That is the way it is. The article is STILL NPOV even if that is true, because it is always open to including statements by organizations that disagree. At the same time, the article can have, as a link perhaps in the hatnote, to the "Individual Scientists who disagree" or whatever that article is called. This would allow readers to go to both sides without wading through too long an article that reads like a war. --Blue Tie (talk) 04:18, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Finally I would add that by calling it "Scientific Opinion of Climate Change", it is has the appearance of being the final word on all scientific opinion -- even if it later says "well, we mean only organizations". Avoid the word "opinion" -- which is softer and squishier and say "statements". Make it "Organizations" and then it can be balanced by the Individuals who disagree article. To me, I fail to see how this is not the best solution for the readers. --Blue Tie (talk) 04:22, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Let me help you pass this ... how about excluding any reference to a subjective "organization" or "individual" POV in the title. Leave that out and then there shall be space and balance for an objective NPOV. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 04:51, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Blue Tie, thanks for splitting this off. There are actually two questions here: (1) The title, (2) the criteria for the organisations

On (2), I am curious about the possibility of broadening the criteria, although I'm far from convinced it would reduce the number of complaints about having any criteria and excluding individuals, but I think the matter deserves some attention, and may have merit even if it would not reduce some of the more misplaced criticism. I would like to throw into the pot notability - Perhaps, rather than being of national-or-international-standing, a scientific society which is notable per WP:N meets the threshold. I am averse to the term 'organisation', prefer societies, (fellowships, academies, etc) where the membership primarily comprises individuals involved in scientific research, and connected by discipline, or be an all-encompassing society (such as the Royal Society) and set up in the pursuit of knowledge, rather than an agenda. Which sounds (and probably is) quite complicated, and might amount to the same set of organisations, but is more wiki-friendly, and does allow for the opinions of smaller societies to also be included. There should be some demonstrable, even if weak, connection between a specialist discipline and GW (like atmospheric chemistry, or health effect mitigation).

On the title - I don't like moving away from Scientific Opinion because to do so is 'dumbing down' - the term seems to me to be universally used within the relevant community to mean what it means for this article. More particularly, the article also includes surveys of individual scientists, the survey being an alternate to the internal processes of a society to reach a conclusion. It is not the time to be looking to hive off the surveys (he says, wearily, slightly begging). So the title cannot be specific to organisations - that is more for the section heading.

But finally, one comment of yours has me wondering if there might be some misapprehension: There hasn't actually been debate (while I've been here) about whether organisations are 'pro' or 'con' - I've actually gone out looking for 'con' statements to include, because having one would deflect some of the accusations of bias - but rather they have been about whether the organisation and the source meet the relevant criteria. There don't seem to be any dissenters, and that might not change even with broadening of the organisational criteria. Thus the summarising statement that there arn't any in the list (however it is worded) may remain, and would continue to generate reaction.

‒ Jaymax✍ 05:10, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Sidenote on the title - try googling "scientific opinion -climate" and alternatives. It might be appropriate to pluralise to opinions, but that feels as wrong as, say, public opinions would when giving a list of public opinion survey results on a topic... ‒ Jaymax✍ 05:14, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Background to RfC

• Yes it is balanced. Given that, no it doesn't need an NPOV tag. Yes, 1RR limit would help avoid disruption William M. Connolley (talk) 22:48, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
• No, the Consensus section only is unbalanced. The POV tag should stay while the article includes a section on the debate around whether there is consensus, but restricts that to only contributions to the "popular discussion" from scientific societies. The section is already duplicated at Climate change consensus, and striking the section here and adding a brief pointer, per NPOV#Making_necessary_assumptions, would resolve the POV issue. ‒ Jaymax✍ 23:12, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Extended content

Given the current configuration of the two articles, what Jaymax said makes a lot of sense.--CurtisSwain (talk) 23:26, 13 December 2009 (UTC) "The POV tag should stay while the article includes a section on the debate around whether there is consensus, but restricts that to only contributions to the "popular discussion" from scientific societies." - I agree. This is in essence the point I have been making and it is the basis of my proposed solution above. My only other related point is that as long as the redirects and wikilinks related to a discussion of "the consensus" are used to direct people here (thus effectively establishing this as the "main article" for that specific discussion) then there is still a problem, IMHO. I have begun the process of trying to rectify that specific point but my efforts yesterday were "hampered". --GoRight (talk) 00:16, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

• The article topic is too poorly defined to enable any consensus to emerge. The reason is that it is a content fork from the article Climate change. identifying the article as a fork is not hard to do because the form of the title runs contrary to Wikipedia:Naming conventions, as it uses the convention "Scientific opinion on...." in its title which seperates in from Climate change in name only. I have not seen this done for any other article topic, i.e the "opinions" (aka the sources) are never seperated from the overarching article topic (climate change). --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 00:06, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

• This hatnote, "This article does not include the views of individual scientists, individual universities, or laboratories, nor [24] lists of individuals such aspetitions" demonstrates a POV issue with the article for excluding views and many sources in the article history. The IPCC mission should be included for context. In addition, other opinion categorizes must be briefly included (following Wikipedia:NPOV_tutorial#Space_and_balance) to balance the article view. The title should be explicitly objective following category guidance. As is now, the article is a Coatrack for "documenting" .... "scientific opinion" as singly manifested by the IPCC mission. No org mission should be held above Wiki NPOV, non-negotiable. There are sources to reasonably summarize and include other opinions here. Edit wars can be avoided when warriors abstain. No need for 1RR if the warrior(s) acknowledge their waring and abstain. (Thanks for the RFC. Let me know if anyone has questions.) Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 00:33, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

• (Mostly duplicated from above) As long as this article is being utilized as the "main article" for a discussion of "the consensus", as evidenced by the fact that redirects and wikilinks referring to "the consensus" are bringing users to THIS article, then the discussion of "the consensus" on THIS article must include a discussion of viewpoints (i.e. from the public domain) other than purely peer-reviewed ones. The fact that the peer-reviewed argument is being used to prevent those other points of view from being included is the source of the NPOV dispute on THIS article. So, there are two possible options for resolving the dispute:
  1. Move the discussion of "the consensus" to a page where the peer-reviewed argument won't be used to eliminate discussion of otherwise valid points of view, or
  2. Allow those points of view to be expressed on this page as WP:NPOV demands.

I have been pursuing the first approach as this will enable those who prefer to have a place that describes only the peer-reviewed opinions to continue to do so, although the termpositions would be more appropriate. The dispute is not over the listing of the scientific positions of the various organizations represented here. The dispute is not over attempts to undermine the scientific credibility of the positions articulated on this page. The dispute is over the exclusion from THIS article legitimate points of view from the public domain which focus on "the consensus". --GoRight (talk) 00:48, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Extended content
Agree with GoRight. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 01:06, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

• Here's a thought: The primary purpose of an RfC is requesting outside input. And as usual, the outside input is being drowned out by the same old folks restating their same old positions. Let's reboot the process and those of us who've already stated our positions ad nauseam agree to back off and let others get a word in. What say? Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 03:04, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Extended content

Beeblebrox said "it would be best if each made a brief statement here summarizing their position" - some are more brief than others - follow-on discussion (including this entry of mine) is mostly unhelpful ‒ Jaymax✍ 03:32, 14 December 2009 (UTC) GR, would you consider removing your discussion reply to me; ZP5 would you consider removing your disussion reply to GR; Curtis, would you consider moving your comment to be its own statement; Jaymax, would you consider deleting your discussion reply to SBHB? Oh, that's me, right, yah sure - I'll do it once it's had time to be seen by the involved parties. ‒ Jaymax✍ 03:36, 14 December 2009 (UTC) collapse in good ‒ Jaymax✍ 06:05, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

• This article is about the scientific opinion on climate change, which is distinct from, and not impacted by (but has impact on) the political or public opinion on climate change. The article does this by describing the views from major scientific bodies, and surveys that try to determine scientists opinion - as such it has included all viewpoints from these aspects. What this means and what, if any, impacts this view may have on political or public opinion and the debates about it etc. lies outside of the articles purpose, and is discussed at Climate change consensus, Global warming controversy and to some extent at Politics of global warming. Perhaps we should have another article as well called Public opinion on climate change (seems there is a lot of material), but it certainly doesn't belong here.--Kim D. Petersen (talk) 03:59, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Extended content

Q: Who's "purpose" does this article serve? And how?Zulu Papa 5 ☆(talk) 04:18, 14 December 2009 (UTC) (edit conflict)It serves the purpose of describing the scientific opinion on climate change, it does it by documenting every official statement that has been made from major scientific bodies on climate change as well as all surveys that we know of that have been conducted on the subject (including two from Bray & von Storch who are "unofficial" (ie. unpublished)).--Kim D. Petersen (talk) 05:21, 14 December 2009 (UTC) You may have confused "purpose" with "function". "Purposes" serve an intended subject (i.e. a person or org, while "functions" serve another object. You have described, "scientific opinion" as an object here. I have not seen you identify who (person or org) the article serves? Sincerely, Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 15:31, 14 December 2009 (UTC) Kim, does the article also represent the Pielke's perspectives, he leads a fairly large group of researchers after all, and does it represent von Storch's, Zorita's (yep, there are more bloggers out there these days). Does the article represent the UAH's views (Christy & Spencer)? Does it represent Lindzen's group's views? I think this may be GR et al's point.Alex Harvey (talk) 05:18, 14 December 2009 (UTC) We do not document individual opinions, nor do we document self-selected lists of specific viewpoints - such as the 1700 british scientists[25] who just signed a statement to confirm that there is a consensus. The reason for this is simple: They do not show what the collective opinion is - but instead how singular (or polar/biased) viewpoints see things. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 05:23, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Request for comment

• The crux of this debate seems to hinge on two issues:

• Is the article balanced with regards to point of view and which sources are accepted as reliable enough to merit inclusion here?
• Is the above problem bad enough to merit keeping a {{pov}} tag on the article?

