Outtakes

Special only to this website! Here I will post some of the passages and sections that Judea and I wrote for the first draft of the book. Our first draft was too long — it would have been 500 pages instead of 400 — so we had to put the book on a diet. I think that some of the things we wrote are still interesting and important, so I will make them available through this page.

The Cattail Remedy.

Managers at Acadia National Park in Maine were concerned about the potential of invasion by cattails, which could eliminate native and endangered plant species. They asked James Grace of the US Geological Survey to conduct an analysis, which he did using a causal diagram. Grace’s study showed that cattails were not likely to be a serious problem, but alterations in the hydrologic cycle due to development around the park perimeter was a threat. Subsequently, the park requested and obtained funding from the Environmental Protection Agency to improve their monitoring of the water conditions.