Guest post by Jim Steele
Director emeritus Sierra Nevada Field Campus, San Francisco State University and author of Landscapes & Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism
MSN appears to be a source of climate fear mongering and “fake climate news” based on their story under the headlines Antarctica hits record high temperature at balmy 63.5°F .
The story was accompanied by what can only be a horribly photo-shopped photograph for the unassuming warmunista of a mushroom-shaped ice form teetering on a rocky outcrop.
Supposedly it was photographed on the opposite side of the continent from which the record temperature occurred. Climbing such a structure would be a difficult technical climb for an experienced mountaineer. Furthermore when Adele penguins come ashore to breed they avoid the ice if possible, only crossing snowfields as the seek ice-free breeding territories. Lastly if you magnify the picture 500%, the penguins become extremely pixilated, the ice chunk less so, and the background rocks even less so, a fingerprint of 3 different photographs with different resolution that have been overlain.
MSN reported, “An Argentine research base near the northern tip of the Antarctic peninsula has set a heat record at a balmy 63.5° Fahrenheit (17.5 degrees Celsius), the U.N. weather agency said on Wednesday.” The record was set in 2015 and the WMO report simply confirmed the temperature. The Wunderblog had reported in March 2015, “On March 24th Base Esperanza (under Argentinean administration) located near the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula reported a temperature of 17.5°C (63.5°F). Although this is the warmest temperature ever measured since weather stations became established [in 1953] on the southern continent, it is complicated by what the very definition of ‘Antarctica’ is.
To induce fear over Esperanza’s temperature record MSN writes, “Antarctica locks up 90 percent of the world’s fresh water as ice and would raise sea levels by about 60 meters (200 ft) if it were all to melt, meaning scientists are concerned to know even about extremes around the fringes.”
However high temperatures at Esperanza tell us nothing about climate change, or if there is any threat of melting ice caps or rising sea level. Instead Esperanza presents a prime example of how temperatures can rise dramatically without any increased input of heat. Argentina’s Esperanza weather station is situated on the most extreme equatorward tip of the Antarctic peninsula and its mean monthly temperature for March is -3.6 C. But Esperanza’s location subjects it to episodic warm northwesterly winds which is why it is also infamous for its foehn wind storms that can dramatically increase temperatures by 10 to 40 C degrees in a matter of hours.
This record 17 C (63.5 F) temperature recently recorded, is 20 C above average, and as expected the record temperature is the result of foehn winds. Foehn winds warm temperatures via adiabatic heating (no heat input) as descending winds passing over the nearby mountains warm from adiabatic compression. It is meaningless weather regards penguins. But no mention of foehn winds by MSN.
At least the Wunderblog, was honest about the cause of record warming in 2015 stating,
“A strong high pressure ridge and a Foehn wind led to the record temperatures as Jeff Masters explains here:
This week’s record temperatures were made possible by an unusually extreme jet stream contortion that brought a strong ridge of high pressure over the Antarctic Peninsula, allowing warm air from South America to push southwards over Antarctica. At the surface, west to east blowing winds over the Antarctic Peninsula rose up over the 1,000-foot high mountains just to the west of Esperanza Base, then descended and warmed via adiabatic compression into a warm foehn wind that reached 44 mph (71 km/hr) at 09 UTC on March 24th, near when the maximum temperature was recorded. A similar event also affected Marambio on the 23rd.”
Likewise in the 2016 paper Absence of 21st century warming on Antarctic Peninsula consistent with natural variability researchers with the British Antarctic Survey reported, “The trend in the SAM led to a greater flow of mild, northwesterly air onto the AP [Antarctic Peninsula] with SAT [surface air temperature] on the northeastern side increasing most because of amplification through the foehn effect.”
This isn’t the first time such photo fakery has been used. There’s the Ursus Bogus episode, and NCDC’s fake flooded house, to name a couple. Anything for the cause – Anthony
Never let the truth get in the way of a good story it would seem.
“…you magnify the picture 500%, the penguins become extremely pixilated, ”
————————–
HA, LOL. If you take a close look at CAGW alarmists you realize they have become extremely pixilated. ( Crazy, insane)
I remember Pixilated Penguin. It was on the flipside of Russ Conway’s UK hit Side Saddle. I think I may be showing my age here. 🙁
https://youtu.be/kePxj6QLt8A
Steely Dan’s song about a very pixilated woman:
@ Gunga Din
Sorry for the duplication – I didn’t catch your post on first reading, and linked to the same video farther down.
Regrets.
No need for “regrets”.
I’m sure lots of readers didn’t see my clip but did see yours.
It’s all good.
My response to this article is amazement at this quote: “Antarctica locks up 90 percent of the world’s fresh water as ice and would raise sea levels by about 60 meters (200 ft) if it were all to melt, meaning scientists are concerned to know even about extremes around the fringes.”
That is possibly the WORST piece of writing I’ve seen in donkey’s years! “…meaning scientists are concerned to know even about extremes around the fringes.” –??? Y’know, I think it’s really nice that the owners of media outlets want to give morons a chance at a job, but this is a public admission that they’re willing to hire the functionally illiterate as long as those kids can holler ‘global warming’ with great enthusiasm.
If you’d like to see the textbook fraud Jim Steele exposed and splattered all over the wall by actual scientists, have a look here: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/04/climate-scientist-bashing/comment-page-3/
MSN apparently cannot even bother with a good fake.
To suggest that the tip of the peninsula has anything to do with mass of the continent is a blatant lie and is as false as the childish collage photo.
The lower right of the ice is clearly reflecting blue water, not the dark rock on which is supposed to be sat.
Blatant forgery. More FAKE NEWS.
Now look at Pelosi’s bullshit and lies about Sessions testimony. She must resign.
Shhhh. Warmists don’t do math, and so don’t have any sense of proportion.
Seriously, the sheer size of the peninsula, let alone its geographical location compared to the rest of the continent would be like taking today’s temp in Florida, and saying that it means something to the average temp of the American South East.
More like taking a temperature reading in Key West and declaring that you know something about the temperature for the entire US (and part of Canada).
“MarkW March 2, 2017 at 10:52 am”
Yeah, I was trying to do the math, but that was my point. Antarctica is ‘yuge”, the Peninsula is large (and not much like the interior), and taking one temp, for one day, at the tip of the Peninsula means basically nothing.
A fake story is to good even for the bottom of a septic tank dwellers like warmist and the main stream media to pass up on!
Two many times, to times this week, too think these grammatical errors are just a typo.
“Those feet’ll steer you wrong sometimes”…
Good catch!
And isn’t it also a bit deceptive to run a two year old story as news, with a headline which makes it sound like it’s happening Right Now. Maybe they should call it “olds” instead of “news.”
Reuters ran this propaganda piece, too.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-antarctica-temperatures-idUSKBN1684I7
Base Esperanza is at the very tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, so it has the mildest temperatures on the entire continent. But, nevertheless, Weather Underground shows that it hasn’t gotten above freezing all day.
I’m sure there are some “warm” pools in the area as well, ones you can actually swim in..
Can’t recall the name of the place at the moment though
A BBC holiday programme several years ago showed wealthy (mostly) American tourists disembarking from their tour vessel, to land on the shores of Antarctica, & to wallow in the hot pools in their swimwear!
Alan, I’ve been on one of those trips. We went swimming at Deception Island and believe me it was not warm at all – the air was around 2C and the water the same. And this was in March, ie as warm as it gets.
Hot pools? Bah.
Yeah, I heard the same thing about swimming in England…
2 stinkin’ degrees . . and people wonder why we stick with Fahrenheit . .
That picture has been used many times, e.g., in 2013 with an article on Arctic warming. http://www.desdemonadespair.net/2013/12/arctic-thaw-tied-to-european-us.html
The 2013 story got about five comments all of which found the picture risible. At least they got it on the correct continent this time.
Editors and writers grab clip art. It’s not that they’re particularly evil, they’re just looking for something with some impact and they’re not going to spend a lot of time looking (or thinking).
And they wonder why they have so little credibility…
BTW, I think they are immoral, or at least amoral.
It’s difficult to distinguish between incompetence and dishonesty.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity, but don’t rule out malice. Heinlien’s Razor
Sounds to me like you are admitting that they don’t care about accuracy, just catching the most eyeballs.
If it’s true for the picture, why should we not also assume it’s true about the story itself?
“Editors and writers grab clip art. It’s not that they’re particularly evil, they’re just looking for something with some impact and they’re not going to spend a lot of time looking (or thinking).”
NO,NO,NO,NO,NO!!!!!
These people are liberals. What they eat for breakfast is political. EVERYTHING they do is about advancing their agenda.
That photo was selected for very specific reasons with malice and forethought.
Roving Broker,
Dishonesty starts with a ‘D’ ….
Encompetence starts with an ‘E’ …
not so hard.
“That photo was selected for very specific reasons with malice and forethought.”
I agree with Matthew W. The Lefties use every trick in the book when they are trying to sell a story.
It’s more of an accusation.
In my high school newspaper/journalism class, we learned about the “inverted pyramid”. Broad strokes first, details last. Ideally, tell the overall story of the whole article in the first sentence. The assumption being that few readers will go through the whole article so give them the gist as quickly as possible.
Naturally, such a structure is easily propagandized. Spin the broad statements on the front page and bury the inconvenient details in the back. Or in this age of digital media, at the bottom where all the annoying ads usually are.
The most likely explanation is that the sea level has receded since the penguins got up there
It is a stock photo from 2010.
Stock photo(shop). FIFY
Thank you!
Wonder how a couple of flight less birds got on top of a approx 20 foot tall chuck of ice ?
Must be the vertical climbing sub-species of Adele penguins; Pygoscelis adeliae Verticalis……
Cheers, KevinK.
All we get from the MSM are lies, half-truths and distortions. They have confused tens of millions of people.
I know how those pixelated penguins got up there…
Very funny. Reminds me of the BBC’s spaghetti trees.
Pure gold . Just brilliant .
http://www.rockyhigh66.org/stuff/polar-bear_penguin.jpg
LOL, dang, that’s one pixilated bear.
