Climate scientists then and now

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It’s been interesting the last few months on TSW seeing up close how climate change deniers operate.  To me any way, but maybe not to everyone reading TSW for insights about public land management.  I don’t think this is the place to debate the scientific nuances of global warming, point by point (nor is it the place to be debating Hillary or Hunter).  At the risk of feeding the trolls one more time, I’ll say one more thing about what I think about the broader climate issue, and then try hard to disengage.

This article (partially excerpted here) is actually about the role of scientists (one of Sharon’s favorite topics), and its actual title is

Why many scientists are now saying climate change is an all-out ‘emergency’

After a few years of record-breaking temperatures and extreme weather events, Ripple’s experience is a sign of how climate scientists — who once refrained from entering the public fray — are now using strident language to describe the warming planet. References to “climate emergency” and “climate crisis,” once used primarily by activist groups like the British-based Extinction Rebellion or the U.S.-based Sunrise Movement, are spiking in the academic literature. Meanwhile, scientists’ communication to the media and the public has gotten more exasperated — and more desperate.

On Monday, scientists released a paper showing that the world’s “carbon budget” — the amount of greenhouse gas emissions the world can still emit without boosting global temperatures more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) — has shrunk by a third. The world has only six years left at current emissions levels before racing past that temperature limit.

“There are no technical scenarios globally available in the scientific literature that would support that that is actually possible, or can even describe how that would be possible,” Joeri Rogelj, a climate scientist at Imperial College London, told reporters in a call.

Tim Lenton, one of the co-authors on Ripple’s most recent paper and a professor of earth system science at the University of Exeter, said that 2023 has been filled with temperatures so far beyond the norm that “they’re very hard to rationalize.”

It wasn’t always this way.

In the 2000s and even early 2010s, most scientists shied away making any statements that could be seen as “political.” Jacquelyn Gill, a professor of climate science and paleoecology at the University of Maine, said that when she was doing her PhD in those years, senior academics warned her against deviating at all from the science when interacting with the media or the public.

Hassol said that the shift is simple. In the 2000s, she said, climate change wasn’t yet at the level of an emergency. She recalls a 2009 report called “The Copenhagen Diagnosis,” which analyzed climate science to date and made suggestions for how to reach net-zero carbon emissions. If world governments had acted swiftly, the world would have had to cut emissions only by a bit over 3 percent per year. “We called that the bunny slope,” Hassol recalled.

If, on the other hand, governments waited until 2020 to start the transition, cuts would have to be much steeper — up to 9 percent per year. “We called that the double-black diamond,” she said. Despite the brief respite in CO2 emissions during the pandemic, humanity’s trajectory has veered closer to the double-black diamond.

If my communication has gotten “more exasperated – and more desperate,” maybe this is why.

Zoom Presentation and Discussion with Kelly Martin on the Wildfire Mitigation and Management Report

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The Zoom will be held Friday, November 3 (this Friday) at 1PM Pacific, 2PM MT, and 4PM ET.

All are welcome to this first TSW Zoom! Email me at Sharon at forestpolicypub.com for the link.  Kelly is a member of the Commission. Here’s her bio:

Kelly is the President of Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing the public with information and education regarding much needed wildland fire workforce reforms. Her organization advocates on behalf of thousands of wildland firefighters.

She is also very active as a Burn Boss for The Nature Conservancy (TNC) mentoring and coaching other TNC employees and nonprofit organizations to help them become more skilled and proficient in applying “good fire” on the landscape.

After 35 years as a fulltime federal wildland firefighter, Kelly retired federal service in 2019 for an opportunity to pass her knowledge to the next generation through her volunteer work as a subcommittee chair of IAWF hosting “Ignite Talk” presentations and serving as the President of Grassroots Wildland Firefighters.

She is a Burn Boss; Fire Behavior Analyst; Operations Section Chief; and Operations Branch Director and served on Interagency Incident Management Teams for over 20 years. She has served as a Fire Management Officer for both the US Forest Service and the National Park Service in Moab, UT; Carson City, NV; Placerville, CA; and Yosemite, CA. She is a strong advocate and leader for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion promoting gender parity throughout the Wildland Fire Community. Her current work includes providing leadership for the Women-in-Fire Prescribed Fire Training Exchange (WTREX) and Indigenous Cultural burning Training Exchanges (TREX) events.

See you there!

