Five Commandments of Decision Making Under Uncertainty

by

Ran across this in Roger Pielke, Jr.’s blog, here. He linked to a paper by Haldane and Madouros at the Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium. Here is the link to that paper and an excerpt below, but check out Roger’s summary, or the original paper or both. Does this remind you of planning? Fire suppression?

(e) Complex rules and defensive behaviour
There is a final, related but distinct, rationale for simple over complex rules. Complex rules may cause
people to manage to the rules, for fear of falling foul of them. They may induce people to act defensively,
focussing on the small print at the expense of the bigger picture.
Studies of the behaviour of doctors illustrate this pattern (Gigerenzer and Kurzenhäuser (2005)). Fearing
misdiagnosis, perhaps litigation, doctors are prone to tick the boxes. That may mean over-diagnosing drugs
or over-submitting patients to hospital. Both are defensive actions, reducing risks to the doctor. But both are
a potential health hazard to the patient. For example, submitting patients to hospital increases significantly
their risk of secondary infection. Hospitals are, after all, full of sick people.
Doctors unencumbered by a complex rulebook will have fewer incentives to act defensively. They may also
be better able to form their own independent judgements when diagnosing medical problems, using their
accumulated experience. That ought to more closely align a doctor’s risk incentives with their patient’s. The
same is likely to be true of other professions, from lawyers to policemen to bank supervisors.
Of course, simple rules are not costless. They place a heavy reliance on the judgement of the decisionmaker,
on picking appropriate heuristics. Here, a key ingredient is the decision-maker’s level of experience,
since heuristics are learned behaviours honed by experience. A dog will outperform a puppy at frisbeecatching
because it has had time to fine-tune its “gaze heuristic”. An expert baseball player or cricketer will
outperform a novice sportsman for the same reason. So too will an experienced doctor or detective or fund
manager or shopkeeper.

And from Roger:

A focus on simple vs. complex analyses and decisions that are based on heuristics rather than optimization runs counter to the grain of conventional wisdom across many areas, from financial regulation to environmental protection.

One important point to note is that their paper uses two conflicting definitions of “uncertainty.” One definition of uncertainty is equivalent to “risk” or the odds of a particular outcome from a known distribution of outcomes. If I bet $1,000 that the next roll of a die will turn up 6, I am taking a risk on an uncertain outcome. A second definition of uncertainty (“Knightian uncertainty”) is equivalent to what I typically call “ignorance” following from the work of John Maynard Keynes, as discussed in The Honest Broker. These two definitions are obviously not referring to the same concept, and thus are subject to confusion unless care in taken in the interpretation. (I discuss uncertainty-as-ignorance at length in this recent paper in PDF).

Academics and policy makers typically like to focus on uncertainty-as-risk rather than uncertainty-as-ignorance as the former is more readily subject to easy quantification and manipulation. This focus reinforces the values of academia (where physics-envy runs rampant through the social sciences) and the desire of politicians to make concrete-looking claims backed by authoritative-sounding expertise. The result can be to create a zone of ignorance surrounding our decisions. Not surprisingly, bad decisions can result.

I was thinking of climate change strategies and also appreciated EO’s comment #12:

Decision making is a process. Before I retired I had to do a lot of decision making under uncertainty. The golden rule is ” The correctness of decision made under uncertainty is uncertain”. The first commandment is: Dont get emotional, dogmatic of the decision made under uncertainty. It could be wrong. Second commandment: keep an open mind, listen to critics, and other views because they might be right and be prepared to modify and even make a complete U turn or abandon a decision as more facts are available and uncertainty is reduced.
Third-keep enough reserve that if required to modify or alter the decision there are enough resources to work. Fourth commandment- hedge or take insurance on such that if the decision turns out to be a complete failure, you could start again. Fifth commandment- execute the decision with a political will and with confidence that the correct decision has been made. The decision could be correct but it will fail because of lack of confidence

Op-ed on “The Nation Possessed” Conference

by

Hmm.. some other folks are seeking to reach across the divide..Here’s a link to Patty’s op-ed in the Sunday Denver Post. Bolding mine. Good on the Center for the American West and the presenters.

