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Academic publishing
Science’s Sokal moment

It seems dangerously easy to get scientific nonsense published
Oct 5th 2013 |From the print edition

IN 1996 Alan Sokal, a physicist at New York University, submitted a paper to Social Text, a leading scholarly journal of postmodernist cultural studies. The journal’s peer reviewers, whose job it is to ensure that published research is up to snuff, gave it a resounding thumbs-up. But when the editors duly published the paper, Dr Sokal revealed that it had been liberally, and deliberately, “salted with nonsense”. The Sokal hoax, as it came to be known, demonstrated how easy it was for any old drivel to pass academic quality control in highbrow humanities journals, so long as it contained lots of fancy words and pandered to referees’ and editors’ ideological preconceptions. Hard scientists gloated. That could never happen in proper science, they sniffed. Or could it?

Alas, as a report in this week’s Science shows, the answer is yes, it could. John Bohannon, a biologist at Harvard with a side gig as a science journalist, wrote his own Sokalesque paper describing how a chemical extracted from lichen apparently slowed the growth of cancer cells. He then submitted the study, under a made-up name from a fictitious academic institution, to 304 peer-reviewed journals around the world.

Despite bursting with clangers in experimental design, analysis and interpretation of results, the study passed muster at 157 of them. Only 98 rejected it. (The remaining 49 had either not responded or had not reviewed the paper by the time Science went to press.) Just 36 came back with comments implying that they had cottoned on to the paper’s sundry deficiencies, though Dr Bohannon says that 16 of those eventually accepted it anyway.

The publications Dr Bohannon selected for his sting operation were all open-access journals. These make papers available free, and cover their costs by charging authors a fee (typically $1,000-2,000). Policymakers have been keen on such periodicals of late. Since taxpayers already sponsor most academic research, the thinking goes, providing free access to its fruits does not seem unreasonable. But critics of the open-access model have long warned that making authors rather than readers their client risks skewing publishers’ incentives towards tolerating shoddy science.

Dr Bohannon has shown that the risk is real. Researchers can take comfort that the most prestigious open-access journals, such as those published by the Public Library of Science, an American outfit, did not fall for the jape. But plenty of periodicals run by other prominent publishers, such as Elsevier, Wolters Kluwer and Sage, did. With the number of open-access papers forecast to grow from 194,000 in 2011 (out of a total of 1.7m publications) to 352,000 in 2015, the Bohannon hoax ought to focus editors’ minds—and policymakers’, too.

From the print edition: Science and technology

Native trout in full sunlight on a warm day in the headwaters of Blue River, Lane County, Oregon, August 24, 2013. Photograph by Aaron L. Zybach.

This post is generally specific to western Oregon salmonid (salmon and trout) populations in relation to current streamside vegetation buffer regulations. The “paradox” in the title refers to the fact that research work done by Mike Newton and others clearly indicate that Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) regulations intended to protect native fish populations are, in fact, counterproductive – that is, salmonids do much better in streams that have been clearcut with no buffering vegetation than they do in streams with partial buffering; which in turn do better than streams with full buffering.

The post follows a discussion that John Persell and I were having on this blog regarding the effects of streambank vegetation on fish:

https://forestpolicypub.com/2013/10/01/federal-forestlands-would-benefit-from-oregon-rules-op-ed-in-oregonian/comment-page-1/#comment-19634

I made the point that I thought fish preferred clearcuts and sunlight to streamside vegetation and shade because they are cold blooded animals and there is usually more food where greater photosynthesis is taking place. Also, that they had responded to millions of years of fluctuating temperature changes in the rivers and streams they inhabited, and that streamside buffers did not provide much lasting effect on potentially hazardous (to fish) stream temperatures. In support of my statements I referenced personal observations (“fishing”) and the work of Mike Newton, a long-time friend and nationally recognized forest ecologist at Oregon State University, regarding a paper he had written several years ago on that topic.

John responded to these assertions with some reasonable questions: “Over what period (time of day, point in spawning cycle, season of year) did Newton determine fish numbers and volume were higher in sunny clearcut areas? What was the size and depth of the stream? At what life stage were the fish? It seems there are a lot of factors to consider before determining fish like clearcuts better than uncut areas.”

John’s challenge caused me to confer directly with Mike in regards to his paper and his own thoughts. As fate would have it (to coin a phrase), Mike was just completing a major article on that very subject, Managing Riparian Forests and the Paradox of Streamside Regulations, for the SAF Journal of Forestry, and was also getting prepared to present his findings to both the regulatory Oregon Environmental Quality Commission (a sub-set of EPA) and to the Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF). These works included references to ten or so reports showing that fish prosper more in clearcuts than in buffered or uncut streams, beginning with Murphy and Hall in 1981.

