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In another discussion string, Gil DeHuff suggested posting this link from the July 2 Missoulian, by writer Kim Briggeman:

http://missoulian.com/news/local/wildfires-going-to-get-worse-says-writer-john-maclean/article_f6c7afa8-e2b3-11e2-9bce-001a4bcf887a.html

Key Maclean quote and text:

“The bigger picture is that these acts of nature have become more frequent and more violent, and it’s not going to stop,” he predicted. “It’s not going to get better. It’s going to get worse, and one of the reasons it’s going to get worse in the Northwest where we are is that there’s too goddamn much timber out there that ought to be cut or burned deliberately.”

Timber sale after timber sale, and prescribed burn after prescribed burn, are being stopped, he said. The woods are full of tinder. Couple that with longer and hotter fire seasons due to a variety of reasons, including climate change, beetle kill and drought and the outlook isn’t rosy.

Here is a recent press release, including requested Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) documentation, from the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD). I have to agree with Hartl where he quotes himself:

“The Fish and Wildlife Service’s actions demonstrate a near total lack of transparency and scientific integrity,” said Hartl. “If the Service had followed this same logic 20 years ago, there would be no wolves in Yellowstone National Park today — and no wolves roaming across the northern Rocky Mountains . . .”

I was unaware that all listing and delisting was legally required to be based on “the best available science,” as stated earlier in the release, but I agree with Hartl’s assessments of apparent agenda-based science driving USFWS policies. I also agree that if the USFWS had been transparent and openly political about the process of transplanting wolves into Yellowstone 20 years ago, they wouldn’t be there today. I’m on the side of the elk and local landowners on this one: contrary to Hartl’s concerns, I think that no wolves in those locations was mostly a good thing.

Here’s the Press Release:

For Immediate Release, June 27, 2013

Contact: Brett Hartl, (202) 817-8121

Endangered Species Act’s Science-based Mandate Sidestepped for Political Expediency

WASHINGTON— Documents obtained from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit show last month’s proposal to remove most federal protections for gray wolves was preordained three years ago in a series of meetings with state wildlife agencies.

Under the Endangered Species Act, decisions to list and delist species must be made solely on the basis of the best available science. In this case the newly obtained documents suggest the Service pushed ahead to delist wolves without scientific support in order to obtain a political outcome desired by state fish and game agencies.

Specifically, the documents show that the Fish and Wildlife Service constrained the possible geographic scope of wolf recovery based on perceptions of “what can the public tolerate” and “where should wolves exist” rather than where suitable habitat for wolves exists or what is scientifically necessary for recovery. The meetings left state agencies in a position to dictate the fate of gray wolves across most of the lower 48 states.

Documents Reveal State Officials, Not Scientists, Led Decision to Strip Endangered Species Wolf_FOIA_document_excerptsProtections From Wolves Across Country

“This process made a mockery of the spirit of the Endangered Species Act. These documents show that years ago the Fish and Wildlife Service effectively handed over the reins on wolf recovery to state fish and game agencies, many of which are openly hostile to wolves,” said Brett Hartl, endangered species policy director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “In order to ensure this politically contrived outcome, the Fish and Wildlife Service has spent the past three years cherry-picking scientific research that justifies the predetermined outcome that wolves don’t need protection anymore.”

In August 2010 officials from a select group of state fish and game agencies were invited to a week-long workshop at the Fish and Wildlife training center in West Virginia to effectively decide the future of gray wolf recovery in the United States. The decisions made at the meeting were largely adopted in the agency’s June 2013 proposal to end federal protections for gray wolves across most of the lower 48.

As part of this process, the Fish and Wildlife Service also excluded any consideration of further protection for wolves in Colorado and Utah for either gray wolves coming from the north or Mexican wolves coming from the south. This was based solely on the opposition of the two states’ wildlife agencies and despite extensive wolf habitat in the two states. The documents also show that Fish and Wildlife promised that the input of state wildlife agencies “with a cooperative management role” would be given greater weight in any future decision-making and that it would develop a wolf delisting rule to “implement [the] understanding” reached at the 2010 meeting.