More important, you will have the rare, almost exotic experience of hearing people of different partisan affiliations consider a national issue in a civil, thoughtful and lively conversation. As the conference title’s direct reference to “conflicting claims” makes clear, the conference organizers have made no effort to deny or suppress the reality of conflict. On the contrary, our goal — to use the phrasing of natural scientists — is to separate “signal” from “noise,” carefully and thoughtfully laying out areas of both agreement and disagreement.

Presenting at the conference will be former Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter, a Democrat, and former Utah Sen. Bob Bennett, a Republican who lost office when challenged by a Tea Party candidate. Speaking at a session — on the challenge of making science-based decisions while being shouted at and litigated against by agitated constituents — will be Mike Dombeck, former chief forester and director of the Bureau of Land Management under Democratic presidential administrations; and Lynn Scarlett, former deputy secretary of the Interior in the George W. Bush administration. All of these individuals are people who have chosen forthright, substantive expression over the alternative of vilification, blame, and demonization.

After years of transforming public land into private property, the federal government’s land management underwent an enormous change. Fears and worries about unregulated extraction of resources led to the creation of new institutions: the Forest Service, the National Park Service, and the agency with the largest domain of all, the under-recognized Bureau of Land Management (the BLM). For years, the BLM carried the nickname, the Bureau of Livestock and Mining. Over two centuries, the BLM and its ancestor agency the General Land Office have served as a political and cultural seismograph, recording the nation’s changing attitudes toward and uses of land and resources.

There is no better focal point for a study of the paired and intertwined questions of how we live with nature and how we live with each other.

Over the last two decades, I have had the good fortune to occupy a prime seat on the 50- yard-line, watching the federal land management agencies as they navigate through times of dramatic change. Attending the “Nation Possessed” conference will position you in a comparably well-placed seat.

800 Trees and 6.5 Acres .. Litigation.. and Mass Extinctions

by
Popular skiing terrain on Burnt Mountain East. The area is outside of the Snowmass Ski Area’s operations boundary, but inside its permit boundary. The trail in question would allow skiers to access this terrain and then return to the Two Creeks base area. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith

I have been following this project (Burnt Mountain) and here is a link to a news story from Friday from the Aspen Times, and below is an excerpt.

So I am totally not a skier, so perhaps I don’t understand the complexities of why this could be good or bad in terms of safety. I do understand the idea of 6.5 acres and 800 trees, though, and I don’t understand how the Ark Initiative mission relates to 6.5 acres. And how the area around an old road could be special because it’s roadless…

I looked up the Ark Initiative here.. it seems to be concerned with the mass extinction of species. I’m just not getting the connection with 800 trees and 6.5 acres.

In an email earlier this month, Ark Initiative representative D.J. Duerr explained the organization’s position.

“Fitzwilliams could call this part of Burnt Mountain a parking lot if he likes, but that wouldn’t change the simple fact that this forested area contains no roads and is in the same wild and undeveloped condition as the immediately adjacent Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness,” Duerr said.

For The Ark Initiative, the dispute pertains to terrain beyond the egress.

“Around 2002, the USFS drew the original boundary for the ‘inventoried’ Burnt Mountain Roadless Area to exclude the exact area where Skico wanted to cut the new ski runs,” Duerr claimed. “It appears the ‘inventoried’ roadless boundary in this part of Burnt Mountain wasn’t based on whether the lands were actually roadless but on Skico’s desire to cut up this area for more profits. The Colorado Roadless Rule reclassifies even more of the roadless lands on Burnt Mountain out of ‘roadless’ status to facilitate the new ski runs.”

Fitzwilliams countered Thursday that the Forest Service spent six years on administrative analysis of Skico’s proposal and that two courts upheld the decision. He maintained that work on the egress is allowable, but he wanted the Forest Service attorneys to make sure the process was adequate in case of a challenge from The Ark Initiative.

“If we’re not going to affect roadless, I don’t know what the issue is,” Fitzwilliams said.