Several references were listed in the materials Mike provided me (including Murphy and Hall), a selection of which I posted for John’s benefit in regards to his questions:

https://forestpolicypub.com/2013/10/01/federal-forestlands-would-benefit-from-oregon-rules-op-ed-in-oregonian/comment-page-1/#comment-19676

These linked references also serve for the few citations I have included in this post. I have also provided several PDF files from Mike and from my own records at the end of this post, for those interested in original source materials.

The importance of stream temperature to salmonids

One of the earliest studies of the relation between water temperatures and salmonid populations was by Geoffrey Greene in North Carolina in 1950, comparing the different temperatures and trout populations in two streams: one that ran through a forested area, and another exposed to full sun as it ran through farmland. He confirmed that the “maximum temperature limit” for rainbow and brown trout was about 80 degrees Fahrenheit.

The maximum year-long measures of the farm stream varied from 65- to 79 degrees F., while the forest stream never became more than 66 degrees: which Greene considered the “optimum temperature” for brook trout. Neither stream reached 80 degrees during the year. From these findings he concluded: “once-productive trout streams can be restored by the control of stream temperatures through good watershed management.” To achieve that objective he thought it important to manage “all aspects of a watershed as a unit,” rather than be managed “on a piecemeal basis.”

Greene also recognized that trout obtained almost all of their food from aquatic organisms, “which are believed to thrive more abundantly at higher temperatures.” He therefore advised that “the most satisfactory practices would be those that raised the feeder stream temperatures to the maximum productivity of the aquatic organisms, yet did not increase the downstream temperatures above the limit of tolerance” via “the careful manipulation of vegetation and other kinds of land use practices.” Many of Greene’s findings and edicts remain as the basis for managing salmonids and water temperatures in fish bearing streams to this time.

Of greater scientific significance, because of geographic range, technical sophistication of measures, and sheer volume of research over time, is the numerous papers and reports by J. R. Brett, beginning in 1952 and continuing into the 1990’s. Brett’s work regarded the relationship of temperature and food supply for salmonids, and forms the basis of much of Newton’s writing and planned testimony on this topic — as well as provide context for subsequent field research Mike has performed on this topic during the past 22 years, often in collaboration with his long-time research assistant, Elizabeth Cole. Brett’s research showed that the warmer the water, the more productive for well-fed fish up to about 64 degrees F., whereas at 68 degrees well-fed fish grow at 90 percent of the maximum rates observed at lower temperatures; thus confirming, with greater precision, Greene’s findings.

Current Oregon regulations

I was involved in forest management issues as a reforestation contractor when riparian vegetation first became a topic of general discussion and new regulations in the Pacific Northwest during the 1980s. Prior to then the USFS even used to have “stream cleaning” contracts, where contractors were charged with removing all evidence of logging and other management activities from streams – even leaves and small twigs! The work made little sense: twigs, leaves, limbs and trees would keep falling into the stream after the workers left, and were being washed downstream to the ocean in any instance. The first contract I ever did of that nature was also my last, about 15 stream miles from the ocean.

Around the same time efforts were being made to save remaining old-growth trees from being logged and large amounts of land were thus being set aside and put off limits to logging. Soon, hydrologists and fish biologists followed this lead and began championing similar set asides for riparian areas, claiming the trees and shrubs were needed to 1) help off-set erosion and 2) provide good habitat for fish. Regulations followed, and harvesting next to a stream bank was soon forbidden. The argument quickly became how wide unlogged stream “buffers” should be, and regulations began being revised and more riparian land began being removed from management operations.

The research of Newton and Cole and others examined whether buffers lead to acceptable regulatory standards for fish-bearing streams. These studies revealed that small differences within buffer rules can make the difference between meeting or not meeting desired standards. Thirty-two streams with full regulatory buffers were measured over time, but State of Oregon forests had somewhat wider buffers than the current rules required, as set forth in the Protection of Cold Water Standard criterion for the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ).

This triggered the question of whether wider buffers might be necessary. The DEQ study considered only buffer width on both sides of a stream, and water temperature, but did not consider other factors influencing the fishery; i.e., the very resource buffers were intended to protect, salmonids, did not factor into the findings – as a result, the several reports of general increase in fish productivity when clearcuts extended to the water’s edge (including those of Newton’s research) were not considered in the state-sponsored study of the use of buffers in meeting the regulatory criteria.