“The Fish and Wildlife Service’s actions demonstrate a near total lack of transparency and scientific integrity,” said Hartl. “If the Service had followed this same logic 20 years ago, there would be no wolves in Yellowstone National Park today — and no wolves roaming across the northern Rocky Mountains. The Service needs to go back to the drawing board and let the scientific facts guide how to recover wolves across the millions of acres of suitable wolf habitat remaining in the western United States and the Northeast.”

The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 500,000 members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.

I’m pleased to announce that the homeowners and community of Cathedral Pines are the first recipients of the Reddy Squirrel “Forest Fires Happen, Be Ready” Award for Fire Pragmatism. As reported in the Denver Post, “El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa said the Cathedral Pines area was a textbook example of fire prevention.”

Colorado’s Black Fire destroyed a record 511 homes, but although the fire swept through the Cathedral Pines development, “I think they lost one or two homes, but the fire stayed on the ground there,” Maketa said. “The reason the firefighters were able to take a stand was because these homeowners had mitigated their properties,” Maketa said.

click photo to enlarge

EarthSky, with which NPR listeners are familiar, discusses this NASA Terra satellite image taken a few days after the Black Fire, which shows the lower fire severity within Cathedral Pines. And here’s a cool site of aerial photos from the Black Fire. Note the lack of damage in this photo compared to this.

Congratulations, Cathedral Pines!

No one has been suing over the northern spotted owl longer than has timber industry attorney Mark Rutzick. And no one has been on the losing side of those cases more often. So, it must come as no small relief, if not vindication, that Mark won an owl case yesterday. And a pretty big one, at that.

The case involves two distinct and separate claims. The first concerns the meaning of the venerable O&C Act of 1937. The O&C Act has long been viewed by BLM and Oregon counties wedded to its generous timber receipt sharing as a timber-first law. But the 1973 passage of the Endangered Species Act, followed by its application to O&C lands with the 1990 listing of the northern spotted owl, expanded the O&C lands mandate to include wildlife conservation. That change came at the expense of logging levels.

Rutzick sought to enforce a provision of the O&C Act that had never been litigated:

That timber from said lands in an amount not less than one-half billion feet board measure, or not less than the annual sustained yield capacity when the same has been determined and declared, shall be sold annually, or so much thereof as can be sold at reasonable prices on a normal market.

Judge Leon had little trouble concluding that: 1) BLM’s Roseburg and Medford districts had been falling short of selling their declared allowable sale quantities, and, 2) that “shall” means “shall.” My crystal ball (yes, it’s still working albeit seen through aging eyes) predicts that BLM will respond by setting less ambitious ASQs in its up-coming resource management plans.

The other claim may also yield unintended consequences for Mark’s clients. In an argument that made my eyes glaze over when I first read his briefs, Rutzick convinced the court that the Fish and Wildlife Service’s in-house computer-based methodology used to calculate the number of owls “taken” by logging is a federal rule that warrants a notice-and-comment rulemaking process. My favorite part of the judge’s strained ruling is this quote:

a document that does not purport to bind an agency – and even one that expressly purports to be non-binding – can be considered binding nonetheless if the agency applies the document in a way that indicates it is binding.

Got that, everyone?

Judge Leon set aside the methodology and prohibited its use by FWS unless and until formal rulemaking is completed.

So where does that leave the current shelf stock of FWS’s biological opinions that relied upon this method to issue incidental take permits for logging? On the cutting room floor, that’s where.

Maybe Mark just can’t win for losing.

Tomorrow’s Massachusetts senate vote to replace John Kerry is a ho-hum affair, with Rep. Ed Markey (D) predicted to win a double-digit victory over political new-comer and former Navy SEAL Gabriel Gomez. It’s the downstream effect of Markey’s win that’s more perplexing to watch.

In a show of group-think that few but environmentalists could engineer, 178 organizations have written Nancy Pelosi to endorse Arizona Democrat Raul Grijalva for ranking minority member of the House Natural Resources Committee, a position Markey now holds and, of course, would have to give up when he moves to the Senate.

The enviro letter mimics an earlier campaign that asked President Obama to appoint Grijalva as Secretary of Interior; a campaign that began before then-incumbent Ken Salazar had even announced his departure. Obama passed over Grijalva, choosing REI CEO Sally Jewell for the post.

For any who thought the Grijalva-for-Interior initiative was a longshot (e.g., I), consider the odds against his promotion to ranking minority member. Standing prominently in the way is Oregon congressman Peter DeFazio, who as the second-ranking Democrat currently on the committee has the inside track to succeed Markey. Mr. Grijalva, by contrast, is currently the committee’s 6th-ranking Democrat.

