Nibbled to Death By Neighbors: The Future of Public Lands?

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One of the issues that you usually don’t hear much about in the press are “lands” issues. Lands people, in my opinion, are among the unsung heroes of the Forest Service.

If you talk to them, you will find out some of the problems facing public lands-
neighbors attempting to cut off access to the public, through
land exchanges, trespass and subsequently being granted the land through efforts of their Congresspeople, putting gates on public roads, signing public roads as private, removing Forest Service signs, and probably other approaches I have not yet heard about.

Because of the relative tininess of each individual action, it is difficult to get a handle on the overall size of the problem. I have heard that it is difficult to get the courts involved, again, due to the individual size of each incursion and the workload of the Justice Department- although some are successfully litigated. My understanding is that there simply aren’t enough people funded to keep an eye on these kinds of things to keep up with the need.

Here’s a discussion about the roads problem- the question raised was “how can you tell if the “private” signs are accurate?”

Unfortunately, there’s no easy way to tell. In Wyoming, you can check the commissioners’ records at the local courthouse to find out the surveyed route of all the county roads, and get copies of the easements (or orders) establishing the road. Even then, you can get into issues regarding whether the county road has been abandoned, and reverted to private.

The forest service roads are not so easy, because the forest service is so bad about either maintaining their roads, or keeping records regarding which ones are public and private. It is not uncommon for private inholders in the forest who block a road through their property, which was built and maintained by the public long before their property was private. The Forest Service (or the public) is left to file suit to enjoin the blockage, and they usually conclude it is not worth the money to bring suit.

I just finished working on a lawsuit where this precise issue was involved, and the forest service won the suit, but they had allowed the road to remain blocked for over a decade. If they hadn’t convinced the U.S. Attorney to bring suit to establish a trail along the old railroad bed passing through the same property, they would never have sued just to reopen the road.

There are several theories under which the forest service, the local county commission or the public can sue to enjoin a landowner from blocking a public road. (prescriptive easements, R.S. 2477, implied easement, simple lack of right) Sadly, the amount of historical research necessary to prevail in those suits means that few ever get brought, due to the cost. The private landowners know this, so they routinely just block the roads, and dare anyone to do anything about it.

The worst abuse I’ve seen in Wyoming is where a private landowner (with buddies on the county commission) will grant an easement for a county road, get the county to pay to build the road, then convince the commissioners to abandon the road later. The landowner, in the process, just got the taxpayers to build him a nice long driveway, thank you very much. I can point to a couple of these in my county.

Here’s a story in the Denver Post yesterday about a land exchange. It’s not clear to me why one individual’s desire to join pieces of property is more important than traditional rights of access for the public.

At the root of the controversy is the fact that the swap is being carried out with legislation rather than through an administrative process as most of the land swaps in the country are done.

That means there is no environmental review process before the trade takes place: There are no formal public hearings that would put a spotlight on the trade rather than making it just another item on a county commission’s agenda.

That is one reason a national watchdog group devoted to overhauling the way the government trades public land is looking askance.

The Western Lands Project in Seattle is questioning the transparency and is troubled that Koch included land in two states (Colorado and Utah) and land involving two federal management agencies. Those factors guarantee the trade must be done through legislation.

“The thing that bothers me about this bill — it appears to me this whole thing was engineered to keep it out of the normal public process. All of our questions could have been answered if this hadn’t been done legislatively,” Western Lands director Janine Blaeloch said.

Goldstein said Koch is only interested in having a much larger ranch in Gunnison County so he can hunt and ride horses and have a place to put his extensive collection of Western memorabilia. He has had enough of people trespassing from the quarter-mile-wide strip of public land that runs through the ranch. The trade would fix that.

Hmm. If there is public access, and people trespass on nearby private land, and the proposed solution is to cut off public access, then there is not much hope for much public land. Another solution would be to not buy (or sell) land that is adjacent to roads with public access.

Readers: do you have these kinds of problems in your neck of the woods?

Bosworth Op-Ed on Tester’s Bill

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Thanks to Terry Seyden for this one!
From the Billings Gazette, here.
Guest opinion: Tester’s jobs & rec bill would benefit Montana forests

By DALE BOSWORTH

As regional forester for the Forest Service here in Montana and as chief of the Forest Service in Washington, D.C., I have watched how the heavy traffic of opinion about public land management has grown more and more contentious, until our management processes resemble traffic jams. When so much comes to a halt, our forests suffer.

