Talk:Economic analysis of climate change

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Text or other creative content from Economic opinion on climate change was copied or moved into Economics of global warming with this edit. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists.

Section sizes

Section size for Economic analysis of climate change (52 sections)
Section name	Byte count		Prose size (words)
Section name	Header	Total	Header	Total
(Top)	6,347	6,347	290	290
Purposes	6,585	6,585	175	175
Types of economic models	782	4,146	80	330
Process-based models	95	95	0	0
Structural models	27	1,947	0	115
Computable general equilibrium models	107	107	0	0
Aggregate cost-benefit models	1,813	1,813	115	115
Statistical (econometric) methods	1,322	1,322	135	135
Analytical frameworks	29	34,457	0	1,793
Cost–benefit analysis	10,612	11,586	414	499
Damage functions	974	974	85	85
Cost-effectiveness analysis	4,908	4,908	336	336
Scenario-based assessments	4,037	4,037	286	286
Risk management	8,107	13,897	354	672
Iterative risk management	4,431	4,431	212	212
Portfolio analysis	1,359	1,359	106	106
Costs of climate impacts	32	36,775	0	1,757
At the global level	16,008	18,954	748	881
High emissions scenarios	2,946	2,946	133	133
Underestimation of economic impacts	5,005	5,005	168	168
By region	2,008	2,008	180	180
By sector	1,635	6,485	53	333
Health and productivity	4,041	4,041	257	257
Agriculture	117	117	0	0
Industry	692	692	23	23
Impacts on living costs	2,842	2,842	73	73
Utility of aggregated assessment	1,449	1,449	122	122
Costs of mitigation	1,499	11,647	58	393
Global costs of mitigation	4,004	4,004	307	307
Regional costs of mitigation	1,780	1,780	15	15
Sharing of mitigation costs	4,364	4,364	13	13
Costs of adaptation	103	103	0	0
Challenges and debates	29	17,900	0	1,054
Efficiency and equity	8,638	8,638	597	597
Insurance and markets	2,503	2,503	193	193
Effects of economic growth and degrowth scenarios on emissions	6,730	6,730	264	264
Economics of climate change mitigation	4,623	45,497	91	2,326
Policies and approaches to reduce emissions	86	16,852	0	645
Price signals	3,270	3,270	194	194
Structural market reforms	2,384	2,384	232	232
Degrowth	11,112	11,112	219	219
Assessing costs and benefits	35	17,830	0	1,466
GDP	838	838	108	108
Baselines	1,336	1,336	179	179
Ancillary impacts	903	903	72	72
Flexibility	1,708	1,708	88	88
Discount rates	13,010	13,010	1,019	1,019
Economic barriers to addressing climate change mitigation	6,192	6,192	124	124
See also	442	442	0	0
References	30	6,389	0	0
Sources	6,359	6,359	0	0
External links	871	871	0	0
Total	171,159	171,159	8,118	8,118

This article was selected as the article for improvement on 15 September 2025 for a period of one week.

Summary of edits made Jan-April 2024 and possible further improvements

Latest comment: 10 months ago4 comments3 people in discussion

There was quite a lot of new text, updating to IPCC AR6 and restructuring of the article following its merger with economic impacts article

improved the lead to better reflect and balance content
improved, more comprehensive purposes section
types of economic models following IPCC + new section on statistical models
analytical frameworks is more balanced in describing methods other than CBA
Costs of impacts of climate change is better structured into global estimates, regional and sectoral.
the global section was improved with information on the 'what' and the 'how' of these estimates and updated with AR6 findings
new separate sections detailing the costs of adaptation and mitigation measures excerpting from those sub- articles
reorgansing text in section on challenges and debates, and updating some which go back quite a long way

Possible further improvements are :

regional and sectoral estimates of economic impacts - main sectors and affected regions, including links to relevant articles still needs work and updating from old sources
Risk management method - I think this should be more focussed on the - iterative risk management concept that is embedded in IPCC work
additional analytical frameworks/methods to be added could be Real options analysis, multi-criteria analysis
there is quite a big reliance on excerpts from other articles which is not ideal
very few studies of climate change are integrated into main articles covering the economic frameworks here eg CBA, CEA

Richarit (talk) 16:40, 6 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Hi Richarit, thanks a lot for this useful summary and your work on this article! Do you have time for any of the possible improvements that you listed here, or is that more for others? Regarding the number of excerpts, I agree with you that it was quite a high number (five). This prompted me to remove the excerpt on social cost of carbon.

How do you (and others) feel about the general article quality now, is it still a C class article, or has it gone up to B? (see here for an explanation of the grading system: WP:ASSESS). EMsmile (talk) 12:32, 13 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

The WP:Text-source integrity of the article is extremely poor, so it's more C than B. I'm also tackling issues with close paraphrasing (usually just individual sentences copied with few words changes).

One question is how to deal with the two sections on mitigation costs. Cost of mitigation and economics of mitigation. They don't overlap too much, but it's unclear from the headings what would be found under them. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 11:18, 4 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I agree with you that it's unclear to laypersons what would be the difference between the sections on cost of mitigation and economics of mitigation. I think this came about as the content under economics of mitigation used to be a stand-alone article and was merged into this one. EMsmile (talk) 21:39, 6 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Planned update

Latest comment: 10 months ago3 comments2 people in discussion

I plan to take this article up to B level, with a focus on climate damages. I do research in this field, so want to be open about potential biases and one conflict of interest:

I've published on postgrowth: , and am sympathetic to this minority point of view. I think it gets overemphasized however, so might condense relevant sections.
I've written critically about Cost-Benefit Analysis before (e.g. ). I might reduce the emphasis on CBA, while also reducing emphasis on the current alternatives specified such as CEA.
I work on the E3ME-FTT model. I don't plan to touch this text.

—Femke 🐦 (talk) 12:47, 4 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Great! Thank you. I once did a bit of work on this article (trying to work with content experts) but didn't get very far (as my experts abandoned me after an initial video call about this article...). It's got rather low pageviews but perhaps that's due to the article's poor quality, and the pageviews will go up once the quality is improved (and it's linked better from other articles). Thanks for tackling this article! EMsmile (talk) 21:41, 6 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

The low page views is why I don't plan to take it further than B-level. There's some general website design evidence that if you rewrite into plain English, you get more views, but I've not seen a change much in pageviews from improving WIkipedia articles myself. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 23:31, 6 October 2025 (UTC)Reply