Belying its title, seniority is not everything when it comes to choosing the ranking minority member. But, it counts for a lot. The Democratic Policy and Steering Committee makes the decision, which is based on such things as merit, length of service on the committee, seniority, commitment to the party’s agenda, and diversity. Mr. DeFazio serves on the Policy and Steering committee; Mr. Grijalva does not.

Grijalva’s bid is the longest of long shots. In no other House committee is the ranking minority member as relatively junior a member as is Grijalva.

In a House controlled by Republicans, environmental groups count few friends in leadership positions. Pissing off one of the most senior Democrats in a naive, shoot-the-moon tactic ensures even fewer.

Yours truly testifying about recreation fees together with long-time friend and Cato scholar Randal O’Toole

This week a House natural resources subcommittee heard testimony regarding the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act (FLREA). FLREA, which became law in 2004, will expire in 2014 unless reauthorized, leaving federal land management agencies without legal authority to charge recreation fees.

My crystal ball predicts that Congress will reauthorize FLREA before it expires, but limit fee authority to highly developed sites only (e.g., campgrounds, RV hook-ups) and national parks entry.  I don’t expect the Forest Service’s and BLM’s existing “standard amenity fee” authority to survive congressional scrutiny. The agencies’ experiment with dispersed recreation fees began in 1996 with “fee demo” and has proven controversial, especially with local, rural residents accustomed to casual recreation access to their federal land backyards.  In 2012, the Ninth Circuit court took the Forest Service to the woodshed for abusing FLREA’s dispersed recreation fee authorities.

By Dr. Bob Zybach, PhD
Program Manager, www.ORWW.org
June 19, 2013

[Note: This is the text version of an illustrated article written for the current July 3rd issue of Oregon Fish & Wildlife Journal.]

Spotted owls have now been in the news for more than 40 years; were listed as an endangered species via the Endangered Species Act in 1990; have been actively managed since 1992 by classification of millions of acres of federal forestlands in Washington, Oregon, and California as “critical habitat” — and have still declined in population at an estimated rate of 2-3% a year ever since.

No one will argue that these results are based on political decisions that have had unexpected and wide-ranging cultural, biological, economical and aesthetic repercussions; particularly in the Pacific Northwest. Some have even referred to these circumstances as a “major social experiment.” According to federal legislation and much of the popular press, spotted owl legislative decisions have been based on the “Best Available Science,” the “newest” scientific information, and “scientific consensus.”

But were they really? And even if true, was all of this “newest science” used to make wise or thoughtful legislative decisions? Efforts to stabilize or increase spotted owls numbers have cost American taxpayers tens of billions of dollars, been partly responsible for unprecedented numbers of catastrophic wildfires, caused the loss of tens of thousands tax-producing jobs for western US families, created economic hardships for hundreds of rural counties, towns, and industries, and indirectly resulted in the deaths of millions of native plants and animals.

Was that part of the plan? Should we continue down the same path to “recovery” that has resulted from these decisions? My personal concern is not the politics involved in making such decisions – that’s what politics are for. My concern is that the scientific process is being misused and degraded via such politics, thereby reducing public faith in the credibility and capability of science in general and scientists in particular. Also, I think the public should be directly involved in such decision-making processes and not continue to leave it up to university and agency committees and the courts. Lawyers on both sides of the table get paid in these disputes, and so do politicians and government scientists; it is just the loggers, truck drivers, sawmill workers, foresters, engineers, tree planters, and construction workers — and their families and communities — that are left with the consequences.

The American public has been told that the scientific information used to drive spotted owl political decisions has been “peer reviewed,” often with the declaration that it is the latest and best information available for making such decisions (and thus leaving “science” and scientists as scapegoats when things don’t work out; i.e., “politics”). The quality of peer reviewed science, however, depends on the chosen method of review, the qualifications of reviewers, and the review criteria – which are typically expressed as a series of questions.

The US agencies in charge of managing public resources have not been forthcoming about the scientific information and quality of peer reviews used to drive their policies and decisions. There is no logical reason the American public has been excluded from this process, nor is there any logical reason to continue such exclusion. The following five questions are intended to begin a more transparent and scientifically credible review of the “science-based” management decisions involving spotted owls. These criteria are just as valid for public discussion as they are for scientific review, and I believe should become part of the public debate on these animals.

