What Does "Natural Born Citizen" Mean? (1)

Part I ― On The "Law of Nations"

Introduction

Recently, I've had the (dis?)pleasure to discuss on Twitter  the meaning of the term "natural born citizen" as used in Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution:

"No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States."

Most of these folks were self-described Conservatives, so most of the discussion revolved around Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio and whether they are eligible to be President (though they occasionally devolved to whining about Obama). And "revolved" is an apt description because much of the conversants on the "clearly ineligible" (or "strict interpretation") side of the discussion had circular and otherwise inconsistent arguments. But I've been listening and researching the issue and I have formed some tentative opinions that are likely to guide my votes in the upcoming elections. But before I get into these, some disclaimers are warranted.


Disclaimers
First, I currently favor Ted Cruz; Marco Rubio not so much, though I'm not much put off by him either. But I have been decidedly favorably disposed toward Ted Cruz since before the "Green Eggs and Ham" filibuster. Second, I am not a Constitutional lawyer or any other kind of lawyer, so any opinions I have are bereft of any educational background in law. That said, much of my professional career involved conducting analyses pursuant to federal environmental laws and writing them up such that they could withstand legal challenge; I also provided some specific commentary on various projects to help the U.S. Forest Service respond to administrative and legal challenges. The review that follows is also necessarily far from exhaustive; clearly, only decades of study would prepare someone to incorporate all of the information required to perform a rigorous analysis of what the Constitutional language was intended to convey. Since the Supreme Court has danced around the issue but apparently never directly addressed it*, a thoughtful voter must be guided by one's own investigation of the issue and one's own conscience. 

I welcome serious comments, though I don't really monitor blog comments; therefore Twitter would be better. Please don't be insulting, excessively derogatory, or obviously bigoted; I will not respond to those because there's no need: Hostile Tweeting is, sadly, far to common.

Origins of the Concept

The Founding Fathers (no, I'm not going to de-gender the term) apparently did not coin the term "natural born citizen," but they were close. It seems the most widely recognized source for the term is a 1758 treatise by Emmerich de Vattel, a Swiss jurist, entitled "The Law of Nations." There is no doubt that Benjamin Franklin and George Washington were familiar with this text, and the former has been quoted as saying:

"I am much obliged by the kind present you have made us of your edition of Vattel. It came to us in good season, when the circumstances of a rising state make it necessary frequently to consult the Law of Nations."

It is even possible that the Constitution specifically refers to this treatise in Article I, Section 8, Clause 10, though that appears to be merely an unsupportable inference based on the words being capitalized (it also seems illogical if Congress is instructed to "define" offenses against the Law of Nations).

Specifically, in "The Law of Nations" we find this text regarding citizenship (§212, in part)**:

"The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens."

So there, children born in a nation to a mother and a father who are citizens of that nation are natural born citizens. Obviously, no one questions this. But what of children born to citizens of one nation on the soil of a foreign nation? Vattel has an answer (§215, in part) where we find this (emphasis added):

"By the law of nature alone, children follow the condition of their fathers, and enter into all their rights (§ 212); the place of birth produces no change in this particular, and cannot, of itself, furnish any reason for taking from a child what nature has given him; I say “of itself,” for, civil or political laws may, for particular reasons, ordain otherwise."

To me, this means that foreign-born children inherit the condition of their fathers; i.e., they are "natural born" if their father was***. A close look also reveals that Vattel also recognized that governments may choose to modify the natural condition. If I understand this correctly, these sections form the basis for the legal doctrines of "jus soli" (of the soil) and "jus sanguinis" (of the blood).

Application to the U.S. Constitution

It's certainly clear that the Founding Fathers referred to Vattel's treatise: We have Franklin's quote above and George Washington had at least referred to a library copy. But we really only seem to have indirect evidence of how or whether they fully subscribed to it. I find it interesting that the word "natural" occurs only in Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 in the "natural born" provision and is not found at all in the Declaration of Independence. Therefore I question whether a concept of natural rights was specifically incorporated; indeed, the Founding Fathers reference "unalienable rights," is perhaps meant to minimize the subjective essence of "natural."

But it certainly helped shape their thinking, as did, without doubt, British Common Law since they were British Subjects. We saw that Vattel apparently believed a child's citizenship status was inherited. Similarly, in 1765 William Blackstone, the renowned English jurist, had this to say:

"But by several more modern statutes these restrictions are still farther taken off: so that all children, born out of the king's ligeance, whose fathers were natural-born subjects, are now natural-born subjects themselves, to all intents and purposes, without any exception; unless their said fathers were attainted, or banished beyond sea, for high treason; or were then in the service of a prince at enmity with Great Britain." (emphasis added)

Now about the obvious argument that the Founding Fathers were renouncing Great Britain and likely desired not only different government but perhaps different law and statutes generally, I agree in principle. However, I think it is important that, although repealed in 1795, the Naturalization Act of 1790 was signed into law by George Washington; it contained this language:

"And the children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond Sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born Citizens:  Provided, that the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States:  Provided also, that no person heretofore proscribed by any States, shall be admitted a citizen as aforesaid, except by an Act of the Legislature of the State in which such person was proscribed. (emphasis added)

The stated purpose of this law (not the presumed purpose) was specifically to "establish an uniform rule of naturalization," a Constitutional duty of Congress (Article 1, Section 8, Clause 4).