More recently however, I’ve found cause for encouragement in the local community partnerships on three national forests in Montana, partnerships that laid the groundwork for Sen. Jon Tester’s Forest Jobs and Recreation Act.

Like many Montanans, I read the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act when it was first introduced and I let Sen. Jon Tester know that I supported his efforts, but I also took the time to offer a few suggestions. Then, over the next couple years, I watched as something very uncommon happened. As the suggestions came in, changes were made and the bill got better and better.

Timely land legislation

With the news that the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act may move forward in the Senate as part of the Interior appropriations bill, it’s important to recognize why this legislation is both necessary and timely.

First, there are many areas in Montana that are long overdue for being protected as wilderness. Almost half of the elk harvested in Montana come off the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest, where most of the lands in this bill are located. The elk are there because the backcountry is there. Many of these special places, from the Sapphires to the Centennials, have been in limbo for decades, and it’s time for Congress to act.

Second, Sen. Tester’s bill will enable the agency to take a larger, watershed approach to managing our forests. It gives the agency tools to help it succeed. And, it requires the use of stewardship contracting to accomplish much needed restoration work on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge and Kootenai National Forests. This tool allows the Forest Service to harvest timber and reinvest that income in other local projects like removing unusable roads so that elk can flourish, or restoring streambeds to support native fish. I strongly support the use of stewardship contracting and I believe it is the tool of the future for accomplishing needed work on national forest system land.

Unprecedented Montana partnerships

Third — and perhaps most important — this bill is based on collaborative efforts across Montana. Members of communities from Deer Lodge to Troy who have historically been at odds did the hard work of working together. And they have stuck with it. That itself is huge. We need to make sure these efforts are rewarded so that we can build even stronger partnerships in the future.

The chairman of the Senate appropriations committee said this about the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act and the work that went into it: “Decisions on how to use and protect our natural resources are never simple or clear-cut. They require commitment and fortitude. They force conversations and compromise. They make us stronger by overcoming differences and looking toward the future.”

I commend Montanans for working together on this vision. After a career of 41 years as a steward of our national forests, I’m truly encouraged by their commitment and fortitude.

Dale Bosworth of Missoula served as U.S. Forest Service Northern Region forester from 1997 to 2001 and as U.S. Forest Service chief from 2001 to 2007.

Science: Beacon of Reality – AFS Keynote by Bob Lackey

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Here’s a paper by Bob Lackey, well worth reading, especially for any of us practitioner/scientist types. He’s got a great deal of real world experience in the natural resource science policy world. I think the whole paper is interesting but excerpted the section below that addresses some of the issues we discuss regularly on this blog.

In case you are unfamiliar with Bob and his work, here’s his bio.

But, for scientists who take their civic responsibilities seriously, all is not well. Far from it.
Specifically, for scientists at least, advocating personal or organizational policy preferences has become widely tolerated as acceptable professional behavior.

Scientists may even be encouraged to do this by a portion of our professional community. The risk: we will diminish ourselves and the scientific enterprise when we allow personal or organizational policy preferences to color our scientific contributions.

This is a morass into which we scientists must not allow ourselves to slip. As scientists, we have a special role, an exclusive role because we are uniquely qualified to provide technical knowledge that is based on rigorous scientific principles.
It is this policy neutral knowledge that the public and decision-makers sorely need.
Is the scientific enterprise at risk? It is! A recent U.S. national poll revealed that 40% of the general public has little or no trust in what scientists say about environmental issues. And, about as bad, the remaining 60% were not overly positive either. I suspect that similar results would be found in Canada, especially relative to fisheries science.

How pervasive is this distrust?

I have a good friend who has worked for several big national environmental
organizations. When I shared with him some of the ideas I planned to present today, he stopped me cold with a blunt reality check:
“

Bob, you’ve got to move into the 21st century. Science is a weapon in the policy wars. We buy the most believable scientists we can find and send them into court to battle Government scientists. Eventually the judge gets overwhelmed by the minutiae and orders the parties to go away and work out some kind of a compromise. This is how it works now. When this happens, we nearly always win because the agency just wants to make the case go away. And, best of all, they usually agree to pay our legal costs. That’s the real world, my friend!”