“Motorheads” Appeal Labyrinth Rims/Gemini Bridges Travel Plan: Jonathan Thompson

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We haven’t had much for our recreation friends lately.. so here is a link to a post by Jonathan Thompson in his Land Desk newsletter.  Apparently he is not a fan of (some? all?) OHVers.  Which is OK. Another writer might have said “OHV groups appeal decision which has had a lot of local input and compromise.”  I mean this is a good argument (if true) but some of us could apply that to say.. the Rock Springs proposed RMP alternative, or numerous lawsuits against collaboratively produced fuels treatment projects.  But do we know what litigants “really want”?  I would say that we do not.  This goes back to intention, and I’m not much of a fan of digging into other peoples’ brains.

The appellants claim the plan — which closes some motorized routes — violates federal law, is “arbitrary and capricious,” and is even unconstitutional.

But really they’re just miffed that they can’t continue to ride their OHVs just about everywhere.

The plan, long in the making, was intended to strike a balance between motorheads’ desire for unfettered access and the urgent need to mitigate the impacts of a burgeoning number of OHVs, especially side-by-sides, on public lands. But even this “balance” was tilted toward the OHVs: Of the 1,120 miles of existing motorized routes in the 469-square-mile planning area, more than 800 miles will remain open to motorized travel. Only 317 miles, or less than one-third of the total, will be closed.

But the Blue Ribbon Coalition, other motorized access groups, and, for that matter, most Utah politicians, have an ideological intolerance to any road closures whatsoever — whether those roads go anywhere or not. The state and various county commissions have spent millions of dollars fighting road closures. They’ve led illegal and damaging protest rides into closed areas and subjected BLM staffers to threats and intimidation. County sheriffs of a certain ilk have even attempted to press criminal charges against federal employees simply for doing their jobs.

This case is a bit different, because the local county commission favors the BLM compromise. In fact, they advocated for a more restrictive plan that would have closed 437 miles of trails. In 2021, the commission urged the BLM to create a rational plan that would remedy the existing situation, in which 95% of the planning area was within a half mile of a motorized route and less than 1% was a mile or more away from a road. “In particular, it is important to provide opportunities for quiet forms of recreation, out of earshot of motorized trails,” they wrote. “We think the travel plan should ensure that a reasonable percentage of the planning area is more than one mile from a road or motorized trail.”

Instead of wielding ol’ RS-2477, the 157-year-old defunct statute giving the right to build highways across public lands to access mines, the Blue Ribbon Coalition and friends are attempting other spurious arguments, such as:

  • The plan violates the Dingell Act, the 2019 legislation designating Labyrinth Canyon as a wilderness area. Congress emphasized that the act was meant only to protect the designated wilderness areas, not “to create protective perimeters or buffer zones around the wilderness areas.” The appellants claim this plan is an attempt to do just that. But the argument falls flat when you consider how many routes near the wilderness remain open. That’s no buffer.
  • The closures violate the Constitution’s Appointments Clause. Okay, this one’s so goofy I’m not even going to get into it. (Basically they’re saying the BLM’s district manager doesn’t have the authority to make any decisions because they aren’t elected or directly appointed by the president).
  • The decision is arbitrary and capricious. Not! The BLM has been working on this plan for more than five years and has accepted and considered thousands of comments. If anything was arbitrary it was the establishment of more than 1,000 miles of roads and paths across the landscape over the last century.

Chances of the appeal actually going somewhere are pretty slim, given these arguments. It’s a colossal waste of time nevertheless.

It would be interesting to hear the other side of the story. I’m hoping some TSW readers will weigh in.

Reducing Polarization: A Modest Amendment to FLPMA- Make the BLM Director a Career Position

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Polarization seems a bit like the weather.. everyone talks about it, but no one does anything about it.  I can think of a variety of Big Ideas to reduce it, but the people who have gained political power via riding the polarization horse have little interest in putting it out to pasture.  So I’d propose simpler and tinier solutions which might ultimately add up to something larger.

We have two multiple-use agencies at this time, the BLM and the Forest Service.  FLPMA has the BLM Director be a political appointee.  The Forest Service Chief is not (although certainly approved by the Admin).  Folks I know who have worked in both agencies say that the policy pendulum in the Forest Service does not swing as far as with BLM.

As Governor Freudenthal (D) of Wyoming noted  in 2010 for the BLM:

Unfortunately, Washington, D.C. seems to go from pillar to post to placate what is perceived as a key constituency. I only half-heartedly joke with those in industry that, during the prior administration, their names were chiseled above the chairs outside the office of the Assistant Secretary for Lands and Minerals. With the changes announced yesterday, I fear that we are merely swapping the names above those same chairs to environmental interests, giving them a stranglehold on an already cumbersome process.