We shouldn't forget that the Constitution was a consensus document signed by 39 men who undoubtedly had disagreements amongst themelves but were willing to settle on the adopted document. After all, Benjamin Franklin said this to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 the day it was adopted:

"I confess that there are several parts of this constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them: For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise." 

Practical Importance of "Natural Born" Status

This point is so important and fundamental that I decided it deserved it's own section. The Founding Fathers did not add the "natural born citizen" requirement to the office of President and to no other office by accident. The intent of this provision is apparently to ensure that the President, as Commander in Chief of the military (Article II, Section 2, Clause 1), hold allegiance to no other nation; that is, to ensure that his loyalty is singular and naturally to the U.S. and its Constitution. Clearly, this intent could be subverted in a variety of ways, so it's probably not foolproof, but it is a reasonable screen. The President must also take the oath of office required by the Constitution (Article II, Section 1, Clause 8) as further protection of loyalty.

Commentary on this Part

Generally, the U.S. seems to have accepted both the jus soli and jus sanguinis doctrines. There has been substantial immigration and naturalization legislation pusuant to Article I, Section 8, Clause 4 of the Constitution clarifying and muddying the situation. For example, the Naturalization Act of 1790 clearly defined a "natural born citizen" but subsequent legislation either overturned that law entirely or struck certain parts and retained others. I have not had the time to decide what I think about that, but it is interesting that one of the principal Supreme Court cases referred to to support a rigid view of "natural born citizen" (that is, people who accept Vattel §212 but somehow miss §215), Minor v. Happersett (88 US 162, 1875), contains this language:

"Under the power to adopt a uniform system of naturalization Congress, as early as 1790, provided "that any alien, being a free white person," might be admitted as a citizen of the United States, and that the children of such persons so naturalized, dwelling within the United States, being under twenty-one years of age at the time of such naturalization, should also be considered citizens of the United States, and that the children of citizens of the United States that might be born beyond the sea, or out of the limits of the United States, should be considered as natural-born citizens. These provisions thus enacted have, in substance, been retained in all the naturalization laws adopted since." (emphasis added)

I think that a comment on "natural law" is also in order. Vattel relied on natural law, and many strict interpreters of "natural born citizen" that I've conversed with fall back on something like "the natural meaning," or "what's natural," or sometimes simply "the way it always was." These seem to me uniformed, distracting, and non-compelling arguments generally, but I also find this avenue of argument troublesome. This is a "nation of laws"; more specifically it is a nation of codified law (statutes). Note the use of "fathers" in Vattel §215: Mothers had lesser legal standing then and for the Founding Fathers. (Also note "free white person" in the Minor v. Happersett quote above.) Natural law is very much subject to the beholder and is not fixed over time and has no amendment or codification process. Thus, women now have the "natural rights" of citizens because of court decisions in about 1850† and then the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which recognized women's rights to vote.

We will undoubtedly never know for certain how the Founding Fathers intended Congress to understand the term "natural born"; indeed, perhaps they didn't even all agree on how it should be interpreted. I personally am inclined to believe that children born abroad to natural born citizens become natural born citizens at birth because that is broadly consistent with the most evidence I can find. However, it should be noted that jus sanguinis is a de facto "naturalization." It is Congress' duty to define "naturalization" (which, in my opinion) logically includes identifying who does not require naturalization) and forms the basis of the next section.

In my personal view, the notion that "natural born citizen" should be determined using jus soli and jus sanguinis is consistent with "The Law of Nations" and historical precedent. It affords (as "citizen at birth") the children of military and consular families the citizenship status of their families regardless of their birthplace††. To deny natural born status to the children of parents stationed oversees to represent and defend the U.S. because of a dislike of foreigners would be truly disgraceful and repugnant; I doubt that was the Founding Fathers' intent. 

In addition, the burden of proof should lie with the opponents to this traditional position of jus soli and jus sanguinis defining "natural born." I don't believe this burden has been met by the "strict interpretation" group who rely so much on incomplete documentary references and faulty logic. Prominent examples of the latter that I've encountered include (1) assuming an affirmation of jus soli denounces jus sanguinis and (2) dismissing or objecting to the proper role of Congress.