• Since there is already a lot of debate from the currently involved parties, it would be best if each made a brief statement here summarizing their position, and then let previously uninvolved editors comment for a bit. If you do not feel this summary adequately represents the key points, please note that in your statement. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:38, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

• Addendum: Maybe we can kill two birds with one stone here by addressing this as well: Should the article be placed on a editing restriction limiting editors to one revert per day in order to encourage discussion rather than revert warring? Beeblebrox (talk) 23:32, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Note: in the interests of encouraging outside participation, I have copied the opening statements to #Background to RfC, above; this method has worked before, but if it is undesirable here please simply undo it and remove this statement. Valued outside commenters, Beeblebrox's opening statement looks like a fair summary of the remaining points of contention, but please review the material in the above section for more detail to this dispute. - 2/0 (cont.) 08:19, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm still pretty new to this page. I can't fully address the editing restriction proposition since I don't know all the details about how that works. However, anything that promotes discussion instead of unilateral editing that is likely to be immediately controversial is a good thing.

After some thought, I support the removal of the tag. The proposal to add a discussion regarding the debate on the consensus is an interesting one. I agree with GoRight that that discussion must be included in Wikipedia in the interest of completeness. I don't think this article is the right place, and the argument that omitting it from this article violates NPOV is not compelling. I would support it here except that I think it would lead to a slippery slope that would quickly grow and overshadow the specific dynamics this article describes.Airborne84 (talk) 12:18, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Consensus section

Who's going to yell at (slash revert) me if I replace Section 5 with a lead note pointing again to Climate change consensus? ‒ Jaymax✍ 09:42, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Don't do it yet. CCC hasn't received much scrutiny - only fairly recently the lede was quite weird [26]. One immeadiate impression is that there is material *there* which clearly dups stuff *here* that should be removed from there William M. Connolley (talk) 09:54, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I had a look earlier, and didn't see anything I would bring here. As for article quality - I don't really understand the relevance. The material being removed is essentially identical in both places, as is better context over ther. However, i'm in no mood to stir things up again anytime this week at the least, so 'yet' is the effective word for now.

I'd appreciate more opinions from the regular editors here about this. I may have sounded like a broken record, but the actual proposal has not had much debate, outside of POV concerns. ‒ Jaymax✍ 10:06, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm not implacably opposed. I'm saying the article quality there is questionable - or unverified, perhaps. I wouldn't want to cut a section here, and replace it with a see-main to there, without doing the due diligence William M. Connolley (talk) 10:35, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

It seems odd to me that you would want to link section 5 to Climate change consensus, when the lead of this article mentions but does not link to Climate change. It seems to me that this proposal is missing a more important point:

1. I think it is clear from the title of this article is a content fork from the article Climate change. The only instances in which the term "Scientific opinion" is used in this article are in the general sense of the term: there is no secondary source which suggest that "Scientific opinion on climate change" is a seperate, well-defined standalone topic.
2. Whilst the term "consensus" is a used more frequently in this article, I am not convinced it is the right merge target for this article, because significant coverage cited in this article address the subject of climate change directly and in detail.
3. I know that many editors here don't accept this, but it seems to me to be that the only thing seperating the article Climate change from the others are variations in the title. All the coverage in both Scientific opinion on climate change and Climate change consensus address the subject of climate change in substantial detail, and this evidence suggests that merging these articles is the only way to avoid conflict with Wikipedia:Naming conventions. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 10:21, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Re #1, not talking about Scientific Opinion so much wrt this change. Re #2 I'm confused by talking of a merge target - currently proposing to just delete a smallish section from this article. Re #3, can you reference the specific bit in the naming conventions pls? Ta. ‒ Jaymax✍ 10:31, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I think if this article is not so much direct towards the topic of Scientific Opinion on climate change per se, but towards climate change. Wikipedia:Naming conventions says that the choice of article names should put the interests of readers before those of editors, and those of a general audience before those of specialists. If the subject matter which this article addresses directly and in detail is climate change (as indicated by its content), then it should be merged with the article Climate change. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 11:09, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Gavin, the 'main article' such as there is one, would be Global Warming, not Climate Change. There's stuff in the archives, not sure if you saw all replies to your prior discussion on this? ‒ Jaymax✍ 11:15, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

If it is, would you not expect it to say so, either in the title or in the lead section? it seems to me that the lead section makes in very clear that it is about climate change. You say that it is about Global warming, but the lack of any statement to this effect would suggest this appears not to be the case. However, if you are correct, which of the sources in this article supports your view? --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 11:19, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Hatnote: "For recent climate change generally, see Global warming." - But the issue is not the refs in this article, the issue is the CONTENT difference between the Climate Change and Global Warming articles. Global Warming states it is about recent climate change. These opinions are all on the subject of recent climate change. Conversely, Climate Change makes it fairly clear it is about climatlogy, not about recent climate change slash global warming. The direct and honest answer to your question is "all of them". (not trying to sound dismissive there) ‒ Jaymax✍ 11:43, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

OK, I took the contents of section 5 from this article and used it to completely replace the corresponding section at Climate change consensus (and then self reverted the other back). This yields the following differences for your inspection, [27]. Somewhat surprisingly, or not, the version at Climate change consensus appears to be the better of the two since it includes a number of citations which are missing from here. --GoRight (talk) 05:51, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for that. Somwhat tellingly, I'd say. ‒ Jaymax✍ 08:42, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Separating out GC's bit

[I've separated this section out. Its not the same discussion above, which is a separate issue which has some hope of resolution William M. Connolley (talk) 10:33, 14 December 2009 (UTC)]

Perhaps I had not made it clear why it was a related discussion. Now I have done so. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 11:04, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

TBH I still don't quite see it - or at least no strong connection. FWIW I added a secondary source referencing the topic to the lead. The term Scientific Opinion or a similar equivalent would be found in many of the referenced articles - I don't see the bearing of the absense of the phrase in the body, that would be true for a great many lists - I do see that we could do some tightening around WP:N issues, but that shouldn't be difficult, and consequently I don't see that this subtopic doesn't deserve it's own article. ‒ Jaymax✍ 11:23, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I think the term Scientific Opinion is used in many articles, but only this one has it in the title. Take it way, and it will become obvious to you that the Emperor has no clothes, that is to say, without Scientific Opinion in the title, this article should be called Climate change. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 12:14, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Analagous to saying that 9/11 opinion polls should be merged with September 11 attacks. ‒ Jaymax✍ 12:33, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I think a correct analogy is to saying that Climate change should have a seperate article on Reliable secondary sources on climate change. The title of this article is just not recognising that article naming should give priority to what the majority of English speakers worldwide would most easily recognize as being the article's subject matter, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature.
If, as your reference to the article 9/11 opinion polls suggests, this article is about surveys on scientific opinion, then why is the article title not Surveys of scientists and scientific literature on climate change? --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 14:50, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

The article lists collective scientific opinions, most of which come from various societies', fellowships' and academies' position papers, policy statements, and formal opinions; and some of which are significant majorites from survey of individual scientists working in the relevant field. The appropriate collective noun to avoid a 15 word title is scientific opinion ‒ Jaymax✍ 02:13, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

I think a more honest description is that it contains a lot of press releases, PR pieces and various vague statements from international, government and non-govermental organisations, but no rationale why this information has been assembled or what purpose it serves. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 08:44, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

The "why" and "purpose" becomes more clear when you step back and look at the big picture. Wikipedia is an Encyclopedia. This extensive research has been assembled to increase the reader's understanding of the collective scientific opinion (or whatever term you prefer) and consensus on this topic. As per the Wiki Encyclopedia Didero is quoted as saying "Indeed, the purpose of an encyclopedia is to collect knowledge disseminated around the globe." You can argue the semantics of "knowledge" if you'd like, but this article provides utility to a lot of people.Airborne84 (talk) 09:57, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't propose to enter into a philosphical debate with you, because the why" and "purpose" is already defined by Wikipedia content polices and supporting guidelines, not anything I say, or what you say for that matter. If the subject matter of this article is not defined, then its content is not encyclopedic - see WP:NOTOPINION for details. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 12:44, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Repointing the 'consensus' redirect articles

I have added a note in the discussion pages at the 'consensus' REDIRECT articles:

• Scientific consensus on climate change (noredirect) links (one link zero links one link due to WMC's revert zero so long as it sticks)
• Scientific consensus on global warming (noredirect) links (seven links zero links)
• Scientific Consensus on Climate Change (noredirect) links (zero links)
• Global warming consensus (noredirect) links (one link zero links)

advising that it is proposed to shortly redirect them to Climate change consensus. Anyone who deliberatly elected to use a redirect page, or an 'alternative title' does (or should do) so in the knowledge that the target can change. Those who did so accidentlly will learn from their error if it matters. I should point out that when I canvassed repointing Scientific opinion from Scientific consensus to Opinion, in multiple places, no-one peeped about the pages that might already link to the Scientific opinion redirect. I just checked and there's a few. No-one said anything before or after the fact. I suggest leaving the Talk note for a week, and then executing the redirect if no one has reasonably objected here or there by then. ‒ Jaymax✍ 10:23, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

