Sharon

A Look Behind the Scenes in Climate Science Publishing: Patrick Brown Explains Why Our Wildfire-Related Sciences Are Left Out

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Patrick Brown of The Breakthrough Institute posted this today at The Free Press.  It’s about wildfires and climate, and also IMHO does a great job of explaining the climate science system and what gets published. Warning: this is an extraordinarily long post because I believe it’s paywalled. So

This may be surprising to some of you, but to others.. not so much. Here are some excerpts.. I bolded sentences that deal with the theme of “why are the usual sciences that deal with, say, forests or wildfire, often overlooked in climate papers (as is adaptation)?”

I am a climate scientist. And while climate change is an important factor affecting wildfires over many parts of the world, it isn’t close to the only factor that deserves our sole focus.

So why does the press focus so intently on climate change as the root cause? Perhaps for the same reasons I just did in an academic paper about wildfires in Nature, one of the world’s most prestigious journals: it fits a simple storyline that rewards the person telling it.

The paper I just published—“Climate warming increases extreme daily wildfire growth risk in California”—focuses exclusively on how climate change has affected extreme wildfire behavior. I knew not to try to quantify key aspects other than climate change in my research because it would dilute the story that prestigious journals like Nature and its rival, Science, want to tell.

This matters because it is critically important for scientists to be published in high-profile journals; in many ways, they are the gatekeepers for career success in academia. And the editors of these journals have made it abundantly clear, both by what they publish and what they reject, that they want climate papers that support certain preapproved narratives—even when those narratives come at the expense of broader knowledge for society.

To put it bluntly, climate science has become less about understanding the complexities of the world and more about serving as a kind of Cassandra, urgently warning the public about the dangers of climate change. However understandable this instinct may be, it distorts a great deal of climate science research, misinforms the public, and most importantly, makes practical solutions more difficult to achieve.

……………

Here’s how it works.

The first thing the astute climate researcher knows is that his or her work should support the mainstream narrative—namely, that the effects of climate change are both pervasive and catastrophic and that the primary way to deal with them is not by employing practical adaptation measures like stronger, more resilient infrastructure, better zoning and building codes, more air conditioning—or in the case of wildfires, better forest management or undergrounding power lines—but through policies like the Inflation Reduction Act, aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. 

So in my recent Nature paper, which I authored with seven others, I focused narrowly on the influence of climate change on extreme wildfire behavior. Make no mistake: that influence is very real. But there are also other factors that can be just as or more important, such as poor forest management and the increasing number of people who start wildfires either accidentally or purposely. (A startling fact: over 80 percent of wildfires in the US are ignited by humans.)

In my paper, we didn’t bother to study the influence of these other obviously relevant factors. Did I know that including them would make for a more realistic and useful analysis? I did. But I also knew that it would detract from the clean narrative centered on the negative impact of climate change and thus decrease the odds that the paper would pass muster with Nature’s editors and reviewers.

This type of framing, with the influence of climate change unrealistically considered in isolation, is the norm for high-profile research papers. For example, in another recent influential Nature paper, scientists calculated that the two largest climate change impacts on society are deaths related to extreme heat and damage to agriculture. However, the authors never mention that climate change is not the dominant driver for either one of these impacts: heat-related deaths have been declining, and crop yields have been increasing for decades despite climate change. To acknowledge this would imply that the world has succeeded in some areas despite climate change—which, the thinking goes, would undermine the motivation for emissions reductions.

This leads to a second unspoken rule in writing a successful climate paper. The authors should ignore—or at least downplay—practical actions that can counter the impact of climate change. If deaths due to extreme heat are decreasing and crop yields are increasing, then it stands to reason that we can overcome some major negative effects of climate change. Shouldn’t we then study how we have been able to achieve success so that we can facilitate more of it? Of course we should. But studying solutions rather than focusing on problems is simply not going to rouse the public—or the press. Besides, many mainstream climate scientists tend to view the whole prospect of, say, using technology to adapt to climate change as wrongheaded; addressing emissions is the right approach. So the savvy researcher knows to stay away from practical solutions.

Here’s a third trick: be sure to focus on metrics that will generate the most eye-popping numbers. Our paper, for instance, could have focused on a simple, intuitive metric like the number of additional acres that burned or the increase in intensity of wildfires because of climate change. Instead, we followed the common practice of looking at the change in risk of an extreme event—in our case, the increased risk of wildfires burning more than 10,000 acres in a single day.

This is a far less intuitive metric that is more difficult to translate into actionable information. So why is this more complicated and less useful kind of metric so common? Because it generally produces larger factors of increase than other calculations. To wit: you get bigger numbers that justify the importance of your work, its rightful place in Nature or Science, and widespread media coverage. *

Another way to get the kind of big numbers that will justify the importance of your research—and impress editors, reviewers, and the media—is to always assess the magnitude of climate change over centuries, even if that timescale is irrelevant to the impact you are studying.

For example, it is standard practice to assess impacts on society using the amount of climate change since the industrial revolution, but to ignore technological and societal changes over that time. This makes little sense from a practical standpoint since societal changes in population distribution, infrastructure, behavior, disaster preparedness, etc., have had far more influence on our sensitivity to weather extremes than climate change has since the 1800s. This can be seen, for example, in the precipitous decline in deaths from weather and climate disasters over the last century. Similarly, it is standard practice to calculate impacts for scary hypothetical future warming scenarios that strain credibility while ignoring potential changes in technology and resilience that would lessen the impact. Those scenarios always make for good headlines.

A much more useful analysis would focus on changes in climate from the recent past that living people have actually experienced and then forecasting the foreseeable future—the next several decades—while accounting for changes in technology and resilience. 

In the case of my recent Nature paper, this would mean considering the impact of climate change in conjunction with anticipated reforms to forest management practices over the next several decades. In fact, our current research indicates that these changes in forest management practices could completely negate the detrimental impacts of climate change on wildfires. 

Another way to get the kind of big numbers that will justify the importance of your research—and impress editors, reviewers, and the media—is to always assess the magnitude of climate change over centuries, even if that timescale is irrelevant to the impact you are studying.

* When I first saw Patrick’s paper on TwitX, I thought “why on earth did they pick that bizarre variable when we know total acres haven’t gone up?  I even wondered, skeptic that I am, if they had looked at a lot of other variables that didn’t work out for the Preferred Narrative.

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I think the article might be paywalled. So here’s more.  I think I’ve tried to say this in the past but much less articulately..

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For example, it is standard practice to assess impacts on society using the amount of climate change since the industrial revolution, but to ignore technological and societal changes over that time. This makes little sense from a practical standpoint since societal changes in population distribution, infrastructure, behavior, disaster preparedness, etc., have had far more influence on our sensitivity to weather extremes than climate change has since the 1800s. This can be seen, for example, in the precipitous decline in deaths from weather and climate disasters over the last century. Similarly, it is standard practice to calculate impacts for scary hypothetical future warming scenarios that strain credibility while ignoring potential changes in technology and resilience that would lessen the impact. Those scenarios always make for good headlines.

A much more useful analysis would focus on changes in climate from the recent past that living people have actually experienced and then forecasting the foreseeable future—the next several decades—while accounting for changes in technology and resilience.