So that concludes this introductory section exploring the derivation and need for the "natural born citizen" provision and how my exegetical analysis works. Next we need to look at legislative duties of Congress and how eligibility to be President has been interpreted in the past. 
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* This seems to be the consensus view. Several cases, some of which I'll review, have been used to justify various opinions, but there are weaknesses in all.
** There may be a question of translation here: In Venus (12 U.S. [8 Cranch] 253), a case often cited by "strict interpreters," "natural born citizen" is rendered "indigenes."
*** Note that I am intentionally avoiding the question of paternal inheritance here. 
† I have not checked this out, bit it's mentioned in Minor v. Happersett.
†† Many, perhaps most, people seem to not realize that U.S. military bases and consular facilities in foreign countries are not considered U.S. soil.

What Does "Natural Born Citizen" Mean? (2)

Part II ― Thoughts On The Role of Congress

Introduction

This post is a continuation of an earlier post discussing my views on the meaning of the term "natural born citizen" as used in Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution. Since Congress is the principal legislative body designated by the Constitution, it must have a role to play in determining adherence to the "natural born" constraint.

Disclaimers

Refer to the earlier post for the complete statement. I will reiterate here that this review is just that: A review of what I have learned and how I view the issue; it makes no absolute assertions.

Foundational Framework

I am inclined to regard the Constitution as what we referred to as a "programmatic document" in land management. What that means is that I take it to define goals and objectives for management of government as well as some standards that must be honored. One of the goals was clearly regulating immigration and naturalization; to that end, Congress was required to produce uniform rules of naturalization (Article I, Section 8, Clause 4).

Uniform Rule of Naturalization

In my opinion, this is one of the fundamental places where the arguments of the "strict interpretation" group collapse. This is a Constitutional mandate for Congress as shown above, and Congress is further required 

"To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof." (Article I, Section 8, Clause 18). 

In order to fulfill this mandate, the First Congress of the United States passed the very first naturalization act (Naturalization Act of 1790). It is clear that Article I, Section 8, Clause 4 was in view because the chapter title of record reads "An Act to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization." This Act was signed into law by America's first president, George Washington. This is the only law ever enacted by Congress using the phrase "natural born citizen" and it says this:

"And the children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond Sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born Citizens:  Provided, that the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States:  Provided also, that no person heretofore proscribed by any States, shall be admitted a citizen as aforesaid, except by an Act of the Legislature of the State in which such person was proscribed. (emphasis added)

It seems self-evident to me that the first Congress understood their role under the Constitution and believed they were empowered to define "natural born," suggesting that even three years after adoption of the Constitution it was not clear because a precise definition is not found in the Constitution. Since "naturalization" is the process of conferring citizenship on a foreigner, this law effectively declared who needs such a process and who becomes a citizen without it. 

I have pointed out that George Washington signed the 1790 Act into law. To me, that alone suggests that some, if not most, of the Founding Fathers accepted the jus sanguinis doctrine and recognizing that those children required no naturalization*. Another thing that seemed interesting to me was how many members of that first Congress signed the Constitution? Without trying to sound snarky, it naturally seems reasonable to assume that the signers of the Constitution would know what they meant by a) "natural born" and b) Article I, Section 8, Clause 4. Answer: 9 senators and 8 representatives were in that Congress. That is 43% of the men who signed the Constitution.

The 1790 Act was repealed in 1795 and the natural born language was not retained; however, the connection to Article I, Section 8, Clause 4 of the Constitution was retained. The "strict interpreters" frequently point out the repeal and assume that means "natural born citizen" reverted to (their presumed original meaning of) only jus soli. I have seen no evidence that the Congress explicitly wanted to revoke jus sanguinis and am more inclined to think they just didn't see a need for a specific definition for a commonly accepted legal doctrine. It seems to me that this is supported, at least in part, by Minor v Happersett:

"Under the power to adopt a uniform system of naturalization Congress, as early as 1790, provided "that any alien, being a free white person," might be admitted as a citizen of the United States, and that the children of such persons so naturalized, dwelling within the United States, being under twenty-one years of age at the time of such naturalization, should also be considered citizens of the United States, and that the children of citizens of the United States that might be born beyond the sea, or out of the limits of the United States, should be considered as natural-born citizens. These provisions thus enacted have, in substance, been retained in all the naturalization laws adopted since." (emphasis added)

Commentary on this Part

I find the notion that that jus sanguinis, as passed on from Vattel, through the Constitution and the 1790 Act, even, in fact, to Minor v Happersett has ever been repealed or abandoned. Indeed, nearly one half of the Founding Fathers (46% if we include George Washington)** apparently agreed to it and passed it into law. That Act was repealed, but it does not necessarily follow that it was repealed specifically to vacate that language. In fact, the 1795 Act and subsequent legislation seem to be concerned more with which aliens and native born people** could become citizens with the same basic rights as natural born citizens (excepting being elected President, of course).

The obvious problem is that "natural born citizen" does not have a context-free meaning. Perhaps this was intentional, given the newness of American government and the complexity surrounding issues of people in the land. Some Founding Fathers owned slaves; these were considered property not citizens, yet Frederick Douglass was a black Founding Father. The young nation was at war with American Indian tribes, yet someday, if the nation survived, they would become something else. I don't see the Constitution as a "living document," but that may not mean that some provisions may not have been written to provide room for growth as the fledgling nation grew.