The problem with Climate change consensus is that the article's title is not neutral. There are some sources that disupute the existence of any consensus (the contarian view), but there is also no evidence to support that one particular view and a related course of action has universal endorsement. It is probably more correct to say that consensus on this issue is emerging.
Since all of these articles seem to address the subject of climate change directectly, it seems to me to be the obvious merger target. I don't think we can just use the subjective arguments to choose a merger target. I think we have to look at the sources cited in the article, and accept that they address the subject of climate charge direct and in detail, not any other topic. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 10:32, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

The purpose of that article is to cover all views with regards to consensus, not to assert that one exists (although proper balance will leave a critical reader with little doubt). I agree the title could perhaps be better, but this is not the place for that discussion. The title alone doesn't assert the objective existence of it's topic, any more than Fairy does. ‒ Jaymax✍ 11:27, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Why? What inclusion rationale says that there should be a stand alone article that includes every single source about a particular topic? --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 11:31, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Gah? I'm confused, I was responding to what I thought was you saying the article pre-supposed a particular viewpoint (that there is a consensus). By 'all', I meant per usual article standards, not 'all' in an absolute sense. ‒ Jaymax✍ 11:54, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

To be clear, the purpose of the article Climate change is to cover all views with regards to climate change as well. I am not sure what the real difference between the two is. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 12:09, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

And the purpose of CCC is to cover all views regarding whether or not there is a consensus wrt global warming (slash recent climate change), which is a related, but distinct subtopic, that gets plenty of it's own attention. ‒ Jaymax✍ 12:15, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

In fact, the lead at Climate Change pretty much starts out sending users elsewhere. I guess you could argue Global Warming (recent climate change) is a sub-topic of Climate Change, Climate Change Consensus is a sub-topic of Global Warming - but chimpanzee is a subtopic of ape, perhaps we should merge those as well? ‒ Jaymax✍ 12:19, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

We both know WP:OTHERSTUFFEXIST, but we can only deal with this article on this talk page, so I won't comment about those other articles for the time being.
All of the editing problems on this article originate from it being a content fork: the lack of definition, the use of an artifical title, the lead statement being original research, and the lack of focus on a particular topic in the article' content. This article is to PR pieces on climate change as The Musical of Musicals (The Musical!) is to musicals. Sooner or later you are going to have to acknoweledge that the title of this article (and a lot of its content) is about Climate change, not Scientific opinion on.., What scientists are saying about... or Who thinks what about...climate change. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 12:45, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I understand your point but you must be aware that the amount of material in wikipedia on climate change is far too great to fit in one article. It is common wiki practice when a given sub-topic becomes too large to fit within the main article that it is split out into its own article with a small stub or summary left behind and a pointer to the "main article" for that sub-topic. For example, see the this section [28]. The main article for Solar output has been factored out of the Climate change page into a sub-page because of the amount of information contained there. I don't see the Climate change consensus as being any different than the Solar variation page in that regards. If this article should be merged with anything it should be the Climate change consensus article but that would preclude hat tip restrictions that seek to exclude public domain points of view. --GoRight (talk) 15:03, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

That is fine, as long as a clear definition of this article's content can be found that makes it clear that it is a sub-topic, and that as a sub-topic, it is notable in its own right. At the momenent, it seems to me that no one has a convincing evidence, based on third party sources, that this is a distinct sub-topic in its own right. Unless one can be found which identifies it as being a distinct sub-topic, then it is probably a content fork, rather than a bona fide article topic suitable for its own standalone article. What is needed is a clear definition from a third party view that can be brought into the lead to define what this article is about. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 15:32, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I think we may have digressed a bit. Feel free to continue above but more specifically, are there specific objections related to Jaymax's proposal to redirect the "consensus" related links to point to Climate change consensus rather than here? If the above discussion results in bigger changes then these will be revisited at that time. --GoRight (talk) 20:51, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't think we can answer that question until someone comes up with a reliable third party source that defines or describes what this article is about. For all we know, this may be precisely the article in which Climate change consensus coveage should be featured. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 12:47, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Edit warring in the lede again

It would be good if people could avoid making controversial changes to the lede [29] at this time. Please discuss such changes *first*.

In this case, the change looks like bad faith. GC appears to believe that this article is a content fork of climate change. There is even a failed merge proposal which he started [30]. Many people have laready told GC that this relates to GW; the addition of a misleading link to CC appears to be little other than POINTy disruption William M. Connolley (talk) 12:05, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I would love to know what is "controversial" about linking the term "climate change" to the article about that term? Why don't we get a third opinion on this matter if you don't accept that the edit is entirely sensible, regardless of what ever you think about me. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 12:16, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, the MOS says not to do so, for starters. Guettarda (talk) 12:22, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Neutral opinions are always good. What troubles me is you are not referring to the content (ie, the topic, which is defined broader than the title) of the target article you are wanting to prominently link to - that makes no sense, linking should take users to relevant content. There's no problem linking to Climate Change from here in a context that is about the topic and content of that article. I'm getting frustrated, so taking a break. ‒ Jaymax✍ 12:26, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Which manual of style says that you can't link a term to its topic? And in what sense is the term "climate change" not related to the article Climate change? It seems to me that you have to change the lead to say what it means or make it mean what it says, but if we get a third opinion or go to mediation on the issue, I think you will find that most editors would support this edit without hestitation - I think this is what Americans refer to as a "No Brainer". --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 12:33, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Sections 6, 7, and 9 of Talk:Scientific opinion on climate change/Archive 9 indicate that this has been discussed. Please be aware that, while I cannot speak for anyone else, I am fairly unlikely to re-lock the article in the near future if other measures will serve. - 2/0 (cont.) 13:54, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

It not that you can't link a term in the topic, but you shouldn't link terms in the title of the page, the part that's bolded. Guettarda (talk) 13:56, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I would normally agree with you, it is a valid point you make, if where not for the fact that the so called "lead" of in this article is more an opinion piece than a statement of fact or a summary of the article content. It does not summarise a partiuclar source nor any definitions cited in the rest of the article. In fact the whole article lacks a definition from a reliable third party source.
The closest a source comes to matching the title of this article relates to this source[31].
However, the lead of this article, for some reason not disclosed, says the sources which it cites do "not include the views of individual scientists". I have never read such intellectual nonsense in any publication about climate change and I don't think that is a sustainable prohibition for any article to declare in its lead.
This brings me back to my original position: as a topic, I don't think there is any evidence to support the fact that this is a viable standalone topic unless a few sources can be found which define (even in a broad sense) what is meant by "Scientific opinion on climate change". The source that I have cited does not provide a definition either; rather, it discusses what scientific opinion there is about Climate change, and I quote to illustrate this:

Mainstream scientific opinion, 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.

Expert consensus is not unanimity, however. 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. Expert disagreement and uncertainty over global warming is particularly likely when scientists are asked to offer broad conclusions, such as the rate of global warming, potential effects, and policy suggestions, which involves value-laden and often contentious discussions of what should be.

Stephen J. Farnsworth & Samuel Robert Lichter: The Structure of Evolving US Scientific Opinion on Climate Change and its Potential Consequences.

The point here is that even in articles which focus on scientific opinion, the subject matter that is discussed directly and in detail is Climate change. In the context of this source, the term "scientific opinion" is simply a hook or editorial device on which a review of the climate change itself. However, employing such editorial device in article to justify the creation of a content fork runs contrary to the letter and the spirit of Wikipedia:Naming conventions. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 14:39, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Then wouldn't it be better to work to fix the lead, rather than fighting over whether we should or shouldn't link a word that the MOS suggests we shouldn't? Guettarda (talk) 15:08, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

How about basing it on the above source? Here is more or less the wording I wish to propose to identify this article as being a seperate subject:

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. Expert disagreement and uncertainty over global warming is particularly likely when scientists are asked to offer broad conclusions, such as the rate of global warming, potential effects, and policy suggestions, which involves value-laden and often contentious discussions of what should be.

Lets take from here, but lets agree really need to get rid of the opinion piece that currently exists. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 15:24, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

The text above is factually incorrect. AGW is a fact that is universally held by the actual 'experts'. See Denialism. If it were not, the meeting at COP15 would not be to decide what to do about it, but whether it is true or not. --Nigelj (talk) 15:52, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that this wording is a summary from a reliable secondary source, but your personal views about it being factually incorrect don't hold any weight on their own. If you can come up with better wording from a reliable secondary source, lets have it. But if you can't back up your views with sources, then we need to proceed with this proposal if nothing better can be found. Better to have a sourced lead that an unsourced lead, I think we can agree on that. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 15:57, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

The existing lede is sourced, to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, "tasked with evaluating the risk of climate change caused by human activity". (Read their article to see that there is no higher authority on the matter worldwide). The lede also summarises the article and the whole article is impeccably sourced. The error you want to introduce into the lede is in contradiction to the body of the article and represents a non-notable, fringe view. --Nigelj (talk) 16:04, 14 December 2009 (UTC) --Nigelj (talk) 16:04, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) You are the one in denial, my friend. There are actual 'experts' who disagree so your use of the word 'universally' is clearly flawed. As is your use of the word 'fact'. The best that you might ever hope to claim in this context is 'scientific fact' which as we all are aware is not the same thing at all as 'fact'. Scientific fact is akin, in actuality, to being our best guess based on what we think we know today. And surprisingly it never gets better than that. The last I heard AGW is at best referred to as a theory, and certainly not a law. Some only consider it an hypothesis at this point. --GoRight (talk) 16:15, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

So, the whole Copenhagen conference is based on a guess??! And only you know the truth! You'd better tell them straight away - before Obama gets there and signs anything! Oh, I see, you're trying to, here? Right, I see. --Nigelj (talk) 16:31, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

"So, the whole Copenhagen conference is based on a guess??!" - Well technically, yes. You do understand how the scientific method works, right? Hypothesis ... Theory ... Law ... Discover something new that breaks the current view of the universe ... Repeat. Remember, Newton was right only until he wasn't. I think you get the point.