In the case of my recent Nature paper, this would mean considering the impact of climate change in conjunction with anticipated reforms to forest management practices over the next several decades. In fact, our current research indicates that these changes in forest management practices could completely negate the detrimental impacts of climate change on wildfires.

This more practical kind of analysis is discouraged, however, because looking at changes in impacts over shorter time periods and including other relevant factors reduces the calculated magnitude of the impact of climate change, and thus it weakens the case for greenhouse gas emissions reductions.

You might be wondering at this point if I’m disowning my own paper. I’m not. On the contrary, I think it advances our understanding of climate change’s role in day-to-day wildfire behavior. It’s just that the process of customizing the research for an eminent journal caused it to be less useful than it could have been.

This means conducting the version of the research on wildfires that I believe adds much more practical value for real-world decisions: studying the impacts of climate change over relevant time frames and in the context of other important changes, like the number of fires started by people and the effects of forest management. The research may not generate the same clean story and desired headlines, but it will be more useful in devising climate change strategies.

But climate scientists shouldn’t have to exile themselves from academia to publish the most useful versions of their research. We need a culture change across academia and elite media that allows for a much broader conversation on societal resilience to climate.

The media, for instance, should stop accepting these papers at face value and do some digging on what’s been left out. The editors of the prominent journals need to expand beyond a narrow focus that pushes the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. And the researchers themselves need to start standing up to editors, or find other places to publish.

What really should matter isn’t citations for the journals, clicks for the media, or career status for the academics—but research that actually helps society.

Why would we do that? (Just joking, I am a proud graduate of land-grant institutions with that explicit mission).

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Here’s the beginning of the piece:

If you’ve been reading any news about wildfires this summer—from Canada to Europe to Maui—you will surely get the impression that they are mostly the result of climate change.

Here’s the AP: Climate change keeps making wildfires and smoke worse. Scientists call it the “new abnormal.”

And PBS NewsHour: Wildfires driven by climate change are on the rise—Spain must do more to prepare, experts say.

And The New York Times: How Climate Change Turned Lush Hawaii Into a Tinderbox.

And Bloomberg: Maui Fires Show Climate Change’s Ugly Reach.

I am a climate scientist. And while climate change is an important factor affecting wildfires over many parts of the world, it isn’t close to the only factor that deserves our sole focus.

So why does the press focus so intently on climate change as the root cause? Perhaps for the same reasons I just did in an academic paper about wildfires in Nature, one of the world’s most prestigious journals: it fits a simple storyline that rewards the person telling it.

The paper I just published—“Climate warming increases extreme daily wildfire growth risk in California”—focuses exclusively on how climate change has affected extreme wildfire behavior. I knew not to try to quantify key aspects other than climate change in my research because it would dilute the story that prestigious journals like Nature and its rival, Science, want to tell.

This matters because it is critically important for scientists to be published in high-profile journals; in many ways, they are the gatekeepers for career success in academia. And the editors of these journals have made it abundantly clear, both by what they publish and what they reject, that they want climate papers that support certain preapproved narratives—even when those narratives come at the expense of broader knowledge for society.

To put it bluntly, climate science has become less about understanding the complexities of the world and more about serving as a kind of Cassandra, urgently warning the public about the dangers of climate change. However understandable this instinct may be, it distorts a great deal of climate science research, misinforms the public, and most importantly, makes practical solutions more difficult to achieve.

Why is this happening?

It starts with the fact that a researcher’s career depends on his or her work being cited widely and perceived as important. This triggers the self-reinforcing feedback loops of name recognition, funding, quality applications from aspiring PhD students and postdocs, and of course, accolades.

But as the number of researchers has skyrocketed in recent years—there are close to six times more PhDs earned in the U.S. each year than there were in the early 1960s—it has become more difficult than ever to stand out from the crowd. So while there has always been a tremendous premium placed on publishing in journals like Nature and Science, it’s also become extraordinarily more competitive.

In theory, scientific research should prize curiosity, dispassionate objectivity, and a commitment to uncovering the truth. Surely those are the qualities that editors of scientific journals should value.

In reality, though, the biases of the editors (and the reviewers they call upon to evaluate submissions) exert a major influence on the collective output of entire fields. They select what gets published from a large pool of entries, and in doing so, they also shape how research is conducted more broadly. Savvy researchers tailor their studies to maximize the likelihood that their work is accepted. I know this because I am one of them.

Disclaimer: I’ve had convos with various folks at The Breakthrough Institute and will be moderating a panel at an upcoming conference of theirs, but have never spoken to Patrick.

Deeper Climate Change Discussions II. Who’s a Skeptic of What Exactly?

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Thanks to everyone who has participated in our first Deeper Climate discussion! It’s not too late.. if you want to weigh in with your own views on the Five Claims or the Ship or Flotilla of Climate, please do so.

It turns out that many of us here at TSW agree that greenhouse gases have something to do with climate change. And as Jon said, maybe what we disagree about is “what should we do about it, and how quickly?”.

At the same time, some of us are skeptical of the various burs that have attached themselves to the climate change socks (I really need a better analogy, suggestions?), and of the certainty that some people claim with regards to climate model outputs. So would someone skeptical of any of these be considered a “climate skeptic”? Do we even have a mutually agreed upon definition?

Here’s one study that tries to address that question specifically, from Britain in 2014 by Capstick and Pidgeon. It’s open-source.

This lack of clarity about what climate change scepticism actually is has important implications. This is not least because the concept is often used synonymously (and pejoratively) with ideas such as contrarianism and denial, as where Nerlich (2010, p. 419) refers to climate scepticism “in the sense of climate denialism or contrarianism”. With particular reference to Anderegg et al.’s (2010) study of expert credibility in climate science in which these labels are also used interchangeably, O’Neill and Boykoff (2010, p. E151) caution against the imprecise use of such terminology, arguing that:

Blanket labeling of heterogeneous views under… these headings has been shown to do little to further considerations of climate science and policy… Continued indiscriminate use of the terms will further polarize views on climate change, reduce media coverage to tit-for-tat finger-pointing, and do little to advance the unsteady relationship among climate science, society, and policy.

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That letter in PNAS O’Neill and Max Boykoff is also open source.

I agree that unclear language of a pejorative nature is probably not helpful to productive discourse. But I thought we already knew that? So if we follow that logic, people who use those terms might not really be interested in understanding others’ points of view, or maybe they don’t know about this not-helpfulness or have forgotten. We’ll have to ask next time we see this.

Anyway, Capstick and Pidgeon go on to say..

We contend that, to date, applications of the notion of scepticism have been inconsistent and have often mixed disparate types of perceptions – but that nevertheless their usage has corresponded thematically to two broad treatments. The first of these concerns perceptions about scientific and physical matters, such as regarding scientific consensus and an anthropogenic component to climate change. The second concerns perceptions about social and behavioural matters, including doubts about responding to climate change at the individual and collective scales, and concerning the communication and portrayal of climate change.