At any rate, the notion I've heard by some that Congress has no role in determining who is a citizen at birth (the modern expression for "natural born" and meaning that no secondary naturalization process is required) seems absurd on its face.

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* In fact, Congress indirectly made this point in 2008 when they resolved to deem John McCain, born in the Panama Canal Zone, a foreign country, a natural born citizen eligible to be President. Those born to U.S. citizens in the Canal Zone weren't statutorily recognized as citizens until 1952. 
** President: George Washington; Senate: William Samuel Johnson, Richard Bassett, George Read, William Few, John Langdon, William Paterson, Rufus King, Robert Morris, Pierce Butler; House: Roger Sherman, Abraham Baldwin, Hugh Williamson, Daniel Carroll, George Clymer, Thomas Fitzsimons, Nicholas Gilman, James Madison.
*** It took the 14th Amendment in 1868 to recognize native born slaves and their children as citizens of any sort, the 19th Amendment in 1920 to recognize the voting rights of women, and 1924 for native born American Indians to be recognized as U.S. citizens (though they would wait until 1957 to have the universal right to vote).

Images from a White Christmas, 2015

Sunrise, Temperature ~10°F

Front Porch, Time to Move Snow

Work's Done, Time to Play

Winter Residents

Pygmy Nuthatches (Sitta pygmaea)

Common to see them eat suet, seeds less so.

Black-capped Ckickadee (Poecile atricapilla)

Feeding inverted, goldfinch/siskin-like

California Quail (Calipepla californica)

Taking a hike across the yard

Why Scientists Should Question Everything: A Simple Example

"The important thing is not to stop questioning."

-Albert Einstein

A curious thing happened yesterday (10 November 2011): One of the first Tweets* I saw in the morning was one with a picture of Arctic sea ice trends from the University of Bremen's AMSR2 Sea Ice Maps page. We know that sea ice has been growing recently in the Arctic, and at quite a high rate, but this site seemed to show a sudden reversal of ice accumulation. This is the chart that appeared yesterday on the UB page** (note: I actually downloaded this chart myself and added the blue ellipse for reference):

Needless to say, this seemed strange to me, so I immediately went to the Northern Hemisphere Sea Ice Extent page of the Danish Meteorological Institute where ice accumulation appeared to remain on track:

The University of Bremen's mapping shows sea ice for both the Arctic and Antarctic, and looking at both you could see the downward tail on both yesterday:

As someone who has worked with time series data and graphing them, I immediately suspected some sort of systematic error in the data, though I know very little about their process other than the few details on the page. At any rate, today (11 November 2015) I found this chart of arctic sea ice extent:

The downward tail was gone this morning. Although not shown, it was gone for Antarctic sea ice extent as well.

I could find no information on the UB page for this issue, though they do apparently provide a tracking page for irregularities.

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* To preserve confidentiality, I am not publishing the identity of the Tweeter.
** This is also not the same chart as on the Tweet. That chart had the last seven years plotted, whereas the one I'm using has the last six years plus 1979. The UB page displays both. The difference here is irrelevant because both series of charts had the same problem.

Idaho Sockeye Salmon and Global Warming: A Personal Perspective

Across much of the Pacific Northwest, the winter of 2014-2015 was quite dry and much of the area is still experiencing some level of drought. Except for coastal areas, this is a region of snowmelt dominated watersheds: After the snow melts, river flows fall dramatically and in drought conditions stable summer flows can be quite low indeed. Of course, this is also the home of tremendous populations of anadromous fish*, most notably various stocks of salmon and steelhead in the Columbia River. Because of the drought and warmer than normal water temperatures in the Columbia River system, there was much discussion over the effects of climate change on these fishes, most of which are listed as "Threatened" or even "Endangered" under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). One article in particular caught my attention as it was making its rounds in the Twitterverse because it was both of local interest and because I was asked what I thought about by someone I occasionally converse with on Twitter.

This article's byline was Boise, Idaho, and the species of interest was Sockeye Salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka). I'm not an expert on sockeye salmon or their habitat, but this is not a technical essay on sockeye per se, it's more of an opinion piece. But I do know that sockeye salmon have been nearly extinct in Idaho for decades, and have been considered functionally extinct. Presently, expensive captive broodstock and hatchery programs seem to be helping the Idaho's sockeye recover to a limited extent, but the landlocked form (kokanee) is most common in Idaho now.

I will start by stipulating that Columbia River and its tributaries experienced unusually warm water in 2015. I will also stipulate that water temperatures in the lower river have been gradually increasing; this is also true in Canada's Fraser River. A Seattle Times article in June claimed the river at Bonneville Dam (the farthest downstream) was hotter than it had been since 1950. In July, Snake River water temperature at Lower Granite Dam (the last passable major dam) was reported as 68°F** and few sockeye were passing through; some 50 were captured and transported by truck to the hatchery in Eagle, Idaho (see here). But is this situation a clear result of anthropogenic global warming (AGW)? Given that river temperatures may have been as high in the recent past, is this situation even unprecedented? Or could climate change, which has likely been occurring since the mid-1700s (even if exacerbated by human actions), be just one of many other better proved threats to anadromous fishes?