What did I say to warrant this rant?
But he was more upfront than most policy advocates, and I’ll accept that his is a sound political strategy, for an advocacy group, but it is a corruption of science and the scientific enterprise. He is paid to understand and manipulate the political and legal system to achieve his organization’s goals. Fine, but it is still a corruption of science.
What role should scientists play in policy debates? How can they best provide
leadership? How does a scientist lead from behind?

First, scientists should contribute to and inform policy deliberations. This is not only the right thing to do, but it’s an obligation, especially if our work is publicly funded. I also do not hold with the notion that it is sufficient for fisheries scientists to publish their findings in scholarly papers, papers that only a few technical experts will ever read. I take it as a given that scientists also should provide, and explain, the underlying science, including uncertainty, around important policy questions.

Second, when scientists do contribute to policy analysis and implementation, and they should, they must exercise great care to play the appropriate role. Unfortunately, working at this interface is also where some scientists mislead or confuse decision makers by letting their personal policy preferences color their science.
It is so easy to do.
Let me share a slightly embarrassing story that demonstrates one consequence of
allowing policy preferences to infect science. It involves a veteran Government lawyer, someone I have worked with for years.
We were relaxing in a Portland pub after spending a long, long day listening to dueling scientists testifying in an Endangered Species Act trial. I was trying to convince him, from my perspective as a scientist, that it seemed reasonable to expect opposing litigants to at least be able to agree on the basic science relevant to a particular court case, the so-called “scientific facts of the case”. After all, the legal debate should be over interpretations of the law, not science, right?

Perhaps I was badgering him a bit too much, but his response to my pestering jolted me:

Bob, you guys have no credibility. All of you spin your science to lend support to whatever policy outcome you or your organization favors. I’m not sure science was ever a beacon of truth, but it sure isn’t now, at least not in the legal arena. I watch scientists routinely misuse science in case after case.”

No credibility? Science spin? Misuse of science? He was wrong, wasn’t he?
No — he was not entirely wrong. Let me offer an example.
The most common misuse of science is to assume a policy preference and then
incorporate that policy preference into scientific information. Such science is called normative science, and normative science is, unfortunately, increasingly common.
Let me be unequivocal. Using normative science is stealth policy advocacy, plain and simple. Ignorance is no excuse.
Who would do such a thing?
It happens and it happens often.
An example from this part of North America: the case of the 160 year decline in wild
salmon and the role of dams. Here is a big insight: dams have an effect on wild salmon
populations and the effect is negative.

Along the West Coast, it is common for scientists to be asked to gauge the likely effects on wild salmon of removing a particular dam, or building a particular dam.
This is a legitimate and appropriate role for fisheries scientists, and one that we are well positioned to play. But, there is no scientific imperative to remove, or build, dams. Policy imperatives come from people’s values and priorities, not from science.
All of the policy options regarding the future of dams have ecological consequences,
some of which may even be catastrophic from a salmon perspective, but ecological
consequences are simply one element that the public and decision makers must weigh in choosing from a set of typically unpleasant alternatives.

Hardly a week passes that I don’t receive an online petition from an advocacy group
asking me, and other scientists, to sign as a show of support to remove a particular salmonkilling dam for reasons that sound like science, read like science, are presented by people who cloak themselves in the accoutrements of science, but who are actually offering nothing but policy advocacy masquerading as science.
Scientists, acting in their role as policy neutral providers of information, should not decide whether it is more important to use water to sustain wild salmon, or use the same water to generate electricity to run air conditioners, or the same water to irrigate alfalfa fields, or the very same water to make artificial snow at your favorite ski resort.
Politically, from what I observe today, the use of normative science cuts across the
ideological spectrum. It seems no less common coming from the political Left or Right, from the Greens or the Libertarians, or from Government agencies or Private sector organizations.
Regardless of the political ideology, normative science is a corruption of science No
matter how strongly a scientist feels about his or her personal policy preferences, practicing normative science is not OK. No exceptions.

Ecologists question research on burns in bug-killed forests after Montana fires

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Photo by Matt Stensland
Thanks to Derek for submitting. From the Missoulian here.

Last summer, a wall of flame roared through a three-mile stretch of tinder-dry, bug-killed lodgepole pine forest and forced a large group of firefighters to retreat to a safety zone.

An official said later the flames moved through the trees like fire does through grass.