He also questioned the legitimacy of The Ark Initiative as an environmental organization. No local groups, such as Wilderness Workshop, have challenged the Forest Service decision, he noted.

Fitzwilliams suggested The Ark Initiative is a front from powder skiers who don’t want their stash turned into inbounds skiing.

“This isn’t about roadless,” Fitzwilliams said. “This is about fresh tracks at the bottom of the hill.”

In practical terms, the status of the traverse remains in limbo at least for this ski season.

“That is part of the area that is still under Forest Service review,” Skico spokesman Jeff Hanle said.

Burkley said Skico can work on a small portion of the 1,900-foot-long traverse from below and from above, but it can’t touch the middle 1,400 to 1,500 feet. The traverse, ironically following an old road, is 15 to 30 feet wide and steeper than Skico wants for intermediate customers.

“We don’t want to create a terrain trap where we suck people in,” he said. “For an expert skier, it’s not an issue.”

The new terrain will be accessed from Longshot. Skiers and riders will work to their right. The new terrain won’t be named.

“You’d be hard-pressed to identify any one run,” Burkley said.

Let me just add that skiers are not roads, and removing trees as part of “activities not otherwise prohibited” seems to be OK under the 2001 Roadless Rule. It’s just not clear to me why this is a Big Deal, related to extinctions of species, and worthy of expensive lawyer time for the plaintiffs, and, ineluctably, the taxpayer.

I’m with Scott.. something here simply doesn’t add up.

Here’s another article from 2009 (!) on the same subject and here’s a quote

Ark’s lawsuit contends that the Skico’s master plan amendment should have triggered studies on effects on roadless areas and on elk. The initial approval and environmental studies were performed in the early 1990s, so conditions might have changed, the group contended. As an example, it wanted a new study on the work’s potential impact on elk.

“If it’s a minor amendment, it might not need NEPA analysis,” Brawer said. “This wasn’t minor and [the initial approval] was old.”

Ark contends that the Forest Service analysis has been piecemeal and it has lost sight of the cumulative impacts on Burnt Mountain. It wants the ski area project blocked “until and unless” full-blown environmental studies are performed on Skico’s amendment to its master plan.

The Forest Service’s arguments essentially flip all the claims made by Ark. The agency said its review was cumulative and satisfied NEPA requirements. The project has no significant effect on elk or endangered species like lynx, the agency said. It wants the review to stand.

The two sides argued the case in Denver earlier this year before U.S. District Judge Walker Miller. It is unknown when a ruling will be made.

Here’s another article from 2011 about how the legal battle was “over”..

A trio of judges in the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals denied an appeal on Nov. 8 in a lawsuit seeking to block the construction of an egress trail connecting lower Burnt Mountain East to Two Creeks, which was approved by the U.S. Forest Service in 2003.

The decision, written by Judge Paul Kelly, Jr., ends the legal process for the plaintiffs in the suit opposed to the trail, the Ark Initiative, Donald Duerr who is connected to the Ark Initiative, Paul “PJ” Smith, who works at the Gene Taylor’s ski shop in Snowmass Village and Alex Forsythe, a Florida resident who skis frequently on Burnt Mountain.

The U.S. Forest Service was the defendant in the suit and Aspen Skiing Company was not named.

However, Skico legal counsel David Bellack attended oral arguments recently in Denver just in case he was needed to support the Forest Service’s case.

It’s not clear yet what the resolution of the legal challenge to the trail means in terms of actually building the trail.

“We are aware the appeal was rejected but haven’t discussed anything internally regarding Burnt Mountain at this time,” said Aspen Skiing Company Vice President of Mountain Operations Rich Burkley.

The trail in question exists today in crude form, but the legal battle begin after the U.S. Forest Service approved a wider and formalized trail.

So.. people already go there and there are folks against something “wider and more formalized”; but it’s not a road and it’s bad for “roadless”??

Like I said, something just doesn’t add up.

