Hotshot Wakeup Interview with Jason Forthofer of the US Forest Service Missoula Fire Laboratory

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Jason Forthofer, mechanical engineer, stands in an area burned by the Carr Fire, one of the devastating California wildfires in 2018. (Photo provided by Bret Butler, U.S. Forest Service)

I thought this was a terrific podcast, an interview with Jason Forthofer at the Missoula Forest Sciences Lab by the Hotshot Wakeup on his Substack.  He has a gift for talking about fire models in a way that is easy to understand, at least for TSW-ites and our ilk.   And the range of tools he’s working on, and their practical applications, are fascinating. At least to me.

He talks about AI and machine learning .. I’ve always been interested in these new-fangled analysis contraptions, so asked Jason these questions.

When you say “AI” what do you mean exactly? Do you mean machine learning? I kind of thought that that was empirical also, based on loading data into it. But then you mentioned a combination of using your physical model with AI.  We have many older readers so if you could explain this a bit more (or anything else you wanted to say but did not get to, or links to key papers), that would be great!

Below are his answers.

Yes, when I was saying “AI” I was primarily talking about machine learning.  I often use these terms interchangeably, but I understand that there are some differences.  In the context of the spread model work we are doing with Google, we are using machine learning, and specifically a method called deep learning which uses the idea of neural network.

I would say that you are correct that AI and machine learning could be considered essentially empirical models.  And yes, often these models use learning data that comes from measurements of actual phenomena.  So in the case of fire spread for example, you could burn some fires in a laboratory and vary, say, the wind speed and measure the outcome (let’s say you measure the fire’s spread rate).  An empirical model would, in one way or another, correlate the input (wind speed) to the outcome (fire spread rate).  For simple cases like this you could do a curve fit to the data, just like you might learn in an elementary physics or math class (one common method is the “least squares” fit).  You could also use a more sophisticated and complex method like machine learning.  From my limited experience with machine learning, I would say that it really is like a kind of very sophisticated “curve fitting” method.  As the phenomena you are trying to model get more complex, for example many different inputs and outputs and also complex relations between the variables, more complex methods like machine learning may work better than the simpler methods.

But machine learning can also use data that is output from another model instead of actual measurements of the real phenomena, which is what we are doing in collaboration with Google.  Instead of the machine learning algorithm using lab or field measurements to learn from, we are feeding it input/output from our relatively slow running physically-based model of fire spread.  The whole purpose of doing this is to have a predictive model that is fast running.  To give you an idea of the speed up in the computation, some preliminary investigations we have done show that the machine learning model (that learns from our physically based model) can predict fire spread somewhere around 100,000 times faster than the original physically-based model.  The huge benefit of this is that it essentially allows us to use our machine learning model to predict fire spread over large landscapes (where tens of thousands or more of these small fire behavior calculations must be done).  It would not be feasible to do such a simulation using the original physically-based model.

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When I think about different research that uses machine learning, I think it’s safe in the hands of folks like Jason who are experienced with the real-world processes he models.  If you are trying to relate machine learning to old processes that you understand, like, say linear regression, I thought that this Forbes article is helpful.  Let’s be careful out there!

Pattern verification is an especially powerful way of using machine learning models to both to confirm that they are picking up on theoretically suggested signals and, perhaps even more importantly, to understand the biases and nuances of the underlying data. Unrelated variables moving together can reveal a powerful and undiscovered new connection with strong predictive or explanatory power. On the other hand, they could just as easily represent spurious statistical noise or a previously undetected bias in the data.

Bias detection is all the more critical as we deploy machine learning systems in applications with real world impact using datasets we understand little about.

Perhaps the biggest issue with current machine learning trends, however, is our flawed tendency to interpret or describe the patterns captured in models as causative rather than correlations of unknown veracity, accuracy or impact.

One of the most basic tenants of statistics is that correlation does not imply causation. In turn, a signal’s predictive power does not necessarily imply in any way that that signal is actually related to or explains the phenomena being predicted.

 

Foot on the Gas. Log on the Brake and.. Arbitration?

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A theme I’ve been thinking about..is in terms of infrastructure build-out our country has one foot (and lots of federal tax $) on the gas, and a log (and lots of federal tax $) on the brake. I’ve been working on comments to the proposed NEPA regs, and listening to speakers on their webinars. It’s kind of funny how agency NEPA people are responsible both for not using plain language, and not including enough detailed scientific perspectives- which might be hard to do at the same time. We can discuss the proposed reg here at TSW, if anyone wants. The Admin claims that it is streamlining while adding more analysis and legally disputable changes. Anyway, I’d appreciate draft copies of comments if you would like to share.