In the upper West Fork of the Bitterroot, another fire blew through 17,000 acres in a day. Much of that area also was covered by lodgepole pine killed by mountain pine beetle.

That unusual fire behavior now has some fire ecologists questioning conventional research that suggests that wildfires won’t burn as fiercely through forests filled with bug-killed trees.

“We definitely saw some unusual and pretty amazing runs under fire conditions that we would normally consider to be moderate,” said Matt Jolly, a research ecologist with the Rocky Mountain Research Station’s Fire Sciences Laboratory in Missoula.

Earlier research based on modeling suggested that stands of dead and dying trees were not as prone to flare into fast-moving crown fires. And if the fire did manage to make it into the crowns, the research said it was unlikely to stay there long.

Firefighters and researchers saw something quite different happen this summer.

“These fires were quite a bit more active than what the conventional research suggests,” Jolly said. “The problem is most of the conventional research used simulation models. If you don’t have good observations, then you have to assume the models are correct.”

Before this year, the past three summers were marked by very wet Augusts, which is typically the peak of the wildfire season in western Montana.

“We’ve been dodging the bullet, if you will, over the last three seasons,” Jolly said.

Canadians have been reporting similar fires in their own forests filled with beetle-killed trees for a number of years.

The fires this summer burned in conditions that weren’t considered extreme over an understory that was often still green. At times, the solid walls of flame reached from the ground to far above the canopy.

In some cases, the fire was burning through a forest of mostly dead trees that had already shed most of their needles.

***

Jolly said trees attacked by mountain pine beetles start a downward spiral that makes them more susceptible to fire early on. Once the trees die, their needles turn red before falling off. The red needles are extremely flammable.

Once the needles fall off, the forest has a gray appearance. This summer, Jolly said the fires blew through those standing gray stands.

“A lot of people have proposed that once the needles fall off, there’s little opportunity for a crown fire,” he said. “In these gray stands, you essentially have a vertical dead fuel with extremely low fuel moistures that once ignited, can create a flaming front.”

Fire researchers also noted the fires were quick to form a column that created its own weather, which further enhanced burning conditions.

For these fires to occur, Jolly said fuel conditions, weather and topography have to be aligned just right.

In many cases, the fire conditions were not considered extreme.

“These fires burned under less than extreme conditions in the same way that a healthy stand would burn under extreme conditions,” Jolly said.

The dead stands are made up of vertical fuels that respond quickly to changes in the weather and humidity levels.

“That’s why it happens very quickly,” he said.

***

With hundreds of thousands of acres of bug-killed stands scattered across the West, Jolly said there is a “very real possibility” of seeing more fires like this past summer’s.

“It’s totally dependent on weather,” he said. “As soon as we have a dry year like we saw in 2000 or 2003, which came with a very prolonged period of drying, it will be very interesting to see what happens.”

Bitterroot West Fork District Ranger Dave Campbell said research like Jolly’s will be important to those who fight and attempt to manage the blazes.

“This was a good opportunity for us to partner with the fire lab, which has some of the best fire scientists around,” he said. “Hopefully, we will be able to make the models for the future.”

Read more: http://missoulian.com/news/local/article_33e5c862-f930-11e0-9771-001cc4c03286.html#ixzz1bEYungr1

Experts disagree about griz numbers, implications

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Figure from the Wyoming 2002 Grizzly Management Plan

Interesting story from the Cody Enterprise..

By MARK HEINZ | Posted: Monday, October 17, 2011 3:57 pm

Grizzly numbers in the heart of the Yellowstone area habitat appeared to have dipped, but some experts’ opinions vary regarding how much, and why.

There are an estimated 593 grizzlies in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, compared to 602 last year, according to a new study.

The number of bears killed, for various reasons, over the past few years “has taken a powerful bite out of the population,” said ecologist Chuck Neal of Cody, who is retired from decades of field work with the BLM, Forest Service, and contract work with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

“The take-home message is the population seems to have reached a plateau. We might be exceeding the female morality level,” said Mark Pearson, conservation program director with the Greater Yellowstone Coalition.

But Game and Fish bear expert Mark Bruscino said he thinks the population remains robust.

“The survey behind the study was only on the grizzly population in the core of the habitat, and only for one year,” he said.

“In areas where we haven’t done systematic sampling, the bear population continues to grow, both in terms of numbers and distribution. Overall, the grizzly population is doing quite well,” Bruscino said.