The authors suggest at the end in their “implications for public engagement with climate change” that:

To date, the majority of work focussing on communicating climate change has tended to be concerned with aspects of climate science. We suggest, however, that additional efforts are required to identify and engage with the doubts held by people concerning the relevance and effectiveness of measures taken to address climate change. Whilst a substantial literature has now developed around strategies for promoting behavioural responses to climate change (e.g. Swim et al., 2010, Whitmarsh et al., 2011) nevertheless this has tended not to directly address people’s fundamental misgivings about the value of such responses in themselves. To do so is complicated by the fact that a person cannot be said to be ‘wrong’ should they be sceptical in this way. Perhaps then, the most appropriate strategy may be to acknowledge the validity of such doubts, but in such a way that nevertheless permits the value of personal and societal action on climate change to be emphasised. This may be most likely to work where individual action is contextualised to common efforts (notwithstanding that this may be particularly challenging for those of an individualistic disposition). Connections made with the effectiveness of collective action (Koletsou and Mancy, 2012), including promotion of environmental citizenship (Wolf, 2011), participatory democracy (van den Hove, 2000) and decision-making at local scales (Rayner, 2010) may be some ways in which this could be achieved. Likewise, Van Zomeren et al. (2010) have shown that communicating strong group efficacy beliefs (conveying the message that people are able to collectively address climate change) can increase individuals’ pro-environmental behaviour intentions.
(my bold)

Who would have placed “wrong” and “skeptical” in the same group in the first place? As if one group has perfect knowledge. But science is messy, conditional and contested, let alone policy.

As for me, I would want to go deeper into what responses people are skeptical about and why. Let’s take an example. We had “bike to work” day at the Forest Service which was supposed to be good for climate (of course it was a bit of a show, and at our RO not particularly safe, involving inhaling car and truck fumes, bouncing over badly maintained roads, and insensitive drivers). It seemed performative rather than helpful. I suggested instead we start a calculus tutoring program for some of the poorer schools in our area to encourage more students to go into engineering- which will probably be the actual solution to decarbonization, in my view. So we have different views of the best way forward (and at the mega scale, nuclear, carbon capture, geothermal and so on). Who determines what gains the “climate skeptic” label from all these choices? Or are they doubts around responding at all- that nothing will work? If I think something will work and they don’t – do they not know about all the technologies? Do they have a negative view of human nature or politics?

It seems like we all may simply disagree about the best paths forward, as with any other policy question. And that’s OK because if believe in diversity, then the best ideas will come forward through discussion and challenge. Not fuzz and name-calling. But how relevant is the “best path forward” question to the “is this specific wildfire/wildfires in Canada/wildfires around the world made worse by climate change?”.

Judge sides with environmental groups in ‘Eastside Screens’ case

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I think this story by the Associated Press deserves an award for maximum number of using “Trump-era” in one piece..the headline, the first line,and paragraphs 7, 9 and 14 (the last is a quote).

“We’re looking to create landscapes that withstand and recover more quickly from wildfire, drought and other disturbances,” Ochoco National Forest supervisor Shane Jeffries told Oregon Public Broadcasting at the time. “We’re not looking to take every grand fir and white fir out of the forests.”

The lawsuit, however, said the government’s environmental assessment didn’t adequately address scientific uncertainty surrounding the effectiveness of thinning, especially large trees, for reducing fire risk. The groups said the thinning and logging of large trees can actually increase fire severity.
….

Rob Klavins, an advocate for Oregon Wild based in the state’s rural Wallowa County, said in a news release that he hopes the Forest Service will take this decision to heart and called on the Biden administration to stop defending the Trump-era rule change.

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Here’s a story from the Wallowa County Chieftain, originating with the Capital Press.

Oral arguments in the case were heard on May 1 in U.S. District Court in Pendleton, Ore. Magistrate Judge Andrew Hallman issued his findings and recommendations on Aug. 31, siding with the plaintiffs on three key claims.

First, Hallman agreed that the Forest Service violated the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to issue a full Environmental Impact Statement, or EIS, reviewing potential environmental impacts of the amendment and alternatives.

Second, the agency violated the National Forest Management Act by not holding an objection process after the decision was signed.

Finally, the Forest Service violated the Endangered Species Act by not consulting on how the amendment will impact endangered fish, Hallman ruled.

Hallman recommended the court vacate the Eastside Screens amendment and order the Forest Service to prepare an EIS. Those findings will be forwarded to District Judge Ann Aiken, and defendants will have until Sept. 14 to file objections.

…

Nick Smith, public affairs director for the AFRC, said the ruling is “just the latest example of how anti-forestry litigants are preventing the Forest Service from implementing proactive forest management projects that reduce the risks of severe wildfire.”

It seems odd to me that the FS wouldn’t have a required objection process and didn’t consult on fish. My sensors tell me there might be more to this story. Hopefully, someone knowledgeable will weigh in.

Also I would think that the list of notable forest scientists who sent the amicus curiae (right language?)letter would have dealt with the scientific controversies adequately. So I wonder if the Judge’s idea was that these scientific issues should have more air time in the EIS? Since it’s Labor Day weekend, I’d like to give a shout out to all those who worked on this and may be dealing with the miasma of “bring me a rock” hood.

Wolves on the Move into California: Three Stories and a Request for Information

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(Photo: Ashley Harrell/SFGATE)
More Wolves Return to California
Story in the San Fran Chron. I excerpted quite a bit because I thought the DNA tracing and migration patterns were interesting.

Four new packs of wolves have established themselves in California in the past five months, bringing the grand total to eight new wolf packs since 2015 — and counting.

The four packs, announced Wednesday by state wildlife officials, were documented in Tehama County in central Northern California, Lassen and Plumas counties in the northeastern part of the state, and Tulare County in the Central Valley southeast of Fresno.

The Tulare County sighting of an adult female and four offspring was the southernmost report of any wolf pack in California’s modern history, hundreds of miles from the usual spots wolves have settled.

The sightings, and especially the presence in Tulare County, suggest that California is becoming a more habitable environment for its endangered species of gray wolves, according to the Center for Biological Diversity.

“Holy smokes, what fantastic progress we’re witnessing in wolf recovery in California,” Amaroq Weiss, a senior wolf advocate at the center, said in a news release. “The homecoming of wolves to California is an epic story of a resilient species we once tried to wipe from the face of the Earth.”

Though the gray wolf is native to California, the animal was hunted to extinction in the 1920s, the Chronicle reported. It is now illegal to intentionally kill any wolves in the state.

Some ranchers and rural residents, however, remain uneasy over the wolves’ expanded range.

In May, the state Department of Fish and Wildlife announced it had expanded its Wolf-Livestock Compensation Pilot Program, through which ranchers can apply for compensation due to wolf attacks, or seek money for deploying nonlethal deterrents to keep wolves away from livestock.

In March, wildlife officials captured photographs of three wolves in Tehama County from a trail camera on private land. Little is known about the wolves’ origin or full number, according to the Department of Fish and Wildlife.

The Plumas County pack includes at least two adults and two pups. The breeding adults for that pair have been identified through DNA testing as partial siblings from a double litter in 2020.

The Lassen County pack has a minimum of two adults and an unknown number of pups. According to genetic analysis, the male is not from a known California or Oregon pack, but the female is an offspring from the Whaleback Pack’s 2021 litter. The Whaleback Pack is a group of wolves that has been seen in Siskiyou County.

DNA testing from the state Department of Fish and Wildlife suggested the Tulare County pack had contained at least five individuals not previously known to live in California, baffling wildlife experts who wondered how the wolves had managed to travel so far down the state.