From last week, here are some foot and log stories..

From the LA Times:

Note what Dave Jones, director of UC Berkeley’s Climate Risk Initiative and the state’s former insurance commissioner says needs to be done to avoid an “uninsurable future” in California?

“I’m not suggesting that we’re there yet,” he noted, “but it definitely bears paying attention to, because that’s a potential path of transmission of this risk in ways that could have negative consequences for our financial system.”

So what else should the state and federal government be doing to avoid the “uninsurable future” Jones warns about? He shared a few ideas:

  • The Federal Reserve and other federal financial regulators need to get serious about assessing the risks climate change poses to the financial system. That’s something the Fed just recently started to do, though critics say their efforts are weak and well behind other countries’ efforts.

  • State and federal leaders should invest more in forest management, especially prescribed burns. Jones said officials finally recognized that “a century and a half of fire suppression has resulted in forests choked with fuel.” Prescribed burns are key to reducing the risks of fires growing to out-of-control infernos, and Jones would like to see insurers factor such risk reduction into their assessments.

  • Most significant, Jones said, is the need to dramatically and quickly cut the human-made emissions that affect our environment.

I’m kind of dubious when financial regulators, who seem to have challenges with regulating things currently and most notably in 2008 , may take their eye off the ball to worry about the climate future.  But then perhaps that’s a feature for them, not a bug.  I wonder what regulatory work they are now not doing and whom that not-regulating might benefit?  And could there be reasons for insurance companies to err on the side of overestimating future risk?

So we need to invest more in forest management?

And to the brake..

From the Flathead Beacon (op-ed by Jim Peterson):

How else to explain the Court’s rejection of two forest restoration projects on the Kootenai National Forest in only 41 days. Judge Donald Malloy shut down the Black Ram Project on August 17 and Judge Dana Christensen’s July 7 ruling upended the Ripley Project.

Lincoln County and the State of Montana have an agreement with the U.S Forest Service to restore – via thinning and prescribed burning – up to 10,000 acres of designated Wildland Urban Interface per year to protect homes and forests from catastrophic wildfire.

Again, like last week’s post, somehow I don’t think it’s true that if NEPA practitioners cleaned up their act, then these projects would move through smoothly.  The other interesting thing is that the Kootenai Tribe supports the project:

“The Tribe supports the Black Ram project, because it protects our Ktunaxa resources, furthers restoration of Ktunaxa Territory forests and was developed through our government-to-government relationship with the United States Forest Service,” said Gary Aitken, Jr., Vice-Chairman, Kootenai Tribe of Idaho.

So even their feet on the gas doesn’t seem to matter because at the end of the day a federal judge will decide.  I hope that any settlements will involve the Tribe.

Anyway, back to the op-ed – Jim suggests arbitration instead.. it’s been around awhile as an idea.. I think it might have been in some proposed legislation..at least as a pilot.  Does anyone remember what bill that was? He suggests:

Let’s nix litigation in favor of baseball-style arbitration. You bring your best ideas for protecting forests and we’ll bring ours and three qualified arbitration judges will decide which ideas best meet the goals and objectives of the Forest Service’s decadal forest planning documents. No more bad juju.

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Which reminds me that I ran across this idea also from Wildlife for the 21st Century by the American Wildlife Conservation Partners.

Increase Collaboration, Reduce Litigation
* Authorize collaboration in federal land decisions and protect collaboratively based decisions from litigation. Congress;Agriculture/FS; Interior/F WS, BLM; Defense/COE
* Authorize alternative remedies to litigation, including arbitration, and limit fee reimbursement to cases of direct and personal interest as defined in the Equal Access to Justice Act. Congress; Agriculture/FWS, BLM; Defense/COE; DOJ Collaboration is the voluntary work of citizens with each other and federal agencies to develop plans and projects.
These locally driven solutions achieve buy-in from diverse stakeholders. New policy must place collaborative agreements on par with lawsuits in determining the direction of federal land conservation. Arbitration between litigants and collaborative groups can avoid costly and disruptive litigation on projects where stakeholders have already agreed upon the best approach.