He was among experts and other interested parties who attended a recent meeting in Bozeman, Mont., of the Yellowstone Ecosystem subcommittee of the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee. The IGBC includes representatives from G&F, Forest Service, Park Service, BLM, USFWS, the U.S. Geological Survey, wildlife agencies in Idaho, Montana and Washington, and Canadian Wildlife Service.

Much of the discussion centered around a population study, done mostly by USGS and USFWS researchers,

Even a slight dip in grizzly populations can be worrisome to bear experts and conservationists, because the bruins’ reproductive rates are much lower than other wildlife species.

There seems to be consensus over the idea that grizzlies are ranging farther and consequently getting into more scrapes with people. But there is some disagreement over why.

There is also differences of opinion over whether grizzlies should be delisted, and perhaps even hunted, in Wyoming.

Bruscino thinks that’s a good idea; Pearson and Neal said they want to bears retain federal endangered species protection.

A ruling from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on the matter is expected soon.

Looking for food?

Bears are losing some key ingredients of their diet because of the decline in white bark pine and cutthroat trout in the heart of grizzly country, Neal and Pearson said.

“Habitat quality has been in decline, primarily because of the loss of white bark pine to beetles,” Neal said.

Grizzlies like to feast on pine cone nuts, which are rich in fat and calories.

“It’s an important food source for them right now, as they fatten up for winter,” Neal said.

“We must take into consideration the effects of climate change on their food sources,” Pearson said. “With less food available in the interior habitat, bears are roaming into the fringe areas.”

Neal recalled the last time grizzlies began to disperse widely, get into trouble and, consequently, get killed in higher numbers.

That was back in the 1970s when the Park Service decided to shut down open landfills in Yellowstone, where bears had gotten accustomed to easy gorging.

Now, essentially the same thing is happening. But instead of the loss of a bad, artificial food source, grizzlies are losing natural sources, Neal said.

But Bruscino is dubious about the idea that bears are wandering to find food.

Rather, more bears are showing up in more places because they’re being pushed out by grizzlies that have laid claim to the interior habitat, he said.

Bruscino said according to what he knows, grizzlies are far more likely to adapt to new food sources in their territory, rather than wander somewhere else.

“Bears are the quintessential omnivores,” he said.

“The core habitat is saturated We just don’t see bears leaving their home ranges, he said. “Fat levels on bears in the core of the Yellowstone habitat indicate those bears are doing very well nutritionally.”

Neal said he doesn’t agree with the idea that habitat saturation is behind conflicts with people.

“They are getting into areas where people themselves are expanding their presence,” Neal said. “It’s not so much ‘saturated’ habitat,’ as it things like trying to raise chickens and sheep on the edge of occupied grizzly habitat.”

A question of tolerance

Bruscino said the GYE grizzly population has met or exceeded all the biological goals set when the recovery program started.

“We need to do more on the fringes to reduce conflicts,” he said. “In my opinion we could be hunting grizzlies, today, and it would not be detrimental to the population.”

Neal and Pearson said the answer isn’t to delist bears now, but rather to allow them to expand their habitat.

“The key has never been numbers. It’s always been enough occupied, contiguous habitat,” Neal said.

Opinions might hinge on whether people see the GYC as essentially a “island” of wild habitat, with nowhere else for grizzlies to go, or as part of a larger network of places where the bears feasibly could roam, Pearson said.

For example, GYC favors enough interconnected habitat to allow for genetic exchange between the Yellowstone and Glacier Park grizzly populations.

But he noted that conflicts with people could ultimately drive policy.

“Human tolerance is absolutely going to be the deciding factor regarding where grizzlies can thrive,” Pearson said.

California resident Dave Smith, who worked for years in Yellowstone, and still frequently visits, agreed.

“Grizzlies have been on the Endangered Species List for 30 years now, and I think people are getting worn out,” said Smith, who has written two books about staying safe around grizzlies and other large animals.

“The Game and Fish in Wyoming is having to play ‘musical bears,'” by constantly trapping and relocating troublesome grizzlies, Smith said.

This raises some questions for those that know this part of the country… given our economic situation, are folks still building houses into or next to grizzly habitat? Is critical habitat designated for private land?

I was also interested in these quotes:

Bruscino said the GYE grizzly population has met or exceeded all the biological goals set when the recovery program started.