The Goshawk Science Utilization Mysteries

by

Tree asked about the paper behind the news story on goshawks in our previous discussion here. So I went hunting in the Journal of Applied Ecology. I searched on goshawk, and found this in .. but it was from 2007. Which may explain why Hamis had heard about it. Here is a link to the article, fortunately it is public.

So this raises two questions.. is there a new one? A casual browsing of the NAU website did not yield this info..so I put in an email to an author.

And what happened on the basis of this “latest science” in 2007? Was this considered the “best available” at the time? Why or why not? This could shed some light on the concerns of folks litigating the planning rule worried about interpretations of “best available.”

PS My understanding/memory (and I could easily be corrected) is that when the 2005-8 rule got cast out by the courts, the FS went back to the provisions of the 82 and projects had to follow the “best available science” and document it. So conceivably, if my logic and memory is correct, projects exist whose documentation discusses the pros and cons of this paper compared to other papers on the subject. Maybe one of our readers could point us to a discussion in such a document.

Did Sen Tester claim his logging bill would have stopped wildfire?

by

Yesterday I wrote about a new study from the Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research station, which found that fuel reduction logging and thinning prior to the Fourmile Canyon Fire outside of Boulder, Colorado was ineffective at moderating the fire’s behavior, having had a minimal impact in affecting how the fire burned or the damage it caused.

Below that article from yesterday, frequent commenter Ed made an interesting point worthy of highlighting here:

Some people just refuse to accept the reality of this…that when you get really extreme conditions of humidity, temps, and high winds, there is no power, no planning, no treatment, no nothing that will stop a fire from going where it wants.  Nada.  I am tired of reading statements from pols (and others who should know better) that “demand this fire be stopped”…. We are now experiencing more and more extreme weather, for whatever reason that none of us are smart enough to explain. We will have to learn to live with these blowup fires, and concentrate our prevention efforts in and around the homes and structures along the forest perimeter.

Well, we know that at least one politician – and their staff – was apparently too busy on the campaign trail to actually have time to read the findings from Forest Service’s Fourmile Fire Report about the fact that fuel reduction logging and thinning had a minimal impact in affecting how the fire burned.  This morning I woke up to see Senator Jon Tester (D-Mont) quoted in Montana newspapers with this amazing claim:

This election is about an area between here and Whitehall that is burning. If we could
have gotten my Forest Jobs Act past [sic] we would have been able to cut those trees.
– Senator Jon Tester

It’s worth pointing out that Senator Tester is referring the 19 Mile Wildfire, a 3,000 acre fire, which according to inciweb, is burning in grass, brush and some timber mainly on private lands west of Whitehall, Montana (see official maps below).   The cause of the fire is under investigation.  Yesterday, the weather at the fire was 97 degrees, 13% humidity and 20 mph winds blowing out of the southwest.

I’m not sure if the Forest Service has an official threshold that needs to be crossed in order for “extreme fire weather conditions” to be met, but suffice to say that temps near 100, humidity in the low teens and winds blowing 20 miles an hour qualify.  Once a wildfire gets going under these types of weather conditions any wildfire expert will tell you there’s not much you can do to put the fire out.

But not Senator Tester. Nope, apparently he wants us all to believe that if Congress would have simply passed his mandated logging bill, which calls for a minimum of 5,000 acres of logging on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest annually for the next fifteen years, that this 19 Mile Wildfire, which has burned mainly on private land (and is burning mainly toward more private land and BLM land) would have prevented this wildfire from either starting and/or spreading.  Incredible….

According to inciweb, the 19 Mile Wildfire in Montana has burned through grass, brush and timber on about 3,000 acres of mostly private land west of Whitehall, Montana.
Another map of the 19 Mile fire from the official inciweb site of the U.S. Forest Service clearly showing this fire has barely burned any Forest Service land. Also note that the fire is moving towards the northeast, towards more private, BLM and state of Montana lands, and away from any Forest Service lands.
This screen shot taken from the official Montana land ownership map (http://svc.mt.gov/msl/mtcadastral) shows that the 19 Mile Wildfire has burned mainly on highly-subdivided private land with small portions of BLM, State of Montana and U.S. Forest Service lands also impacted.