The adult female is believed to have come from California from southwest Oregon’s Rogue Pack, while her male breeding pair originated from the Lassen Pack’s 2020 double litter.

Genetic testing also suggested that the female of the pair is a descendant of the first documented wolf to enter the state since the animals were hunted off in the 1920s.

That wolf, known to wildlife officials as OR7, migrated to the state from Oregon in 2011 and later returned, but is presumed dead, the Chronicle reported. OR7 traveled through seven northeastern counties in California before returning to his home state of Oregon, finding a mate, and building his Rogue Pack, according to officials from the Center for Biological Diversity.

Since then, several of his offspring have come to California and established new packs, including the breeding female of the new Tulare County pack and the original breeding male of the Lassen Pack, according to the Center for Biological Diversity.

LA Times, Wolves and.. Chad Hanson

The LA Times has this story.

In any case, gray wolves occupy a small part of their historic range. Scientists say a comprehensive recovery plan encouraging their return is crucial to returning ecological stability across thousands of square miles of still-wild habitat.

Among them was ecologist Chad Hanson, who, in an interview, said the wolf pack has become, of all things, the beneficiary of wildfires that jump-started new generations of nutritious grass and shrubs that attract deer they prey on.

“Higher ungulate abundance provides prey for wolves,” he said. “Logging reduces habitat for deer, adversely impacting endangered wolves.”

That kind of talk leaves some federal forest managers and timber industry advocates quietly seething.

One wonders whether the reporter might have asked federal forest managers and timber industry advocates.. if the reporter spoke with them I’d be curious as to what they had to say. “Hey, I’m seething” doesn’t sound much like any Forest Service public affairs response..

Another obvious question is openings created by logging reduce habitat, but openings created by fire increase habitat. I’d be interested in how that works.

In a recent letter, a group of environmentalists urged the U.S. Forest Service to suspend post-fire logging operations in the region until it can “determine whether any activities associated with those and other projects could adversely affect the wolves.”

That’s because the environmental reviews for the projects have not considered the impacts of hand crews with chainsaws, bulldozers and trucks on endangered gray wolves and wolf habitat.

Environmentalists say their presence is vital to restoring the rhythms of life among countless other animal and plant species that evolved with them.

The story didn’t mention exactly what groups, so I couldn’t find the letter. Perhaps someone from California has it?
“Restoring the rhythm of life?””countless plant and animal species that evolved with them.” I’m not so sure about plants evolving with wolves. Holism sounds great.. but as usual mention of Indigenous folks.. who’ve been around also adapting to the glaciers retreating with organisms presumably co-evolving with them, doesn’t show up in this formulation. Wikipedia had this as part of its entry on “balance of nature.”

Despite being discredited among ecologists, the theory is widely held to be true by the general public, conservationists and environmentalists,[5] with one author calling it an “enduring myth”.[8] Environmental and conservation organizations such as the WWF, Sierra Club and Canadian Wildlife Federation continue to promote the theory,[17][18][19] as do animal rights organizations such as PETA.[20

I like that the reporter characterized this as being a view of environmentalists, not scientists.

Ranchers and Wolves in Northern Cal Getting Along With the Aid of Technology

And here’s a great story about ranchers and wildlife folks working together that I found in the Red Bluff Daily News but was written by a reporter for SFGATE.

Since September, wolves in the Whaleback Pack have killed more than 20 cows and injured another half-dozen across Siskiyou County. It’s the highest concentration of attacks on livestock since wolves first returned to California in 2011. In fact, after 23 years of working with wolves across the United States, this is the first time Laudon can recall a single pack being linked to so many attacks.

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Most of the calves targeted by the Whaleback Pack have been residents of Table Rock Ranch, a large cattle operation set squarely within wolf country. The ranch has been using many kinds of deterrents, including a watchman hired to drive around the range at night. But without knowing when wolves were nearby, it was a little like shooting in the dark.

Now, most mornings local ranchers get a text message letting them know the general locations of the two collared wolves. “I was optimistic that it would be helpful, as far as making our deterrents more effective, and being at the right place at the right time,” Table Rock Ranch manager Janna Gliatto told SFGATE.

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But in Siskiyou County, “ranchers have been a model of patience,” Laudon said. California’s compensation program will soon begin compensating ranchers who implement deterrents. But that money has been a long time coming; Gliatto says she was promised reimbursement for the range rider months ago, but has yet to see a dime. Still, she’s hopeful that the new data from the collared wolves will help with another aspect of the program called “pay for presence,” where ranchers are reimbursed for the impacts of wolves simply being around, such as stress on the animals.

California Wildfire and Landscape Resilience Interagency Treatment Dashboard: 545K Acres Treated in 2022

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All: please continue to participate in the Climate Change discussion.. I’m hoping to continue that concurrently with our usual stuff and spend time listening and reflecting.

Anyway, back to the California Interagency Treatment Dashboard. There’s an E&E News story on this.  It is a very cool dashboard, but it’s a beta so I recommend that people interested in California play with it and give feedback to them. It wasn’t really transparent to me how to get acres treated for fuels without also getting planting, but clearly the reporter on this E&E News story did, so it’s possible.

California is still far from its goal of thinning vegetation to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire on 1 million acres a year by 2025, according to a new tally that Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration released Tuesday.
Just over 545,000 acres saw some kind of wildfire preparedness work in 2022, mostly mechanically cutting down brush and trees but also controlled fire and grazing, by the Forest Service, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, private timber companies, tribes, local governments, and nonprofits.
The numbers show that a sizable gap remains before California reaches its target of 1 million acres treated annually, despite the increases in funding touted by Newsom. The Democratic governor set the goal in 2020 to reduce damages and emissions from catastrophic wildfires.
“The only way we’re going to reach our target and reach it sustainably is to ramp up to do much bigger projects,” said Patrick Wright, the director of the administration’s Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force. “You’re starting to see that in most areas of the state, but it’s challenging.”
The numbers released Tuesday mark the first time California has aggregated and detailed its data on wildfire prevention efforts. They were spurred in part by a round of bad publicity the Newsom administration received for the way it counted its fuel reduction work in 2021.
The administration’s wildfire task force sought transparency to avoid more negative headlines, said Wright. Its dashboard breaks out data by activity type, like controlled fire or grazing; by organization; and by type of landscape, in addition to project acres. The goal, Wright said, is to provide more information to firefighting and wildfire preparedness agencies.
But it also provides insights not previously tallied, including that private timber companies account for nearly half of the entire footprint of wildfire prevention efforts in the state.
The task force’s dashboard shows that Cal Fire is the largest user of prescribed fire, at 33,000 acres in 2021.
And while Cal Fire has already met its part of the goal after steadily ramping up its use of prescribed fire, the Forest Service must still roughly quadruple its efforts by 2025 to reach its target.

Also, note that (some targeted) grazing counts as a fuel treatment.  It would be interesting to find out what qualifies, if someone wants to look into it.

Understanding Folks’ Views on a Changing Climate and Designing a Framework for More Productive Discussions

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Various folks on TSW have been having a discussion on their climate views, including what constitutes “denial.”  I’m not sure that the folks who write about climate (or AGW anthropogenic global warming or whatever) have parsed out all the complexities of different views that human beings have, and try to understand why we disagree.  Instead, some of our academics are more inclined to study how to convince us to think differently, as if it were simple to figure out what is the correct way to think on such an incredibly complex matter.