"And only you know the truth!" - I never said that, please work on your reading comprehension skills. What I said was, you claim to know the truth but you are wrong. Those aren't the same things. --GoRight (talk) 17:19, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Hmm GR, you are aware that your: Hypothesis -> theory -> law, thing is wrong - right? (law doesn't belong there, its separate from hypothesis and theory, since it doesn't explain anything) --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 19:15, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

"..." != "->" --GoRight (talk) 19:26, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Just to be clear, I propose eliminating the opening paragraph to this article. If it is sourced, then the source needs to be cited.--Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 16:39, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, here's the opening para: "National and international science academies and scientific societies have assessed the current scientific opinion, in particular on recent global warming. These assessments have largely followed or endorsed the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) position of January 2001 that states:" (followed by the quote). Which bit are you disputing, that these academies and societies have assessed the science re global warming? Or that these assessments largely follow or endorse the IPCC? --Nigelj (talk) 16:54, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

No, the source of the opening paragraph, but also the longer section above it in italics:

This article is about scientific opinion on climate change as given by synthesis reports, scientific bodies of national or international standing, and surveys of opinion among climate scientists. This article does not include the views of individual scientists, individual universities, or laboratories, nor self-selected lists of individuals such as petitions, Global warming, Climate change consensus, and List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming.

In both cases, these paragraphs are unsourced, yet both are key to understanding what this article is about. If this article is a viable standalone article, they need to be replaced by a definition, even if it is only a broadly based definition, from a reliable third-party source. Withoug such a source, there will never be any agreement on what this article is about or what it should contain. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 17:06, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Oh, the bit in italics at the very beginning is called a hat-note. It doesn't need a source, it just says what this article is (and is not) about. It is necessary to place restrictions like that to stop some articles becoming unmanageably long. This article is already 88 kilobytes long, and comes with the warning, "It may be appropriate to split this article into smaller, more specific articles. See Wikipedia:Article size". It often happens in WP that we need to move specific, related information out of long articles into sub-articles, with links, like in the rest of the hat-note to the other related articles. --Nigelj (talk) 17:14, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I have never seen a hat note like it. It is a basically a statement of opinion which is not supported by any source, and is in no way a suitable substitute for a proper lead based on seconary sources that defines the article's subject matter. I have never seen an article lead with a hat note that comprised of original research. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 17:19, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

You must be mis-reading it, it doesn't contain any opinions or research. It says, "This article is about [title] as given by [list]. This article does not include the views of [list]. For [A], see [B]. For debate on [C], see [D]. For opinions of individual climate scientists, see [list]." There is nothing there apart from a very helpful set of lists saying what this article is about, what it's not about, and where you might find some of the things not covered here. We can't fit everything into one article, and this is as helpful as we can be if the info has to be distributed into various pages. There's a 'See also' at the end too with further suggestions, and a huge collapsed template at the very bottom with loads of pages linked as well. --Nigelj (talk) 17:32, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that it not only contains opinions and original research that is not verfiable; it contains really weird opinions and original research that can't be verified. For instance:

This article is about...surveys of opinion among climate scientists...(but)... does not include the views of individual scientists.

This sort of stuff is just so weird, it is hard to imagine how anyone could have made it up, let alone to thought it rational in any way. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 21:47, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

It's emerged and evolved with consensus over time. ‒ Jaymax✍ 23:35, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Oppose - I disagree with changing the hat-note. GC, your recommended edit to the hat-note would degrade the article, not improve it. I re-read the hat-note a few times, trying objectively to find opinion or original research. I find none. The fact that you haven't seen a hat-note of this type before (I haven't either, but I haven't looked) doesn't discount its utility. Nor does its lack of a reference in light of its intended purpose (which I also read above). I can allow that it would be possible to change and improve the text of the hat-note, but only in the sense of providing clarity - and as long as it retains its descriptive character. Your plan to change a descriptive hat-note to an agenda-laden version that stands in opposition to the central theme that the article describes cannot be an improvement. I understand you disagree with the article and are trying to introduce elements that allow for your understanding of the dynamics of this issue. However, if you can't build a consensus to change, my recommendation would be to discard this issue, continue to analyze the article, and recommend further improvements. If you recommend a change that is contrary to my opinion on the subject, but consists of a logical improvement to the article, I assure you I will support it. I cannot support this.Airborne84 (talk) 08:23, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

The hat note is not going to changed, it is going to be deleted. Any content which is not sourced can be removed in accordance with WP:BURDEN. The fact that it is a hat note does not exempt it from the prohibition against original reseach.
The fact remain, this article's subject matter is not defined by a reliable third party source in accordance with WP:V, and original research in the form of a hat not can mever be a substitute for sourced content. The paragraph from Stephen J. Farnsworth & Samuel Robert Lichter cited above is close to the title of this article. If you can find better sourced content than this or content that builds upon this, all well and good. But saying you oppose the removal of unsourced content goes against the letter and the spirit of WP:BURDEN. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 08:35, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

An interesting argument. However I believe that all you will accomplish is a degredation of the article. I'm not emotionally attached to the hat-note, as it was here when I arrived. I will also agree that a deletion would be better than the 'improvement' you mentioned (to be clear, I would oppose a deletion). However, your argument that it constitutes original research has no basis or support. If others on the talk page agree that it is not original research and state that it was built from a consensus (as was noted above), then your unilateral deletion of the hat-note will continue the fruitless spiral downward on this article. If you pursue this course, I'll simply assume that is your intent.

I will offer you a bit of further logic, although I suspect that it will be a wasted effort. If you go to the Physics page, you will see a hat-note that states "This article is about the field of science. For other uses, see Physics (disambiguation)." You might notice that it is not referenced. As per your logic, this clarifying statement with no reference can and should be deleted. Please also see the article on Germany. You will note that a sentence in the introduction states that "Germany is bordered to the north by the North Sea." This also has no references and per your logic should be deleted straightaway by anyone claiming it consists of original research.

A conclusion based on my premises would normally be in order, but as you seem an intelligent individual, I will assume it's not necessary. Cheers.Airborne84 (talk) 09:15, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

please be aware of #The_hatnote_.2F_disambiguation and have a look at the subpage in my userspace referenced there. It won't (well, I very much doubt) satisfy Gavin any. But the hatnote was undergoing significant but gradual work before the whatever of the past week broke out. ‒ Jaymax✍ 09:29, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

The main problem with the hat note is that it contains the two extraordinary statements:

1. "This article is about scientific opinion on climate change as given by synthesis reports, scientific bodies of national or international standing, and surveys of opinion among climate scientists."
2. "This article does not include the views of individual scientists..."

However, these exceptional claims are not supported by any sources. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 09:40, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

I lost track of your reasoning GC. Anyway, you'll be happy to know that I found a precedent for the un-sourced hat-note. It's from the German Wiki page "Kontroverse um die globale Erwärmung." It's very similar and is unreferenced.

Dieser Artikel gibt einen Abriss zur wissenschaftlichen, politischen und öffentlichen Kontroverse um die globale Erwärmung. Diese Kontroverse wird über die Ursachen der globalen Erwärmung, ihr Ausmaß, ihre Folgen sowie um die Möglichkeiten und die Dringlichkeit einer Gegensteuerung geführt.