Suppose just a tiny tweak.. suppose FLPMA was amended to require the BLM Director to be a career employee? (This could also be done for all the Director roles at Interior, NPS, USFWS, BOR and BIA).   The Assistant Secretaries, Deputy Secretary and Secretary would then, similar to the FS, be politicals to develop the President’s policy as the result of the election. Career Directors should have expertise and agency management experience (preferably in the field, and in the case of BLM, in the West) and work to implement the policy as developed by the politicals. At BLM currently there is the Director (PAS) and one of two Deputy Directors as politicals and some lower level schedule C’s politicals.   If you have too many politicals around in positions of power, it is likely that everything is seem through a partisan lens.  And they don’t always hear different views.  First, it’s easy to discount voices from the other party (they are not worth listening to) and people from their own party who disagree don’t always feel comfortable telling them (you’re either with us or against us; or fear of ticking off powerful people in their own party and possibly future retaliation).  So it’s easy (especially with no career feds around who have western field experience) to be in an echo chamber and rely on people from your past life (ENGOs or industry) for info.  It leads to a situation in which people closer to the ground could come to agreement, but the politicals  in DC  cannot.

Fundamentally, to my mind, the best land solutions are developed locally by local people with local knowledge and local research.

One thing that struck me about Governor Gordon’s letter was the contrast between how this decision was made and the idea  of environmental justice.

EPA defines “environmental justice” as the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. EPA has this goal for all communities and persons across this Nation. It will be achieved when everyone enjoys the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards and equal access to the decision‐making process to have a healthy environment in which to live, learn, and work.

My bold. Perhaps EJ does not include “all people regardless of whom they vote for”?

Why throw out all that work, and throw the BLM employees under the bus?  For indeed, they and the State and the local folks have put a great deal of work into these plans. Fpr twelve years.

Our political friends come in to Interior and spend a few years making decisions (without having direct experience of these places and people; often without natural resources backgrounds at all). They are just passing through on their way to their next law firm, ENGO or industry post.  Meanwhile,  BLM employees have to live with the mistrust and the bad decisions that the politicals generate, in the grocery store, in the bleachers at the high school basketball game, and so on, for their entire 30 year ish career.   I’d rather that public involvement was not an elaborate hoax, and that politicals put a finger (tip?) on the scale rather than ignoring it.  For some westerners, picking a surprise alternative seems like an intentional sharp stick in the eye, and if we question it,  we are incipient Bundys (not people seeking environmental justice), and so the unproductive cycle continues.   Our access to federal land, our recreation and in some cases, our livelihoods, are pawns in the R/D chess game, effectively without agency.   Not exactly EJ, to my mind, nor any justice at all.

If Congressfolk asked me “why do this FLPMA amendment now?” I’d say it’s a tiny step towards reducing polarization.  If we are in a climate emergency, we need BLM employees (who, we remember, are down in numbers to the extent that the Admin is concerned) to not waste their time on doing and redoing plans based on the predilections of people in each Administration.  We think that the stakeholders and people who work on developing agreements and those who give public comment need to be fairly and meaningfully involved- just like the definition of EJ.. which would mean that the people in the room making the decision would be immersed in those views and agreements.  We want to build trust and the foundation for States, feds, Tribes and locals to work better together.  Things apparently haven’t changed much between Freudenthal’s and Gordon’s concerns- in the last 10 years.  If we want to build a national effort to decarbonize and to adapt to climate change (the Wildfire Commission says wildfire is an emergency).  We need to work together better across federal, state and local governments.

I’ll end with another quote from Governor Gordon’s letter, that talks about fostering relationships that lead ultimately to better governance:

Until very recently, the BLM has been a major partner, along with state and local entities, in bringing about consensus-based Wyoming solutions to major land management questions. Wyoming is a national leader on Greater Sage Grouse, migration corridor management, and responsible development. We did that with local support, stakeholder buy-in, and rigorous on the ground work. That work was not simple or easy, but it showed a respect for the resources and the people of the area. The BLM’s RMP and Preferred Alternative threaten to eliminate all the hard work accomplished by bulldozing over state executive orders, stakeholder engagement, and interagency agreements. Simply put, existing and future partnerships are in jeopardy. A federal fiat won’t run efficiently or well over such a bumpy road.

There is a substantial amount of trust placed in our federal government to manage our public lands effectively and according to law. That trust is fragile and should never be abused. One of the BLM’s Guiding Principles is, “To cultivate community-based conservation, citizen-centered stewardship, and partnership through consultation, cooperation, and communication.”

I think a simple FLPMA amendment would go a long way in that direction.