CAGW makes everything and everbody pixilated.
I’ll bet that polar bear is pixilated too. It gives no sign of being hungry, so it must not have been stranded there long.
That is very funny!
LOL Great work. Fotoforensics shows the bear and penguin equally pixelated. Hmm what does that tell us?
http://fotoforensics.com/analysis.php?id=26779c72224df1cc9e3bfd15f235a11c8514ab9e.51771&fmt=ela&size=600&i=22157723
I’m sorry Jim, you are flat out wrong here. It’s rare that on WUWT my area of expertise is relevant but it is in this case. All the fotoforensic site can do is pick up artefacts in the image. And every time an image is saved, uploaded, displayed, copied saved etc. jpeg compression artefacts are created and exacerbated along the high contrast hard lines in an image. It’s just the nature of the compression algorithm. It’s why professional photographers take images in RAW format and submit them in TIFF format. They are used in jpeg on the internet because the compression allows for a small file size. The trade off is the loss of quality and the artefact creation.
The ice chunk itself is photoshopped, and crudely. The actual base photo is of a barren rocky shore.
Craig (@Zoot_C),
But then all elements in the photograph would show the same level of compression, Craig; you know that. Neither the horizon nor the rock edges display it. The bottom left corner of the ice is straight and turns up. The terrain beneath it, however, dips, and is facing the sunlight.
@MRW, no, it does not work that way and that’s why people are paid big money to develop algorithms to combat it. It’s kind of chaotic bit it’s almost always guaranteed along the light side of hard edges of high contrast. ie. anything against a blue sky. We combat it daily as photogs.
A palm tree on the right side would really balance the whole photo niceley and “lead the eye”, don’t you think?
It needs a Unicorn….
That explains a lot about the stories I see in the BBC.
The penguins are on top of a big block of ice. Did they think that their readership would assume that the penguins just flew up there?
It used to look like this before man. get some feels.
Perhaps the two pseudo-photos above suggest why the polar bear in the first pseudo-photo gives no signs of being hungry, though it might be soon.
So the claim is that they did not fly up there? …humor
Were we to suppose the penguins FLEW up onto the ice and
couldn’t get down ? Or maybe they nested there and the ice
melted away from around them ?
It’s the kind of visual propaganda the viewer is supposed to have
a visceral reaction to without thinking about the details.
Who could DENY the penguins are in trouble ?
Be skeptical….
Even Leo Decaprio and the polar bear cub think it looks fake.
I was waiting for Leo to show up here. He’d be right at home with the whole story.
He hires trolls for that.
A Foehn Wind is a Chinook in Alberta and Montana, just different names. Leo experienced one when he was filming The Revenant during the month of January west of Calgary, and returned to the US proclaiming that he’d just experienced the worst example of global warming in his life. The entire western provinces howled in derision. Even the Canadian PM guffawed.
Esperanza Base at approximately 63S (below, or north, of the Antarctic Circle), gets a foehn wind influenced record high temperature, while Reykjavik, Iceland, at 64N gets a nation-wide paralyzing (February) record 20 inches of snow last weekend. MSM probably won’t be mentioning that story, even though the effect on Iceland was much more severe. My guess is more than few editors think it is winter down at Esperanza.
They will take any extreme conditions, warm or cold, as proof that ‘something is happening’.
A CBC announcer was talking to a climatologist about the record warm February temperature in Toronto (Canada). He wanted to know if it proved global warming. The climatologist pointed out that two years ago Toronto had a record cold February. It wasn’t the record warm temperature that should be paid attention to, it was the extremes that prove that ‘something is happening’.
You could just tell that the announcer didn’t find that very satisfying. He wasn’t sophisticated enough to realize that the record cold February disproved global warming just as much as the record hot month proved it. Nuance is an endangered species. It’s like Al Gore told him: “If you can’t say something alarming, don’t say anything.”
Yes, and one of the Toronto blogs I read (TRYING to find local events, but they keep filling it up with crappy lists and fake news) went on about the WARMEST FEBRURARY EVAH:
http://www.blogto.com/city/2017/03/toronto-just-had-warmest-february-its-history/
“The average temperature of 3.48 C beat out the previous record of 3.39 C set in 1998.”
Um, that’s an average of the HIGH temp, BTW…not mentioned in the “article”.
Toronto? Isn’t that the place where they called in the army when it snowed? They’re not even Canadian!
Well, there is Toronto and TROC (that’s The Rest of Canada), and yes, most people outside of Toronto make fun of us. And we’ll never live down calling in the Army down BUT:
1) the mayor at the time was almost as crazy as Rob Ford, (without the excuse of drug abuse)
2) we received a winter’s worth of snow in two days
3) other areas of the nation also call in the Army, as New Brunswick did this year (for snow as well)
Incredible timelapse video shows snow getting deeper and deeper as Iceland’s capital has biggest snowfall in 80 years with 20 inches in 24 hours
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4268754/Iceland-sees-20-inches-snow-24-hours.html
Worth looking at.
I think that was also on the BBC News website.
Auto
HA, if you are at Esperanza, Antarctica (bout 63° S latitude) then you are as far north as you can get from the South Pole and still be on the Antarctica continent.
So, an air temperature of 63.5° F at Esperanza, Antarctica at 63° S latitude isn’t that much more amazing than the summer air temperature of 70° F at Fairbanks Alaska at 64° N latitude.
Snow packs in the Sierras have gotten so deep that the traditional tools for measuring it, can’t.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/03/02/western-snowpack-too-deep-scientists-measuring-devices/98623436/
What’s funny is that here in New England, USA, we get snow falls like that every year or two. Here’s some good detail on one from 2015. Some years we get more than one.
http://www.weather.gov/okx/Blizzard_01262715
It will shut us down for a day or two, and some places a few more.
Nothing like pixelated penguins with a glass of whisky.
Chilly Willy is not happy about this!
http://i.giphy.com/xUPGcAzlECKEApxcME.gif
CO2 is causing a rise in pixels.
http://double-eband.com/Squanch-penguin.jpg
I need to set the record straight, here.
Penguins can, indeed, fly.
They just need an assist from a suitably sized catapult or slingshot.
Admittedly, the trajectory is a bit more “ballistic” than “controlled flight”, but they absolutely can be made to go airborne.
The same can be said of the common barnyard chicken, another “flightless” bird. As many a farm boy can attest, the chicken can also be made to fly. A topic I may have some aerodynamic engineering experience with.
Penguins do fly, and maneuver quickly while in flight, they simply do it underwater
But their wings serve negative lift in order to counter buoyant force as their plumage along with body makes for a density lower than water.
My experience tells me that most all of the common barnyard chicken breeds are capable of flying, …… iffen you don’t fatten them up too much. But they are of the same mindset as the Roadrunner who prefers “running” instead of flying.
If available, barnyard chickens will roost in trees if they don’t have a chicken coop/house to spend the nighttime in.
Chickens can fly. On the farm we had to clip their wings to keep them from flying over their pen enclosure.
There’s fly and then there’s FLY!
Lest we forget…there’s flying, and then there’s “falling with style”.
rip
The British Aviation Authority used to test the strength of windshields on planes using a device that could fire out dead chickens at extremely high speed.
The device was pointed at the aircraft’s windshield and if the chicken didn’t break it, it was assumed that the windshield would survive the impacts of actual collisions with birds when in flight.
British Rail had recently designed a new locomotive and was testing various designs of windshields, so they borrowed the device from the BAA.
Adjusting it to approximate the maximum speed of the train, they loaded a dead chicken and fired it at the first windshield design.
The chicken went straight through the windshield, broke several components and left a huge dent in the compartment door. Surprised by the result, they asked a BAA official if they had done the test correctly.
An engineer checked everything and suggested that for their next test they defrost the chicken.
Auto
That’s the best laugh I’ve had in days! Thanks Auto. It just had to be British Rail. 😉
I don’t disagree that the story is purposefully alarming, but I’m not sure about this particular analysis. You may be confusing pixelated edges at various resolutions with image compression artifacts. The affect is more noticeable around contrasting edges.
You can view a higher res version of the above image and zoom in. Although there are still artifacts, I do not see any obvious betrayals of multi-image compositing. Not saying it wasn’t edited, just that it was done well.
I would agree. This is bad journalistic practice – using a picture from 2010 to illustrate a
minor point about a weather event in 2015 but that is a long way to go to claim that the
picture is a fake. I imagine that the reason it was taken was because it was so unusual.
And probably there is more of the ice hiding behind the picture explaining why the structure
is stable and how the penguins got up there.
There is also something not right with the shadows. Where are the penguin shadows? Based on the ice’s shadow we should see similar shadows elsewhere.
Penguins could not get on top of that block of ice unassisted. They can jump out of water. They cannot jump to any significant height on land. The photo is either photoshopped or staged. Either way it is yet another bit of climate hype deception.
In cinema there is the concept of “forced perspective”, where multiple actors can be at different spots in the scene, and with the right camera angle can be filmed to look like they are occupying the same space. Peter Jackson used this technique regularly in his LotR movies to make the actors playing the hobbits look like hobbits despite not actually being 3 1/2ish feet tall (along with other tricks, like using child doubles in shots where they face away from the camera).
So there very well could be a penguin-climbable slope on the backside of the ice mass, hidden via forced perspective. How to Take a Fake Picture with a Real Camera.
Everything about the picture does not jive with penguin behavior. Nor does it jive with the ice placement in an environment where there is no other ice anywhere land or sea. Nonetheless I realized there was an off chance that the penguin reached the top by means not visible. So I uploaded the pic to Fotoforensics and got this picture analysis
http://fotoforensics.com/analysis.php?id=c656885d3c820e556c8a3e5739301d11967b433d.25737&fmt=ela&size=600&i=22157313
The penguins not only looked unusually pixalated, but their pixalation disrupts the upper edge of the ice. In the original the penguins appear behind the upper edge. In the forensics the pixalation bites into the ice and disrupts the edge. With all things considered it appears fake.