1. Are Spotted Owls Even a Species?

This is a trickier question than you might suspect. When I was a kid in public schools I was taught that animals that could biologically breed and produce viable offspring were considered the same species. A few anomalies such as lions, tigers, horses, and burros usually stretched the limits of these discussions; otherwise, viable offspring was the rule. The generation of Americans who taught this basic approach to biological taxonomy were members of the same generation that passed the Endangered Species Act in 1973, as spotted owls were first being introduced to the general public. What was the principal intent of this legislation? More importantly, how were they defining “species?”

The most common owl in North America is called the “hoot owl,” or “barred owl.” It looks and sounds almost exactly like a spotted owl, occupies the same range, and has successfully bred and produced viable young with spotted owls. Are spotted owls therefore, just the western-most cousins of the brown-eyed hoot owl family? Or did some committee of nameless scientists give them separate Latin names that somehow transformed them into separate species?

And if they really are the same species, shouldn’t this whole “critical habitat” operation be shut down ASAP and the people who assembled it be held accountable?

The analogy I have been using for several years is probably not politically correct, but makes this key point in terms most audiences can relate to: ‘there are far greater variations in physiology, vocalizations, coloration, preferred habitats, diet, and appearance between a Pygmy and a Swede than between a barred owl and a spotted owl.’ Sometimes some people seem uncomfortable by this comparison, so potatoes, red and yellow roses or German shepherds and French poodles can be substituted as discussion points if the audience is more familiar with those species.

The point is, humans have mastered selective breeding and domestication of many species of plants and animals – and now we are trying to do the same thing with a particular group of wild owls. The public, at least, should know what it is spending such enormous sums of money on – and if it’s only to breed a particular variety of common hoot owl, shouldn’t that information be known and perhaps reconsidered?

2. What is so “Critical” About “Habitat”?

In 1992 the federal government designated several million acres of Pacific Northwest forests as “critical habitat” for spotted owls, thereby fundamentally changing the management methods and focus of our public forests. These lands were no longer managed by the US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management foresters, but rather put into the hands of US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) biologists – who declared them off-limits to logging and most other commercial activities. These same lands had been used for subsistence and recreation by generations of American families, and for hundreds of generations of local Indian families before them. Now it was being made into a massive and unprecedented reserve for a single species: spotted owls.

These so-called “critical” properties were designated by dozens of 2.7 mile diameter “crop circles,” supposedly based on the “home range” of a nesting spotted owl. The final result was much like the cookies or biscuits shaped for your mom with drinking glasses or teacups when you were first learning to bake. The circles mostly correlated to owl sightings and were concentrated in public lands the USFWS did not want logged. Thus, about seven million acres of some of the world’s finest timberlands were abruptly removed from management for human uses for the first time in history. These designations were transformative and unprecedented, yet quickly adopted without independent scientific review or substantive public discussion.

Environmental activists and some scientists have long claimed that spotted owl habitat used to exist in far greater amounts before 1940 than it does now — therefore, spotted owl numbers must have been greater in the unknown past than they are now. This is a baseless assumption that cannot be documented and therefore needs serious critical examination before acceptance – much less widespread adoption at an enormous cost to taxpayers or treatment as a “fact.”

In 1996 I wrote a research report for a Portland, Oregon law firm dealing with this issue. My study area was the Columbia River Gorge, including thousands of acres of private and federal forestlands along both Oregon and Washington sides. My findings showed – and documented – that spotted owl “habitat” (by current definitions at that time) was likely never more than 5% or 10% of the total study area during anytime since the 1790s. Subsequent research over two million other forested acres in western Oregon have yielded similar documented findings.

There is no demonstrated correlation between owl populations and artificial designations of “critical habitat” zoning. These areas appear far more critical for the survival of agency biologists and ecologists than for owls of any stripe or spot. Predator-prey relationships seem to have much more to do with owl populations than forest structure – an assertion borne out by efforts used to restore endangered condor populations, which are kept and bred in cages, and by the fact that at least one agency wildlife biologist caught and kept a spotted owl as a family pet for 30 years.