Of course, the forest kinds of collaborative efforts might work for forest resilience projects, probably not so much for transmission lines, solar and wind installations, carbon capture, mines and other kinds of facilities. Still, it may be worth it for vegetation projects.

Deeper Climate Change Discussions III. Does Apocalypticism Affect Our Path Forward and If So, How?

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So let’s go back to our discussion. Again, the point is not to change minds but to understand each other better. It turns out that many of us are in camps 4 and 5.

4. Humans are influencing the climate and we need to focus on reducing greenhouse gases, notably carbon and methane.
5. Humans are influencing the climate and if we don’t stop fossil fuels apocalyptic things will happen.

It is true that some folks here are not in 4 and 5. For the time, though, let’s leave that discussion. We don’t need to convince them, nor they us. As the English cleric and writer Charles Caleb Colton wrote: “The greatest friend of truth is Time, her greatest enemy is Prejudice, and her constant companion is Humility.” So we can leave them to their beliefs.. they may be correct but time will tell. It’s also possible that the way we propose to deal with decarbonization will have other advantages such that those folks may ultimately agree. For example, the way the authors of he 2009 Hartwell Paper framed the issue:

Therefore, in our view, the organising principle of our effort should be the raising up of human dignity and in that pursuit, our re-framed primary goals should be three:
1) to ensure that the basic needs, especially the energy demands, of the world’s growing population are adequately met. ‘Adequacy’ means energy that is simultaneously accessible, secure and low-cost.
2) to ensure that we develop in a manner that does not undermine the essential functioning of the Earth system, in recent years most commonly reflected in concerns about accumulating carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, but certainly not limited to that factor alone;
3) to ensure that our societies are adequately equipped to withstand the risks and dangers that come from all the vagaries of climate, whatever may be their cause.

So stand by, 1s,2s, and 3s, we may pick you back up somewhere along the way.

For now, I’d like to go back to 4s and 5s and look more deeply into where our different views could lead us in terms of efforts to decarbonize.

If I think about the differences between 4’s and 5’s, we all agree that decarbonizing is something that needs to be addressed. What we differ on (perhaps?) is urgency, what environmental, social justice, economic, national security trade-offs should be made, and what will work in physical reality. Then there’s scale, country or international. Should the US export more LNG to help other countries burn less coal? Should we tell Africa not to develop its resources? And there are so many values and scientific disciplines and practitioners involved in all the possibilities and trade-offs. This is a tough problem, because right now our world runs on fossil fuels- electricity, transport, chemicals and so on. We also know it’s difficult because states like California, and countries like Germany, have tried a bunch of things- some have worked better than others- and we have watched them struggle. If you follow Sammy Roth at the LA Times you can follow some of California’s twists and turns.

At the same time that states and countries are making efforts to decarbonize, the natural world (e.g., many aspects of wildfires); the human world (e.g., the War in the Ukraine); and interactions of both (e.g., the Covid pandemic) can change expectations and possibilities of any steps forward at any time. As does technological innovation for both mitigation (carbon capture, geothermal, small modular reactors, and so on) and for adaptation (wildfire suppression technology, CRISPR for plant breeding and so on).

So decarbonizing will be difficult in terms of new energy sources and building and buying new energy sources and physical infrastructure, it can’t physically happen as quickly as some might want, and care will have to be taken such that the transition doesn’t impose undue burdens on the non-wealthy/environmental justice/marginalized communities; AND we will have to be flexible as new information and natural, human and the interactions of those change through time. It seems like we should ask everyone to help row the boat. and we need to build a coalition that can maintain itself and be flexible through time and all kinds of internal and external trials. Including groups that want to hijack the issue to their own known or unknown ends. So what is the path to that coalition.. via old-fangled traits such as honesty, transparency, intentionally developing trust, and perhaps a healthy dose of humility?

So my question to 4s and 5s, do you see the situation the same way? If not, why not? And specifically for 5’s, do you think your view on the possibly apocalyptic nature of climate change affects your views on the above?

Thanks to all for your continued participation in this discussion.

Public Lands Litigation – update through September 6, 2023

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NATIONAL FOREST CASES

Court decision in Eagle County v. Surface Transportation Board (D.C. Cir.)