The history of disturbance

History tells us that fish have evolved and survived disturbances far more severe and widespread than clearcut logging, including: windstorms, catastrophic wildfires, volcanic eruptions, mass flooding, major landslides, etc. Such disturbances have almost always resulted in significant changes to streamside shading. Native fish have therefore survived and evolved with fluctuating stream temperatures — daily, seasonally, and occasionally. Their ability to swim to more favorable conditions during these changes should not be discounted.

As one result, the DEQ standard of 64 degrees F. for most of the salmonids and their habitats in Oregon fits neither the streams nor the fishery. The streams vary so much, and the environments in which they flow vary so much, that one standard cannot be made to adapt the fisheries that are acclimated to those streams. Neither the streams nor the fish are as homogenous as the standards; they never have been and they never can be.

Research Methods

The DEQ criterion for protecting the cold water standard is that no forest practice shall allow an increase in the 7-day mean temperature of water of 0.5 degrees F. or more downstream from a forestry operation, regardless of the natural temperature of the stream. This requirement eliminated any forestry operation intended to maintain the riparian forest — or to provide improved growth and health of affected fish. A technical problem is that existing temperature measuring equipment is only sensitive to plus or minus 0.32 degrees F., with a range of 0.64 degrees. Moreover, year-to-year variation in natural stream temperature is well over one degree. That means the only way to enforce this criterion is to require that there be no change at all in the riparian forest cover.

Germane to the above considerations is what, other than temperature, limits primary productivity of streams. Answer: short-wave light energy, and the photosynthetic process that supports the food chain. Newton and Cole’s research in the past 22 years has employed well over 100 thermistors registering summer-long stream temperatures along several streams. Their placements bracket clearcuts, partial buffers, and ODF’s Best Management Practices (BMP) streamside buffers. The instruments have recorded years before harvests and 5-17 years following harvests of several kinds.

Study streams range from eastern Douglas County to northern Lincoln County, all in western Oregon, in both the Coast and Cascade mountain ranges.  The work is part of the Oregon State University (OSU) Watershed Research Cooperative (WRC), an organization with several other large watersheds under close examination. Streams in the WRC study range from maximum summer temperatures of 50- to 68 degrees F. – all well within the desired range of temperature conditions for salmonids.

Newton and Cole’s research within the WRC involved four low to medium elevation streams with basins of 600 to 1000 acres each to determine how the arrangement and amount of streamside buffers in clearcut units influenced stream and air temperatures. Conditions included no-tree buffers, partial buffers 40-feet wide, and two-sided BMP buffers 50- to 100-feet wide. Impacts of clearcut logging on stream temperatures were determined based on time series analyses of post-harvest trends compared to pre-harvest trends.

Research Findings

Trends for daily maximums and means significantly increased after clearcutting in no-tree buffer units. Partial buffers led to slight (less than 4 degrees F.) or no increased warming. BMP units led to significantly increased warming, slight warming, or no increased warming, depending upon the stream. The effects of clearcutting and different buffers on daily minimum temperatures also varied by stream. Maximum temperature peaks were not maintained in downstream units; that is, elevated temperatures quickly returned to average stream temperatures within short distances.

Clearcutting led to increases in daily maximum and mean air temperatures above the stream for most buffer designs, with the greatest increases in the no-tree units. Changes to daily minimum air temperatures varied among buffer design and streams.  Although there were some inconsistencies in trends with different buffer designs among the streams, there were also some differences related to buffer implementation, changes in radiation, and stream features.

Brett (1956), Brett et al (1982), and Sullivan et al (2000) have all described tolerance of fish to elevated temperatures, the ability of fish to adapt with only 24 hours of adaptation time, and the very critical role of food availability with rising temperature. Viability of fish at temperatures 77 degrees F. and above depend on duration of exposure. The importance attached to stream temperature in regards to fish has been widely cited, but seldom with respect to the variability with which fish can respond within a range of responses.

The differences between units in fish biomass and other parameters were negligible before clearcutting in the spring of 2005, and all cut units increased in the three years following logging. Clearcuts with no buffers showed the largest positive response — but all cut units measured better than any unlogged units.

Peak temperatures above 64 degrees F. are necessary to achieve mean temperatures in the optimum range for salmonid metabolism.  The daily fluctuations of temperatures ranged from 2 degrees to 4 degrees F. in most forest streams within the study areas, with brief peaks and very productive means.