Senses of Plants In New Scientist

by

There are a couple of interesting small articles on the senses of plants and what we know..
Here’s the link. Many interesting things have been discovered since I took plant physiology, lo , these many years ago.. Here’s a link to some pages from Chamovitz’s book, “What a Plant Knows”.

HAVE you ever wondered what the grass under your feet feels, what an apple tree smells, or a marigold sees? Plants stimulate our senses constantly, but most of us never consider them as sensory beings too. In fact senses are extremely important to plants. Whatever life throws at them, they remain rooted to the spot – they cannot migrate in search of food, escape a swarm of locusts or find shelter from a storm. To grow and survive in unpredictable conditions, plants need to sense their environment and react accordingly. Some people may not be comfortable describing what plants do as seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching. They certainly lack noses, eyes, ears, mouths and skin, but in what follows, I hope to convince you that the sensory world of plants is not so very different from our own. Daniel Chamovitz

Report: Prior fuel treatments ineffective at moderating Fourmile Canyon Fire

by

The U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station has just released an August 2012 study titled, “Fourmile Canyon Fire Findings.”   We’ve discussed the 2010 Fourmile Canyon wildfire outside of Boulder, CO a few times before on this blog, including this post from Andy Stahl titled, “Fourmile Canyon Fire Report Confirms Firewise.”

Here’s an excerpt from the Rocky Mountain Research Station’s abstract to their new study:

“Fuel treatments had previously been applied to several areas within the fire perimeter to modify fire behavior and/or burn severity if a wildfire was to occur. However, the fuel treatments had minimal impact in affecting how the fire burned or the damage it caused….This report summarizes how the fire burned, the damage it caused, and offers insights to help the residents and fire responders prepare for the next wildfire that will burn on the Colorado Front Range.

On Tuesday, Bob Berwyn wrote this article for the Summit County Citizens Voice titled, “Report: Wildfire mitigation work largely ineffective in moderating Fourmile Canyon Fire.” Below are some excerpts from Mr. Berwyn’s article:

A report on the 2011 Fourmile Canyon Fire will probably raise more questions than it answers for firefighters and land managers, concluding that, in some cases, the ferocious fire near Boulder may have burned more intensely in treated areas than in adjacent untreated stands.

That may have been due to the relatively high concentration of surface fuels remaining after treatments, as well as the higher wind speeds that can occur in open forests compared to those with denser canopies, Forest Service researchers concluded in the report published last month….

The report also concluded that beetle-killed trees had “little to no effect on the fuels within the area burned by the Fourmile Canyon Fire, the fire’s  behavior, or the final fire size,” explaining that crown fires are “driven by abundant and continuous surface fuels rather than beetle-killed trees.”….

In the end, the report found no evidence that fuel treatments changed the progression of the Fourmile Canyon Fire, and that the treated areas were “probably of limited value to suppression efforts on September  6.” Large quantities of surface fuels in the treatment area also rendered them ineffective in changing fire behavior.

Satellite photos taken after the fire clearly showed that the fire burned just as intensely inside treatment areas as it did in adjacent untreated stands. In some cased, the fire appears to burned more intensely in treated areas, the investigators said, explaining that additional surface fuels, as well as higher wind speeds, may have been factors….

[T]he report once again calls for a change of approach — instead of increasing expensive fire protection capabilities that have proven to strategically fail during extreme wildfire burning conditions, efforts should be focused on reducing home ignition potential within the immediate vicinity of homes, the investigators concluded.

Certainly one new study about one wildfire isn’t the be-all, end-all. However, how does the new research and scientific findings coming from a comprehensive look at the Fourmile Canyon Fire mesh with the constant drum-beat supporting logging for “fuel reduction” and “thinning” we see coming from some quarters at this very blog?

Why the First FS Chief Deserves a Cool Tshirt- Char Miller

by

Here’s the link, and below is an excerpt.