On August 18, the circuit court reversed a decision by the Board to allow construction of the Uinta Basin Railway connecting oil fields in Utah to a railroad along the Colorado River by 88 miles of track through the Ashley National Forest. The Forest Service had granted a permit for the railroad (but was not a party to this lawsuit).  According to the court, the environmental impact statement, which largely limited its analysis to the effects of the new construction, failed to adequately study the potential of oil spills, trail derailments along the Colorado River and the potential for wildfire in communities along tracks. It also did not address the health of the Texas and Louisiana residents who would bear the brunt of increased air pollution near oil refineries.  (This article has a link to the opinion.)

Court decision in Alliance for the Wild Rockies v. U. S. Forest Service (D. Mont.)

On August 23, the district court vacated the “Gorilla” (GRLA) Project on the Custer-Gallatin National Forest, which had authorized logging and thinning activities on approximately 21,871 acres, because it reduced the designation of lynx habitat without formal review.  The forest plan includes direction applicable to “mapped lynx habitat” on this national forest.  The Project NEPA analysis “could not rely on Canfield (2016)’s (modified) lynx habitat map without first reviewing Canfield (2016) under NEPA—either separately or as part of the Project EIS.”  It referred to this as improper “tiering,” and held that the Forest violated NEPA by failing to take a hard look at the environmental effects of its revisions to the lynx habitat map.  (I see the problem as one of amending the forest plan without a formal process, which would also be a violation of NFMA.)  The court upheld the Forest on its determination of the wildland-urban interface to comply with exemptions from lynx management direction, and consideration of cumulative effects of a nearby timber sale on state lands.  (The article includes a link to the opinion.)

Court decision in Friends of the Inyo v. U. S. Forest Service (9th Cir.)

On August 25, the circuit court reversed the decision of a lower court that would have allowed exploratory drilling in bi-state sage-grouse habitat on the Inyo National Forest.  While a full opinion has not been released, the court apparently ruled against the use of categorical exclusions.

Magistrate findings in Greater Hells Canyon Council v. Wilkes (D. Or.)

On September 1, the district court reversed a plan amendment for national forests in eastern Oregon and Washington that would have allowed logging of trees greater than 21″ in diameter.  (The link is to our extended discussion here.)

Court decision in Center for Biological Diversity v. U. S. Forest Service (9th Cir.)

On September 1, the circuit court refused to require the Forest Service to prohibit the use of lead shot by hunters in the Kaibab National Forest to protect endangered California condors.  It specifically rejected the contention that the Forest Service inaction is violating the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, a law that lets private organizations and individuals sue anyone who contributes to improper disposal of hazardous waste.  The ruling said that even though the Forest Service has “broad authority to regulate hunting and fishing activities,” it rarely chooses to preempt state laws (see this post for background on this issue).  This article includes a link to the opinion.

New lawsuit:  U.S.A. v. Southern California Edison Company (C.D. Cal.)

On September 1, the federal government sued Southern California Edison for damages it sustained from the 2020 Bobcat Fire that burned over 100,000 acres of the Angeles National Forest.  The Forest Service says it spent more than $56 million suppressing the fire, incurred property and natural resource damages of over $65 million, and spent $769,000 on burned area emergency response costs.  Forest Service investigators determined the Bobcat Fire started when a tree came in contact with power lines.  The article includes a link to the complaint.  (Query:  did the Forest Service count any of these burned acres as accomplishments?)

Notice of intent to sue

On September 6, the Center for Biological Diversity, Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Council on Wildlife and Fish notified the Custer-Gallatin National Forest and U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service of their intent to sue regarding the South Plateau Project’s effects on grizzly bears and Canada lynx.  The notice also criticizes the use of condition-based process to identify treatments and the logging of mature trees, and it suggests that the project does not comply with the just-revised forest plan.  (This article includes a map showing the results of the mature and old growth inventory for this part of Montana, and the mapping tool is available here.)  The NOI is available here.

Court decision in Twin Metals Minnesota LLC v. U. S. A. (D. D.C.)

On September 6, the district court dismissed an attempt by the mining company to reinstate the company’s mineral leases for its planned copper-nickel mine near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in the Superior National Forest, which had been cancelled by the Bureau of Land Management.  The land had then been withdrawn from mineral entry by the Department of the Interior.  The court essentially found that the mining company had no legal rights to its lease.  (The Forest Service was not a party to this case.)

Litigation follow-up

After losing two recent timber sale lawsuits (Ripley and Black Ram) involving the effects of roads on grizzly bears, the Kootenai National Forest is proposing to amend its forest plan to change the way roads are counted in areas outside of grizzly bear recovery zones (BORZ) to allow the use of temporary roads during logging projects to not count against road limits.  After admitting that, “there’s no (timber sale) project that comes across my desk that gets denied,” the forest supervisor observed, “Getting a handle on the courts would help a lot.”

