[Wikimedia-l] Carbon footprints on Wikipedia.

[Geoff Beacon]

Thanks James

... but that isn't an answer about carbon footprints. Climate change may be controversial. I'm in the thick of that argument but carbon footprints are simpler and fit with other information on Wikipedia. e.g. [Global Warming Potential] and [Carbon Dioxide Equivalent]

[break] 

But now I've looked at those I'm very confused the "definition" of [Carbon Dioxide Equivalent] does not seem to be influenced by the lifetime of greenhouse gasses as opposed to [Global Warming Potential]. Perhaps I have been using a different concept of CO2e.

I've noticed that PAS2050 is referenced in [Carbon footprint]. There are a some serious criticisms that can be made of this. As I remember it 

-- ignores the radiative forcing index associated with air travel, 
-- uses the unrealistic conventional wisdom of a 100 year time scale for calculating carbon footprint 
-- assumes all wood product will be returned to carbon dioxide 
-- but allows cement to recapture some CO2 within their time-frame.

The consequences are to go easy on beef, air travel, cement, steel and penalise wood products. This would be inline with government political objectives and some commercial interests.

If I were to point these things out somewhere in the [Carbon footprint] piece would my entry be removed? I know of no academic work that has received funding to make these points so there is no peer reviewed literature. 

Could I quote PAS2050 as it isn't peer reviewed?

Best wishes

Geoff

----- Original message -----
From: James Salsman <jsalsman at gmail.com>
To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Carbon footprints on Wikipedia.
Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2013 17:37:49 +0800

> "The inherent complexity and controversy of carbon footprints".
> What do you mean by that?

Even those who fight for inclusion of the facts about climate change
on Wikipedia aren't very likely to follow the peer reviewed secondary
literature when it comes to reporting the extent of changes in extreme
weather.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Extreme_weather&action=history
has some good examples, with more going back years.

There's really no way to get Wikipedia to correctly reflect
controversial topics unless you are willing to invest the time it
takes to counter conflicted interest editing.

Good luck!


-- 
  Geoff Beacon
  geoffbeacon at sent.com