Stream reaches with some direct sun on them were the most productive for both the food chain and the fishery as long as they didn’t exceed 71 degrees F.  To this point, none of the study area streams have reached that level.

Temperature changes in logged units did not persist more than briefly downstream as water moved into other environments. Water temperature equilibrates rapidly with its local environment.  It naturally rises as it goes downhill, and remains very warm in interior valleys, gaining heat each day and losing it each night.

Why fish like light

Newton and Cole’s streams have compared buffer designs from no harvest to standard ODF buffers to residual-tree screens that shelter streams from the sun (one-sided buffer) between 9AM to 5 PM (daylight time), and units with no buffer other than scattered shrubs.  Brome Creek, a tributary to Hinkle Creek, the site of a major WRC basin-sized study in the western Cascades of Douglas County, demonstrated that full sunlight on the stream provided twice as much fish biomass as any other harvested unit, and all three harvested units produced more fish than any of the uncut units between harvested units.

Light clearly is responsible for fish growth. This was despite the complete clearcut units reaching maximum (but not mean) temperatures of 71 degrees F., and was frequently above 64 degrees.  The harvested units on Brome Creek ranged above 64 degrees before harvest.  Newton’s studies in several of these streams showed that the periphyton and macroinvertebrate abundance (“fish food”) was greatest where the most light reached the streams. On all streams peak temperatures were within the range defined by Brett et al (1982) in which fish growth was roughly 80-100 percent of growth observed at 62 degrees; the optimum.  This level of productivity is reached only when temperature exceeds about 57 degrees.  It is by no means a harmful temperature.

The argument against homogenized standards

Several factors weigh against a single set of criteria for all streams.  First, fish tolerate a wide range of temperatures.  Mortality of salmonids begins only when held above 75 degrees F. for an extended period of time. Above this temperature mortality becomes a function of the duration of time in which fish are subjected to warmer temperatures.

Brief excursions to such temperatures reduce feeding rate and raise respiration reversibly, leading to slow or even cessation of growth before mortality begins.  A single regulatory criterion (e.g., 64 degrees F,) does not capture the evidence that even though the constant temperature where growth is near or at maximum if well fed, 68 degrees F. is tolerated with only a 10 percent decrease in growth from the maximum; it is still a very favorable temperature.

Newton’s observations of highest stream productivity occurred when streams were fully exposed to sun, and when summer temperature peaks were well above the numeric criteria, revealing serious and costly flaws in the regulatory process.

The notion of requiring more shade when less shade equates to more biological productivity of streams represents a conflict between regulatory convenience (meeting a numerical criterion) and resource sensitivity (increasing fish biomass). Moreover, many streams are far too cold for optimum fish metabolism, and yet the Protecting Cold Water Standard prohibits operations that would provide both a more productive temperature range, but also improved food supplies.

Recommendations

Newton makes the following recommendations, based on his own research and the research of others:

1) The approach to stream quality should be one that first reflects that:

a) water quality in most Oregon commercial forest lands is excellent;

b) existing quality is protected by forest management that actively maintains streamside cover in direct proportion to stream temperatures; and

c) fisheries are not limited by temperature if good at the time of proposed harvest.

2) There should be flexibility in harvesting toward options that allow optimizing the harvest in order to improve fisheries productivity according to initial condition:

a) cold streams should be allowed (or even encouraged) to design harvests with no buffer; streams running 90-day mean averages of 59 degrees to 63 degrees before harvest should be allowed (or encouraged) to design a sun-sided partial buffer that would permit increased productivity in both fisheries and forest growth.

b) warmer streams should be allowed a sun-sided partial buffer plus a narrow screen of residual trees, which would increase forest and fisheries productivity with no appreciable change in temperature.

3) Such an approach is forest management friendly, fish friendly, and allows (or encourages) periodic entry into buffering forests in order to maintain optimum conditions — an activity not allowed by current rules.