To start with, sockeye salmon were in a population decline in the 1950s or so, before the concept of AGW was conceived  and about the time adherents of climate change theory think anthropogenic CO2 emissions started to become an issue; this is some decades before AGW became widely accepted. Between 1937 and 1975, eight hydroelectric dams were built on the Columbia River and it's major tributary the Snake River, dramatically impairing most of Idaho's anadromous fish from reaching the Salmon River, one of the largest free flowing rivers in the continental United States. These dams mostly support some level of impaired fish passage, but many other parts of Idaho had their salmon runs extinguished as the Columbia River hydrosystem was developed***, sometimes by impressive structures like Hells Canyon Dam shown here.

But there are many full and partial barriers scattered throughout the system, and effects to anadromous fishes started before the first major hydroelectric dams were built. In fact, the ability of sockeye to acccess the upper Salmon River and the Sawtooth Valley was initially blocked by Sunbeam Dam in 1913, though this was probably not a complete barrier and was removed by 1934.

Sockeye (and kokanee) salmon have inhabited the Columbia River watershed since at least the Wisonsinian Glaciation about 14,000 years ago†. Sockeye were never really very abundant in Idaho compared with other salmon and with sockeye populations in Canada's Fraser River, probably because their habitat requirements are more restrictive than the more common Chinook salmon and steelhead because they typically require use of a lake. In Idaho, this combination is especially prevalent in the glacial lakes of the Sawtooth Mountains, particularly Redfish Lake where they are monitored, though they historically occurred in other areas (e.g., Payette Lake, where there were reports of commercial harvests of some 77,000 sockeye salmon in the 1870s); however, some lakes still retain the residualized kokanee form. More to the point, drought periods are common in the northern Rocky Mountains and Pacific Northwest and have occurred with some frequency during this 14,000 year period (see e.g. here and here). A similar drought situation to 2015's occurred in 1977 leading to trucking young salmon downstream around some major dams, a process that has been used frequently to help mitigate the threats faced by outmigrating smolts .Without directly comparing historic droughts, we can get an idea of how streamflow fluctuates regularly in the region with this graph of US Geological Survey data from Johnson Creek, a South Fork Salmon River†† tributary in west-central Idaho:

Overall, streamflow has been variable but relatively stable over time with some obvious low flow periods. The drought of 1977 is clearly visible, as is a similar period in 2001 and a sustained low flow period in the 1980s and 1990s.  In 1990, no sockeye salmon were observed at Redfish Lake in the Sawtooth Valley.

So drought is common and sockeye salmon populations have been declining to the point of extinction prior to 1990 when they may have, in fact, become functionally extinct as a natural population in Idaho. How does this relate to climate change? I produced a previous post from a U.S. Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) site on the Little Salmon River at New Meadows, Idaho, where raw temperature data suggested at most minimal warming over 120 years. For this post, I chose to look at temperature records from the USHCN site at Lewiston, Idaho, because it's near Lower Granite Dam. The raw data produce this plot:

This doesn't suggest warming, but in the interests of full disclosure, the SHAP adjusted data reverse the apparent stable to downward trend and show a possible upward trend. Data collected prior to 1947 were decreased, on average, by 2.08°F; from 1947 on, adjustments averaged 0.07°F, mostly upward. Here is the plot:

The reader can choose whether the data adjustments were appropriate and whether this indicates warming over the region, particularly in recent years. This graph shows adjusted data trends since 1979 (a commonly used start date because it starts the "satellite era") and since the "super El Nińo" year of 1998: Maybe slightly up since 1979, maybe down since 1998 but less variable.

In my opinion, climate and drought are stressors that would probably be irrelevant without the other threats to both adult fish and outmigrating juveniles. Adults coping with passage restrictions has already been discussed. Another major impact is water withdrawal, particularly for irrigation: several million acres of cropland are irrigated by impounded water. In addition, reducing streamflow and velocity through impoundment and diversion can increase water temperature irrespective of climate change. Native and non-native predators of juvenile salmon (pikeminnow, smallmouth bass, terns, etc.) have taken advantage of the altered watershed conditions. Sport and tribal fishing still impacts migrating adults. And, ironically, despite all the concern, 45 adult sockeye salmon returned to the Sawtooth Valley in 2015. While fewer than recent years, this is well above the 16 that returned between 1991 and 1998 and the zero return in 1990.