Whatever Happened To: FLPMA’s Requirements for Coordination With States? Rock Springs RMP

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Many thanks to Jon for bringing up the Rock Springs RMP.  There are many interesting things about it. In this post, I’ll focus on what appears to be a breakdown in the FLPMA and associated regulations for coordination with the State.  In the next post, I’ll focus on impacts to communities and employees. I don’t know a bunch about the BLM but did participate in a Governor’s Office Review (with Harris Sherman, then DNR Director in Colorado) of the ill-fated joint BLM/FS San Juan plan.  It seemed to me that it indeed was a useful exercise.  So I was surprised when I took a look at the Governor’s letter on the proposed RMP:

in this case, Governor Gordon of Wyoming seems to have been blindsided:

More to the point, this draft does not accurately reflect the 12-year cooperative process undertaken during my entire time in office as Governor and as State Treasurer, three presidential administrations, a multitude of public meetings, cooperating agency input, technological and scientific advancements, and millions of taxpayer dollars. So, it is completely incomprehensible that the BLM selected for its Agency Preferred Alternative, Alternative B, one considered an outlier in previous attempts at issuing an RMP one that was meant to serve initially as a bookend – an alternative with the most resource use restrictions and concomitantly with the largest socioeconomic impacts. Over a decade’s worth of contributions from local stakeholders, cooperators, counties, and state agencies are either falling on deaf ears or disingenuously being thrown by the wayside with this decision.

And

The Agency’s actions here are contrary to that intent. One is left to assume that that partnership was found to be less valuable than playing to some other audience than those most affected by the people and the ecology these decisions would most impact. It is a shame that evidently little heed was paid to the wishes of local communities. The release of this draft is the first instance the public has to review the BLM’s proposal, and it has completely blindsided those involved, those who care most about the place. The release of this draft places a 90-day burden on the shoulders of those who live, work, and recreate here to understand and respond to this outlandish Preferred Alternative. The trust that has so painstakingly been earned over years of cooperation has been tested severely.

Why did that happen?  According to a source.

FLPMA is replete with directions to BLM to cooperate with states. See e.g. 43 U.S.C.  § 1712 (a)(9) (planning), § 1716 (exchanges) and § 1720 (conveyances).  FLPMA also provides an opportunity before the Final RMP for the Governor’s Consistency Review – is the RMP consistent with state and local land use plans. The late Governor Richardson was successful in redirecting a BLM plan through that process and a lawsuit.

And..

The existing BLM regulation requires cooperating agency status to be offered to State, Tribal and local governments during land use planning and current Department NEPA rules require the same for all Department Environmental Impact Statements. See BLM, Cooperating Agency Deskbook (2012) p. 2 (“The BLM amended its planning regulations in 2005 to ensure that it engages its government partners consistently and effectively through the CA relationship whenever land use plans are prepared or revised. In 2008, the Department of the Interior (DOI) applied this policy to the preparation of all EISs.

So all those requirements were .. ignored?  And  a trusted source reported that they had spoken with an ENGO who said that they were “shocked and delighted” that they had been given whatever they wanted on the RMP.  Perhaps this is less about rewarding your friend NGO’s than punishing your enemy States who don’t vote the way the Admin prefers… despite legal requirements to work with them.  I am not a fan of the ship of federalism, which has served us well, foundering on the shoals of political partisanship.

Next post: Concerns for EJ, communities and employees.

 

A Three Sisters Wilderness Trailhead Information Station Volunteer Corps

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Volunteer John Flood, M.D., staffing the Green Lakes Trailhead.

Volunteer John Flood, M.D., staffed the Green Lakes Trail Head
Information Station for several summers.

By Les Joslin

“Now I want you to recruit and train and supervise wilderness volunteers to work at the trailhead so you can get back on the trails,” Marv responded to my written report on the Green Lakes Trailhead Information Station’s first summer of operations.

With this license, and eschewing such terms as “trailhead host” and “information kiosk” used by Marv and others, I set about recruiting a small group of volunteer “wilderness information specialists” possessed of first-hand knowledge of the Three Sisters Wilderness to operate the “information station” as uniformed Forest Service representatives. The station would be open nine hours daily from July 1 through Labor Day and on weekends into the fall.

“Working alone or in pairs,” my recruiting brochure and news releases advised, “volunteers will assist wilderness users and other national forest visitors by providing information and explaining the wilderness permit system, regulations, and etiquette. They will also gather visitor statistics and maintain trailhead facilities. Additional duties may include trail patrols.”

I laid out the details, and did so in a way that set the tone I intended as it assured potential volunteers they would not be just hanging out at a trailhead but doing a real Forest Service job for free.