Jim, the fotoforensic site, whilst fun, is essentially useless unless you are working on an image straight from the camera. The image that ends up with you has been compressed many many times, and then again by your browser and then again by you as you copy it to do the forensics’ on. It’s a useless gimmick ( source me. Adobe certified expert). You are mistaking jpeg compression artefacts with evidence of photoshopping. As someone who has made countless composite images I can tell you that the ‘evidence’ in your site above appears very different in an actual photoshopped image that has not been around the web a few thousand times. See my post below where I explain that it is a Reuters stock file image.
Not sure your high res version indicates a lack of shopping. Looking at the pixelated edges around the Penguins, it appears that the pixelation has definite larger right angle zones surrounding flippers and heads
Here it is blown up 3x using Irfanview . I think the pixelation around the penguins and even around the ice block is pretty apparent compared to , eg : the horizon .
http://cosy.com/y17/WUWT_FakeMSN_PenguinPic.jpg
@Bob Armstrong. Those are jpeg compression artefacts and are impossible to avoid because of the nature of jpeg compression. Do it with a random sample of images involving a subject taken against a blue sky. I guarantee you in a sample size of suitable jpeg images you will see the same effect >95%
We are supposed to ignore physics and biology and assume the picture is not photoshopped? Sorry. It doesn’t require counting pixels to see that this is manufactured photo.
The ice chunk itself is photoshopped into the frame. The original frame depicts a barren rocky shore.
Reuters has a photo credit from 1/1 2010 and location of pic at Cape Denison, Commonwealth Bay, East Antarctica
“Antarctica contains 90% of the worlds freshwater” is a meaningless statistic. Absolutely zero percent of anyones freshwater comes from Antarctica. It’s another example of abuse of language and data being taken out of context is used to miseducate people.
Gravity-defying ice.
It really is an appalling job, why doesn’t it fall over, the shadow outline on the rocks is ham-fisted and how come is there no sign of any melt water at the base?
?w=720
As for the flooded house it is also a joke, the BS artist had no idea of linear perspective the horizon line being at the water line at the house the camera lens would have been half under water so any foreground should be submerged:
Ah, no, you fail to realise that in the warmist world you can have sloping water. So the picture is correct, and the water level slopes up towards the house…. 😉
R
Sloping water is very common. Sloping water allowed the penguins to swim up onto the ice on the rock.
Cut the heads off of chickens and they can run around like an alarmed warmest.
[Sorry; not nice.]
Very true. As children during butcher day we got to run them down to take them to the boiling water tank for a dip. The feathers were easier to pluck after a plunge. Bloody business as the cut neck would fling blood around as we caught them. I remember it being fun but smelly work.
I mean chickens, not warmists.
Did you flour the immature eggs and deep fat fry them?
Works on ducks, too. It is messy.
What temperature range was measured by the Esperanza sensor on March 24th, 2015?
Maybe 50°F ? Or more?
Good job, Anthony. It seems there has been a sharp increase of climate hype stories that fall apart under even slight scrutiny. This one may be one of the biggest whoppers.
Other uses of the image: https://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en-GB&q=climate+change+ice+melting&tbm=isch&tbs=simg:CAQSlQEJAHLDEsUTgZUaiQELEKjU2AQaAggBDAsQsIynCBpiCmAIAxIo3AyRFuwVmR6bFroBkBaIHpMepwSLK48r3SK2N7Ui6SKOK4IrkSqHKxowJAD-CXfbX91TiZ6_1_1hB93pO4NSfYDqYGhBGbFfYXldAj1XptWxZk7b55YiipInVjIAQMCxCOrv4IGgoKCAgBEgSzA8H8DA&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjcu5PjlrfSAhUlAsAKHayCBsgQ2A4IGigB&biw=1366&bih=626#imgrc=_
The other Arctic record temperature form 1982: 19.8 Deg. C
https://eos.org/features/evaluating-highest-temperature-extremes-in-the-antarctic
Sorry, no penguin pictures, but 2.3 Deg. C higher 35 years ago.
So fake pictures, fake records, and pixulated reporters.
Someone tell those penguins it’s safe to come down now. Those weren’t really polar bears, just a lot of overfed democrat women dressed as polar bears.
Definitely a foeny foto.
Ohhhhhhh.
Auto
Another thing wrong with this story, the world almanac this new record is updating used different criteria of what qualified as “Antarctica” .
The previous record included only locations within the Antarctic circle (66 degrees South or better). Apparently meteorologists prior to the AGW political movement considered Esperanza Station unrepresentative of general conditions in Antarctica and excluded it for the purposes of almanac records of extremes. So this might not be the highest temperature ever recorded at Esperanza, it might just be the most recent temp higher than the record for inside the Antarctic circle.
The record high temp for inside the Antarctic Circle remains 59 degrees at Vanda Station, Antarctica, on Jan. 5, 1974.
Here’s Vanda Station.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanda_Station
It’s defunct. The ecologists insisted all trace be removed to avoid contamination of the environment. So they needed a replacement for a regular source of Antarctica is so hot stories.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/77%C2%B031'00.0%22S+161%C2%B040'00.0%22E/@-77.5274021,161.7678879,74680m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x0!8m2!3d-77.516667!4d161.666667?hl=en
Interesting that Vanda sat in the moisture shadow of three converging mountain chains. Kind of like the Death Valley of Antarctica.
Has anyone proved this is photoshopped?
Asked MSN for a comment?
You see that’s the difference between this website and the NY Times: the Times asks for comment and fact checks. It doesn’t just sling mud at people.
And it was a record high temp, wasn’t it? Which is of interest and concern… is this article trying to divert attention from that fact?
and I don’t see the posts on the record low Antarctic ice here anywhere ???
Griff, it’s very easy to test a digital image for tampering, if you know what utilities to use and what to look for. So, like polar bears, you know nothing about what you speak.
Shopped or not, It definitely isn’t Esperanza on 3-24-15, almost 3400 miles away on a continent that is 3500 miles accross. In fact there is a good Google 360 view at Ninnis and Mertz Cross on Azimuth Hill Antarctica that shows what the area looks like.
A good picture used out of context, is bad reporting in any book
In fact, the only images in the MSN article are from Scott Base and Commonwealth Bay respectively 3400 & 2500 miles away from Esperanza Base. If Esperanza Base on 3-24-2015 is the news, show us an image from there then, not some recycled image from someplace else designed to jerk heart strings.
That is like telling us that LA is overcrouded and showing a picture of New York City
“the Times asks for comment and fact checks. It doesn’t just sling mud at people.”
Hilarious comment of the year from Griff
Griff remains, as always, an endless source of mirth and merriment:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Blair#Plagiarism_and_fabrication_scandal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_lacrosse_case
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/23/us/times-should-lose-pulitzer-from-30-s-consultant-says.html
You are missing the point Griff. The object is to discredit a report which is uncomfortable news by diverting attention to the nature of a stock photograph. If it had not been the photograph, doubtless something else would have been found which was equally as minor. However you are right is suggesting we discuss the nature of the report, as opposed to the aesthetics of the Penguin picture.
Or to fuel emotion rather than fact. Yeah, I missed that point! The fact is, it is fake.
Gareth and Griff==>the whole damn story, illustration and copy, is bogus, all the way down. It is a fabricated illustration to a grossly misleading story.
There is nothing uncomfortable about the report.
It really is funny how easily you alarmists are fooled.
It’s almost as if you have no brain power to speak of.
No, I thought that was exactly what was happening… an attempt to discredit an uncomfortable report by diverting attention.
I was however also trying to make the point that this site is advocacy, not reporting: the news media often have higher standards than websites.
There seems to be a tendency among sceptical sites to have a go at photos… which is ridiculous seeing some photo editor who has really nothing to do with writing the articles usually just sticks in first stock photo which vaguely matches the subject…
news media have high standards?
Once again you be-clown yourself.
The NY Times covered up the starvation deaths of 6,000,000 Ukranians at the hands of the Soviets. They received a Pulitzer prize for their reporting. After their falsehoods were exposed, they still did not disavow the Pulitzer.
I will accept Griff’s polar bear expertise, as an anonymous commenter, on the WUWT blog, before I will ever uncritically accept anything written in the NY Times.
Gareth,
the story is misleading since they didn’t mention that it was caused by a warming wind (Foehn wind),that lasted for part of a day,as it cooled back down to freezing. There were other previous record highs in the 50’s,that happened numerous times in the past at the base.
Jeff Masters made this statement:
“A strong high pressure ridge and a Foehn wind led to the record temperatures as Jeff Masters explains here:
This week’s record temperatures were made possible by an unusually extreme jet stream contortion that brought a strong ridge of high pressure over the Antarctic Peninsula, allowing warm air from South America to push southwards over Antarctica. At the surface, west to east blowing winds over the Antarctic Peninsula rose up over the 1,000-foot high mountains just to the west of Esperanza Base, then descended and warmed via adiabatic compression into a warm foehn wind that reached 44 mph (71 km/hr) at 09 UTC on March 24th, near when the maximum temperature was recorded. A similar event also affected Marambio on the 23rd.”
That is the TRUE nature of the phenomenon, a temporary WEATHER event that dissipated in just a few hours.
Has nothing to do with “global warming” or insignificant increase in atmosphere CO2 levels. Nothing uncomfortable about it,Gareth. It is warmist loons like you who make a mountain out of a molehill,milking it for propaganda purposes.
What is sad is that Senator Schumer,you and Griff go bananas over a tiny region of the continent,cause by a short term weather event.
SunSettommy: They are also the first to scream that any temperatures that are colder normal, is just weather and should be ignored.
AYUP, Higher Standards like using Stock Photos from different parts of a continent 3000 miles away to make a point about a weather situation that is already 2 years old and an entire continent away
Seriously, Is there any eco-babble that you won’t defend?
BTW if there were actually a record low in ice … this would be a bad thing because…?
Wishing for more ice is like wishing for more desert. Life is orders of magnitude more prolific at the equator for good reason.