There is an extremely diverse range of views about different aspects of climate change and, for some reason, it seems like the Powers That Be that shape our discourse haven’t given us the words to discuss it.  Rather, it seems they prefer to lump us into large groups “warmists” “deniers” and so on.  So let’s work the other way, and assume we’re doing a survey of different knowledge claims around climate change.  We can jointly develop a landscape of views, and after we have done that, we can discuss our own experiences with the climate and climate science literature and use those stories to help understand each other.  Because it could be argued that raising the level of hype and calling each other names has not been effective in moving climate policy forward.

I’ve been following climate science and politics for around thirty years in various venues, so I think I can safely say that if we want to talk to each other across our disagreements, we need to do something differently.  To my mind that starts with developing our own terminology.. designed to clarify, not to disrespect, nor even dissuade.  Personally, I’m not trying to convert anyone to my point of view but I’d like to understand others’.  And we don’t have to argue evidence right now either (or ever, it seems like that ends up being a rabbit hole), we can just see where everyone is.

I’d like to start with our own abbreviation for this topic. How about CC for talking about “the issue around different concepts about the sources, intensity and impacts of human-caused changes to the climate and what are the best strategies, time-frames, adaptation and energy technologies to deal with those changes.”

So I’ll start with two approaches and then move on to some others.

The Five Claims: Where Do You Stand?

1. The climate is changing. (1)Strongly Agree, (2)Agree, (3)Neutral, (4)Disagree, (5)Strongly Disagree

2. Humans have never influenced the climate and aren’t influencing it now.  Strongly Agree, Agree, Neutral, Disagree, Strongly Disagree

3. Humans have influenced the climate in the past and are doing it today in many ways including greenhouse gases, land use, irrigation, wildfire suppression or not, smoke of various kinds. Strongly Agree, Agree, Neutral, Disagree, Strongly Disagree

4. Humans are influencing the climate and we need to focus on reducing greenhouse gases, notably carbon and methane. Strongly Agree, Agree, Neutral, Disagree, Strongly Disagree

5. Humans  are influencing the climate and if we don’t stop fossil fuels apocalyptic things will happen. This view is held by Antonia Guterres, the current Secretary-General of the United Nations and was stated in July of this year.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Thursday that it is not too late to “stop the worst” of the climate crisis, but only with “dramatic, immediate” action. “The era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived,

On the five claims, I’m a 1(1),2(5),3(1),4 (1.5),5 (5).  What are you?

To my mind, a climate change denier is a 1 4 or 5- that would be the plain English read.  But I (and others)  have been called deniers because we agree all the way up to 5.  In fact, some people have been called climate deniers for being anything other than a 5(1).  So the term “climate denier” has basically lost all meaning in my opinion.

The CC Ship Analogy

I haven’t decided yet whether this analogy works, so let me know what you think, or if you can think of another.

It seems like people on the CC Ship spend a fair amount of time determining who belongs on it.  If you spend time on Climate Twit-X, as I do, you’ll notice there are many discussions around Groups That Don’t Belong There.  One week everyone’s ganging up on nuclear, the next week carbon capture.  I imagine them trying to throw them overboard.  Ironically, the Ship itself is powered by diesel (because there are no alternatives), but the oil and gas people were thrown off a long time ago. Since funding, honors, professional standing, and an unruffleable sense of rectitude are the joys of being on the ship, most people who work for a living don’t want to be tossed off.

This leaves a bunch of us watching the Ship cruise along, watching people, ideas and groups that seem reasonable get thrown overboard.  In patterns that can be baffling. I have two problems with the Ship. The solutions to CC don’t seem rational and coherent or based on any kind of physical or engineering reality.

Some areas of science have more representation on the Ship than others, which don’t have to be tossed off the Ship because they are mostly ignored  as long as they give lip service to the dominance of the prevailing sciences. That’s where our traditional forest sciences are.

Is anyone steering this thing?  We don’t know.  And if there is, and one watches carefully the dynamics of who is on and who is off, many get the feeling that the Ship is not really about decarbonization at all.  As soon as the Ship gets closer to what we thought was the target (decarbonization) it seems to change direction. Or perhaps it originally was about decarbonization, but is now about prolonging the time the Ship continues to sail, rewarding the same folks and with the same folks in charge.

So I am both agnostic (I don’t know) and skeptical (dubious) about the nature of the Ship, its passengers, and the less-than-transparent decisions being made on the bridge. My skepticism is based on their behavior over the last 30 years that I’ve been watching.  Does that make me a “climate” skeptic, or a “Ship” skeptic?  But I’m generally skeptical, as a scientist was trained to be back in the day.  I’m pretty much skeptical of any claims that seem based on authority, be it religion or science, if those claims don’t agree with other information I have, including personal experience.

Doomberg on Substack had an interesting observation on language last week..maybe Doomie is oversensitive, but at least they are observing the ship.  Many of us are only aware of its vague outlines.

For decades, we were told that carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels were dooming the planet and that we needed to slow and then eventually eliminate the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere. Now, with industry on the cusp of validating carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technologies at commercial scale—an advance that would theoretically allow humanity to benefit from the life-nourishing energy fossil fuels provide while minimizing global emissions of CO2—environmentalists are throwing everything they have at stopping such developments in their tracks. As part of this coordinated effort, the word “emissions” is being purposely de-emphasized in Newspeak, replaced instead with “burning.” Read how YouTube currently contextualizes all videos on its platform that mention climate:

Funny, we thought emissions were the problem | YouTube

To discover that emissions emanating from the burning of fossil fuels is the real issue to be dealt with, one has to click through to “learn more,” something we presume precious few people do.

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Here’s an illustration of the “we know best so we can change the language”. The problem with this is that many of are sensitive to changes in language and manipulation thereby.  Not a way to build trust.

From  this piece on  Ideastream Public Media:

Changing climate language

The words we use to talk about climate change and its effects are essential to make sure we’re communicating the right message, Hassol said. But this also means we should choose our words carefully.

When discussing climate change, Hassol recommends referring to it as human-caused climate change to specify that the effects we’re seeing today are not natural, and instead brought on by human action.

“Some people hear climate change and they think, ‘oh, well then, the change we’re seeing now could be natural,’” she said. “But the science is very clear that this current warming is not natural.”

There are also a few phrases she’d recommend over global warming, which can be confusing and inaccurate when used in conversation.

“[The] problem with global warming is that it sounds nice to some people, right? Warmth is generally a positive thing.,” Hassol said. “Another problem is that it speaks mainly to rising temperatures, and it doesn’t invoke all the other things that come along with the rising temperatures: heavy rainfall that causes flooding, stronger, more destructive hurricanes [and] larger, more intense wildfires.”

Instead, Hassol recommends phrases like climate disruption, global heating and global weirding to cover all the bases of climate change and its effects.

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So what do you think? Where do you stand on the Five Claims? Do you think the claims should be expanded to different views on what to do about climate change? Does the Ship of Climate make sense to you?  I’m going to moderate this a little more intensively than usual as I think I know the common discussion rabbit holes after much time on Climate Twit-X.