Qualified persons at least 18 years of age who can commit at least one day per week may apply. In addition to familiarity with the Three Sisters Wilderness, volunteers should possess strong interpersonal skills and be physically capable of performing the full range of trailhead duties. Additional qualifying experience might include previous Forest Service or similar public contact service and relevant education. Current first aid and CPR certification also is useful. The Forest Service will provide supervision, pre-season and first-day on-the-job training, uniforms, and equipment. Volunteers are not considered federal employees, but they do receive legal protection as well as insurance for work-related injuries and reimbursement for certain expenses.

“The Forest Service,” I assured them, “needs reliable volunteers to supplement its small wilderness ranger force.” People who “are qualified, enjoy working with people, and would like serving as a ‘friendly face and a helping hand’ in the Three Sisters Wilderness this summer,” were invited to contact the Bend Ranger Station or me.

This challenging invitation attracted a few good volunteers from all walks of life. Two who proved the most active were Bend residents Larry Robertson, a retired General Motors executive engineer and former head of the Mount Bachelor ski patrol, and his wife Marian. Larry, a native of Corvallis, Oregon, and an Oregon State College aeronautical engineer who served as a U.S. Navy aviation maintenance officer during World War II and later helped design the Corvair and defend it before Congress from Ralph Nader, served at the trailhead station two or three days a week that summer and the next. As the summers went by, others included both active and retired Central Oregon doctors, lawyers, armed forces officers, and other professionals and retirees. Still others were college students who—along with Central Oregon Community College and Oregon State University, for both of which I taught part-time—eventually added another dimension to the project.

Training those volunteers—whom I referred to as Wilderness Information Specialists—at the trailhead station, staffing the station myself when no volunteer was scheduled, and patrolling trails while continuing the campsite surveys I’d begun in 1990 put me in the field for fifty-nine of the seventy-four days the station served over six thousand visitors that second summer.

Even after the previous summer’s shakedown, a few issues remained to be resolved. One of these was overnight wilderness permits. Day-use permits were self-issued at the trailheads, but overnight permits had to be obtained from a forest officer at a ranger station, and that could mean a sixty-mile roundtrip to Bend. On July 3, I made the case for trailhead volunteers to issue overnight permits to the Deschutes National Forest community affairs staff officer when he visited the station. “To the public, this is a ranger station.” On July 9, the Green Lakes Trailhead Information Station was authorized to issue overnight wilderness permits. A few years later, overnight permits, too, were self-issued at trailheads.

The success of the volunteer program begun at the Green Lakes Trailhead Information Station that summer of 1993 is reflected in statistics for the fourteen years during which a total of ninety-five uniformed volunteers I trained and qualified worked with me to staff the station for 997 days—8,560 hours—during which they represented the Forest Service and the wilderness concept to about 82,500 wilderness visitors and served another eight thousand Deschutes National Forest visitors who stopped by the station for other assistance and information. Add to those numbers the many wilderness visitors served by these same volunteers who staffed the Devils Lake wilderness trailheads about fifteen to twenty days annually for many of those years and patrolled wilderness trails, and the positive presence of these wilderness volunteers well exceeded ten thousand hours of service to more than one hundred thousand visitors served.

 

Presidential election has consequences for BLM plan?

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The Rock Springs (WY) office of the BLM has recently released a draft of its resource management plan.  The DEIS includes the traditional four alternatives:  no-change, protection, development, and “balanced.”  As Governor Gordon’s natural resources policy advisor put it, “In this case they kind of broke precedent and chose (alternative) B, the most resource-restrictive development.”  A retired BLM employee has alleged that presidential politics played a role.

The most balanced plan for managing millions of acres of federal land in central Wyoming — and the alternative that Bureau of Land Management employees and others put the most time, effort and money into — was rejected by the past two presidential administrations, a retired BLM employee said.

The Trump administration likely would have pushed Alternative C because it favors more drilling for oil, he said.

But the Biden administration has gone to the opposite extreme, so the BLM now is pushing forward with Alternative B, which designates 1.8 million acres as “areas of critical environmental concern” (ACES).

Evans said it’s disheartening that two presidential administrations boosted the plans with the least amount of effort put into them.

“The science and the work to do that was all done on D,” Evans said. “And it’s kind of a shame that what the people in the field office and the cooperators spent all that time doing was rejected.”

Now many of those same BLM insiders who worked for years and spent millions of dollars fleshing out a balanced alternative instead have to push the administration’s preference and sell it to Wyoming residents and officials.

The State of Wyoming is considering suing over the plan (even though is not final yet).  Road management and minerals are key issues.