For an alarmist, all that matters is that the narrative must be supported. It doesn’t matter how badly the alarmist has to embarrass itself, support the narrative at all costs.
err griff mate..its SUMMER down here
Griff—You’re proving what skeptics say. You care only about the actual temperature and NOTHING about why it occurred. It’s HIGH!!!!!! For 5 hours once in a while, yes. Why? Who cares? It’s HIGH!!!!!!! Your comprehension of science is just so lacking.
As always Griff doesn’t know what the difference between weather and climate is.
Everything is interpreted based on whether it supports one of his religious convictions or not.
the Times asks for comment and fact checks.
=========================
Two reporters in a bar:
Reporter 1: Anyone know what Trump is doing?
Reporter 2: My girlfriend’s aunt’s hairdresser says Trump is in bed with Putin.
MSN breaking news – Reporter 1 exclusive:
Confidential sources report KGB blackmailing Trump over kinky sex orgy.
Griff, why are you concerned about a 2015 high in a place that last was that temperature in the 1980’s? No one is commenting on the Antarctic ice because like all claims by climate hypesters, it turns out to be unimportant. Low sea ice in the Antarctic is doing nothing adverse to world climate. So back to the topic of this post: Why would MSM consistently decide to lie and deceive readers about climate?
“And it was a record high temp, wasn’t it? Which is of interest and concern…”
It’s cooled off since then, Griff.
FAKE SCIENCE
Does not even qualify as resembling science.
I think the photo could be genuine. Of course there would have to be an easier way to get onto the ice from the back, but penguins are much more agile on land than you might believe. And it isn’t unusual for penguins to get onto snow or ice patches on sunny days in Antarctica. I’ve often seen this behavior in Gentoos and Royal Penguins. Admittedly I haven’t seen Adeles do it, but I have rather limited field experience of that species. Remember that those feather coats have to keep the penguins warm in sub-zero water, so I imagine they can get uncomfortable on land when temperatures creep up over freezing.
Jim Steele is right that they only breed on rocks though, I’ve seen them scramble hundreds of meters up a steep snowbank to get to a suitable rocky patch.
Correction “Royal Penguins” should be “King Penguins”. I always mix those two names up.
It seems to be a 2010 photo taken by Reuters staff. http://pictures.reuters.com/archive/CLIMATECHANGE-ANTARCTICA–GF10000365918.html
Just out of curiosity,this temperature sensor wouldn’t happen to be next to the exhaust of the generators, or down wind from a heat source perchance ?
Actually not needed to get extremely high temperatures during Föhn conditions. Next time you hear abot record warmth in Greenland, check where it happened. It will almost certainly be in Narsarsuaq which is famous for extreme föhn effect.
As soon as I saw the term ‘warmunista’ I gave up reading. You cannot condemn people for using the word ‘denier’ and claim the high moral ground when you patently use the same insulting terms in a different context.
Gareth I use warmunista as a kinder apolitical term than alarmists. What do you recommend for a term for people who think CO2 causes everything?
I often refer to them as global warming advocates or global warming believers. I changed to “advocate” when there were objections to “believer” as being religious (which it isn’t, but I gave up on logic with said persons). Actually, I don’t object to the “d” word—it’s additional proof that the advocates don’t have a science case. If this were REAL science, the “skeptics” would be referred to as those who have a different theory, not those who deny science. Even the use of the term “pseudoscience” would have been less indicative of the advocates not being able to make their case. Of course that term opens the discussions to actual scientific investigation, something that is not wanted by advocates.
Stupid comes to mind.
“What do you recommend for a term for people who think CO2 causes everything?”
The wizards of COZ?
If anyone has an interest in false news and dodgy reporting, they may find this of interest :
http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/news/fake-news-and-alternative-facts-in-the-times/
Wales. The country in the UK where the Welsh burn houses owned in Wales by the English.
The same country where English immigrants persecuted school children for speaking their native language and wouldn’t allow official documents to be printed in Welsh!
Once you realise your beliefs and morals are defunct, it’s always a good fallback position to attack the integrity of someones country or their culture. You are both beneath contempt for reverting to such Philistine pig ignorant tactics.
Apologies Phil, I think I may have misread your post. Mae’n ddrwg gennyf
As Gareth attacks the Phillistines. Who aren’t even around to defend themselves!
The Romans forced the “Angles” to speak and write in Latin. The French forced us to write and speak French, the official language, “English” was actively banned. I don’t quite see your point.
@Patrick.
“The Romans forced the “Angles” to speak and write in Latin. The French forced us to write and speak French, the official language”
No they didn’t that’s a fallacy.
There was no such thing as English when the Romans arrived and there was no such thing as English when they left. Latin was the language of the aristocracy whilst there was little to no written language for the common man. That which was spoken was Brittonic Celtic and has no relation to modern English. And after the Romans left the language which replaced the common tongue was am Anglo-Frisian version of German that was spoken by the people left behind by the Romans. With the influx of Angles and Saxons who spoke their own version of old high German the common tongue became a mixture of all three.
English is a form of German and a recognisable form of English as we understand it didn’t come around until maybe 1500 whilst the aristocracy spoke French for a few centuries after invasion the common tongue remained an evolving form of the Germanic Anglo Saxon that had been around a long time. The common man was certainly not forced to speak any language, certainly not that of the aristocracy. Keeping the populace illiterate by maintaining Latin as the language of the church and French as the language of the gentry was a contrived plan to maintain control of the minds of the populace.
Modern English didn’t exist until some time into the 1600’s when the language in Europe had a major shift.
Your comments about Wales are also incorrect but meant to be provocative. As I am in content moderation i will only address those as I am able.
LOL!!
The ever reliabe Bob Ward!
Heh!! I suspected as much, but was reluctant to visit the LSE Grantham Institute site link to find out. Lo and Behold! For those at WUWT not familiar with Mr. Ward and his long history with Grantham Institute, check out the Bishop Hill site and use the Navigate, Search menus with “bob ward” or, for easier links to Josh’s enhancements, “bob ward josh” . Quite a guy.
I would disagree that foehn winds have no heat input. They do have a heat input, through the agent of moisture output. They get their extra warmth though condensation, rainfall, and dry adiabatic warming.
R
You know what “adiabatic” means? “No heat exchange”, from greek a- “not” -dia- “through” -batos “passable”.
There is no heat input. The temperature increase comes from energy of position as the air moves downward in the gravitational field.
“Adiabatic” is a most interesting word. I find it fun to just say it over and over again! (Yeah, I’m not like other people!)
>>You know what “adiabatic” means?
Yes, I know what it means. But the air is only warmer on the way down, because it has been given heat through the latent heat of condensation.
No moisture, no foehn wind. Understand now?
R
The fake picture has been circulating for years. Reuters, for one, has been using it. I wonder who has the credit?
Ok, I’m not calling it photoshop fake. I’m calling it a piece of art deliberately planned to not document but to lie about nature. Media are full of that kind of crap. Nice one if you don’t think about the carbon fingerprint created by shooting two penguins.
Here is a link. Pauline Askin is the photographer. Look at the version of the posting thare. The image edge boundaries and resolution are much crisper.
https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&hl=en-us&ei=RSm4WIDhG8OojwPe8rvgDg&q=pauline+askin+penguin+pictures&oq=pauline+askin+penguin+pictures&gs_l=mobile-gws-serp.3…46958.56058.0.56326.17.17.0.0.0.0.167.1954.3j14.17.0….0…1c.1.64.mobile-gws-serp..0.16.1850…0j0i22i30k1j33i160k1j33i21k1.OInek218RZE#imgrc=_
Crisper but the penguin pixelation still disrupts the ice forms top boundary
It’s Pauline Atkins — anyone with Twitter account (which would not be me) could send her a twit and ask her about it at
@ProudPagen
If you do, let us know here.
I just tweeted her directly. Such an odd ice shape would prompt a photographer to take several photos. As photographers know, we only get one really good photo for every 100. So I asked her for any photos of the backside of the ice that would reveal a gentler slope that enable the penguins to climb to the top.
Will absence of such evidence mean you are correct? You have suggested the opposite in my argument.
Send her Griff. That’s a twit we can do without.
Craig says, “Will absence of such evidence mean you are correct? You have suggested the opposite in my argument.”
PLease Craig dont be so snarky. The absence of such evidence only means we will never know for sure. Did reuters get back to you that there is no evidence?
The CofG of this ice mushroom would be so far to the right that it would topple. The smooth ice shows it was a peak on a larger iceberg. 100% photoshop, even without the added penguins.
However, you can get ice mushrooms if there are some rocks around, to shade the ice beneath them….
http://oi66.tinypic.com/1045c7n.jpg
I spent 2 months in the area in 1996, and we had an unusual warm spell because of high pressure. Continuous storms are the norm, but the rare high pressure yields conditions very much like Vancouver in the winter–both being martime climates. The Antarctic peninsula is the Florida of Antarctica. The photo is definitly not from anywhere around Esperanza, and penguins would never achieve such a precarious position.
“minds bound and cramped by their own theories and despisers of their fellows….They make poor observations because they choose among the results of their experiments only what suits their objective, neglecting whatever is unrelated to it and setting aside everything which might tend toward the idea they wish to combat.
Claude Bernard (1813-78)
Worth noting that the previous record was only slightly lower at 62.8F, set way back in 1961, also at Esperanza.
So “balmy” temps of 63F are not unusual there.
Interestingly the photo originally appeared in 2013, as part of an article by the International Science Times about the record Antarctic COLD temperature in 2010!
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2017/03/02/antarctic-record-temperature-con/
I expect we’ll see plenty more of it every time there is a bit of warm weather there.
Ok, so we can infer .2 degrees C rise in 56 years. Well I’ll be pixilated.
actually the story admits that that was not even the Antarctic’s highest record temp …
The heat record for the broader Antarctic region, defined as anywhere south of 60 degrees latitude, was 19.8°C (67.6°F) on Jan. 30, 1982 on Signy Island in the South Atlantic, it said. (from the story)
Putting aside the photoshop inquiry, the photo makes no logical sense. The hunk of ice would have been washed into place by a severe storm with waves big enough, strong enough to place it, or push it, into this unlikely spot, probably much earlier in the season. The idea that penguins would have stayed put through all of this long enough to find themselves isolated from the ocean and terra firma is utter nonsense. So, unless there is a gentle ramp to the heights of this ice chuck unseen on the far side – where one would expect to see a shadow, but one does not – one can be assured that the photo is pure hogwash, without any further investigation into photoshop techniques.