Let me know if you need the link. However, if you don't agree with the precedent, you'll want to go axe their hat-note first. The page is unlocked right now...Airborne84 (talk) 10:19, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Okay, this thread was originally about linking to climate change in the hat note. We seem to have gotten over that bit and have moved on to a much more important issue: the criteria for inclusion. So, let's start new thread...--CurtisSwain (talk) 10:29, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't think a "German Wiki" is a reliable source - the text may be self-referencing, in the sense that the German version was copied from here. Provide the link, and a translation and details of the author, date of publication and the institution they represent. Otherwise, your source is just not credible, it is questionable source. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 10:41, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

A sentence that starts "this article is about ..." is logically unsourcable - can you give me an example of a sentence with that lead-in that either (a) you don't feel would need sourcing, or (b) could be sourced. Thanks. ‒ Jaymax✍ 11:07, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

I think Gavin has a very good point to make, he's just not articulating it clearly. It's not really a technical issue with the way the hat-note is used. The issue is with the criteria for inclusion. Basically, we need to do one of two things: either (1) better explain/justify the limitation to position statements, synth reports and surveys; or (2) be less restrictive and open it up to other forms of expression of scientific opinion. That conversation should be continued below.--CurtisSwain (talk) 11:35, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

The hat note as it is written is taking on the role of lead in which the article topic should be described, defined or given context in accordance with Wikipedia:Lead section. The way the lead has been written using statements of opinion that are not sourced is just not acceptable - hat notes are not supposed to be used as commentary on the article subject. In answer to Jaymax, I recomended using the source cited above in the lead, although this does not solve the issue of inclusion criteria, as CurtisSwain says. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 12:37, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Gavin, there's lot's of above: do you mean the Farnsworth/Lichter source? It gets halfway there, but dodges, or assumes as uncontroversial, the question of cause, which is a significant factor in selecting the quotes used from the sources here. ‒ Jaymax✍ 13:03, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps the first half of your suggested text covering the general point, without getting into the list of examples that excludes the big question? It still holds, as a generality addressing the field of climate change. ‒ Jaymax✍ 13:15, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I was refering to this source. There is a lot more to the article if you read it, so I doubt it purposely dodges anything. The excerpt I have quoted is what I think should go into the lead - perhaps other editors have a better alternative, or can write a better summary of theis source than I can. Review the sources yourself[[32]; the article is free to download, its a reliable secondary source, and for an accademic paper, it is a suprisingly easy to read, and and is interesting to boot.
You should be warned that this article suggest to me that merging this article with either Climate change or Global Warming is the right thing to do, as these subject matters which the paper disucsses directly and in detail. We have not yet found a source that identifies either Scientific opinion on climate change or Scientific opinion on global warming as being a seperate standalone article topic. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 13:22, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Funny story - when I added the STATS survey to the article ages ago, I spent hours trying to find something that wasn't a press release, and there was some rueing amongst ourselves that we couldn't find the methodology anywhere. A quick skim tells me this might be it. On sources, did you review the Union of Concerted Sciences source? http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/science/ipcc-backgrounder.html#Representing_a_Range_of_Expert_Opinions ‒ Jaymax✍ 13:34, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Concerted - Freud woud be proud... I meant Concerned, of course. ‒ Jaymax✍ 13:36, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Is there a particular statement or scientific paper you could quote from this site? I am not sure which coverage you consider worth citing in this article that would define or describe the topic of Scientific opinion on.... Rather this site is simiar to Wikipedia, in that it is more a tertiary source in which other contributors commentary is assembled. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 13:50, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Odd, the link didn't go to the section of the backgrounder I expected. Section 8 Para 1 at that link...

"Representing a Range of Expert Opinions

... One critical strategy the IPCC uses to ensure the scientific credibility and political legitimacy of its reports is to represent the range of scientific opinion on climate change fairly. To this end, the IPCC provides several channels for input from experts along the entire spectrum of opinion, including global warming contrarians."

My italics ‒ Jaymax✍ 14:40, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

My reading of this excerpt is that this source is describing IPCC owns internal process, rather than commenting on what is or is not scientific opinion on climate change. As such, it is a bit like reading the Wikipedia's policy on consensus; it describes the process, but does not provide any criticism or analysis of the process itself. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 14:59, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Criteria for inclusion

I think entries in the organisations list should be notable Learned societies with some demonstrable interest in, or contribution to, global warming science, arising from the scientific disciplines they incorporate. Note that this might align to national or international standing, but more likely will broaden the field. ‒ Jaymax✍ 11:11, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Hmm...seems like what you just said (notable Learned societies with some demonstrable interest in, or contribution to, global warming science, arising from the scientific disciplines they incorporate) is a long-winded version of scientific bodies of natonal or international standing. Unless you're advocating for including the Social sciences! But that would be heresy!--CurtisSwain (talk) 11:51, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

If this is a shift from the above discussion. Hasn't this been discussed at length already in the archives? is the intent to rehash it every time someone new comes in and asks the same question?Airborne84 (talk) 11:42, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Who's new? Anyway, Curtis is half right - but notability is wiki-friendly, and the "demonstrable interest in, or contribution to, global warming science" is something that has come up here in talk several times, I think with the consnsus that it is a requirement, but isn't included in "scientific bodies of national or international standing" and isn't formalised anywhere else AFACIT (Curtis, you're prob best to advise if anyhave been left out on that basis?) ‒ Jaymax✍ 12:18, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I'm new, so I shouldn't be talking about new people... I just read through the archives of these articles (skimmed) a couple of days ago and it seems like we're discussing topics that have already been hashed through. Anyway Jaymax, I'm glad you're here (and many of the others) defending the accuracy of, and working hard to improve, these articles. I don't have the time to stay engaged for long, so I'll have to leave the task to better people than I!Airborne84 (talk) 12:25, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Heh, stick around - surely you must realise by now how much fun we have! ‒ Jaymax✍ 12:38, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

The fact that the issue keeps coming up shows that it has yet to be adequately resolved. The FAQ is for dealing with repeated questions, but nobody's written anything explaining or justifying the restrictions. I know (or believe), and many veteran editors of this article know (or believe) that looking at position statements, synth reports and surveys is the best way to assess the scientific community's thinking on any given issue. The problem is the average reader doesn't understand this and we don't have an RS that confirms it. Frankly, I think the problem and the continuing perception of POV and bias issues can be solved by loosening the criteria and including petitions and open letters, which are about the only thing the dissenters have on their side. Doing that would more adequately acknowledge the existence of the handful of scientists who disagree with the majority opinion. It would also clearly show that the dissenters are the minority. If the views expressed in this article are that of the vast majority (consensus), then we need to demonstrate that by placing the dissenting views along side and letting the reader compare the two.

Jaymax: well stated. Let's go with notable or demonstrable interest in....--CurtisSwain (talk) 12:36, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

"notable and demonstrable interest in..." ? ie: exclude, for example, the Mars Society (or are we at cross-puropses?) (edit) actually, they're not a scientific society anyhow, but you get my point... ‒ Jaymax✍ 12:45, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

"notable Learned societies with some demonstrable interest in, or contribution to, global warming science, arising from the scientific disciplines they incorporate" that's pretty wordy. How about just notable scientific societies? Obviously, if a sci. soc, issues a position statement they've demonstrated an interest. notable scientific societies redirects to Learned society, excludes those flaky social scientists:) and is wiki-friendly as you say.--CurtisSwain (talk) 15:28, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

The problem is as I see it that the rationale for including this article in Wikipedia (looking at position statements, synth reports and surveys) could apply to many other related topics. The key to establishing the legitimacy of this article is finding a source which actually examines the development of Scientific opinion on climate change rather than what those opinions are at any one point in time as demonstrated by some of the statements made by various organisations. If there are not any, then I would say a merge is on the cards, and if that can't be achieved then its back to edit waring, POV pushing and all the other symptoms of there being no general agreement as to what this article is about. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 13:39, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

CurtisSwain, I agree with you in principle that the discussion regarding scientific disagreement with the majority must be covered. However, I can relate to you that I quickly found the link to that article when I visited this article about a month ago. I went to it and read through it thorougly. If you add it here in condensed form, that article would arguably need to be deleted. It seems that this overall topic needs to be sectioned appropriately due to its size and controversy, not combined (although that is just my opinion). Also, I found it useful reading through the article on scientists who disagreed. If it was condensed into this article - it would not have been nearly as useful. Again, any reader who comes here to be informed will do what I did - click the link to the "scientists who disagree" article and read it.

GC, I simply don't understand your rationale that this type of article doesn't belong in an Encyclopedia in any form. I believe your opinion on this to be idiosyncratic. You can see my comments in a thread a few above on that. The setup for the "List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming" is very similar. It simply represents the dynamics of that topic. Further, I read that entire article and I found it very useful as well. Are you on that talk page arguing for its dismemberment or deletion? Logically, you should be doing so since your argument is against the inclusion of this format in an encyclopedia at this point. However, deleting these articles will not contribute to the knowledge of the reader that comes here to become informed. It will simply destroy their ability to gain knowledge. How can you support that concept on a website like Wikipedia?Airborne84 (talk) 19:53, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

UCS backgrounder / Topic notability

This edit added a sentence on the Union of Concerned Scientists report "Who Are They and Why Do Their Climate Reports Matter". I do not see where this edit has been discussed recently here, nor does spot-checking indicate that it was in the article before. If either of these observations is in error, please forgive me. Elsewise, please remember to discuss potentially controversial edits and avoid edit warring. - 2/0 (cont.) 14:20, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I just took out that strange sentence. If the statement made in that sentence is to be included, it should be put in the appropriate place in the article. Count Iblis (talk) 15:29, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I put it in after a comment that we didn't have much in terms of secondary sources for the notability of the topic as a whole. TBH i didn't spend much time contextualising it, thought that would happen with time. And finger-slip resulted in no edit comment. ‒ Jaymax✍ 00:05, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

For info, below is the content

• 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.

‒ Jaymax✍ —Preceding undated comment added 11:43, 15 December 2009 (UTC).

Note - if anyone wants to help, I'm looking for good WP:RS, including mainstream media, that uses the term "scientific opinion" or "scientific opinions" WITHOUT a prefix of 'majority', 'consensus', 'accepted', 'general', 'predominant', or 'prevailaing' etc - ie. using the term to refer to the range of opinion, or the set of opinions, rather than a singular opinion. (obviously needs to be in the context of AGW). The issue I'm having is too many search results accepting the singular, consensus opinion - thus clearly demonstrating the notability of the article topic here, but only statistically (ie: via WP:OR). ‒ Jaymax✍ 02:33, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

The irony of "RV STOP EDIT WARRING!!!"