References

https://forestpolicypub.com/2013/10/01/federal-forestlands-would-benefit-from-oregon-rules-op-ed-in-oregonian/comment-page-1/#comment-19676

Greene, Geoffrey E. 1950. “Land Use and Trout Streams,” Journal of Soil and Water Conservation, Vol. 5, No. 3: 125-126.

www.esipri.org/Library/Greene_1950.pdf

Newton, Michael 1996-2013. Select Publications and Brome Creek Presentation.

www.esipri.org/Library/Newton_Michael/

Seeds, Joshua 2011 Nonpoint Source Compliance With the Protecting Cold Water Criterion of the Temperature Standard. Protecting Cold Water Criterion Internal Management Directive, State of Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, Portland, Oregon: 12 pp.

www.esipri.org/Library/Seeds_2011.pdf

Zybach, Bob and George Ice 1997. “Revisiting the Botkin Salmon Study,” IN: Proceedings of the 1997 NCASI West Coast Regional Meeting, Special Report No. 97-13, National Council for Air and Stream Improvement (NCASI), Corvallis, Oregon: 276-321.

www.nwmapsco.com/ZybachB/Reports/1997_NCASI_Salmon/

From today’s Missoulian:

Montana lumber mills are bracing for an expected suspension of timber contracts on national forest lands Monday as part of the growing impacts from the federal government shutdown.

A Washington, D.C.-based agency spokesman confirmed Friday the agency plans to send out notifications that logging operations will be required to cease.

“Due to the federal funding lapse, early next week the U.S. Forest Service must notify 450 timber purchasers across the country that timber sales and stewardship contracts will be suspended,” said Forest Service communications director Leo Kay.

The agency plans to work with individual timber purchasers to suspend work in an orderly manner, he said.

“We regret the continued impact to the American public,” Kay said. “However, we must cease activities that require Forest Service oversight and management during the funding lapse.”

Kay said he was not able to provide details on how the suspension will occur, but several representatives from Montana mills said it appeared the agency would give loggers seven days to finish whatever work they could.

At this time of year, Montana mills are feverishly stockpiling enough logs to keep their operations running though the winter months and spring breakup.

“It would really hurt to have to shut down this time of year,” said RY Timber resource manager Ed Regan. “Most of the sales we have are up in the high country.”

Read the entire article here.

Earlier in the week the LA Times featured an oped from Dr. Chad Hanson. I will post the opening paragraph below, but you can read the entire piece on the LA Times website.  The bottom of the LA Times piece has this biographical and contact information: Chad Hanson is a forest and fire ecologist with the John Muir Project of Earth Island Institute. He is based in the San Bernardino mountains. http://www.johnmuirproject.org.

Once again, I’d like to respectfully request that if anyone has questions about the content of the oped please contact Dr. Hanson directly.

It was entirely predictable. Even before the ashes have cooled on the 257,000-acre Rim fire in and around Yosemite this year, the timber industry and its allies in Congress were using the fire as an excuse for suspending environmental laws and expanding logging operations on federal land.  (Continue reading….)

This is apparently the third in a sequence, following my last post on this topic: https://forestpolicypub.com/2013/09/27/osu-forestry-saving-our-planet-by-letting-us-forests-burn-and-rot/

It refers to an article that Guy Knudsen suggested to me during an earlier discussion on this blog that continued via email. That article, “Legal Implications of Forest Management Science in National Environmental Policy Act Analyses,” by Jerry Magee (2008), can be found here: http://www.esipri.org/Library/Magee_2008.pdf

This is the slightly edited version of an email I sent out yesterday evening to Mike Newton and a brief selection of representatives from Oregon Department of Forestry, Associated Oregon Loggers, Oregon Forest Industries Council, Oregon Senate, “Best Available Science” author Alan Moghissi, Environmental Sciences Independent Peer Review Institute (ESIPRI) and one or two others — nine in all:

The basic question is: “Why do the courts consistently disregard better science information when it is provided, and rule in favor of half-baked and outdated “best science available” instead? Especially when the “best science” is obviously biased?” The surprising answer is: “Because the law says they have to.” I had no idea this was the case until I read this article and discussed it with someone who really knew their stuff — an actual forest scientist-lawyer.

Here are some quotes from the attachment that summarize its contents:

From the Abstract: “Scientific analysis has primarily fallen within the “issues of fact” realm of disputes, where the courts grant substantial deference to the informed discretion of the responsible agencies.”

From the body: “As with any field, forest management research and studies may produce conflicting results, giving rise to scientific disagreement and uncertainty. These science-related issues, as well as concerns over the accuracy or credibility of agency-sponsored research and studies or the agency’s interpretation of those studies, have led to challenges to forest management decisions purporting to rely on current science or on understanding of forest ecosystem responses to management actions.” (p. 218)

“Even more on point with respect to NEPA and matters of scientific controversy are some earlier Ninth Circuit opinions, which “observe . . . that ‘NEPA does not require that we decide whether an [EIS] is based on the best scientific methodology available, nor does NEPA require us to resolve disagreements among various scientists as to methodology.’” (p. 219)