Agreed. The only way this would be natural is if there is a ramp on the other side that allowed the penquins to get to the top. Then, it would qualify as use of a photographic angle to produce a photo that gives a false impression of what is going on.
That’s called using your photographic eye. We are taught to use perspective and position to create striking images.
Craig: I’m well aware of that. I clearly label all my photos that are “artistic” as such. I do not use photos to try and bend people’s perceptions of reality. I consider that dishonest.
So what is your evidence that the photographer is dishonest here? They have taken this image along with many others and submitted it to their employer for the stock image file. It has been used a number of times since then for different articles. At what point has the photographer been dishonest by the time you have become aware of the image? It was submitted without comment.
Many people do not have any grasp of geography. Antarctica is huge you will see from this overlay picture
that the claim that a temperature at the northern tip of the Antarctic peninsula is rather like claiming that the temperatures in the Bering straits affect the temperature of Iowa. The do-you-want-fries-with-that greens are extremely easily led due to their ignorance
http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lpxzm2ZeBY1qcapx7o1_500.jpg
Life imitates art. ;*]
There is a pattern of deception by alarmists which has been called out, two notable examples being Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace. False advertising is a criminal offense, if the authorities have the gumption to enforce the law.
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2017/01/06/truth-in-climate-advertising/
Don’t they know that ice kills Adelie Penguins?
http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/13/world/penguins-die-giant-iceberg-irpt/
It’s not photoshopped. It’s a series of pictures that Pauline Askin took in Cape Denison in late 2009 – early 2010.
http://www.newsweek.com/antarctic-ice-melting-may-be-worse-thought-314614
Yes, there must be access unseen behind the ice block after all. I don’t believe a reporter with Reuters would be making things up… http://pictures.reuters.com/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&VBID=2C0FCI3HBII44&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=625
“I don’t believe a reporter with Reuters would be making things up…”
Why not?
Andrew
Very notorious example of Reuters using photoshopped pictures as evidence.
Yeah, why not?
Hi-Res version:
http://s.newsweek.com/sites/www.newsweek.com/files/styles/full/public/2014/08/26/melting-ice-climate-change-reaching-irreversible-levels.jpg
I would say in that case Jim Steele has published fake news. No evidence of fakery – no cookie.
[but you’ve provided no evidence other than your own opinion -mod]
Mod. It’s no less evidence than has been provided to the contrary
Except for the very obvious common sense of “How does that mass of ice balance itself?” What magic keeps it from toppling over to the one side
Perhaps its the greater body of ice behind that slopes to the shore not yet eroded by the summer tides that follow the natural channel from the north. Perhaps?
“Perhaps its the greater body of ice behind that slopes to the shore not yet eroded by the summer tides that follow the natural channel from the north. Perhaps?”
Just-So Story.
Andrew
pat. I’m very aware of that image and story which is precisely why it would be suicide for them to include composite images in their library now. Reuters did not manipulate the image, the photographer did. And when it was discovered he was suspended then fired. Reuters are a news agency, not a content delivery service. They as an entity have no position but they must rely upon the integrity of their content providers. The image above was quickly found out and dealt with. To suggest a manipulated image would stay in their catalogue for 6 years undetected is a bit wide of the mark. But by all means, report them for bad practice. Their code of conduct means they must investigate it.
Reuters defended the reporter for several weeks. Only when the evidence became overwhelming did they decide to cut their losses by firing the reporter.
This issue does create the instant hew and cry that the Lebanese engagement did, so the heat levels are not the same.
Mark, it does not alter the facts. The reporter was removed. It has not happened since
Context is very important.
You left out all of the important details, like the huge outcry and that Reuters defended the “reporter” for weeks.
You want us to believe that absent the outcry, Reuters still would have removed the reporter, and from that concluded that absent any outcry, Reuters went through it’s stock images and removed all photo-shopped pictures.
Based on what? The evidence of their past behavior does not support the picture you are trying to paint.
Yes, not Photoshopped, but forced perspective. That chunk of ice could be a foot tall.
But definitely deceptive if used in the context of “poor penguins, ice is running out”.
>>It’s not photoshopped.
It is photoshopped.
a. The ice block is unstable, with a far-right CofG. It could not stand on a small plinth like that.
b. The ice shadow is from forward-top-left, casting a shadow to the right and slightly towards us. The rocks shadow is from back-top-left, which is why the rocks are giving no shadow. Had the ice sun-angle been correct, many of those rocks would have been giving shadow.
c. The upper ice shadow is far too smooth. This is a jagged ice shadow on jagged rocks, and it cannot give a smooth shadow.
d. The left penguin has the back-top-left sun position. But the right penguin does not show the same illumination.
e. The penguins could not have got on top of this plinth. And if there were a rear access ramp, we would see its shadow. And there is no shadow.
Photoshop deceit. SOP for the warmist lobby.
R
A: You have no evidence that the ice you see is all there is in a 360 view.
b: The shadow is not unusual. It merely means you have no understanding of perspective, In fact the shadow is evidence of the ice being longer to the rear than can be seen.
c.d,e dismissed as lack of education.
First there is activism-motivated “science”. Then there is deceptive “reportage”. And then there are the politicians who use the fake news to push agendas. Yesterday a leading US Democrat senator declared that it was presently 64 degrees F in Antarctica. You can’t make this stuff up.
https://twitter.com/SenSchumer/status/837058685520261122
I tweeted
@SenSchumer Fake Foto w intransigently stupid non-news . The AlGoreWarming eKo-fascists fighting for their scam in the last swamp puddles .
Note today Mar. 2, Esperanza station is -4 degrees. That’s 6 degrees below average for Mar 2nd.
Colder than average is weather. Warmer than average is climate.
Chuck fails on so many points, but most glaring, he does not recognize this record was from 2015, and the report was just a confirmation that it was a record since 1953. It is not a recent temperature, but Chuck tweets “its 64 degrees”
I guess Chuck Shumer isn’t aware that this took place several years ago. Or maybe he is.
I can’t wait for the climate change debate to begin. Talk about stirring up a hornets nest. Ole Shumer will be buzzing all around.
Unfortunately this image is not photoshopped ( i’m an adobe certified expert and erstwhile professional photographer ) I could find no evidence in the image that showed any photoshopping so I went in search of the images that would have been used to composite it. I could not find them but I could find the original image. It is a Reuters file image ( so available to anyone ho pays to use it and has access to their stock images ).
It was taken by Pauline Askin at Cape Denison, Commonwealth Bay, in East Antarctica on January 1, 2010.
It’s just the perspective that makes the penguins appear stranded atop a pillar of ice where in fact they would have easy access from the shoreline behind the ice.
So who is Pauline?
As far as I know Pamela she is an Australian journalist with Reuters who has covered many subjects. I believe she is currently, or was recently the Editorial Office Manager of Reuters UK in London if you needed to contact her.
I believe this is she https://twitter.com/proudpagen?lang=en
In addition to what I have said above you have to understand that when you receive a stock image from a photo file service you are getting a low resolution compressed jpeg at the size that you have licensed. There is no way to examine the file for evidence of photoshopping other than visually examining it. And unless you have years of practice or the image is so obviously faked that is hard to do.
Pixels around hard edges are easily explained away by the fact that multiple compressions and copies of an image ( the image you copy yourself is again a copy of a copy of a compressed image) will mean that chromatic aberrations which will almost always appear around hard edges of objects and especially when taken against a blue sky background. These are just artefacts of the lenses. They will be less harsh on more expensive lenses but in 2010 I would expect that the original raw image or even the jpeg produced in camera would have produced chromatic aberrations. The act of copying and compressing the image would then turn those into jpeg artefacts which will explain what you see when you examine them closely.
Craig ==> The Reuters caption on their stock images site is no guarantee that the image is not a composite.
Reuters has other images that are composites, and sells them — this is not news.
As a fellow photog, why don;t you Twit Pauline Atkins and ask her about the origins of the photo? @ProudPagen
(I don’t twit…or I’d do it.)
@Kip. I don’t wish to use twitter to ‘twit’ anyone because I stopped using the service in October for personal medical reasons. To suddenly come out of hiding with a comment my 3500+ followers could see would lead to a barrage of questions about where I have been. Those are questions I don’t wish to answer. You could easily ask her yourself by emailing her at work as I suspect it’s in her Linkedin profile. Although I suggest you get her name correct first.
The penguins look fake just to the naked eye.
Andrew
That’s the problem with the naked eye and the brain. Once you have ‘seen’ something it’s difficult to see it any other way. In fact with this image an alarmist would insist that this is evidence of warming simply because they can see the ice is melting. Whereas a sceptic would look at it and see the normal coastal ice melt of summer. Completely opposite things that can be ‘seen’ in the image but only one is true.
Shouldn’t we see penguin shadows? Just asking.
Andrew
Andrew no, because the penguins are clearly standing below the high point of the ice structure. Which agrees with the theory that the ice slopes away from the photographer and down to the ground level. Which would be the access point for the penguins.
It really does not matter what anyone thinks, including me. For Reuters to include a photoshopped image in their stock file would be suicide. It’s beyond thinking about.
Craig,
But their heads are above the high point. We are not look down on the penguins, we are look across at them.
Andrew
I don’t see an issue there. The perspective tells me that the photographer, assuming she is hand held and not using a tripod, is holding the camera at a height that is comparable to just above the top of the ice and the distance between the camera and the subject is long, suggesting a long lens, 300mm at the least. In fact I would suggest it was a longer lens as getting close to creatures in the wild as a photographer is often extremely difficult with short lenses.