3. Are Barred Owls a Living Example of “Natural Selection?”

“Darwin’s Finches” are 15 species of closely related birds – but with entirely different beaks and feeding habits, adapted to their local environments. These birds, and their individual variations, were first noted by Charles Darwin in his exploration of the Galapagos Islands in 1835, and were instrumental in the development of his theories of biological evolution and “natural selection.”

Darwin’s finches aren’t really finches at all, but passerines: members of an order of songbirds and perching birds containing more than 110 families and more than 5,000 species – including Darwin’s 15 finches. Passerines are the second most numerous vertebrate families on the planet, following bony fishes, and the basis for most subsequent findings and theories regarding evolution.

In the mid-1900s, Darwin’s thoughts on natural selection were being refined into “ecological niche” theory, a systematic look at “how ecological objects fit together to form enduring wholes” (Patten and Auble 1981). It is basically an effort to systematize Darwin’s theories so they can be diagrammed and programmed into mathematical computer models.

Spotted owls were first described in California in 1857, in Arizona in 1872, in Washington in 1892, and in Oregon in 1914. Barred owl were first described in 1799 in the eastern US, expanded their range westward to Montana in the 1920s, and were interbreeding with spotted owls in Western Oregon and Washington by 1975. From all historical perspectives, it appears as if two isolated populations of hoot owls – western and eastern – have coincidentally expanded their ranges during the past century or so, and have now joined together to form viable hybrids that are replacing former spotted owl populations. How is this any different than Europeans and Africans colonizing North America and replacing Native American populations as they “expanded their range?”

In 2007 the US Fish & Wildlife Service began a long-term program of systematically killing barred owls in order to maintain the genetic purity of local spotted owl populations. You can use dogs or roses – or humans – as analogies here to see how artificial breeding precedence is being used. Is this a god-like attempt to control evolution, simply another human effort to artificially produce desired breeding characteristics, or some kind of ecological niche theory testing opportunity?

Depending on the rationale used to justify these actions, the next questions become: “Is this method logical or practical?” And, “How much does it cost?”

4. How Reliable Are Computerized Predictive Models?

Modeling isn’t rocket science – it isn’t even a science. Computer sciences made rapid gains in quality during the 1970s and 1980s, with one result often being modeling predictions accepted as reasonable substitutions for actual field observations and independent analysis — especially by other modelers.

Wildlife models are almost exactly the same thing as “Sims” computer games, but with a lot more acronyms and algorithms in their attempts to mimic actual life. And then predict the future. Making predictions and comparing them with actual outcomes is a hallmark of scientific methodology, but when predictions are based on unstated assumptions, unproven theories, and “informed” speculation – all typical modeling characteristics — then the product can be little different than any other computer game. Models are a very useful tool for summarizing current knowledge and suggesting possible futures, but they have proven no more capable of predicting future conditions and catastrophes than ancient oracles or modern religious leaders and politicians. Or most scientists.

In his book ”Best Available Science (BAS): Fundamental Metrics for Evaluation of Scientific Claims” (Moghissi et al. 2010), Dr. Alan Moghissi categorizes computerized predictive models into five basic types. Those typically used to model wildlife populations and habitat correlations he terms “primary” and “secondary” models. Despite their inherent weaknesses, he observes that society “has no other choice” but to use primary models in making certain decisions. Regarding secondary models, however, he states, “a society that bases its decisions on these models must accept the notion that it may waste its resources.”

Often, the only people said to be “qualified” to assess models and modeling methods are “other modelers.” The results have not been good. It is time to shine some daylight on this industry and have actual environmental scientists and concerned members of the public take a better look at “the man behind the curtain.”

5. What Do Government Scientists Say About Owl Recovery Plans?

Certainly, if the US government was going to spend billions of our dollars, ruin the economies of hundreds of our communities, and kill millions of wild plants and animals in the process, they would have at least used “peer reviewed” science – and been transparent in their methods — wouldn’t they?

In 2007 a number of prominent university and agency scientists that had help create the spotted owl “recovery plans” were asked, in essence, by USFWS to review their own work. Not surprisingly, they decided it was pretty good stuff and – despite declining spotted owl numbers – we should be doing more of it.