From the Conclusion: “Those challenging forest management decisions may view the subjects of these recent Ninth Circuit cases as particularly egregious examples of slipshod science falling short of congressional intent as interpreted through the accurate scientific analysis provisions of the CEQ regulations. But earlier deferential rulings concluded that “[w]hen specialists express conflicting views, an agency must have discretion to rely on the reasonable opinions of its own qualified experts even if, as an original matter, a court might find contrary views more persuasive.” (p. 227)
****************************

The public record is very clear — in legal actions involving the timber industry in Oregon and environmental organizations during the past 20 years, the timber industry has lost at nearly every turn, often being painted as greedy, antiquated, or even malicious in the process. This is despite the industry often having much better information and better arguments to bolster their positions that those provided by the environmentalists.

From my perspective, the problem seems to be that the courts are all but required to follow the edicts of government scientists rather than actual “best available science” as described by Dr. Alan Moghissi and others. If this perspective is correct, then this is probably a problem for Congress, and not the courts, where too much time and money has been spent to no apparent avail for more than two decades. It is exactly why ESIPRI was formed — to put science back into the hands of scientists (and maybe particularly scientists not funded by agencies), forest managers, and citizens and out of the courts, where it is being ignored or abused.

Other opinions?

Bob

As usual, if you want to comment, please go to Virtual Book Club here.

Bob did an excellent job of summarizing Chapter 2 here. However, instead of answering his questions, I would like to explore another idea that arises (albeit peripherally, perhaps) in Chapter 2. (This is OK in Virtual Book Club; you, too, can post a topic, just send your post to me or Bob). This book is full of post-worthy quotes, paragraphs, and digressions.

I was intrigued by this quote from Daphne Sheldrake in the Tsavo Story (on page 28 of the print edition).

“hasn’t man always had a regrettable tendency to manipulate the natural order of things to suit himself?”
“With amazing arrogance we presume omniscience and an understanding of the complexities of Nature, and with amazing impertinence we believe that we can better it.. We have forgotten that we, ourselves are just a part of nature, an animal which seems to have taken the wrong turning, bent on total destruction.”

There are a couple of ideas in this quote.. first there is the breast-beating misanthropic tone..and the use of “we”.. as I said in this essay..entitled “Breast Beating of Others is Neither Attractive Nor Particularly Useful.”

You mean people have hunted, fished, grown crops and livestock to feed and clothe themselves? So whassup with the negative tone of “manipulate the “natural order” of things to “suit himself”? Would the world be a better place if we all killed ourselves? There is something behind this that deserves deeper exploration. We hear the same language today, even, sometimes, on the NCFP blog.

The idea of bad humans using resources seems to be a fairly recent idea (Botkin mentions Marsh in the late 1800′s, which makes sense because there were notable negative impacts from people’s uses). “People can have a variety of impacts on the land and its creatures, and we should be careful not to have severe negative effects on the environment” (my framing) is different than “we are an animal bent on total destruction.”

Where does this “nature is best” philosophy lead us? To all killing ourselves for the good of Nature? Just to feel bad that we exist? Does this go back to deeper philosophical questions about the Nature of Humankind, fundamentally good or bad, that have traditionally been addressed by religions (on both sides of the argument)? Has the rise of this belief come about since the “death of religion” due to a fundamental need some humans have to feel bad about themselves (brain chemistry) or to tell other people they are bad (bossiness), normally expressed through preaching fire and brimstone, but in the post-religion era needing some other framework for expression?

Those of us who are involved in religions may feel that this drill is very familiar. “We” have sinned by existing and using resources. By appropriate self-mortification, like riding your bike to work, as determined by the Environmental Curia, you may atone for your sins.

One more thing I’d like to address.. how the word nature is used to determine what should be is as old as the hills. “Nature” tends to be an argument used when more rational arguments for what you want to do fail to convince others. Is this the case today?

And first, where I affirm the empire of a woman to be a thing repugnant to nature, I mean not only that God, by the order of his creation, has spoiled [deprived] woman of authority and dominion, but also that man has seen, proved, and pronounced just causes why it should be.

The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (1558, John Knox).

Just because they’re not at work today, through no fault of their own, doesn’t mean you can’t call or email them at home, or on Facebook or whatever, with a note telling them how much you appreciate their efforts. Because of the rancid nature of the current political discourse, some folks are posting negative things about them that they don’t deserve. Blaming the victim; always a bad strategy for change.

But you can add a little light to the Universe today.. just send a thank you to that special Fed who has made the world, or your world, a better place. This is the day. Now is the time. IMHO.