Here’s what we know. The photographer is a journalist and works for Reuters. She has visited the Antarctic many times as her body of work shows. She was in this area when the photo is purported to have been taken because her body of work corroborates that. She is An Australian who supports conservation areas in the antarctic because she has a thing for penguins.
I’ve not been on Twitter for 5 months and I don’t want to return but I’m getting close to contacting her and asking for an original. You can throw up all the roadblocks you like bur there is no evidence that this is photoshopped, none at all and certainly none that can be determined from a compressed jpeg. I don’t expect you to take my word for it as I won’t appeal to authority for argument#s sake. However you have my opinion. Do with it what you will.
And for reference my opinion on anthropogenic global warming is that there is extremely little of it and much of what the record shows is an artefact of poor record keeping and data manipulation. Just so you know I’m trying to be objective in my observations. I would love this to have been a composite image. But I am extremely sure that it is not.
“The photographer is a journalist and works for Reuters.”
To quote the late great Matt Foley –
“Well ladee friggin da”
Andrew
Yea, and the US CBS TV network would never introduce a forged document to malign then President GW Bush/sarc
@Tom, hardly relevant information but I’ll bite enough to say that CBS are in the business of entertainment. They also provide news delivery. Reuters is a news agency like AP. They are very different entities. They provide information for the news delivery services who can do with it what they like once they have paid for it.
Craig, you may be right about the photo; I don’t have the expertise to discern otherwise. But your statement about Reuters and AP isn’t entirely correct. Both entities have been exposed in recent years twisting and contorting to produce fake stories and misleading stories. Sad but true.
Glenn you are indeed correct that there have been issues at both organisations. But they were by individuals and dealt with as the problems arose. Are all organisations responsible for all of their employee actions all of the time?
Sooo,,,even if the photo is not photo-shopped it was taken in 2010? How is a 7 year old picture an honest representation of Antarctic temps in 2017?
It’s not. Please don’t shoot the messenger 😀
Friendly fire.
“Just so you know I’m trying to be objective in my observations.”
Nothing wrong and a lot right about that. Add in honesty (not implying you’re not being honest) and humility and you’ve nailed what’s been missing in “97%” of climate science.
Craig, if separate pictures were discovered that were then overlain, that would prove forgery, but your failure to find those pictures on the internet is not proof of anything. Even in the stock footage the pixalated penguins bite into the ice’s upper edge. Perhaps your expertise could explain such an anomaly?
Furthermore the rock substrate has a small rising step that is in shadow across the photo. The shadow suggests the sun is behind so that shadows would be angled straight towards the viewer, while the ice shadow is strongly angled from left to right.
Finally the imagined gently incline on the back side of the ice is just that imagined. Again hardly the proof leading self proclaimed expert to suggest it is a real photo.
Jim, I’m sorry if you can not understand jpeg artefacts and how they appear. Please. I’ve stated the case for the photo. The woman took hundreds while she was there. Try using your technique on all of those and you will come up with the conclusion that they are all fake. Please, try it, then report her to Reuters. That’s the logical conclusion to this if you are so convinced. Have the courage of your convictions and report her.
I’m only taking the stance I am because i value photo-journalistic integrity most highly. I’d be all over this is there were anything but common compression artefacts in it, but there are not. You are calling my integrity into question by continuing to argue in the face of reasonable explanation
Please, report this dishonesty if you believe so hard. I have done my best to help you avoid being hoisted on your own petard. I’m done now.
As for the snide remark that I missed on the first read I used the term expert as that is the qualification I referred to as opposed to having a pompous opinion of self. It’s called the adoce certified expert programme and i use the term as they do.
https://training.adobe.com/certification/overview.html
I am calling your interpretation into question based on many things about the photograph. Every thing about Adelie biology suggests a fake photo. Adelies prefer to be on ice floes in the winter and while molting. They are on land to breed. But this photo is certainly not a typical breeding area. They use pebbles to build nests, and breeding colonies have dense concentrations of nests. Nothing like that is visible either.
Compression artefacts of the penguins would not just take a bite out of the upper ice edge, while creating no such artefacts anywhere else. But compression artefacts are not the only issue you raised. You said you searched the internet for similar ice pictures on top of which the penguins would be added, but did not find any. Such an ice form is highly unusual on land, but often seen on floating icebergs, with its underwater mass giving stability to such an awkward shape. Second to see such an ice form on land when there is no other ice in view on land or water is highly suspect. One would expect her to take several pictures of such an odd shape.Conversely if such a phenomenon was not rare, we would should find other examples in your internet search. Your argument regards compression artefacts has merit, but it is odd how vigorously you try to defend the photo as real based on imaginary possibilities. Its odd you try to defend the photo based on the absence of evidence, when that absence is more suggestive of a phony photo.
Craig, you are missing the point here,I agree with Jim because it is obvious that the Ice part of the image was ADDED onto the rocky area. It is a composite of at least two separate photos. That make it a photoshopped picture.
When you have submitted your report of dishonesty Jim I’ll continue to address your points. Conviction. Go for it.
[ok, that’s it -mod]
I suggest Craig you do a google search of mushroom shaped ice bergs. There are hundreds of examples. If you search for mushroom shaped ice berg on land you only get this weird penguin photo.
I’ll just give you a taster of a rebuttal though
“Every thing about Adelie biology suggests a fake photo. Adelies prefer to be on ice floes in the winter and while molting.”
I’m pleased for them and have no doubt in your expertise when you say that. Because I trust your authority enough on the subject.
However this was taken on jan 1st 2010. The height of the Antarctic summer.
Here is a clue that Greg pointed out that cast strong doubt on the image as being a real single composite photo:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/03/01/msn-augments-fake-news-with-photoshopped-penguin-photos/comment-page-1/#comment-2440235
“The lower right of the ice is clearly reflecting blue water, not the dark rock on which is supposed to be sat.”
I add one more,the center of gravity of that ice pile should have toppled it since the base is tiny,with most of the weight at the top and to the right of the center column. This was actually the top part of an ice berg being placed on DARK rock,with zero snow or ice visible in the area. Then we have two,ONLY two penguins who by magic got on top.
The whole thing smells badly.
Jim,your Mushroom photo is part of an iceberg,which is why it can look like that and still be intact. While that same shape is NEVER like that on land with a tiny base and a huge head on dark rock.
That alone is why I think it was added onto the rocks.
Christ Jim this is becoming tedious. It’s only a mushroomed shaped object in the perspective of the photograph. To the left, the north, you can see where the tidal water pushes in, you can see from the right of the ice that this tail of ice suggests the water rushes in from the north.
You are assuming that this structure is a mushroom. Well assume that there is a great deal more of the structure beyond what the camera sees and it’s not an unusual structure at all, it’s just a wedge shaped chunk of ice on a beach.
As for the why the photographer took no more images of this mushroom structure? Because it never existed. She simply took the image from a perspective that worked most for her narrative and I’m afraid we all do that because boring does not sell images.
Craig and Jim,here is the photo of Esperanza base,that has ZERO indication of tall mushroom ice piles anywhere:
http://www.urbanghostsmedia.com/2016/08/esperanza-base-argentina-antarctic-peninsula/
Just some small patches of snow and possible FLAT ice patches in the area.
What’s your point Tommy? The image was taken at Cape Denison, Commonwealth Bay in 2010 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Denison and I refer you to the pertinent paragraph about the penguins in 2010
Close up photo of the base:
also many photos of the base and the surrounding area:
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=Photos+of+Esperanza+base&*
Not a single instance of towering land ice at the base in Summer and Winter, Patches of Flat ice in the water.
I am now 100% convinced that Jim,Anthony are correct.
And just in case it has escaped you completely Tommy your example is 3300 miles away and 6 years later during the winter. i’m not sure you could get less opposite.
Tommy please stop, you are beclowning yourself. The image is not anywhere near the base in question. That’s been one of the main points of the post. It’s a Reuters stock image from 2010 used in a current article about an unrelated place. Do keep up.
Craig, I never disputed the reality of the photos themselves,but it is obvious the ice part was ADDED onto the rocks,which were supposed to be in the vicinity of Esperanza base.
Posted several times to show that it never gets that big or have a mushroom shape at the area of the base itself,where the few hours long record high occurred.
That is why I have to agree with Anthony and Jim on this.
So Tommy, please explain why you are using images and video of a place 3300 miles away? It was long ago established that this is a stock image and is unrelated to the article. That has been put to bed. Or are you just here to argue with me rather than read the whole body of the conversation?
Very good Craig, you finally make a point of the photo, What the article did was misleading and dishonest since NO photo of the actual region of the warm wind caused record high was shown.
Here is the headline:
Antarctica hits record high temperature at balmy 63.5°F
Which was at Esperanza base.
But the iceberg shaped mushroom Photo in the article were at Cape Denison,which I saw from the start,since it was under the photo.
The other two were from the Ross Sea and a large iceberg not specifically located.
Now here is what Cape Denison region really looks like:
https://www.google.com/search?q=cape+denison&biw=1280&bih=860&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&sqi=2&ved=0ahUKEwimuKzsxLjSAhUIjVQKHUkfDHgQsAQILQ
There are over 100 photos of the area of Cape Denison,only that photo you are trying mock me with is shown,while all the others are mostly snow fields and small flat ice areas. It appears to be a made up photo…….,not remotely similar with ANY of the others in the region.
I think you are being snookered here,Craig.
Holy f&*^ Tommy are you simple? At no point ever have I taken issue with the subject of Jim’s article. I merely offered my expertise as to whether the photograph was a fake. And my opinion is that it is not. I offered no opinion on the fair use of the image or if it offered ant deception to the reader.
My opinion on man made global warming is quite prominent and I apologise if when you discover it’s likely the same as yours you are disappointed.
I gave me honest opinion on the validity of the image from a position of some knowledge. Yet I’m attacked. Well done y’all. This is why we can’t have nice things.