Settlement regarding restoration of national forest lands

While the state had previously agreed to remove the shipping containers it had placed as barriers along the Mexican border, and had done some restoration work, they have now also agreed to pay an additional $2.1 million to fully remediate the damage to national forest lands.  Once that bill is paid, the case would be dismissed

BLM CASES

New lawsuit

The Applegate Siskiyou Alliance has challenged the BLM’s 10-year “integrated vegetation management for resilient lands program,” or IVM-RL, for more than 680,000 acres in the region, as well as the specific Late Mungers project, which involves 830 acres of commercial harvest and 7,500 acres of thinning.  Up to 20,000 acres of commercial logging, 60,000 acres of small-diameter tree thinning, 70,000 acres of prescribed burning and 90 miles of road construction would be allowed over a decade.  The BLM did not prepare an EIS and did not identify specific sites necessary for a site-specific evaluation, allegedly in violation of NEPA.

Post-litigation

As a result of previous court challenges and settlements, the BLM has produced a new proposal for a resource management plan for Colorado’s Western Slope, which is currently open for public comments.  BLM says in the draft proposal it would bar industry access to lands with “no-known, low or medium” oil potential, as well as to acres that are striking for their wildlife, conservation or wilderness values. This would be a significant reversal of the current situation – it would mean closing 80 percent of the lands in the decision area managed by the Colorado River Valley Field Office to new oil leasing and 81 percent of the Grand Junction Field Office’s lands.  It would keep 93 percent of the Colorado River Valley Field Office’s high oil and gas potential lands open to leasing, but in the Grand Junction Field Office only about 44 percent of the high oil potential area would be available for leasing.  (Interestingly, per this article, the mountain bike industry is “neutral” – “if those companies weren’t there, the roads wouldn’t be either.”)

FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE CASES

New lawsuit:  Center for Biological Diversity v. Haaland (D. Ariz.)

On August 22, the Center sued the Fish and Wildlife Service for reducing the previously proposed critical habitat by 90% for the narrow-headed garter snake and the northern Mexico garter snake; both are threatened species.  The reduction was the result of eliminating unoccupied critical habitat.  The riparian habitat they use is found on the Tonto, Coronado, Coconino and Prescott National Forests, and BLM and National Park lands, and occupied habitat there was designated as critical habitat.  (The news release includes a link to the complaint.)

Court decision in Center for Biological Diversity v.U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service (S.D. N.Y.)

On September 6, the district court vacated the Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision to not list the eastern hellbender as threatened or endangered. The court found that the Service unlawfully relied on conservation measures that had not yet been implemented and determined effective and that did not address sedimentation, a primary threat to the species.  The large salamander lives across the eastern U. S.  It was previously listed as endangered in Missouri.  (The news release includes a link to the opinion.)

(The Center for Biological Diversity doesn’t always win these listing/critical habitat lawsuits.  Here, they lost their challenge to a 90-day negative finding by the FWS for listing the Tucson shovel-nosed snake, the court deferring to the use of genetic testing by the Fish and Wildlife Service to define the range of the subspecies.)

Mapping Fire Resilience Priorities: Communities and Carbon

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This essay from The Conversation is interesting.  The author’s study is public access.

“The US is spending billions to reduce forest fire risks – we mapped the hot spots where treatment offers the biggest payoff for people and climate”

Excerpt:

To find the locations with greatest potential payoff for forest treatments, we started by identifying areas where forest carbon is more likely to be lost to wildfires compared to other locations.

In each area, we considered the likelihood of wildfire and calculated how much forest carbon might be lost through smoke emissions and decomposition. Additionally, we evaluated whether the conditions in burned areas would be too stressful for trees to regenerate over time. When forests regrow, they absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and lock it away in their wood, eventually making up for the carbon lost in the fire.

In particular, we found that forests in California, New Mexico and Arizona were more likely to lose a large portion of their carbon in a wildfire and also have a tough time regenerating because of stressful conditions.

When we compared those areas to previously published maps detailing high wildfire risk to communities, we found several hot spots for simultaneously reducing wildfire risk to communities and stabilizing stored carbon.

