The New (Ab)Normal: Outliers, Everyday Exceptionality, and the Politics of Data Management in the Anthropocene

Abstract

The Anthropocene affects how we manage the environment in many ways, perhaps most importantly by undermining how past conditions act as baselines for future expectations. In a period when historical analogues become less meaningful, we need to forge new practices and methods of environmental monitoring and management, including how to categorize, manage, and analyze the deluge of environmental data. In particular, we need practices to detect emerging hazards, changing baselines, and amplified risk. Some current data practices, however, especially the designation and dismissal of outliers, might mislead efforts to better adapt to new environmental conditions. In this article we ask these questions: What are the politics of determining what counts as “abnormal” and is worthy of exclusion in an era of the ever-changing “normal”? What do data exclusions, often in the form of outliers, do to our ability to understand and regulate in the Anthropocene? We identify a recursive process of distortion at play where constructing categories of abnormal–normal allows for the exclusion of “outliers” from data sets, which ultimately produces a false rarity and hides environmental changes. To illustrate this, we draw on a handful of examples in regulatory science and management, including the Exceptional Event Rule of the Clean Air Act, beach erosion models for nourishment projects, and the undetected ozone hole. We conclude with a call for attention to the construction of “normal” and “abnormal” events, systems, data, and natures in the Anthropocene.

人类世以各种方式影响我们对环境的管理, 其中可能最主要的是, 人类世摧毁了过去对于未来的参照作用。在历史没有很大参考价值的时代, 我们需要打造环境监测和管理的新实践和新方法, 包括如何分类、管理和分析海量的环境数据。特别的, 我们需要检测新的灾害、变化的参照底线和加重的风险。然而, 目前的数据方法, 特别是在确定和排除离群值方面, 可能会误导我们更好地适应新环境的努力。本文提出这些问题：在“正常”总是在变化的时代, 什么是判断“异常”和决定排除的政治学？数据排除（经常以离群值的形式）如何影响我们的理解和规范？本文采用了递归扭曲方法, 建立异常-正常类别, 从数据中排除“离群值”, 从而产生了虚假的奇异、掩盖了环境的变化。本文采用法规科学和管理的少量实例, 包括清洁空气法案（Clean Air Act）的特殊事件法则、培育项目的海滩侵蚀模型、未知臭氧空洞。本文最后倡议, 在人类世里我们应当构建“正常”和“非正常”的事件、系统、数据和自然。

El Antropoceno afecta de muchas maneras el modo como manejamos el medio ambiente, quizás más notablemente restando importancia a condiciones pasadas como puntos de partida para futuras expectativas. En un período donde las analogías históricas pierden significado, necesitamos forjar prácticas y métodos nuevos de monitoreo y manejo ambiental, incluso el modo de caracterizar, manejar y analizar la avalancha de datos ambientales. Particularmente, necesitamos prácticas para detectar las amenazas emergentes, las cambiantes líneas de base y el riesgo acrecentado. Sin embargo, algunas prácticas actuales relacionadas con datos, en especial la designación y la desestimación de los casos atípicos, podrían confundir los esfuerzos para una mejor adaptación a nuevas condiciones ambientales. En este artículo formulamos las siguientes preguntas: ¿Cuáles son las políticas para determinar lo que cuenta como “anormal” y es digno de exclusión en una era de lo “normal” que siempre está en proceso de cambio? ¿Qué ocasionan las exclusiones de datos, a menudo en forma de cosas atípicas, a nuestra habilidad para entender y para regular en el Antropoceno? Nosotros identificamos un proceso recursivo de distorsión en juego donde las categorías constructivas de lo anormal–normal permiten excluir lo “atípico” de los conjuntos de datos, algo que en últimas genera falsa rareza y oculta los cambios ambientales. Para ilustrar esto, nos apoyamos en un puñado de ejemplos de ciencia y manejo regulador, incluyendo la Ley del Evento Excepcional de Aire Limpio, los modelos de erosión de playas para proyectos alimentarios, y el hueco del ozono sin detectar. Concluimos con un llamado de atención para la construcción de eventos “normales” y “anormales”, sistemas, datos y naturalezas en el Antropoceno.

Key Words:

• climate adaptation
• data exclusions
• environmental change
• extreme events
• rarity

关键词:

• 气候适应
• 数据排除
• 环境变化
• 极端事件
• 奇异性。

Palabras clave:

• adaptación climática
• cambio ambiental
• eventos extremos
• exclusiones de datos
• rarezas

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Laura Nash for helpful comments on draft versions and to Ami Nacu-Schmidt and Erica Clifford for graphics. We also appreciate the careful reading and comments by anonymous reviewers, which improved the article.

Notes

1 By referring to the situatedness of science, we are not critiquing science or its findings but illuminating the decisions, assumptions, and trade-offs in the process. Scientists and regulators who crunch numbers and analyze systems make a slew of decisions in the collection and analysis of data; it is impossible to make science without such decisions, but it is also important to note that these decisions do imbue scientific data and analysis, our understanding of a system, and decisions about how to intervene in that system. STS scholars and geographers building on this thinking have long documented how the decisions scientists make during the production of science are influenced by neoliberal forces (Lave 2012), available instruments and technologies (Clarke and Fujimura 1992; Frickel and Vincent 2007), disciplinary forces (Clarke and Fujimura 1992; Murphy 2006; Kleinman and Suryanarayanan 2013), problem orientation (Frickel et al. 2010), time frame of analysis (Sedell 2019), and use of categories (Bowker and Star 2000; Duvall, Butt, and Neely 2018).

Additional information

Funding

Parts of this work was supported by the Western Water Assessment, funded by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration under Climate Program Office grant #NA10OAR4310214WWA.

Notes on contributors

Katherine R. Clifford

KATHERINE R. CLIFFORD is a Researcher for the Western Water Assessment at the University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80302. E-mail: [email protected]. Her research examines questions of environmental knowledge, regulation, and decision making in the context of environmental change.

William R. Travis

WILLIAM RIEBSAME TRAVIS is Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309. E-mail: [email protected]. His research focuses on human interaction with hazards and risks, especially in a changing global environment.