Once again, I offered no opinion on anything other than the validity of the image. So don’t try and sideline me with bullsh*&
Craig indeed it is getting tedious that you are so persistent in defending the photo based on imaginary evidence. Long ago I agreed it is possible to have a more gentle sloping ice hidden from view, but to suggest that the ice berg washed up on shore in January when there is no floating ice to be seen anywhere appears to be more wishful thinking with you hoping to support your expert adobe opinion. That the top heavy ice could be tossed onto the rocks and remain in an unstable position is a stretch. Any semblance of proof of authenticity, will require photos of the other side. And again show me real pictures of such ice structures on land.
In January most adelies have chicks that are about 3 weeks old, and both parents are very busy swimming, often to great distances, to find food.The penguins in the photo are adults, so we can rule out stray chicks. But there is also no signs anywhere of a breeding colony in this photo. Even if there are some hiddnen evidence, the adults are making bee lines from the chicks to the ocean, and would not waste energy hiking up an iceberg away from their nests.
Craig,
I am sorry if you feel attacked by my comments.I wasn’t trying to attack YOU,just your position on the photo that has several credible objections commented against it.
The shadow is wrong, The bluish color on the SHADED side of the ice, indicating reflection. Penguins being on top of a tall ice column.without apparent way for them to get there,note the steep walls of the ice.
Then you didn’t adequately address Jim’s comments about the Penguins habitats and the ice:
“I am calling your interpretation into question based on many things about the photograph. Every thing about Adelie biology suggests a fake photo. Adelies prefer to be on ice floes in the winter and while molting. They are on land to breed. But this photo is certainly not a typical breeding area. They use pebbles to build nests, and breeding colonies have dense concentrations of nests. Nothing like that is visible either.”
I have showed numerous photos both Cape Denison and Esperanza base,that make clear mushroom ice with a tiny base are not found on land at all. They are a common feature of icebergs IN THE WATER,not on land based ice. Ferdberple,and Jim posted examples of Mushroom shaped ice,which are also in the water,not on land,YOU stated that you couldn’t find another photo to
Craig, there are simply too many surrounding problems with that photo,to think it has been created for propaganda purposes. You have to look at the whole picture, to decide on its legitimacy.
Try not to take it personally.
I don’t care about the suppositions and assumptions Jim because yours are no more valid than mine.
On the basis of photo evidence this is not a fake. My apologies if you don’t like the answer. As for the rest of it i don’t care. You have ruined my day here at wuwt because you have lost the basic concept of sceptics having an open mind. Good day and please call your rabid dogs off.
Also be a man and make your accusations of professional impropriety public by complaining to Reuters. Because if you don’t I will and we shall see who’s reputation survives.
Craig, you need to chill.
Here is my latest comment showing my sudden change in my opinion:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/03/01/msn-augments-fake-news-with-photoshopped-penguin-photos/comment-page-1/#comment-2440696
Found the photo that can be greatly expanded to show additional details that were not readily apparent before.
Click on the small one,then click again.
It is amusing that the person who posted this was for propaganda purposes,but actually doesn’t help her at all.
Gosh Craig, you really need to calm down,since I am NOW admitting that I now think it is real,this after trying to prove the opposite, that it was a probable fake.
You have no idea what I do, since I post all over the internet,do moderation and run my own small climate forum. I have been wrong before and admitted it as I am now doing here.
LOL.
Craig, Sorry Ive ruined your day by challenging your conclusions. I am biased by a biological perspective that makes the photos look odd. It does not have the look of a typical penguin colony, but it could be a peripheral area.
You are basing your conclusion based on not detecting compression artifacts. As I said earlier, you argument has merit when looking at a more “original” photo. Although I do not know enough about photo forensics, I do believe there are ways to photoshop that are difficult to detect. So what I do object to here is arguing the photo must be real based on imaginary scenarios, although it may turn out to be true.
What is needed to settle this debate is a photo of the back side of the ice, Otherwise we will never know.
I have watched video of penguins be catapulted and stranded on top of tall icebergs by heavy sea surge. Friends who lead trips to Antarctica see that in the Weddell Sea but rarely elsewhere. Ice chunks do get tossed on to land but rarely in that position and rarely in summer. I am asking geologist friends to see if the rocks in the photo are typical for Cape Denison. I am also sending the photo to someone I know to also be an expert on photoshopping.
Whatever the authenticity, we both agree the article was alarmist in nature and the photograph was inappropriate for the region, the date and the causes of the 2015 temperature record in that region. Even if the photo is proven to be authentic, it was now used in a most misleading way, to impart an effect via a perspective that the photographer had purposefully intended, even if that effect was not intended for the MSN article. Hopefully the photographer can produce an image of the back side of the ice as requested.
Jim. I have made your complaint known to the original author of the image and to the highest person I could find available responsible for ethics standards and values and integrity at Reuters.
I used your name and linked to this article. I’m sure you have no objections to this. I will await their response to the accusations of dishonesty and i’ll report back here. You may hear from them yourself should they feel it’s necessary to contact you personally.
My observation is whether or not it is fabricated in whole or simply staged is not important. The photographer is using deception to feed the false narrative of climate doom.
You can’t accuse the photographer of anything if they merely take the image and submit it to their boss. only the people who license the image for use can be accused of that when they decide how it fits their narrative.
Honestly, we just take pictures, we don’t tell the stories that appear in your head when you view them.
Here is a link to a zoomed photo in question, now I have doubt that it was faked:
https://lifeupcall.com/2016/09/14/lifeupcall-for-mother-earth/two-adelie-penguins-stand-atop-a-block-of-melting-ice-on-a-rocky-shoreline-at-cape-denison-commonwealth-bay-in-east-antarctica/
Click on it to greatly expand it. It now appears that it is real?
You really are clueless about how this works aren’t you Tommy? You have linked to a licensed image of the original. Further compressed for web use. The best version of this image you will get without paying is the one posted at the bottom of the discussion, click it through to full size and don’t save it because when you save it you will compress it further. And ad nauseum.
Here you go, Craig,this make you feel better?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/03/01/msn-augments-fake-news-with-photoshopped-penguin-photos/comment-page-1/#comment-2440710
LOL If MSN makes Jeff Masters seems like the voice of reason you know its lost its mind! To me, he usually comes off like an actual lunatic.
The record goes back to 1953?
Sheesh, call me when you have 200 years worth of data to compare against.
The latitude is about 60S like Oslo in NH ~60N.
Already in the tube –
http://www.istockphoto.com/photo/the-last-emperor-gm147262644-3726704
So – its a stock photo, not faked… some photo editor just stuck it in to illustrate the article.
Back to the main point – what about that record high temp and record low summer ice extent in Antarctica?
This photo is as fake as a dollar with Big Al’s pic on it.
Andrew
Both points have been addressed over and over again. In this article as well as others.
Griff, if you photoshop an image onto a photo,it is now all fake, since it is a composite of two unrelated images.
The Esperanza record high was caused by a warming wind,which lasted for just a few hours,rapidly cooled back down to freezing within the same day.
After it was record highs sea ice levels for years, you were silent,until a single year drop you suddenly babble about it.
You are indeed a warmist bigot.
Griff, it appears that I was wrong about the photo:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/03/01/msn-augments-fake-news-with-photoshopped-penguin-photos/comment-page-1/#comment-2440701
Again, HIGH means nothing out of context. Are you like Leo DiCapprio and don’t understand a foehn wind? Maybe you don’t understand the difference between climate and weather—this is WEATHER.
The record high temp is weather related. While the drop in sea ice extent shows that nature is ever changing, and science has a lot more to learn before gaining a better understanding of “why”.
Already 2 year old weather news 3-24-2015 not 3-1-2017
I give up. What is an “MSN”, and why should I care what it claoms?
er, clowns, claims.
Media photoShopped News!
Actually, it’s the renamed Micrsoft Network:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSN
the photo could be genuine
==================
nope. the ice has been undercut by water, as can be clearly seen by the line 1/3 the way down. the bottom of the berg has been cut off and replaced by a rock. Here is a photo example of where to start. Replace the ocean with a photo shopped bit of rock. It is impossible for an iceberg that large to get back onto land, and there is no way it would stand on land given the center of mass is outside the foot.
Fred. The image is on the shoreline. It’s not beyond the realms of possibility that tidal water is the reason a block of ice, on the sure, during summer, could be eroded that way? Just devil’s advocate.
*Shore, apologies for some horrendous typos today. Still want that edit feature added.
Ferberple is correct,that it can’t stand like that on the rock.It would have toppled over. You need to consider center of gravity with most of the weight at the top and to one side,way to unstable to still stand like that.
Greg, already showed that on the right side shows bluing,indicating reflection of the water, but photo shows only rock all around it, a glaring contradiction.
Fred. In the absence of further evidence how is this?
not easily translatable to this?
and beyond my expertise in images that’s all i can offer. And it’s no less viable than anyone else assuming that the camera perspective shows a 390 degree mushroom because well, that would be absurd.
Again Craig, that backside slope is possible, but then again I see no evidence of it in the shadow. Such an extend gentle slope should have casted some hint of a shadow. But it doesnt.
And agreed 390 degrees would be absurd.
I don’t believe a journalist went to Antactica and took 1 photo. Show us the other photos, including at least one with the pov you’ve drawn.
Definitely pixelated!
One of our teachers from our homeschool co-op went to Antarctica over winter break (summer there) to look at the amazing ice structures in Antarctica. (They went to study them so they might guess what could be found on other planets and moons that have ice.) He went to McMurdo, I believe, but I’m not 100% sure. One of the things he talked about was how they don’t mess around in dealing with the weather. And even though it was summer, how they still had to layer up, and wear parkas and whatnot.
All that to say, that structure isn’t even all that weird looking compared to some of the ones he saw (that were in the interior).
Using that picture, griff, is misleading your audience. So there was a one day temperature record set. The image implies that Antarctica is getting warmer and that penguins are getting trapped on the top of the ice and can’t get back to the ocean to get their food. That’s why it is wrong to use that picture.
Weather Underground shows 15 degrees for the high on March 24 2015 and wind speed of 9 km/hr. They show higher temperature and wind in the graphs below the numbers , but it stops at 10 pm. It does not show the temperature going to 17.5. The weather station number is 88963.