Based on my experience, I would agree that there may not be a precedent for selecting the most resource-restrictive land management plan alternative .  I also have not seen this level of direct political involvement in picking an alternative in Forest Service planning.  Typically in the Forest Service, any political “wants” would be built into the “balanced” alternative that would end up being selected.  Please let us know if anyone has had a different experience.  (Maybe this is a result of the different structures and cultures of the Forest Service and BLM.)
I have mixed feelings about this approach, where all but one are essentially straw alternatives.  Legally, all action alternative must be given equal treatment in the effects analysis, but that doesn’t preclude more serious thought being put into to the design of one alternative.   If one of the others is actually selected it would create the problem the employee described here – it has to be prettied-up at the end of the process.  I think it is important to meaningfully evaluate all reasonable alternatives, but there is a difference between “reasonable” meaning “what would meet the purpose and need” and “reasonable” meaning, “what the agency could realistically select.”  I think what is missing from public disclosure is the actual iterative alternatives that are considered in building the preferred alternative.
On October 9, the BLM extended the public comment period to January 17.  I guess that would buy them more time to refigure out the details of this alternative, or as they point out “In any resource management planning process, the final plan may mix and match portions from all the alternatives.”   “Rebalancing” them I suppose.

The degree to which forest fires are caused by fossil fuel-driven climate change

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I happened to run across something that contradicts Bob Zybach’s repeated assertions that, “these fires have been clearly predicted by me and others because of USFS management policies and Wilderness designations and have zero to do with warming climate or drier fuels.”  The Union of Concerned Scientists calculated the effect of warming climate and drier fuels on burned area, and the result from their peer-reviewed analysis is not “zero.”

Climate change is causing hotter, drier conditions that are also fueling these increasingly large and severe wildfires. In particular, vapor pressure deficit (VPD), a measure of atmospheric “thirst,” has emerged as a key way of tracking how climate change is amplifying wildfires because of its role in regulating water dynamics in ecosystems and, together with rising temperatures, contributing to increasing dryness (Box 1).

UCS used a combination of data and modeling to determine how much the carbon emissions associated with 88 major carbon producers (hereafter, the “big 88”) have historically contributed to increases in VPD and burned forest area across the western United States and southwestern Canada (see Methodology).

Across western North America, the area burned by forest fires increases exponentially as VPD increases, which means that relatively small changes in VPD result in large changes in burned forest area. The observed rise in VPD has enabled a steep increase in the forest area that has burned across the region since the mid-1980s. Since 1986,1 a cumulative 53.0 million acres of forest area has burned across western North America as VPD has risen. Without emissions tied to the big 88, the rise in VPD would have been much smaller, and 33.3 million acres (IQR 27.7 million–38.5 million) would have burned (Figure 4). That means that 37 percent (IQR 26–47 percent) of the cumulative burned forest area from 1986 to 2021 is attributable to emissions from the big 88. This represents nearly 19.8 million acres of burned forest area, or an area roughly the size of Maine.

You can criticize UCS for being agenda-driven (and we’ve talked about the limitations of “burned area” as a metric), but I’d challenge Bob or others to provide a similarly peer-reviewed research paper that attributes fire effects to his chosen causes.

 

More on RVs and Potential Housing for Federal Workers: Colorado Sun Story

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Kristin McGrath and Collin Vlass have been living in their 2015 Outback Keystone travel trailer for over two years with their dogs, Ola and Clyde. McGrath has had to move frequently to do clinical work for her degree in nurse anesthesia through Westminster University in Salt Lake City. The couple has lived in New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado and will soon move to Las Cruces in New Mexico. Vlass is a firefighter and wildfire paramedic. (Olivia Sun, The Colorado Sun via Report for America)

 

 

Kelly’s and Rebecca’s comments on housing reminded me of this article from the Colorado Sun.  Apologies if I have already posted, my list of items to post is long and my memory is not perfect (nor is the search engine on TSW).   I think there’s definitely something there, especially compared to the difficulties and long-term nature of building permanent housing. Or reducing the cost of housing more generally (requires, I don’t know, messing with the economy?) so definitely above our pay grade.

Kristin McGrath and Collin Vlass have gathered plenty of first-hand information about trying to live in an RV while working in Colorado.

McGrath is a nurse anesthetist student and Vlass fights wildland fires.

Last year, McGrath learned she would have to move five times to do clinical work for her degree. She and Vlass have two dogs and own a house in Durango, “and seeing housing prices go crazy, rent gouging and having the dogs, we knew it was going to be astronomically expensive to find housing anywhere for a couple of months,” she said.