Yet for all Pinchot’s love of the political rough-and-tumble, he repeatedly argued that democracy functions best when the citizenry and their representatives pursue the collective good; when they negotiated their differences, not exaggerated them; when they worked together, across the street and aisle.

This was especially critical for public servants: “Learn tact simply by being absolutely honest and sincere,” he told Forest Service employees, “and by learning to recognize the point of view of the other man and meet him with arguments he will understand.” After all, “a public official is there to serve the public and not run them.”

In no other way could the Forest Service achieve the mission Pinchot had set for the land-management organization at its establishment in 1905: “the greatest good for the greatest number in the long run.”

This maxim became the mantra for Pinchot’s gubernatorial campaigns in the mid-1920s and early 1930s. Because conservative Republicans despised his progressivism and Democrats controlled the state’s large bloc of urban voters, Pinchot had to construct an odd (yet winning) coalition outside the usual party apparatus. Feminists, minorities, miners and mill workers, the dispossessed and impoverished, prohibitionists and small farmers turned out in force for this well-heeled man of the people.

Forest Guidelines For Goshawks May Not Help

by

TThanks to an eagle-eyed (or hawk-eyed?) member of our circle…

Here’s the link

And here’s an excerpt:

“Our forest plans require it,” he said. “But that would be a pain” if the existing guidelines don’t actually help the goshawks successfully rear more chicks. “We do have different prescriptions for the goshawk areas. In those breeding areas we know they typically have a higher (tree) density. So we have prescriptions for that. We’re trying to manage the future forest. One of the big concerns is whether we’re going to have adequate canopy cover — so we’re really managing groups of trees and also providing for those interspaces and managing for their prey.”

#But the NAU study raises questions about whether biologists yet know enough to micro-manage the forest for the benefit of any individual species.

#The goshawk and the Mexican Spotted Owl for years have fluttered about at the center of the legal and political fight about the future of the forest. The agile, crazy-orange-eyed goshawk is nearly as large as a red tailed hawk, but can maneuver deftly through the thick forest. In open areas, they tend to lose out to the red tails — which circle overhead looking for prey rather than perching on tree branches for a quick swoop to the ground.

#The now nearly defunct timber industry in Arizona made most of its money on cutting the big, old growth trees associated with those species and others like the Kaibab squirrel and the Allen’s lappet-browed bat. With most of those trees reduced to two-by-fours, the timber industry had a hard time making money on the smaller trees that remained in dangerous profusion.

#The Centers for Biological Diversity has repeatedly sued to prevent timber sales that included a large number of old growth pines greater than 16 inches in diameter at about chest height. For instance, earlier this year the Centers for Biological Diversity successfully blocked a timber sale on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon on the grounds that the 25,000-acre sale would include about 8,000 old-growth trees — even though such trees account for only about 3 percent of the trees.

#The NAU study demonstrated that biologists still don’t really understand what species like goshawks need.

#None of the sites studied very closely matched the guidelines, which call for clusters of giant, old-growth trees and nearby areas with underbrush likely to result in high populations of 14 different prey species.

#Although little true old-growth ponderosa pine forest remains in Arizona, the researchers expected to find that the more closely the conditions around the nest area resembled that prescription — the more chicks the goshawks would produce. In fact, the more closely the forest matched the prescription the fewer chicks the hawks reared.

#That doesn’t mean the goshawks don’t prefer nesting in big, old growth trees. But it does mean that they’re not as sensitive to the prey populations in the area or the nearby forest conditions as biologists had expected.

But my favorite quotes are:

The NAU research now throws into question many key assumptions built in ponderous legal strictures of existing forest plans.

#“The results raise questions about the decision to implement the goshawk guidelines on most Forest Service lands in Arizona and New Mexico,” the researchers concluded.

#However, the Forest Service remains legally bound to the detailed guidelines now cast in the legal concrete of adopted forest plans.

“Ponderous legal strictures” and “legal concrete of adopted forest plans”, indeed. The old conundrum – while some people look for certainty of protection in plans, others look for flexibility to respond to changing conditions. Can both sides ever be happy?