I suggest that people who insist that others stop edit warring while they revert to their preferred version have gone past the point of irony and to self-parody. As such, I suggest that users who are obviously over-attached to this article stop editing it, and it's talk page, and allow other, uninvolved editors to make a decision on the tag. I have requested review at the content noticeboard, and would ask that the usual suspects attempt to disengage - from the talk page, from the article, from everything. That means stop editing, stop commenting, and certainly, don't harass whoever comes into check the pov of the article. Thanks. Hipocrite (talk) 18:06, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Since edit-warring flared up within a few hours after the previous protection expired, I've re-protected the article for 3 more days. Hopefully that will provide a bit of breathing room. Outside commentary on the content dispute is certainly welcome; hopefully the article will be a bit less off-putting for uninvolved editors with a 3-day enforced vacation from edit-warring. MastCell ^Talk 19:06, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Could you provide a link to the review please. My BRD cycles are here [33] Thanks. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk)

I don't see any sign of sanity returning. I have a couple of suggestions:

1. Declare ZP5 personal attack removed by Hipocrite (talk) and ban him from this article
2. Declare proposal 2 above the closest thing we'll get to consensus and implement it

William M. Connolley (talk) 20:34, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I have a counter proposal: Declare WMC personal attack removed by Hipocrite (talk) and ban him from GW articles. This will save a lot of time for many editors across an entire swath of wikipedia. --GoRight (talk) 20:43, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree, except for banning of ZP5 at this moment. What we need is a consensus among the Admins that are watching this page that it is reasonable that the article will stay more or less as it is without a POV tag. Then ZP5 and GoRight can either argue about actual edits to this article (so not about putting the POV tag back, but instead about some proposed text they want to add to this article that we can discuss on its merits).

If in these arguments ZP5 and GoRight were to make very good arguments that are not purely based on Wiki-Law but have some firm grounding in actual facts (unlikely i.m.o.) for their proposed text, but the other editors here were to simply oppose their text based on WP:IDONTLIKEIT, then the POV tag would be appropriate. In such a (very hypothetical) case, any outsider could see that there is a real POV problem with the article based on the arguments presented on the talk page (and not by merely noting that there is a editing dispute going on). Count Iblis (talk) 20:57, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

What is wasting time is eds continue to ignore the points GoRight and I have made and begin to escalate with personal attacks (perhaps because of their ignorance). Acknowledgment in good faith goes a very long way to settling disputes and moving forward. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 21:08, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm an insider, and GR has a point - took me a while to see it though. (and not the one related to the redirect pages) ‒ Jaymax✍ 23:27, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Sadly, I must object. There is still a dispute on-going although progress on resolving it may actually be making some progress ... albeit outside the context of these proposals. --GoRight (talk) 22:13, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

What dispute? Where? --Nigelj (talk) 22:19, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Nigelj, did you see the many talk sections, the RFC, the POV Tags, and now a NPOV review underway in an overly protected article? Please don't distract from issues which you may chose to ignore. If you nobly see no dispute here, then seriously, it might be best to hold back from this article for while. I am finding it difficult to find what you intend to accomplish here. Respectfully, I am talking some time off now from this "pain in the NPOV article". Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 22:35, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I understand GoRights issue - it took some time and effort on my part to see where he was coming from. I don't fully agree with him, but he has a clear POV issue on the section of this article that explicitly talks about a "question that arises in popular discussion", and then limits information pertnant to the "popular discussion" to viewpoints captured in scientfic opinions. Per earlier, the issue of wheter or not there is consensus, is not a scientific question, but one of opinion. Nigelj, could you respond to this point?

On the other hand, most of ZP5's concerns are indeterminable, or applied dissruptively, or based on a lack on understanding of Wikipedia, or potentially, bad faith (not indended as a personal attack). More lately, Gavin's edits have been disruptive and directly contrary to the consensus position clearly outlined in recent (now archived) discussions started by him. He largely fails to address the questions and points put to him, and has not once (AFACIR) responded to the issue of GW being the parent article for this article, according to the lead text and content generally of those articles, but seems hung up on the fact that one name uses the same term as used for another article, despite the distinctly different application. ‒ Jaymax✍ 23:27, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I disagree that my edits have been disruptive. I have gone a long way to explain my views on this article, including asking you the question as to what third party evidence you have that the subject matter is Global Warming? You may be right at the end of the day, but this article needs significant coverage from a reliable third-party source to provide verifiable evidence one way or the other. Until a source is found, all this talk about whether this article is about Global Warming or not is just so much hot air. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 13:01, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

I apologise and retract. It was the recurrent 'CC or GW' issue frustrating me on top of everything else here the past few days. We are, I think, moving forward now. ‒ Jaymax✍ 13:46, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Jaymax, I'm trying to respond to your point. I note the slightly reverse wording, "he has a clear POV issue on the section of this article...", rather than 'he thinks the article has a POV issue in the section...' However, I cannot find 'the section of this article that explicitly talks about a "question that arises in popular discussion"' that he feels is limited. Is the perceived limitation that such a section does not exist? Either way, I have repeatedly discussed and explained that this (climate change) is a huge topic and that we cannot fit everything into one huge article. Therefore, the subject is split into dozens of sub-articles. This is one of those, and its purpose and scope are clearly explained both by the title and the hat-note. It is 88 KB long and so cannot get much longer without needing to be split again itself. Therefore, other points of view (e.g. unscientific opinions, individual opinions etc) and discussions of the political and social ramifications of these scientific opinions, need to be discussed in other articles. Which they are. I believe, when this article was titled, there were important scientific bodies that still disagreed with the consensus, and so the title made even more sense. They have now all withdrawn any contrarian statements. It would be more POV if the article were therefore renamed to "Scientific no-doubt-at-all about CC", so the current title stands, but the scope of the article still allows for the inclusion of any dissenting statement by a significant body, should such a one be issued. What it can't hold, for the simple sake of article size and scope, is a whole set of sections on all the other non-scientific, unscientific, anti-scientific, political, social, and public-perception issues related to CC, worldwide. --Nigelj (talk) 13:58, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Nigel, Section 5 starts "A question which frequently arises in popular discussion of climate change is ..." The issue (at least in part and in my understanding) is that the intro is utterly correct - it is a popular question, that is properly examined at Climate change consensus - By including Section 5 here, this article implies that it considers the 'popular question', but it does not do so in a balanced way, it presents 'one-sided' (heavily supported by the scientific establishment, obviously true to many of us, but still restricted) opinions on the question: 'is there a scientific consensus on climate change'. ‒ Jaymax✍ 14:25, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

NB: The proposed solution, that I believe GR is largely, if not entirely comfortable with, is to remove that short section from here - inserting additional sections is only the 'fall-back' if this article continues to discuss the popular question. ‒ Jaymax✍ 14:33, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, your quote stopped a little short. The section begins, "A question which frequently arises in popular discussion of climate change is whether there is a scientific consensus" (emphasis added here only). This specifically narrow question, closely related to the article title, is clearly answered. This is 'a' question, germane to this article, not 'the' 'popular' question. What are not covered, very explicitly, are all the other questions, viz, political consensus, popular consensus, commercial consensus, etc, etc. As I said, these can't all be covered in any one article, especially as the answers in each case will be different in different countries. The scope of this article is very clear. Articles that go into politics, effects, mitigation policies, prevention policies etc will have to be sub-divided regionally or nationally as the overall topic is too huge. This 'scientific opinion' article is probably the only aspect of this topic at this level that can be discussed worldwide in one article; the science was established, and is accepted by scientific bodies, worldwide. Politics and policies, public awareness and public opinion will vary widely between countries and continents and we cannot allow a US-centric dominance to develop either. --Nigelj (talk) 14:47, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Take a look, for example, at the excellent suggestion made by Itsmejudith near the bottom here. With new categories like that, I too think that the ground could be covered with due weight to every party concerned, in ways that do not leave the reader's head spinning, or rely on artificial distinctions in article titles (e.g GW vs CC). There is nothing artificial about this article's title, however - it does exactly what it says on the tin, and nothing more, as you would expect. --Nigelj (talk) 15:10, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

The problem is, although the scope of this article is very clear in your opinion, there is no reliable third-party source to provide evidence that the title of this article can be classed as a seperate article. All of the sources in this article are actually about climate change or global warming, in the just same way the sources cited in the Climate change or Global warming articles are too. If you are right, you will need to cite a source that provides evidence in support. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 15:25, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Can you find a single policy or guideline that says we have to find a "reliable third-party source to provide evidence that the title of this article can be classed as a seperate(sic) article"? This article exists as a sub-article to stop other articles becoming too long. What is required is that it is "consistent with usage in reliable English-language sources".(WP:TITLE) We combine two established terms here, Scientific opinion and climate change, then, for reasons of length (88 KB already don't forget) restrict that to "synthesis reports, scientific bodies of national or international standing, and surveys of opinion among climate scientists" using the hat-note. If we titled it "Opinions of Northumbrian stonemasons on climate change" and it was very short because there weren't any notable ones to discuss, you may have a point. The present title distinguishes this article from those on public opinion and political opinion on CC. As I say above, I don't think those articles can be written in one go and maintain a worldwide viewpoint, so I suggest a scheme for categorising and managing their continued growth in the corpus of WP. --Nigelj (talk) 15:48, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that the hat note is original research, so that making the distinction between the opinion's of scientists and other opinions of other commentators such as economists or politicians (such as Al Gore - remember him?) is purely arbitary. WP:V says that "If no reliable, third-party sources can be found for an article topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it." And so far, we don't have a reliable, third-party source that can be cited as evidence that the Scientific opinion on climate change is a distinct subject area from climate change. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 15:59, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