So they bought a used RV thinking they’d live in RV parks while they worked. But that plan would turn out to be more difficult than they thought.

In Manitou Springs’ Pikes Peak RV Park, where they currently reside, the two pay $1,300 a month for a concrete parking slab, water, power, sewer and the use of amenities — coin-operated laundry, bathrooms with showers and access to the Manitou Pool & Fitness Center. It’s the most expensive park they’ve lived on their journey, McGrath said, and “it seems as though they’ve seen the demand and are cramming as many RVs in there as possible.”

The crowding issue sometimes creates problems with renters not knowing which hookup pedestal to use, and McGrath said on the couple of instances when other campers unplugged them from electricity and turned off their water, the managers on site told them “it didn’t happen.”

When you mix vacationers with long-term renters, “they rarely have situational awareness,” Vlass added. “It’s bad because Kristin is pregnant and has to get up at 4, 5, 6 a.m. to go to school. I’m sorry, but even if it’s like nine people who came from three different spots in Colorado and chose Manitou for their reunion, even though we’re paying a pretty premium cost, there’s no separation between us and them.”

At least the two have been able to live in RV parks while traveling for work, something not everyone can manage due to aesthetics.

Many Colorado parks have restrictions around who can and cannot stay. A big one: If your RV is 10 or more years old, forget it, because they’re often rejected for being too worn or weathered, out of a concern they’ll ruin a park’s image.

**********

But for the Coloradoans living in wheeled homes out of necessity, very little assistance has been available.

Jonathan Damon, a ski coach who lived in Colorado for a time, characterized long-term RV camping here as “a nightmare” and “impossible,” because “there are too many wealthy people who don’t want to see affordable living near their backyard.”

A situation last year in Grand County highlighted another challenge nonrecreational RV campers face, when a couple renting a site from Sun Outdoors Rocky Mountains resort, in Granby, was forced to leave after miscalculating the price of their site.

After renting at Sun Outdoors for a short time, camper Aaron Keil realized he couldn’t afford the $2,500-per-month rate. With no other place to legally park his RV, he moved onto Bureau of Land Management land outside of Kremmling. He planned to move campsites every two weeks, to stay in compliance with BLM policy, according to reporting in the Sky-Hi News. But he didn’t see the part of the policy that states each move must be 30 miles — as the crow flies — from the last site.

Steven Hall, Colorado communications manager for the BLM, said it’s difficult to get an accurate number of people using BLM lands for “residential use,” but “it’s an ongoing challenge for us with law enforcement and recreation staff in field offices like Kremmling.”

Hall said two of the most popular places for this kind of camping are the outskirts of Grand Junction and Cañon City, and that when BLM finds someone who has violated the two-week restriction, they’ll contact the person, let them know they’re in violation and help them find another campsite “where they would be in compliance.”

If a camper ignores the warnings long enough, agency law enforcement will “take action, including escorting them off the land and seizing what they’ve left behind,” Hall said. Cleanup can be a big job, because sometimes what’s left behind is the RV.

“BLM is trying to preserve the natural environment, which is hard to do if you have someone living there. People get concerned about ongoing hygiene issues and the watershed. But I worry less about people not using BLM land to help solve the housing crisis and more about the unused land that gets snapped up by market-rate developers,” said Curtis, from the safe parking organization. “We can’t build housing without land, and if you’re an affordable housing provider, you’ve got to have a wing and a prayer to get access to usable land that’s decent, near transit and a grocery store — all things we need to have.

And yet, some people (including, but not limited to, federal employees) who need space have cars.. so don’t need to be “near transit and a grocery store.”  So there’s that. It seems like such places could be limited to preferentially feds and then if space is available to other public employees.  It seems like it might be worthy of piloting such an approach at least.

TSW Proposed Guideline: Can We Leave Intention Out of Our Discussions?

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Mike, Jim and Jon were discussing a topic yesterday that I want to dig into a bit, because I think it has a broader context, one about intention.

Mike questioned two of Jim’s cites. One was about the Sea Change funding and one was about the Rocky Mountain Institute and its funding from the Chinese.  My view is that generally, people don’t accept money to do things they disagree with (unless you’re an employee).  So is money really an important thing to track?

Let’s take three energy examples. Often a person can read that say Senator Manchin is “in the pockets of fossil fuel companies.”  But I ask, is it chicken or egg? If a person supports a policy, then organizations that support the policy will like to fund that person.

Just looking around randomly, EDF Action Fund (Environmental Defense) spent $171K for Senator Murkowski’s 2022 win. Do we think that that contribution changed her mind about anything?