Most scientists realize that the earth has been warming since the Little Ice Age, and for resource management purposes, it's reasonable to assume that trend will continue even if CO2 is largely irrelevant. There is a clear legal requirement to attempt to recover ESA-listed species, and the program with sockeye salmon appears to be working to some extent. Irrespective of climate, however, the question is really whether recovering sockeye in the Salmon River is truly worth the effort; that is, whether people are willing to accept the costs. In a world without tradeoffs, I would like to see the species recover; however, reducing the threats over which people have control would be more directly helpful than worrying about the theoretical threat that is represented by AGW. Hydropower is often regarded as a renewable energy source because the turbines spin so long as the rivers flow. But the Columbia River demonstrates how large an ecological footprint renewable, momentum-based energy production can have. This is environmental destruction on a grand scale; a watershed that can never really be restored. There are movements afoot to remove the lower four Snake River dams, which would surely improve anadromous fish passage to the Salmon River; in fact, some studies have shown that wind and solar could (or already do) more than compensate for reduced power generation from removal of the four Snake River Dams below Lewiston. But others disagree and, in any case, removing those dams, and even others, cannot not restore the cumulative ecosystem damage that has occurred in five states and one Canadian province.

To sum up: The Columbia River has been heavily altered. Some dams may be removed to improve fish passage and efforts will certainly continue to increase anadromous fish numbers. But climate change is currently a theoretical threat in a sea of real, demonstrable threats; to recover species, the demonstrable threats should be addressed first.
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* Anadromous fishes spend most of their adult lives in the ocean but spawn and spend some juvenile time in rivers after hatching, then migrating downstream to the ocean.
** 68°F is a mandated threshold established by the National Marine Fisheries to ensure sufficiently cool temperatures during salmon migration.
*** A graphic of the major dams can be found here.
† Sockeye life history and population structure is complicated. I have used this paper to establish the Wisconsinian date.
†† Sockeye salmon likely did not regularly use this stream, but it has a complete flow record and should be approximately representative of Snake River tributaries in Idaho that did.

Local Temperature Monitoring in West-Central Idaho: RAWS

This post follows, in part, the theme of my previous post: US Forest Service avoidance of local data in project analyses. For example, the Final Environmental Impact Assessment (FEIS) for a recent project that I was involved with as Forest Fishery Biologist (available here) contained this statement:

Climate data for the last 55 years (1951–2006) (The Nature Conservancy 2011) reveal that on average, temperatures in Idaho have increased 0.031 °F per year (Figure 1-2), and precipitation has increased 0.085% per year (Figure 1-3). Consistent with findings by Diaz and Eischeid (2007), the temperature increases have been more severe at higher elevations.**

The overview of the "Affected Environment" in this document talked generally about temperature requirements for native fishes, but did not expand upon local temperature trends. At the time, the Forest maintained a large water temperature monitoring network, and I tried to remedy lack of local temperature data to some extent in the Biological Assessment (BA)* for that project by including analysis of water temperature monitoring data in the project area; unfortunately, the general public generally does not routinely get to see BAs. The BA contained this statement about project area stream temperatures:

Stream temperatures within the analysis area are generally functioning appropriately and appear to be declining (Figure 19 and Appendix F).

and contained this graphic***:

My previous post on local temperatures from the New Meadows, Idaho, USHCN station suggested that the FEIS statement above might not be true for local temperatures (or might be essentially true if data adjustments and estimates were appropriate). This post examines additional local temperature data so that the reader can come to his or her own conclusions about that, and focuses on what should be the agency's obligation to look at local data beyond such generalized statements.

There is a network of remote automated weather stations (RAWS) scattered around the United States, established principally as interagency resources related to wildland fire management. I have suggested that the Forest could also use these data in addition to USHCN data to assess local trends. They have not, to the best of my knowledge done so, even though it's local, agency, and readily available information. So I look at some here.

I downloaded data for four sites on or very near the Payette National Forest from the Western Regional Climate Center (WRCC): Weiser River, at 5500 ft elevation; Ski Hill, at 5500 ft elevation; Tea Pot at 5152 ft elevation; and Snake River at 4100 ft elevation. These stations are located as shown in this Google Earth image:

Only the Ski Hill RAWS station has a photo as part of its metadata, shown here:

If the others are similar, they're in quite undeveloped settings. While temperature records are incomplete prior to 2001 or 2002, they appear to be raw (unadjusted) data. The Ski Hill site had one missing monthly average (February), which I estimated by averaging the other 12 points in the 13 year record. I averaged all twelve months for each year to generate annual mean temperatures. Here are the results:

All but one linear fit to these points (Tea Pot) are weakly negative. While I would not assert that these demonstrate decreasing temperature generally in this part of Idaho, they certainly refute any contention that temperatures, even at high elevation, are rapidly increasing; the most reasonable conclusion is that temperatures have been moostly stable over the past several years (much like the contentious "hiatus").

Whatever one takes away from this review, I think it should be obvious that project analyses for the Payette National Forest should use local data in its project assessments. Even if the increasing trend such as those shown for Idaho as a whole are correct, a proposed project needs to be evaluated in it's geospatial context as well.