WaPo Essay on Some Access and Population Growth Topics; Plus Colorado 14er and Recreation Use Law

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The summits of 14ers Mounts Democrat, Lincoln and Bross are on private property. Landowners have prohibited access to the peaks over liability concerns. A new QR code waiver program will allow hikers to summit Mounts Democrat and Lincoln. (Jason Blevins, The Colorado Sun)

Thanks to TSW readers who submitted this piece for discussion.  It’s an essay that touches on some of our usual topics.

MONTEZUMA COUNTY, Colo. — Hunters and backcountry enthusiasts celebrated in May when a federal district judge in Casper, Wyo., ruled in favor of four hunters, dismissing the civil case brought against them by a wealthy landowner from North Carolina.

The hunters had “corner crossed.” Like checker pieces on a game board, they had moved diagonally from one public land parcel to another. They didn’t touch the North Carolina financier’s 22,045-acre ranch land, everyone agreed, but he maintained that they had entered his airspace and therefore trespassed, to the tune of $7.75 million in damages.

For a moment, it seemed the little guy and advocates for public land access had won. But wait.

In Colorado, an angler lost a similar public/private battle in June when the state Supreme Court ruled in favor of the landowner. The Arkansas River might seem like a historic public way in Colorado, but when a river or stream flows through private land, the court ruled, wading by members of the public is not okay. Meanwhile, in New Mexico, it is okay. In Utah, it depends.

Across the West, courts are reflecting the struggles that residents and visitors face in trying to balance public trust and private land ownership. Some cast it as simple battles of rich vs. poor, or of locals vs. out-of-towners. But it’s not so simple.

As outdoor recreation increasingly fuels economies here and as landowners assert their rights, the clashes — not just in courts but also across streams, fence lines and dirt paths — will continue.

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This summer, the county’s newly created Outdoor Recreation Industry Office hosted public workshops to share their findings. Turns out, some 2 million visitors spend more than $100 million annually in our little corner of the West, according to RPI Consulting, the firm hired to do an economic assessment.

While real estate agents, backcountry outfitters and bike shops are celebrating, many of us here struggle to roll with the triple influx of transplants, second-home owners and visitors. Like the courts, when we consider the multifaceted impact of this population flow, we’re conflicted.

While newcomers are nothing new in the West, I feel for communities such as Gallatin County in Montana and Weld County in northern Colorado, whose populations have swelled more than 30 percent between 2010 and 2020, according to the Census Bureau.

My thought. Gallatin County is a different kettle of fish than Weld County, parts of which are expansion of the Colorado Front Range Megalopolis.  But maybe not.

I delved into the comments on the piece; there was some thinking that private landowners  are protected from liability by recreational access laws.  I think this reporting piece by Jason Blevins in the Colorado Sun gets at some details of real-world problems with existing recreational use law in Colorado. As usual, it’s more complicated than many seem to think.

The legislation was in response to a 2019 federal appeals court decision that awarded $7.3 million to a mountain biker who sued the federal government after crashing on a washed out trail at the Air Force Academy. That decision has pushed many landowners to close access, fearing the decision would lead to more lawsuits from injured visitors.

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The group is fine with the statute’s exceptions that do not protect landowners who display “gross negligence” or “malicious intent” with dangers on their property, said the coalition’s chairwoman, Anneliese Steel. The group is concerned that the decision in the Air Force Academy case could lead to a lack of protection for landowners who might be aware of hazards but a jury could find they failed to adequately warn visitors about those hazards.

“That is too low of a bar and it has led to a significant chilling effect among landowners that we are seeing right now with these closures,” Steel said. “It’s an unnecessary barrier to access. What’s going on at the Leadville 100, for example, is untenable.”

Trial lawyers who testified against the recreational statute reform legislation in March argued that a single award for an injured visitor in the 45-year history of the law shows that the statute is working. There has not been a surge of lawsuits from injured people suing landowners.

TGIF TSW News Round-up: More FOIA Frolics, Seed Orchards Return, as do Wolverines (maybe); and Pack Mules Never Left

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Fire Retardant FOIA Frolics Update:
FOIA Review at White House White House

Remember that I was curious about how the decision was made for the USG to not support a fire retardant bill that aimed to exempt fire retardant from CWA permitting. I had heard through a few grapevines that this was not the USDA position and they had been overruled.   I was wondering how these disagreements are hashed out in the Biden Admin, and so I FOIAd CEQ and USDA Office of the Secretary.

I’m still waiting on a part of the FOIA from CEQ; their FOIA folks are incredibly helpful, so a big shout-out to them, as well as USDA FOIA folks! Unfortunately, there’s apparently a relatively new White House review process that requires all FOIAs with messages with emails “who.eop.gov”  to be reviewed by the White House.. I guess this is the White House White House, not just CEQ,  OSTP, USTR ,NSC, OMB nor any of those other White House “Executive Office of the President” agencies. You can find all the EOP agencies  listed  here. From now on, I’ll just call the White House White House as in “who.eop.gov”  WH2.

It’s probably easier than calling them “Who”; could be confusing. As in “who’s on first” and so on. The good news is that one of our forest issues attracted the attention of someone in the WH2. Who? Why? What did they have to say? Time will tell, hopefully, when the review gets finished. Stay tuned. This review process seems to hold up transparency, which I think is a value of the Admin, so there’s that, or at least it was.

Biden plans to “bring transparency and truth back to the government to share the truth, even when it’s hard to hear,” she said.

I’m sympathetic, as saying you’re going to do things is easier than actually doing them.  I have the same problem.

Why NSC Was on Email Chain
According to sources, NSC is usually involved in Wildland Fire issues. According to these sources, USDA tried to involve NSC to get the debate at the CEQ.EOP vs. NSC.EOP level (more level footing), as opposed to CEQ.EOP vs. Department level. Seems like a good strategy for USDA, even if it didn’t work this time.  Perhaps the question was resolved at WH2. Thanks to FOIA, we should find out. And we should all thank TSW Contributor Andy Stahl for this opportunity to gain insight into the Department and EOP conflict resolution processes and the role of WH2.

Who Knew? Seed Orchards are Cool Again…

 

Just when you think everyone who knew about something is retired.. it becomes cool again.. reforestation, nurseries, and now at least one seed orchard! Since we are using them for good purposes now -as in climate adapation and carbon sequestration- reforestation is back to being white hat-ish at least.

Check out this video with Jad Daley of American Forests on a refurbished Gifford Pinchot NF seed orchard! As Jad says “let’s get to work on reforestation.” We finally have the bucks.

“Hey #Forests4Climate, coming live from this rehabilitated seed orchard on the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. Give a listen to hear the story, and how we can use REPLANT & other BIL/IRA funds to rebuild the #reforestation supply chain. ⁦”
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But…Pack Mules Never Go Out of Style
Thanks to the Hotshot Wakeup for this one.
The Deep Fire in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest has been using pack mules to shuttle supplies to firefighters punching in handline “deep” in the forest. Crews have made tremendous progress. Other incidents in California in remote areas are still chunking away. The Smith River Complex in the Six Rivers National Forest is now 57,200+ acres and the Happy Camp Complex is pushing 16,000 acres on the Klamath National Forest.
The mules seem surprising unconcerned about the fire; but then I’m more familiar with horses.  Let’s lift our Friday beverage glasses to the brave and helpful pack mule!
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Reintroducing Wolverines to Colorado
This Denver Post article is interesting on the “letting them come back on their own” vs. “reintroducing them” debate..