Forests surrounding Flagstaff, Arizona; Placerville, California; Colorado Springs, Colorado; Hamilton, Montana; Taos, New Mexico; Medford, Oregon, and Wenatchee, Washington, are among locations with good opportunities for likely achieving both goals.

Alaska Oil and Gas Leases Cancelled Due to …Poor NEPA?

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Now, I’m not a lawyer,  but I have sat in many meetings with OGC folks about cancelling existing oil and gas leases.  So I was surprised by this :

Here’s  the NPR story.

“They just yanked those leases,” Sullivan said. “But now we’re going to get ready for the next lease sale. Give me a break. Who the hell in their right mind would invest money in a lease sale when they just watched the first lease sale get yanked?”

The administration is required to hold at least one more lease sale in ANWR. Senior administration officials said they “intend to comply with the law” in regards to that mandate which requires another lease sale by December 2024.

The original sale, held during the last weeks of the Trump Administration, drew unexpectedly little industry interest. Major oil companies did not participate, and the state of Alaska was the largest bidder.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski told reporters on the Hill she wants to put pressure on Biden to reverse his decision but cautioned that it’s “incredible to think that people are going to trust this administration on anything related to oil in Alaska.”

Haaland said the environmental reviews done under the Trump administration to allow the lease sales were “fundamentally flawed and based on a number of fundamental legal deficiencies.”

According to a Biden White House release, this includes failure to adequately analyze a reasonable range of alternatives and properly quantify downstream greenhouse gas emissions, as well as failure to properly interpret the 2017 tax law.

The administration said Wednesday’s announcement “does not impact valid existing rights” from developing leases.

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So it sounds like, based on this, Admin’s can simply state that the previous analysis was wrong and revoke decisions? Folks can always find flaws in any analysis.. one would think that since our usual suspect ENGOs did not litigate this project that they didn’t see those fundamental flaws quite so.. clearly.  And yet, we can suspect they didn’t want these leases, because at least some are supporting this decision.

I don’t particularly like the idea of possibly endlessly recursive NEPA.. suppose the Admin were to find “fundamental flaws” in the last ten years of Forest Plan EIS’s.

It will also be interesting to see how this is portrayed politically; looks like at least one Alaskan D is not on board.

“I am deeply frustrated by the reversal of these leases in ANWR,” said Democratic Alaska Rep. Mary Peltola. “I will continue to advocate for them and for Alaska’s ability to explore and develop our natural resources, from the critical minerals we need for our clean energy transition to the domestic oil and gas we need to get us there.”

According to AIDEA, the non-wilderness section of the ANWR where its leases are located contains approximately 7.6 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The agency said a large share of economic development and jobs supported across Alaska’s indigenous and rural North Slope communities are related to oil and gas development.

Deb Haaland claims that this commitment recognizes Indigenous Knowledge, but doesn’t acknowledge that different Indigenous groups disagree about the project.  I guess that some Indigenous folks’ views count more than others.

“With climate change warming the Arctic more than twice as fast as the rest of the planet, we must do everything within our control to meet the highest standards of care to protect this fragile ecosystem,” Haaland said in a statement. “President Biden is delivering on the most ambitious climate and conservation agenda in history.”

“The steps we are taking today further that commitment, based on the best available science and in recognition of the Indigenous Knowledge of the original stewards of this area, to safeguard our public lands for future generations,” she continued.

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Coincidentally, journalist Matty Iglesias on his Substack this morning made the claim that:

The current Biden policy is to support domestic oil production for economic and geopolitical reasons, even while investing in long-term decarbonization via technological progress. The old Schumer policy was to try to take advantage of the pandemic to crush the domestic oil and gas industry.

I think we can safely say we are entering pre-election silly season.

 

Two New Recreation Strategies: BLM and the Forest Service

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Thanks to all who are contributing to our ongoing climate discussion! I think already we’ve seen that our thoughts are complex and not easily categorized and we’ll be looking at other ways to break free of categories. But there are probably many TSW-ites interested in more newsy things, so here are some posts along those lines.

BLM Seeks Public Input on a New Plan for Recreation Management

WASHINGTON – The Bureau of Land Management is welcoming public input on a plan to inform recreation management on America’s public lands. The new Blueprint for 21st Century Outdoor Recreation will guide Bureau decisions to proactively meet modern demands for exceptional and unique outdoor experiences, complementing the significant public land investments in President Biden’s Investing in America agenda.