UPDATE (04-15-2019): There are two Weiser River RAWS station graphics in the post; one of them should have been this one from the Snake River station:

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* BAs are bureaucratic documents describing potential effects to species protected under the Endangered Species Act during consultation with federal regulatory agencies (US Fish and Wildlife Service in this case). The analysis is typically more rigorous than for NEPA.
** This information and a graph were obtained from the Nature Conservancy site at  http://www.climatewizard.org/ for Idaho using the graph for last 50 years option.
*** MWMT is Maximum Weekly Maximum Temperature, a 7-day moving average of daily maximum water temperature (see here).

Data Adjustment: Inspection of West-Central Idaho Temperatures

This is not a post about Climate Change being a hoax, nor is it a denial of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW), catastrophic or otherwise. It is also not a specific criticism of data adjustments; as a former data manager and analyst, I recognize that adjustments and estimations are sometimes appropriate. The appropriateness is the question, which I won't be able to definitively answer; however, the following may help readers draw their own conclusions.

New Meadows, Idaho, is a small, rural town in west-central Idaho. At about 4000 feet above mean sea level, it sits in a mountain meadow on the upper reaches of the Little Salmon River. It is also home, on the grounds of the US Forest Service's New Meadows Ranger Station, to a weather station that is a component of the U.S. Historical Climatology Network (USHCN, station 106388). This site has a monitoring record of more than 100 years and is available here. Since the Forest Service consistently insists in its project assessments under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) that AGW is occurring and must consider potential interactions with it's projects*, this should be an important resource; however, it's data are rarely used in this context, relying on more generalized warming forecasts instead.

In fact, I had used the USHCN data in some assessments I produced when I worked on the Payette National Forest (PAF), and the data never appeared to support any particularly significant warming. After I retired I downloaded the data because I wanted to use it in a commentary on a proposed Forest project. What I found was surprising: It seemed to me that there was less raw data than I remembered, though there was a complete sequence of adjusted data. I admit here though that that assessment was a "rush job" and I may have mistaken adjusted data for raw data. That's water under the bridge now, but a recent post by Christopher Booker about global temperatures actually being in decline for the past three decades and not increasing caught my attention because there is so much talk of government agencies falsifying data (e.g., here). So I decided I'd like to look at these data again.

So what do the data look like? I've plotted the SHAP** adjusted record here:

So there's considerable annual variability with a minor positive trend and approximately 2°F increase in 120 years. Not particularly worrisome as one would really expect temperatures to be increasing after the low points of the Little Ice Age and, more recently, the relatively cool 1960s and 1970s.

But how does this record compare to the raw data record? In short, not well. Here I've overlain the two data sets on the same axes:

Now there seems to be reduced variability and a slightly downward trend of about 1°F over the 120 years. Well, less than 120 years because you can see that data before about 1905 don't seem to exist. So here's a few statistics***:

Interesting. I don't know enough about the station history to know whether the changes were appropriate. I know the station moved about a half mile with a Ranger Station move in the early 2000s, which I wouldn't expect to matter much because of the rural setting. Equally clearly, prior to 1979, the data values were reduced in the adjustments much more than they were after that. (I've not shown it here, but the few raw data points available before 1910 were reduced by about -3.5°F). Visually, the adjustments over time look like this:

There may be more information available in the station metadata that I have not yet examined, so this analysis is hardly exhaustive.  But this is a very small, rural town probably not subject much to UHI effects. It seems odd that all measurements prior to 1979 were all missing, erroneous, or 1.8°F too high on average; that is, that all data needed to be estimated or adjusted downward. There are raw precipitation data for two years prior to the start of the raw temperature record, but one of those clearly seems wrong, suggesting problems with the station's data generally prior to 1906; but why recorded temperatures would have been 3.5°F too high is unknown to me.

I confess to being skeptical that anything out of the ordinary, climate-wise, is happening; simple investigations like this fuel such skepticism. I also discount prognostications of dangerous effects of AGW, if they're happening, as inherently unscientific. Speculation is appropriate in science for generating theories and testable hypotheses subject to falsification. In other words, science is about evidence and demonstrable facts. It does concern me, however, that the adjustments in this data set serve primarily to make the past colder relative to the present. 

It also concerns me that the PAF assumes climate change is creating warmer temperatures when local data may not support that assumption. The PAF manages land in a relatively small area in west-central Idaho. Local conditions, not just theoretical global changes, need to be assessed on their own merits for potential project effects. 

Update (01-30-2019): The use of the abbreviation "SHAP" was incorrect. The SHAP homogenization method was version 1 and was replaced by the "version 2 "pairwise" homogenization algorithm," the adjustment reported here.




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* Federal law does require consideration of climate change and greenhouse gases in NEPA analyses.
** Data are adjusted for time of observation (TOBS) and station history (SHAP), which presumably effectively incorporates TOBS (see here).
*** Adjustment values are for no-zero adjustments; there were 4 adjusments that produced no change, all since 2009.