Natural wanderers

Colorado’s last wolverine lived here between 2009 and 2012 after traveling 585 miles over a few months from the northwest corner of Wyoming to the mountains west of Breckenridge, crossing two interstates, several mountains ranges and Wyoming’s vast and arid Red Desert.

M56 was the first wolverine seen in the state since 1919, but it didn’t stay put. It eventually wandered out of the state and was shot and killed on a ranch in North Dakota.

Data collected by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service shows that wolverines are moving back into some of their previous territories all on their own.

That’s why Colorado officials should wait for wolverines to reintroduce themselves instead of forcibly moving wolverines into the state, said Jeff Copeland, executive director of the Wolverine Foundation and a wildlife biologist who studied the species for more than 30 years.

Wolverines have moved back into all of the lower 48 states they previously occupied except Nevada, California and Colorado, Copeland said.

“Reintroduction is kind of happening on its own,” Copeland said. “The fact that we can see that and watch it is very exciting to me.”

Wolverines have been spotted recently in places where they hadn’t been for a century. In June, a young male was spotted three times in and near Yosemite National Park in California. Utah wildlife officials have confirmed several sightings.

The species’ rambling nature is what gives Copeland hope that a human-initiated reintroduction won’t be necessary in Colorado.

“It’s a very messy process,” he said. “It’s a last resort. It’s not the first choice because you’re going through a capture process, trying to capture these animals, transport them thousands of miles and then drop them off in completely new habitats and expecting them to live.”

Because wolverines do not live near each other, taking one or two will impact the ecosystem of that area, Copeland said.

But other advocates for the species said there is risk in waiting and hoping that wolverines reestablish themselves here. Even if a breeding pair make its way down south, more will have to follow to make sure there is enough genetic diversity, said Michael Robinson, senior conservation advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity.

“Colorado should do it on the principle that wolverines belong in Colorado,” Robinson said. “They’re part of the natural ecosystem and Colorado’s ecosystem can make a big difference.”

I also think it’s interesting how ideas about ecosystems and climate change are blended in this article.

“The governor continues to join so many Coloradans who share his enthusiasm for reintroducing the native wolverine, last spotted in 2009 in our state, to better restore ecological balance in wild Colorado areas,” Gov. Jared Polis’ spokesman, Conor Cahill,

So we need them to “restore ecological balance.”

Colorado’s high snowy mountains are the species’ largest unoccupied territory and will only become more important as a warming climate shrink the snowpack the wolverines need for dens.

“There is a real role for Colorado to play in conservation here,” Odell said. “Wolverines really need Colorado.”

So Colorado will be balanced (unless climate change gets worse) with wolverines, but Montana will be unbalanced if the wolverine habitat declines or goes away.  Does that mean once Montana enters the state of unbalance, it can or can’t get more unbalanced if other species exit or enter? Maybe balance is not a useful or meaningful concept in this context.

The most significant stressor on wolverines in the coming years will be climate change, according to an analysis by the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Wolverines create high-altitude dens in the snowy mountains in the winter and raise their kits there to keep them warm and protect them from predators. Wolverine mothers need deep snow that lasts long into the spring months.

That type of snow will become rare in the American West as the climate warms. Wolverines will lose an estimated 30% of their habitat in the lower 48 states in the next 30 years and 60% of their habitat here in the next 70, according to the National Wildlife Federation.

But will Colorado really be “balanced” just by getting wolverines back? Because that’s also said about wolves.. and grizzlies.  I think “wanting all species back everywhere they used to be” is a human idea but unlikely to happen due to climate change and a variety of other factors.  But ecosystems are not somehow “unbalanced” without them.. they are just.. different. 

 

 

 

 

 

CEQ NEPA World and Your Alternative Framings of Improving NEPA Processes

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I’m going to share my story of how I came into the NEPA business, because I think it’s relevant to why I look at it differently than many. It also tells the story of how much difference small interactions can make in the lives of individuals. When I worked in the WO (Washington Office) R&D (the Vegetation Management and Protection Research staff, known colloquially as “Vampire”), we were tasked with writing an answer to a journal article.. (perhaps the Beschta report?) that silviculture folks could use when writing NEPA documents. I remember Chief Gail stopping by our staff area and thanking us for being helpful. This made a big impression on me, as some research administration jobs involve laboring in obscurity and not being appreciated. But just the Chief making a point of thanking us planted a seed in my brain that there were jobs with higher degrees of practical outcomes and appreciation.

I had worked with an individual (I will call her JR) who encouraged me to apply for a job on the NEPA staff there in DC. She likely had the greatest impact of anyone in this whole story. I had probably the worst background of anyone, but the EMC Director at the time, Fred Norbury selected me. He said it was because he wanted a fresh set of eyes and that he thought my science background would be helpful. This was right around the time of Process Predicament- an effort to streamline decision-making and NEPA. I ended up being involved with many interesting things- CE development, the NEPA side of the 2005 Rule, the initiation of PALs, and the staff folks were terrific. So there are two points to this story, first that Chief Gail and JR made a great difference in my career just by encouragement at the right time and place. And second, Fred had to roll the dice with someone inexperienced. And of course, Fred and the Deputy, Pam, and the NEPA staff welcomed me with a generous spirit despite my background.

So if I see things differently than many, my background may be a reason.


CEQ NEPA World

One part of my job in NEPA was to attend inter-agency meetings with the NEPA reps from the agencies. There were certain themes I heard from CEQ. They basically were of the genre, “if you would just do things correctly, there wouldn’t be a problem.”

There were several elements to this.

1. Why do you write so much? We have guidance.
2. Why don’t you use more programmatics?
3. If you engaged with people more and did it correctly, then they wouldn’t litigate.

But that wasn’t what I saw or heard in the field. I saw a complex ecosystem of ID teams, NEPA practitioners, contractors, scientists writing a variety of papers, lawyers, case law and judges. It’s known that bullet-proofing documents (or at least attempting to do so) is a thing. OGC was always interested in being able to defend our decisions, and so that placed them at odds, to some extent, with CEQ’s views. And practitioners in the middle. In my previous work experience, I would have thought the CEQ question would be “how can we work with you agencies to make NEPA work better? let’s talk in depth” But the feeling seemed to be “things would be fine if you do what we say.”

When I worked in R2 in planning later, I attended a multi-agency NEPA meeting on analyzing climate in NEPA documents. Most of us said that the place to analyze carbon emissions from fossil fuels was at the power plant permitting level, not for each project. But again, the over-riding value seemed to be “more analysis is always better, unless you write too much and not in plain English.” For me coming from a rational kind of science background, I just didn’t get it, and still don’t. Writing complex documents with analyses that will stand up in court is really hard work. Or at lest that’s my observation.

Then there’s almost a religious belief in the value of programmatics, which again goes against the lived experience of many folks in agencies. The problem is that if it takes you two years to do a programmatic, then by the time you do an actual project the information can be outdated (or claimed to be by plaintiffs) and you end up redoing it anyway.