That sentence you have quoted out of context from WP:V is talking about "the burden of evidence [that] lies with the editor who adds or restores material" (my emphasis). It is not talking about the choice of a title. As in my stonemason example above: If, by choice of title and/or hat-note this article ended up with nothing in it that could be verified, then WP:V would come into play and the sentence you quote would apply. As it is (not surprisingly since climate change is an important branch of modern mainstream science) even with the restrictions placed by the title and hat-note, we have an 88 KB, fully sourced and fully verifiable article here. There is a lot more to say about climate change (public awareness, government policy, economics etc) but not much more than what we have can go into this article. If you find another synthesis report, or statement from a scientific body of national or international standing, then let's have it. But if you want to discuss public opinion, political debates, climate conferences etc, then there are separate articles for those. Some of them need a great deal of work and sorting out to make them clear, findable and logical, so there is lots to do; just not here, but there. --Nigelj (talk) 16:31, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

The sentence from WP:V has not been taken out of context, because it is refering to the article topic of which Scientific opinion on climate change is just one such topic. All of the sources in this article are indeed scientific opinions, but they are statements about climate change, not commentary, criticism or analyis about the emergence or development of the scientific opinion on the matter. The closest we have come to a reliable third-party source on this topic is cited above[34], but the hypotheses examined in the report are based on statistics from opinion polls/surveys taken from scientists themselves, not on an analysis of public pronouncements by institutions. The approach taken by this article is very different. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 17:48, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Surprised at POV tag

I apologise if I am failing to follow procedure in my comment (I'm a newbie). I found this article when searching for information regarding the standpoint of scientific bodies in regard to mankinds contribution to climate change.

I found the article to be useful and informative. I did not observe any undue bias, with a great number of references and quotes. I was surprised to find it being challenged as having a non-neutral point of view.

Even after reading all the discussion, I just could not find one valid challenge from those who are complaining. There was no mention of scientific bodies whose positions are not covered. The one from Poland was dealt with appropriately as being just a subcommittee. Even then I didn't feel that the statement quoted showed a dissenting point of view, just the need for further study. In any science there is always the need for further study.

I don't think this article is intended as scientific fact, merely as a summation of the position taken by scientific bodies on man's role in climate change. It does that well.

I do not think that all the consensus should be condensed into a single statement, as it is useful to see each body listed and a statement from them.

Again I apologise if I am out of line here, but to be quite blunt, the only complaint I see against this article is how abundantly clear it is that scientific opinion, as represented by internationally recognised scientific bodies, is largely supportive of the notion that climate change is happening and is very likely greatly influenced by human activity.

If I am wrong, then please, all you have to do is find an international scientific body that presents a different opinion, or to show that these quotes are out of context. And if you can do that then I'm sure your information will be duely included.

Xtempore (talk) 23:10, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Xtempore, I understand your comments. I only started researching these topics a couple of months ago and started looking at these talk pages about a week ago. I finally realized that the reason so many skeptics with agendas are making strange and incomprehensible (to me) attacks on this article (among others) is because they can't find a dissenting opinion. For skeptics with strong feelings, the fall-back plan seems to be to attack this well-resourced article with whatever tactics they can drum up. I've seen some reasonable recommendations to make the articles better by considering all sides though, so I'm also glad these aren't primarily opinion pieces - it would make Wikipedia irrelevant. Stay tuned to the talk pages and weigh in with your opinion for consensus on disputes such as those you've seen. Be objective and you'll be an asset as an editor.Airborne84 (talk) 07:47, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Factual Errors in the Oreskes 2004 section

{{editprotected}} The statements made by Naomi Oreskes have been in question since at least 2007. It has been proven that 929 articles come up on the search of "global climate change," while only 905 of those have abstracts. Thus, the claim of 928 abstracts cannot possibly be truthful. As well, the conclusions she came to, that of 75% of the "abstracts" supporting her alleged consensus, are also questionable, as more than half of the 905 abstracts fail to mention anthropogenic climate change at all. Based on that, it is questionable if one could consider those abstracts/articles as supporting a supposed consensus. In addition, her assertion that "Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position" is demonstrably false, as several of the abstracts explicitly reject the consensus view. This quote is included on this wiki page.

These claims are specifically addressed at http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/consensus_what_consensus_among_climate_scientists_the_debate_is_not_over/page-2.html. A full PDF of this is available at http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/monckton/consensus.pdf

At the very least, these facts should be pointed out on the page.

Aaronburro (talk) 23:51, 14 December 2009 (UTC)aaronburro

Some more balanced evaluation here: http://norvig.com/oreskes.html ‒ Jaymax✍ 00:39, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Also see http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2006/10/peiser_admits_he_was_97_wrong.php "And when we pressed him to provide the names of the articles, he eventually conceded - there was only one". Oreskes research seems to have been thouroughly scrutinised, and generally found to be strong. The criticism by Peiser has been effectively withdrawn. ‒ Jaymax✍ 00:45, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

I appreciate that. But, should it not be correctly noted that there are only 905 abstracts? Moreover, should it not be noted that over half of the articles fail to even mention anthropogenic climate change? Aaronburro (talk) 01:36, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

And where do you get the 905 and the "over half" from? If its from the SPPI documents, then these are certainly not reliable sources for this kind of information. (and neither is Peiser's self-published response - which he himself admits has serious errors). --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 01:52, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

She repeats the 928 abstracts statement in 2007 Oreskes#References. WP:BLP also applies. You will need much stronger evidence than Peiser's now-mostly-retracted study to allege that the 928 claim is incorrect - perhaps you can find where she has responded to the Peiser study (i haven't) and see if she acknowledges an error. ‒ Jaymax✍ 01:59, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

If I had access, and maybe I do, I don't know, I would re-do the search myself. Maybe someone else with such access can do the search and report back and put it to rest. I'd be interested in knowing either way. Aaronburro (talk) 02:10, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Even if someone did, that would be WP:OR and would have no bearing on the content of this article. I'm sure someone else in some WP:RS somewhere will have done it - unfortunately google search results are soaked in endless restatement of the flawed Peisner stuff. ‒ Jaymax✍ 02:52, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

→ This edit does not appear to have achieved consensus at this time. Please reactivate the template when there is agreement that this should be included. - 2/0 (cont.) 04:22, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Oh spaghetti, not the title AGAIN!

I've been thinking about one of User:Gavin.collins points, which I think was saying the Climate Change article derives from scientific opinions on climate change, and this article just lists scientific opinions on climate change, so why aren't they the same article.

The obvious conclusion, is that the opinions here are not about various specific areas of the science, as there (or rather, as at Global Warming) but that all these scientific opinions are addressing the same key question: Is recent climate change significantly human-driven, and implicity therefore (usually) is global warming 'real'.

What we list here, are Scientific opinions on human driven climate change or Scientific opinions on anthopogenic global warming Thoughts on the words and/or the premise? ‒ Jaymax✍ 01:37, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Jaymax, I realize that Wikipedia is not censored, but we do try to be civil. Please remember that some of the editors here are Pastafarians, and try not to use religiously loaded terms for sectionheadings. Hoping you take this in the spirit in which it is meant - KillerChihuahua^?!?Advice 01:43, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

I think this was discussed above, in the probe for renaming, but anyways here is my comment: It would be dumbing down things, and make strange very long titles. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 01:55, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

anthropogenic is dumbing down? ‒ Jaymax✍ 02:01, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

nb: I first wrote Scientific opinion on anthropogenic climate change, but figured if I was going to use that word, AGW was better. ‒ Jaymax✍ 02:04, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

I am curious. Why do people prefer (or do they?) "opinion" over "positions"? Are not the statements quoted on this page effectively position statements for each of the various organizations? Why shouldn't this article be titled "Scientific positions on climate change"? --GoRight (talk) 05:21, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Some quick googling of the two phrases should answer that question (exclude 'climate' to keep things neutral). Short answer: because that's the phrase in most common use for what we are trying to describe. ‒ Jaymax✍ 08:34, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

I am not sure either is a good idea, unless there is a reliable third-party source to support the title of this article. At the moment, I am doubtful that this article is little more than a content fork Climate change, because there is no reliable third-party source cited in it that proivdes evidence that this is a seperate standalone article topic. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 09:01, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Bait not taken. ‒ Jaymax✍ 09:19, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

As demonstrated in Sections 6, 7, and 9 of Talk:Scientific opinion on climate change/Archive 9) there is a lot of support for changing the title to Scientific opinion on global warming. The few people who objected to the name change mostly just said, "CC and GW are interchangeable" which really isn't a strong argument against it. Given that the article Climate change is about historic changes and the article Global warming is about current warming, and this article refers to the current warming, it makes prefect sense to change the title to SOoGW, just to make things perfectly clear to the average reader. Let's just do that and have done with it. There's far more substantive work that needs to be done. --CurtisSwain (talk) 10:11, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Do I detect a note of frustration? I can't imagine why: so much has been achieved over hte past week or so. If I move the article, it will be to Scientific opinion on anthropogenic global warming - but why don't you take the WP:BOLD step? (oh yeah, protection, how'd I not forget that). FWIW, an honest well done and thanks for all the work you put into this article during the less drama-dominated (ie: productive) periods. ‒ Jaymax✍ 10:56, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

What reliable third party source could be used to support the move? We just need some good sources to provide a knockout argument in favour, othewise you will be the subject accusations of POV pushing from opponents of such a change. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 11:04, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

{{editprotected}} Change title to Scientific opinion on global warming per above and Sections 6, 7, and 9 of Talk:Scientific opinion on climate change/Archive 9.--CurtisSwain (talk) 11:11, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Dear admin, even though I had eventually swayed slightly against this, I concur that the archive shows a consensus for move (editors being either supportive or essentially agnostic) ‒ Jaymax✍ —Preceding undated comment added 11:23, 15 December 2009 (UTC).