“The key has never been numbers. It’s always been enough occupied, contiguous habitat,” Neal said.

I am not very expert on ESA, but if there are population goals, can they shift through time? That could get discouraging to people trying to implement policy
if folks are moving the goalposts.

And if the problem with endangered species is not numbers, how do we decide what is “enough occupied continguous habitat”?

Fourmile Canyon Fire Report Confirms Firewise

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The Rocky Mountain Research Station released its Fourmile Canyon Fire report, requested by Senator Udall of Colorado. The Report confirms that:

1) A home’s fate depends upon fuel in its immediate surroundings and construction materials;

2) Fuel treatments, especially those that leave fine fuels untreated, are ineffective protection against wildfires that threaten homes, i.e., windy, dry conditions; and,

3) Fire suppression resources are easily overwhelmed precisely when Fire-Unwise homes need them the most.

The report took a special look at aerial attack, finding that the great preponderance of retardant was dropped after the fire had already stopped advancing.

Sarewitz on “Consensus Science”

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This piece is reposted from Roger Pielke’s blog here. Note from Sharon: we have been discussing collaborating in terms of developing agreements about what action to take; I see a clear distinction between their use in policy (getting groups together to decide or recommend an approach or action) and in science (getting groups together to determine the current scientific thinking).

The below post by Roger, describing some of the ideas in Dan Sarewitz’s piece in Nature, deals with the latter. I don’t think we do much in terms of this in the world of public land management, which may be a good thing. Also note a comment here on Roger’s blog by Andy Stahl about consensus policy; some think that committees are places where good ideas go to die.

Writing in Nature this week, Dan Sarewitz reflects on his recent participation on the BPC Geoengineering Climate Remediation task force and why efforts to achieve consensus in science may leave out some of the most important aspects of science. Here is an excerpt:

The very idea that science best expresses its authority through consensus statements is at odds with a vibrant scientific enterprise. Consensus is for textbooks; real science depends for its progress on continual challenges to the current state of always-imperfect knowledge. Science would provide better value to politics if it articulated the broadest set of plausible interpretations, options and perspectives, imagined by the best experts, rather than forcing convergence to an allegedly unified voice.

Yet, as anyone who has served on a consensus committee knows, much of what is most interesting about a subject gets left out of the final report. For months, our geoengineering group argued about almost every issue conceivably related to establishing a research programme. Many ideas failed to make the report — not because they were wrong or unimportant, but because they didn’t attract a political constituency in the group that was strong enough to keep them in. The commitment to consensus therefore comes at a high price: the elimination of proposals and alternatives that might be valuable for decision-makers dealing with complex problems.

Some consensus reports do include dissenting views, but these are usually relegated to a section at the back of the report, as if regretfully announcing the marginalized views of one or two malcontents. Science might instead borrow a lesson from the legal system. When the US Supreme Court issues a split decision, it presents dissenting opinions with as much force and rigour as the majority position. Judges vote openly and sign their opinions, so it is clear who believes what, and why — a transparency absent from expert consensus documents. Unlike a pallid consensus, a vigorous disagreement between experts would provide decision-makers with well-reasoned alternatives that inform and enrich discussions as a controversy evolves, keeping ideas in play and options open.

Not surprisingly, Dan and I have come to similar conclusions on this subject. Back in 2001 in Nature I wrote (PDF):

[E]fforts to reduce uncertainty via ‘consensus science’ — such as scientific assessments — are misplaced. Consensus science can provide only an illusion of certainty. When consensus is substituted for a diversity of perspectives, it may in fact unnecessarily constrain decision-makers’ options. Take for example weather forecasters, who are learning that the value to society of their forecasts is enhanced when decision-makers are provided with predictions in probabilistic rather than categorical fashion and decisions are made in full view of uncertainty.

As a general principle, science and technology will contribute more effectively to society’ needs when decision-makers base their expectations on a full distribution of outcomes, and then make choices in the face of the resulting — perhaps considerable — uncertainty.

In addition to leaving behind much of the interesting aspects of science, in my experience, the purpose of developing a “consensus” is to to quash dissent and end debate. Is it any wonder that policy discussions in the face of such a perspective are a dialogue of the like minded? In contrast, as Sarewitz writes, “a vigorous disagreement between experts would provide decision-makers with well-reasoned alternatives that inform and enrich discussions as a controversy evolves, keeping ideas in play and options open.”