My World

In my world, on the other hand, people don’t want certain kinds of projects. We don’t know why really.. you can call them NIMBYs, say for renewable projects, but they might really care about the environment. Who knows? What we do know is that if they hire attorneys, then each process step that agencies engage in, and all the documents and emails and texts, will be scrutinized in great detail to find potential flaws.

I agree that the best public engagement should be a goal. Writing concise documents should be a goal. But at the end of the day, at least in the FS, people may still disagree because, say, they didn’t get everything they wanted (think NFMA planning) and have enough interest and resources to litigate. Judges decide that, for example, the Black Ram project analysts did not do enough climate analysis, or the poor folks at the BLM (home of many unpopular projects) did not analyze something “correctly”. All of this, to my mind, has a “both things are true” element.

1. There are poorer jobs and better jobs of analysis and documentation in terms of litigation-proofing
2. The judge (and DOJ representation) can ultimately be a crapshoot in terms of wins or losses

Does this remind you of the psychological experiment where sometimes the rat pressed the lever and got a treat and sometimes got a shock? You can do a really great job and have it thrown out for a redo based on random stuff. As OGC folks once told me.. “yes the Judge is wrong, but he is young, and if we point it out, he will have a bad taste in his mouth for the FS and he has a long career ahead of him.”

There is a trade-off between litigation-proofing, obviously, and having concise documents. There is a trade-off between full public engagement and Tribal consultation. and time limits for EIS’s. There is a kind of a no-frills strategy that might work. For example, I worked on one project that (some) readers of TSW and their allies really didn’t like. The FS tried not to go overboard on the analysis, and the judge said do more alternatives, then the alternatives weren’t fleshed out adequately and so on. I don’t remember how many times it went back and forth. I kind of like this strategy, but it does lengthen the time, and may actually tick off the judge after a while if it goes to the same judge. Plus it would tie up the courts, who might have better things to do than read about the climate analysis of a thinning project, or having a roomful of lawyers and the judge discuss whose air quality model is better.

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Permitting at least for renewables and transmission, is now a big thing. But I think we need to talk about framing the issue before we talk about solutions.

I’d like to hear how you all see your own NEPA World, and next post about the CEQ Proposed Regulations and elements therein that suggest CEQ World hasn’t changed much in the last 10-15 years or so. If you want to write a post instead of a comment, please send to me at the email in the donate widget on the right.

BLM Range Whistleblower and Potential Risks of Bundy-Phobia

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he Rio Grand River flows on Feb. 16, 2022, near Monte Vista. RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post

The Denver Post had an intriguing story  about a BLM whistleblower:

Melissa Shawcroft, who has been a BLM rangeland management specialist since 1992, is facing a two-week unpaid suspension after her supervisor disciplined her over discourteous emails and a failure to follow rules. Shawcroft is arguing that the discipline is retaliation for her insistence that the Bureau take action to stop area ranchers from trespassing by allowing their livestock to graze on BLM property without permits.

The illegal grazing has gone unchecked for years on the nearly 250,000 acres she manages and her pleas for enforcement, which must be authorized by her supervisors, have gone unheeded, she said. Shawcroft has documented damage to the land and riverbanks and has heard repeated complaints from ranchers who pay to use BLM land.

The way the above sentence is written it sounds as if illegal grazing has gone on on all 250K acres. This seems unlikely.

“I’m sick and tired of them telling me it’s my job to solve the problem when I don’t have the authority to do it,” Shawcroft told The Denver Post. “I jabbed at them and they fired back.”

The Bureau has the power to impound livestock or levy fines, but managers are timid because they fear another armed standoff similar to the ones led by the Bundy family in Oregon and Nevada, Shawcroft said. In 2014 in Nevada, Cliven Bundy, his family and an armed militia organized a standoff with federal agents who had come to round up the rancher’s cows that were illegally grazing on federal land.

“They come right out and tell me we don’t want another Bundy situation,” Shawcroft said.

Steven Hall, the BLM’s Rocky Mountain communications director, said the agency does not comment on personnel issues, but the agency takes unauthorized grazing seriously and is adopting measures to better enforce the rules, he said.

Under federal law, livestock may graze on Bureau of Land Management property when a rancher holds a permit authorizing the land use. Permits are passed down through families and rarely become available for purchase.

The permits determine how many cattle, sheep or horses a rancher can place on federal land and which months the animals are allowed to feed on it. Those rules protect the land from overgrazing and give grass, brush and water time to recover throughout the year.

Shawcroft manages rangeland along the Rio Grande River where property on the east side is private and cows and horses are crossing the river to the federally-owned Rio Grande Natural Area on the west side, she said.

If it’s true that BLM managers said that.. is Bundyism (fear of armed conflict) a real thing, or an excuse?  Reminds me a bit of the FS claiming escaped prescribed burns were due to climate change.  Bundys are a thing. Climate change is a thing.  But both things can also be used as excuses for not doing better.  When we read these things, we need to think about which is which.

Interestingly, the ones who are most irritated are .. other ranchers.. who apparently are not going All Bundy on the law-breakers.

Area ranchers who pay for the permits are complaining that law-breakers are ruining the land for their livestock. It’s such a problem that “chronic livestock trespass” was on the June agenda for the BLM’s Rocky Mountain Resource Advisory Council meeting.

At that meeting, Dario Archuleta, the acting field manager for the BLM’s San Luis Valley field office, said there is a “fine-tuned administrative process they believe will be vastly more effective than the criminal approach,” according to minutes from the meeting.

Archuleta told the meeting’s attendees that the process for impounding livestock is lengthy and complicated and that courts have been lenient on violators.

The BLM has assigned up to 14 employees to address unauthorized grazing through site visits that require a minimum five-hour time commitment, including travel, Hall told The Denver Post.

The agency also has implemented a new GIS tracking tool to collect data such as identifying livestock and the improved documentation has resulted this year in trespass notices being issued, Hall said.

Shawcroft is represented in her complaint by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a non-profit that works with public employees who want to point out government wrongdoing.

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The Bureau of Land Management named Shawcroft its range management specialist of the year in 2012 and she’s only had one other disciplinary action taken in her 31-year career, Jeff Ruch, PEER’s Pacific director said.

“She doesn’t mince words and apparently some of her male supervisors took offense,” Ruch said. “The idea that you’re being hit with a heavy sanction when you use words like ‘gumption’ in an email strikes me as an overreaction.”

Now, having been involved in a variety of different personnel difficulties, I am sympathetic to everyone involved, and especially the HR and Labor Relations who I’m sure are trying to sort things out. I wonder what the maleness of (some) supervisors has to do with it. Perhaps this is intended to imply that male employees can get away with more acerbic statements? Curious.

Here’s what PEER says:

On July 28, 2023, Melissa was served with a proposed 14-day suspension without pay for a series of four emails dating back to December 2022 in which she expressed consternation at BLM’s hands-off posture on grazing trespass. In one email, she questioned the agency’s lack of “gumption” and in another whether the agency would “live up to the task of taking care of our resources.” For those emails, she is charged with “discourteous” behavior.

IF this is all it is.. I would say I have read many snarkier emails in the FS about FS activities. On the other hand, when it comes to personnel issues, there are at least two sides to every story.

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