No. Don't change the name while it is protected (I could add more but it would just kick off another round of the same stuff we've already had; ask on my talk page if you really care) William M. Connolley (talk) 11:47, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, I'm an admin watching this page, but I don't make edits to protected pages unless the desired edit is unanimously supported, and/or its fixing an obvious error (missing period, for example, I don't wait to hear from everyone about.) Given that at least one person objects to this change, request declined. KillerChihuahua^?!?Advice 12:14, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, I'm a long-standing Pastafarian, and I too was surprised to see His Noodliness invoked in this way. I don't think the title should be changed, or the hat-note. They both describe clearly what this article is about. It's already border-line too-long and so discussion of other concepts needs to be split out, not merged in. Itsmejudith may be on to something here that will help give everything a categorisation and everyone a space to express their heartfelt needs, without getting noodly appendages into each other's stuff. Pesto be upon you all. --Nigelj (talk) 13:17, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that the hat note is original research, and the lead fails to define or describe the article's subject matter, even in the broadest terms. If there is a reliable third-party source to justify its existence, only then can it be shown not to be a content fork. One way or another, the hat jobby has to go. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 13:28, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

1RR

This is clearly not going to receive the unanimous support necessary for a gentlemen's agreement, and is now distracting from the more pressing issue building a quality encyclopedia. Please seek consensus and avoid edit warring per usual. - 2/0 (cont.) 19:57, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

The idea of agreeing to a one revert rule on this article has been bandied about a few times. I myself think that this could be a good idea, but the only chance it has of working lies in the voluntary agreement of all the major players. To be explicit: Proposal 1 Any editor who within any 24 hour period makes more than one full or partial revert of any text excepting obvious vandalism or blatant violation of the Biographies of living persons policy shall be considered to be engaged in edit warring. The likelihood of any of the currently involved editors making any edit falling under these exceptions is extremely small. Please be aware of WP:VAND, WP:BLP, and WP:3RR. Any editors becoming involved after this proposal takes force to be directed to this section. A consensus of involved editors may discontinue this remedy at any time. This remedy to lapse on 2010-01-16 at midnight server time, roughly one month after the current protection ends. Please discuss below. - 2/0 (cont.) 04:49, 15 December 2009 (UTC) Proposal 2 (added following some commentary) Any editor may make any change to the article that they reasonably think would attain consensus if discussed fully among the involved editors. Any editor may revert such a change or series of changes provided that they make explicit reference to a relevant talkpage discussion, starting one if necessary. Archived threads may be used to show prior consensus. Exceptions for vandalism and BLP and sunset provision as before. - 2/0 (cont.) 08:01, 15 December 2009 (UTC) Question: Let me make sure I understand how this works. Person 1 adds a NEW item X to the article. Person 2 removes item X from the article (which uses up person 2's 1 revert for that 24 hour period). Person 1 adds item X to the article before 24 hours have elapsed since he first added it. Is this a violation, or is this Person 1's 1 revert? I assume that this is person 1's 1 revert. Is this correct? If person 3 now comes along they can also remove item X and that is their 1 revert for 24 hours. If person 4 now comes along they can also restore item X and that is their 1 revert for 24 hours. Note that this is NOT what is described in WP:1RR which is why I am asking. Please clarify your meaning. --GoRight (talk) 05:05, 15 December 2009 (UTC) I am generally inclined to oppose because I don't think it will solve anything. 1 revert or 3 the balance of power (edit war wise) is identical. The side with the most editors wins. I guess it has the benefit that we get there in 1/3 the time/reverts. --GoRight (talk) 06:05, 15 December 2009 (UTC) (e/c) Comment: WP:3RR talks of three reverts by editor X in any 24 hours to any text in an article. ie: don't make four reverts, even if it is to edits by four different editors in four different sections. WP:1RR talks about never re-applying (re-reverting) a change made to one's own edit (without the 24hr restriction) I'm happy with 1RR on top of 3RR, providing that's what we mean - but it's different to the "more than one full or partial revert of any text within any 24 hour period" described above. ‒ Jaymax✍ 05:11, 15 December 2009 (UTC) Oppose - as soon as the protection comes down, the war will begin again, except it will be spread out over more editors. There are a certain core group of editors who work in coordination on the global warming pages in order to keep the status quo. Note, I am not implying explicit coordination, which would be bad faith. This is about effect, not intent, and the effect of 1RR will be more edit warring, and the state of the article will be decided by which has enough editors to enforce their POV. I suggest we keep it right the way it is now -- protected on the wrong version -- until this can go through DR. By protecting the page in its current state, both sides will be forced to discuss the issues here rather than playing silly numbers games on the 1RR restriction. ATren (talk) 05:25, 15 December 2009 (UTC) For this to work, I think we need to make it clear that "revert" is being used broadly. If it was there before, whether you added it or not, it's a revert. Whoever reinstates {{NPOV}} is reverting. Whoever removes it is reverting. Substituting one tag for an equivalent tag, or replacing it with sect-NPOV is still reverting. Vandalism must be defined narrowly. And whoever is managing the issue must be prepared to act. Guettarda (talk) 05:27, 15 December 2009 (UTC) GoRight - the parity is the same, you can do that under 3RR (not that anyone should, mind you). You raise another good point that I debated adding: I did not link WP:1RR precisely because it is different from this proposal. On the other hand, I try to follow it except when I forget. Following GoRight and Jaymax's comments, I have added a version as Proposal 2 above. I am not a lawyer, so please bear in mind Gaming the system. Guettarda - yes, I agree that the recency of the edit being reverted is irrelevant. If you think this might help, please feel free to improve the wording. Atren - the numbers game works the same in a normal editing environment. The point of this is to try to reduce some of the back-and-forth that clogs the edit history. Clearly what we have been doing has not been working. There are an RfC and a POV-check request active, and based on the number of variously veiled personal attacks bandied about here an RfC/U might be in order. I am quite generally not a fan of trying to establish special rules at article granularity, but there seems to be a relatively closed set of deadlocked editors here. Extended protection, {{editprotected}}, and DR remains an option. - 2/0 (cont.) 08:01, 15 December 2009 (UTC) support proposal one, reverts to be counted in the usual way as they are for 3RR. Note, however, that "proposal 2" way up above has 11/6 support (or 11/5, if you discount the obvious) which should be good enough to implement William M. Connolley (talk) 08:42, 15 December 2009 (UTC) But they were (presumably) supporting 1RR, as it's defined at WP:1RR, not that. I would support that, but inventing a 'new variant 1RR' seems unnecessary and will be very confusing for any new editors not involved in this discussion. ‒ Jaymax✍ 09:24, 15 December 2009 (UTC) Sorry if this lends needless confusion but.. : Proposal 3 Editors may freely revert only vandalism, blp concerns and edits failing to comply with the below. Changes to article must be presented and discussed on talkpage for least 12 hours before it can be considered added if consensus is behind such an addition. All editors weighing in must address arguments raised and any blanket Support or Per should not be considered as contributing to the discussion. In my view any proposal which reduces to number of editors rather than strength of arguments is unfortunate. The fact that a number of editors who have engaged in the edit warring and have not engaged in talk page discussion is doubly unfortunate. Unomi (talk) 12:02, 15 December 2009 (UTC) Just to clarify, do you mean this discussion, rather than talk page discussion generally? ‒ Jaymax✍ 12:51, 15 December 2009 (UTC) I was referring to talk page discussions regarding material for the article. Unomi (talk) 15:53, 15 December 2009 (UTC) Proposal 4 We forget about imposing all manner of confusing restrictions and simply stick with the rules we already have which are tried and true across the project. Support --GoRight (talk) 13:57, 15 December 2009 (UTC) The problem is that 3RR applies to each person. What is needed is a 3RR type rule that applies to the edit. That way, it would not matter how large the tag teams are. In my opinion, once something is reverted twice, the original text (or lack of text) should stand and all additional discussion should be on the talk page. Oh, and 24 hours is nonsense (it is ok for vandals, but not for real disagreements). Instead, the prohibition against adding the text should continue until consensus is reached OR until no one has contributed for 2days (3 days?, I am open to suggestions). Q Science (talk) 18:57, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Meta-discussion

It must be obvious by now that we're not going to get full buy-in to anything from everyone. The closest we have to consensus is "option 2" well above, now at 12-6 in favour. Nor are we going to have a focussed discussion on the talk page, without admin intervention - people are too ill-disciplined. There is an RFC still pending above - some of the "regulars" here haven't even bothered to respond William M. Connolley (talk) 20:04, 15 December 2009 (UTC)