“BLM hosted more than 81 million visitors on our public lands last fiscal year – a 40 percent increase since 2012. We are thrilled at this trend, but also recognize that more guests means a need for varied and diverse response strategies,” said BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning. “The Blueprint aims to help BLM meet the growing demand for exceptional recreation experiences on our public lands.”

Managing for recreational opportunities is a core tenet of BLM’s multiple use mandate and aligns with BLM’s mission to sustain the health, diversity and productivity of public lands for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations. The increasing demand for recreational activities on public lands has provided a critical window of opportunity to advance a transformational shift in recreation management. This Blueprint will help BLM prioritize recreation investment and staffing appropriate for current and future needs.

BLM is seeking input from partners and the public, including in-person and virtual recreation Blueprint roundtables hosted by the Foundation for America’s Public Lands. Together, BLM and its partners will implement a strategy to guide the agency in providing the resources and experiences that visitors to public lands expect in the 21st century.

Forest Service Reimagine Recreation

The FS is also working on a recreation strategy that they call Reimagine Recreation.  They had a workshop in July and I will post the summary when I receive it from them.  Here are the Recreation Workshop – Case Studies and Successes Links .

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At that point maybe someone will volunteer to review both strategies and talk about similarities and differences?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Here’s how it works.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Here’s the beginning of the piece:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why is this happening?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway, Capstick and Pidgeon go on to say..

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Three Sisters Wilderness Trailhead Presence

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Les Joslin collecting wilderness visitor data at Green Lakes Trailhead.
Les Joslin collecting wilderness visitor data at Green Lakes Trailhead entrance to Three Sisters Wilderness.

By Les Joslin

I made such a good start at those campsite surveys during 1990 that some of my Three Sisters Wilderness work during summer 1991 was focused on gathering information for a study about how visitors use and perceive wilderness. This put me in a position to meet about five times as many visitors as I had met the previous summer.

A trailhead—especially a heavily-used one—is a good place to contact wilderness visitors. There, where people begin and end wilderness visits, an appropriate Forest Service representative can do a lot of good. Visitors may be made to feel welcome—which they are—and provided useful information. Regulations may be explained. And violations of regulations—and thus, impact on the wilderness resource and the wilderness experiences of other visitors—may be prevented. And, in those days, permits—if required—could be issued.

I spent about a third of my wilderness duty days that second summer at the Green Lakes Trailhead, the most used Three Sisters Wilderness access point. There, for nine hours a day, I collected visitor use data through interviews and surveys, explained the new wilderness permit system instituted that summer, and answered questions.

That new wilderness permit resulted in the most questions. Yes, I answered, self-issued day-use wilderness permits—previously required in the late 1970s and early 1980s—were required from Memorial Day weekend through October. I likened these permits, for which there was no charge, to visit registrations. It was a softer word. Overnight permits were issued by forest officers.

One regulation, prohibiting use of mechanized equipment—including mountain bikes—in the wilderness, required frequent explanation. One day that summer, after explaining the wilderness idea to two young men with mountain bikes who wanted to follow two young women on horseback around the Fall Creek-Soda Creek loop trail, I explained how any form of mechanical transport—except wheelchairs—is incompatible with the legal and ethical definitions of wilderness. They accepted my explanation, and the map of Deschutes National Forest mountain bike trails I offered as an alternative.

“Have you ever seen a wheelchair in the wilderness?” one asked.

“No, I haven’t,” I replied.

But, as fate would have it, I did later that afternoon. A man and wife with two children, one a seriously handicapped toddler in a three-wheeled conveyance, arrived at the trailhead. The conveyance qualified as a wheelchair.

“We plan to go in for a night or two. It’ll be the kids’ first time,” the man explained. “We thought we’d try Green Lakes. What do you think?”

“Well, it’s pretty late in the day to start for the Green Lakes, especially with the children. And the weather forecast calls for storms in the Cascades tonight. If you’re going into the wilderness, I think you’d be better off going to Moraine Lake. It’s closer, easier to get to, and there’s more cover there.” I told him how to get there, and showed him on a map. The couple thanked me.

“Do you have an overnight wilderness permit?” I asked. At that time, overnight permits had to be issued by a forest officer.

“No. Guess we forgot to get one.”

“I’ll issue you a permit, and you can be on your way.”

And soon they were. I admired their determination to experience the wilderness with their children despite their young son’s condition.

It stormed that night.