Then there’s wind and solar..  the Open Secrets website says.. “Of partisan contributions, 76 percent went to Democrats, who want to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy sources.”

Again, this sounds like industries (and ideological folks) support people who want to foster their industries or ideologies.  I suppose if a Congressperson or Senator is lukewarm, a large contribution might make them feel more warm and fuzzy toward a given industry or point of view.  Maybe it happens.

Let’s go back to Sea Change and Rocky Mountain Institute, they both have donations from sources we may say are questionable. But we will never know if they have changed their point of view based on this part of their funding. Then there’s this (obviously the far-left designation means the source report is biased, but are the observations they made true?)

Sea Change Foundation/Klein Ltd. Pass Through Illustration. Original credit, US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. Original URL: https://www.epw.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/6ce8dd13-e4ab-4b31-9485-6d2b8a6f6b00/chainofenvironmentalcommand.pdf

Do the Simons invest in renewables because they believe in them, or do they invest in ENGO’s who want to get rid of competitors like oil and gas because of their underlying beliefs or to support the industries they’ve invested in? More chickens and eggs.  And to complicate things, currently nat gas electric generation is quite compatible and without large-scale battery capability, necessary as a backup to wind and solar because it’s relatively easy to power up and down. You can see the natgas/wind/solar compatibility in these graphs from across the country the last four days. That’s one of the reasons Sierra Club supported nat gas. .. until they didn’t. Supposedly because some chapters didn’t like it; but other chapters don’t like wind..

My original point wasn’t that people who want to get rid of domestic production of fossil fuels are funded by what we might gently term “non-supportive nation-states.”  My point was rather “if we can’t distinguish these proposed “keep it in the ground” policies from those of non-supportive nation-states, shouldn’t we ask why that is and have that open dialogue with those holding those views somewhere? Maybe it’s just my personal laziness-perusing 990s makes my eyes glaze over. And if we go into the funding question, we have to go within the complex minds of politicians as to whether they are “bought off” or just “supported by folks who agree with them.”

It seems to me that we are unlikely to delve into their psychology in any meaningful way.  So I think we should stick to actions and writing,  not intentions.

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Similarly, (not to pick on Mike, as I’ve used this term in the past, as have others),  I’d like to do away with the terms misinformation, disinformation and malinformation for the purposes of The Smokey Wire.

I’m always leery of new words entering the lexicon.. if, as our old friend, the author of Kohelet (Ecclesiastes), says, “there is nothing new under the sun” chances are we won’t really need new words.   I think simply saying “I don’t think that’s true, based on..” will take care of it.  The whole misinformation movement seems a bit cloudy.  For example, I looked up the definition of it on Google. It said “false or inaccurate information, especially that which is deliberately intended to deceive.” So, whoa! We’ve gotten back into reading other peoples’ intentions again.

When people make up new words or abstractions, I am suspicious that there is an underlying purpose that doesn’t involve my input. Here’s what the American Psychological Association (second on my Google search) has to say and yes, I noticed it doesn’t match the Google definition:

Misinformation is false or inaccurate information—getting the facts wrong. Disinformation is false information which is deliberately intended to mislead—intentionally misstating the facts.

The spread of misinformation and disinformation has affected our ability to improve public health, address climate change, maintain a stable democracy, and more. By providing valuable insight into how and why we are likely to believe misinformation and disinformation, psychological science can inform how we protect ourselves against its ill effects.

And yet, people have been giving out misinformation and disinformation (however defined) since we learned to sign, and somehow Homo sapiens has managed to muddle through.

As to falsehood.. let’s face it – most of us, most of the time are not going to do the investigation to figure out where we come out based on our own review of 990s.  Most of the topics we cover are complex, conditional in time and space, and oftentimes it’s difficult to discern what is true.  In the words of Politifact, with regard to the Rocky Mountain Institute:

The institute is working with the Chinese government to reduce carbon emissions, but experts say that characterizing this as “ties” to the Communist Party lacks important context.

So there are facts, but they can be stated in such a way that they lack “important context.” Maybe we’ll never arrive at the ultimate truth?  Or maybe there isn’t one truth. I’m sure Anonymous would have the relevant philosophical citations. On a more pragmatic level..

Say Amira says to Javier “that’s misinformation”.  Amira is implying that either Javier is a doofus who’s been misinformed or that he has ill intentions to misnform others.  Or maybe both.  We should be able to challenge each others facts and perceptions without implying anything negative about each other.

So here are my suggested substitutions.

That’s disinformation..  = These sources, or my experience, say something different.

That’s been debunked. =  These sources, or my experience, say something different.

See how easy that is?