The “Scientific Review of the Draft Northern Spotted Owl Recovery Plan and Reviewer Comments” was written by Steven Courtney, Jerry Franklin, Andy Carey, Miles Hemstrom, and Paul Hessburg, several of who also appear prominently in their review bibliography – often for work done for, or used by, the USFWS. Despite the obvious potential for bias with this arrangement, the work was conducted openly and transparently and resulted in several useful observations and recommendations, including:

*Current models of owls and their habitats are largely heuristic. Hence decisions on important issues such as reserve size, spacing, etc., must be made with relatively weak predictive tools.

*The approach of the Draft Recovery Plan for designating habitat goals is deeply flawed. However the need to set locally appropriate and sustainable habitat goals remains a valid goal.

*The threat from wildfire is underestimated in the Draft Recovery Plan . . . This threat is likely to increase given both current forest conditions, and future climatic change.

Conclusions

1) Federal spotted owl regulations have been implemented during the past 25 years at an enormous cost to American taxpayers — particularly those living in rural timber-dependent areas of the western US.

2) Current plans are a proven failure. Targeted owl populations continue to decline despite an unprecedented public investment into their maintenance.

3) Barred owls and spotted owls may be the same species, in which there is no logical need to continue managing for the survival of either one. Or, they may be different species and we are simply witnessing natural selection in progress.

4) The scientific basis for these plans should be considered in full light of public and scientific review before they are continued much longer; the methods by which agency modelers and university theorists apparently dictate federal policies should also be publicly reconsidered.

5) Scientific research and review teams dealing with spotted owl and critical habitat issues should also include scientists with an understanding of current and historical roles of people in the environment, such as landscape historians and cultural anthropologists.

In our recent discussions, the timber industry (or wood products) industry has been called the “logging industry,” at least by Matthew. I first became fascinated by what industries are OK environmentally and which not, when I worked on an assignment with the Office of Science and Technology Policy during the Clinton Administration. I was the Science Lead on a CEQ/OSTP Interagency effort to review US regulation of genetically engineered organisms released into the environment.

At the same time, the 2000 Planning Rule was being cleared and I helped folks at OMB to understand the rule. It seemed at the time the timber industry on public lands was questionable from the environmental perspective, but the biotech industry was not particularly questioned, even the mild recommendations of our team did not go forward. I remember the meeting where we presented our findings to George Frampton, the Chair of CEQ at the time. Many of us were surprised that “environmentalism” was strong in some areas, and weak in other areas. I also thought the role of the science community was an interesting contrast, since the “listened to” scientists thought logging was harmful to the environment, but that ge organisms were harmless and in fact, the salvation of the future. We can still see that today. Clearly the same scientists can’t know about both (well I know something about both, but I am not among the “listened to” scientists. How governments choose to partition their environmental inclinations across industries would be worthy of some graduate student studies.

I wondered why one industry was so important and the other rejection-worthy. I had a variety of hypotheses, of course
1) who donated to the campaign
2) the amount of bucks generated
3) did not capture the attention of environmental groups to the same extent (or not as effectively).

In Colorado, we had a curmudgeonly wonderful columnist named Ed Quillen, who used to refer to “the Committee that really runs America”. I can only guess that the timber industry had a falling out with the Committee at some point, while the biotech industry did not.

Sometimes I wonder whether folks project all their guilt about using resources onto one convenient industry. so we do not examine the semiconductor industry or the medical equipment industry, (or even agriculture) with the same fine-toothed environmental comb.

Anyway, if we could talk about an industry who provides products for people by their extraction techniques rather than the products they produce, let’s think about that:

I just got back from the family place in western Kansas, so we can think of wheat and field crop farming as “the cutting industry” as in Custom “Cut”ters or “cut”ting hay.

We could think of vegetable growing as the “picking” industry. Or oil and gas as the “drilling” industry. Sometimes we talk about coal as the “mining industry” but mostly the “coal” industry. Now we have molybdenum and other mines in Colorado, so we call those the “mining industry”, perhaps because if you are mining these other minerals than energy, there are so many of them.

So let’s look at solar industry might be the “cell manufacturing” industry. Wind might be the “turbine manufacturing” industry. I just think it’s interesting how people talk about these things, with my concern being that talking about extracting as opposed to what the product is removes us from the link between us and our lives and the products we use. You can’t look out the window in my town without seeing a great many wood products in construction and reconstruction, in art, in furniture, and so on.