Living with Unpredictability and Change: Reflections on Desert Trout

A few weeks ago, the web site CO2Science posted a review of a recent study by Idaho researchers Shawn R. Narum and Nathan R. Campbell of the Columbia River Intertribal Fish Commission (CRTFC) evaluating thermal adaptability of desert redband trout (RBT; Oncorhynchus mykiss gairdneri). This was a genetic study of adaptability comparing desert populations, where conditions are highly variable, to montane populations where conditions are more stable. Essentially, it is a study of evolutionary changes over the short term rather than adaptation over several generations. The CO2Science review and the original paper are worth reading and point to how animal populations may be able to respond to environmental changes, especially climate, relatively quickly.

Early in my career I worked with a variety of desert Lahontan cutthroat trout (LCT; O. clarki henshawi) endmic to the high desert of northeastern Nevada under environmental conditions very similar to desert RBT. Both of these trout subspecies were intriguing to trout biologists because their habitats, especially with respect to summer temperatures, would normally be considered unsuitable for trout*. However, these fishes thrived. In fact, conditions were such that stocking of hatchery rainbow trout (O. m. irrideus) that are generally produced from coastal stocks, inevitably failed in the HCT streams we studued; typically, stocking rainbow trout either out-compete cutthroat trout or form hybrid swarms when they are put together.

Most of the fish we studied were members of local populations in small, sometimes intermittent, streams, but larger fish also occurred in larger streams like the Mary's and Humboldt Rivers. It was known that there was very high degree of genetic differentiation among populations of HCT, suggesting limited reproductive interaction, though it was also assumed that larger migratory individuals moved into these streams in spring to spawn. 

These were the early days of genetic taxonomy, but the genetic variability of these eastern populations suggested they may have been an independent subspecies of cutthroat trout; we accepted this distinction and called them Humboldt cutthroat trout (HCT)**. Our studies were directed at physical habitat conditions and population dynamics, not genetic, but in two papers we proposed "genetic flexibility" or "plasticity" (for which we had no precise definition) was responsible; that is, we thought it likely that these fish were genetically capable of tolerating a wide range of unpredictable and extreme environmental conditions absent specific evolutionary change. 

In the first paper, titled “Population Fluctuations and Genetic Differentiation in the Humboldt Cutthroat Trout of Gance Creek, Nevada,” published in 1983***, we theorized that HCT had evolved sufficient adaptive flexibility to respond properly to variable local conditions and was indirectly expressed in the high genetic diversity among local populations of these fish demonstrated by other researchers (see here). The second publication was entitled “Evidence for Variability in Spawning Behavior of Interior Cutthroat Trout in Response to Environmental Uncertainty” and dealt with response of HCT in a small stream to extreme streamflow conditions. In this case we thought we might have detected two spawning events in response to an early freshet followed by sustained spring runoff. This may have been driven by spawning events that included migrants tuned into basin-scale triggers and some among resident individuals responding to local cues.

While these two papers may not have represented earth-shaking research, they have been used in developing management strategies to help recover LCT, a subspecies of cutthroat trout listed as "Threatened" under the Endangered Species Act. In addition, and most relevant in the context of this post, they hypothesized a genetic component to the ability of HCT to tolerate extreme and variable environmental conditions, including stream temperature. With the Narum's and Campbell's work, it would seem that such a genetic component has been demonstrated. 

It is experience like this that has helped lead me to question the "consensus" view of dire environmental and social consequences of a changing climate. Climate, of course, is constantly changing in response to natural cycles and the human influence on them. A reductionist approach to such complex systems is quite likely to lead to oversimplification of cause and effect relationships. It seems to me that climate alarmists embrace this narrow view of climate system dynamics and environmental response to change. Environmental variability happens, habitat conditions change, ecosystems naturally change as climate changes and organisms must be flexible or evolve to maintain viable populations. Even though people naturally favor environmental conditions that they perceive as normal, changes in organism ranges and even extinctions occur naturally over time as well as in response to human action; but no given state is inherently superior any other, just different. To me, it seems likely that some ecosystems may change and some organisms may be displaced, but many will be able to cope with whatever climatic changes occur over the next few decades, whether those changes are anthropogenically derived or natural or both. 

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* A review of the state of the knowledge by Dr. Robert Behnke on western trouts in the 1970s-80s is available here.
** Information supporting the logic behind this reasoning can be found here and here.
***  Note that the title on the paper contains a typographic error using the word “Generic” instead of “Genetic.”

Blackchinned Hummingbirds

Females - Ready to Fight

Male - Showing Purple Gorget

Fall Scenery

Rapid Fire, Sudden Blow-Up

Lake Fork Creek Canyon

September Snow on Jughandle

Local Hummingbirds

Female Rufous hummingbird

(Selasphorus rufus)

Squaw Meadows, Payette National Forest

Male Black-chinned hummingbird

(Archilochus alexandri)

McCall, Idaho