Jim, Anthony, et al
Possibly already posted…
You can download a large version here:
http://www.getjoys.net/sharingSub/1605/tr1310762817797813373558.jpg
I take photos and proficient on Photoshop. Can’t really say it is a fake.
If no one has mentioned TinEye…here:
https://www.tineye.com
TinEye is an excellent resource to find other versions of an image..any image. In this case, copy the WUWT image URL and paste it into TinEye’s search window and then select “largest” in the “Sort by” window.
That photo has been used many times to support all sorts of climate articles. For example:
ANTARCTICA’S CO2 LEVELS ARE THE HIGHEST THEY’VE BEEN IN 4 MILLION YEARS
But that is not the point as others have said and the tenet of Jim’s article is sound. i.e. using an OLD photo to support and realy mislead whether or not it is ‘shopped. .
Jim, I like your articles. Please continue to publish here.
Clive
I too love Jim’s articles. Especially butterflies and his knowledge on species movement in response to climate. I have the utmost respect for him. I’m not often in the business of correcting my betters but in this instance I had to point out that the image is original and not photoshopped. I take no issue with anything else in the article.
What you are saying is you cannot find evidence of photoshopping. That is not the same thing as “It was not photoshopped”. While it may show no evidence of tampering, the picture in no way appears to represent realtiy which is why it’s being questioned. If there were other photos that showed the other side or other angles, the believability would go up. Without those, it’s just looks like a faked photo. (This is what happens when photography goes digital and there are hundreds of ways to alter photos now—a picture is no longer evidence of anything.)
I can’t find evidence of photoshopping because the multiple things that do appear in photoshopped images are not here. Not a one of them. So Occam’s razor and all that. There is nobody that is good enough to create a composite image that will show NONE of the often multiple artefacts of a photoshopped image.
Not even me.
I did attempt to add an image Sheri but I have no idea how to do it here is normal html does not work
http://s2.b3ta.com/host/creative/47549/1320035927/spgirlmedium.jpg
Andrew it’s as confident as i can be without taking the raw image from the camera and knowing the person myself.
I agree with you,Craig.
At this point in time with digital photography, I would require seeing the RAW image. In the ancient days of film, the negative was required. Even then, a photo could be faked. Photos are not “proof with certainty” as people ascribe to them.
“I can’t find evidence of photoshopping”
You’re saying the photo is real?
I am saying it is real with 99% confidence. Because if it is faked then it is the best I have ever seen. The full scale resolution image posted above makes it almost more of a certainty. It’s just the eye of the photographer who took good advantage of the situation.
Flying penguins or photoshopped penguins?
I guess we will never know for sure.
The image I posted above is one of mine. It is as composited as they come. it has also been through the compression engines of many internet browsers, including yours before arriving here. Do your forensics on that. You know it’s fake, i’m telling you it’s fake but please, subject it to your ‘forensics’.
“I am saying it is real with 99% confidence.”
Is that the same as 97% of climate scientists saying something?
Andrew
I suppose since we know the name of the photographer, that maybe the onus is on jim Steele to PROVE his potentially actionable claim against the photographer.
Only in a day of fake news would a NON EXPERT in photoshop get away with claiming that a photo was a fraud, with ZERO evidence. Zip. zero. There isnt a shred of evidence this photo was photoshopped.
And ONLY on a site of fake skeptics, would people demand the impossible before they rejected unsupported claims like Steeles.
Basically Jim Asserts its a fraud, and the ONLy way to disprove that is to actually Have Been On the scene when the photo was taken and take the raw data from the camera sensor AND provide a traceable
and secure chain of custody of that raw data..
Once Steele claims fraud he effectively shifts the burden of proof to strangers and No evidence we could present would satisfy some people here.. That is the nature of conspiratorial thinking.
Let me show you how it works.
I have good reason to believe that Jim Steele has a ghost writer and that he didnt write this post.
Prove he wrote it.
See how burden shifting works?
Mosher is here. Now we know the photo’s fake.
Andrew
I do not find it at all comfortable to be agreeing with Steve Mosher. We have clashed on various issues in the past. Yet here is is defending the position I have taken so in this instance I can only say thank you.
Given the darkness of the shadow, the under side of the ice is unreasonably bright.
I have read Dino Brugioni’s book, Photo Fakery, and what looks suspicious is that the shadow fall, I.e. the lighting ,on the rocks looks different from the ice chunk and penguins.
Is there a fake reporting and photoshopping convention for global warming news outlets? Perhaps they could give lifetime achievement awards to Soviet photoshop experts.
Sorry that image was way to large to post…here is the URL with separations
http://www.getjoys.net/sharingSub/ [remove space] 1605/tr1310762817797813373558 DOT jpg
Whether or not the photo is Photoshopped to fabricate a photo in whole, or the penguins were placed on top of the ice as props, or the angle the photograph was take was arranged to hide the access point for the penguins is irrelevant. The picture was shot to deceive people into thinking that penguins are stuck high and dry on ice due to “climate change”. It is a sales photo designed to sell cliamte hype. It is not a photo designed to honestly show how the penguins got where they are.
Perhaps it is simply an ice island that has capsized due to too many penguins.
“Climbing such a structure would be a difficult technical climb for an experienced mountaineer. ”
Oh please, every school child knows that the Penguins were trapped on that outcropping of ice after the rest of the ice field melted in the intense heat. ‘scientists’ are still trying to figure out how this particular outcropping was able to resist the intense heat where the rest of the ice cover succumbed .
/sarc off
I can imagine an unscrupulous photographer might easily pick up two penguins and throw them up there to get a good photo. Photoshop isn’t the only way to fake things.
I have asked a motorcyclist at a race track to get back on the floor next to the disintegrated mess of his motorcycle after a 200mph crash in order to get a picture that better suits the narrative. And he did. It’s an extreme example but it’s how the job works.
“Andrew it’s as confident as i can be without taking the raw image from the camera and knowing the person myself.”
I do apologize, Craig, but I don’t think this means anything.
Andrew
fuck off
My apologies to Anthony and the moderators. I have been pushed too far today for trying to be helpful. Although it is in no way an excuse it is all the mitigation I have.
What’s scary about this sort of staged, photo-manipulations is how many people – who you’d think would know better – actually buy it. A while back, a friend sent me a picture of giant squid washed up on a beach, blown up to appear larger than a battleship, under a headline about the effects of nuclear waste (college-educated friend by the way, although not in any science-related field), with the comment, ‘I sure wouldn’t eat any of THAT calamari’.
I pointed out that ‘giant’ squid really don’t get much over five, six hundred pounds, and then supplied the original image of the squid used in the picture – which might have had a six-foot mantel, and maybe another fifteen feet of tentacles.
Now that was all in fun, and mostly harmless (unless you count the fact that it was yet another scare-story about nuclear radiation), but he was ready to buy it.
Point being, its hard to filter through this stuff, if you don’t already know what you’re seeing.
The photo is from 2010 http://www.christiantoday.com/article/scientists.discover.monster.virus.frozen.in.siberia.for.30000.years.as.arctic.ice.melts/64785.htm
Not saying if real or not (probably doctored)
The photo could suggest the ice is in an area of significant tide changes when reviewing the water marks and remnants on both ice and land or it could be modified for viewing pleasure also. Those Penguins did not jump up there and the ground around the ice shows no signs of a raised area or supplimental ice out of the sightlines.
https://www.tide-forecast.com/locations/Esperanza-Station-Antarctica/forecasts/latest/six_day
My money would be on a 2 picture solution. One with water around the ice with penguins combined with one with no water and no penguins. Just sayin…..
My money is on a real but staged photo. I think the penguins probably got tossed up there to add interest to what would otherwise be a boring picture of shoreline ice.
In the Weddell Sea with tall surges penguins do catapult to the top of tall icebergs. This photo is different.
Any other photos of “mushroom” ice on the shore of a seacoast, with or without penguins, out there?
If I saw one, I’d take a picture.
Just asking.
I don’t live near either pole but it sure strikes me as unusual enough that there should have been lots of pictures taken. Maybe they’re to common to attract a shutterbug.
This has been a busy post and my comment may have been after everyone has moved on, but no one has put up a similar photo, with or without penguins or polar bears.
That could mean that this was a one-in-a-million shot or ……. clever, very clever.
PS Has the lady who took the photo responded to anyone?
Craig,
I appreciate your reasonable input ….
WRT to your posted ‘photo’ you say:
“The image I posted above is one of mine. It is as composited as they come. it has also been through the compression engines of many internet browsers, including yours before arriving here. Do your forensics on that. You know it’s fake, i’m telling you it’s fake but please, subject it to your ‘forensics’.
I sense that you are saying that it would be difficult to deem it as a fake through. Is it a good enuf compilation that it can’t be stated to be a fake, with certainty?
(and my first criticism of the picture would be that the air is ionizing over the thumb to get to the hand rather than just ionizing from the thumb down. But if it is a really a witch then she could short out at any point on her body at will; magic could allow that the path of least resistance wouldn’t really mean anything)
DonM. I have no idea how long it will take for you to get this message because I am in content moderation for losing my cool earlier. To be honest this is an old image with no purpose. it was just something I found quickly that I knew had upwards of 100 layers to the final output. The point was to allow Jim and his forensics to dissect that and see just how the standard they are holding up the article photo to is flawed.
I most certainly did not expect an off the cuff image done for fun in 2009 to be held up to any physical integrity checks. If I take up this nonsense again in future I shall be more mindful 🙂
Folks, please, put it to bed. As improbable as this scene seems and looks to be (it does), as inappropriate as it is for a ‘global warming’ story use (it is), as many good arguments as can be raised to prove fakery (they’re good, they really are), this is a real photo. I’m a photographer. Thirty year photojournalist actually. I’ve seen a lot of photos. Taken a few too. I’ve downloaded the original photo. ‘Depth of field’ comes into play. Upon enlargement, the foreground rocks at the bottom are slightly out of focus, annnnnnd (drum roll here) so is the base and rim of the ice. The lens focus is on the penguins, not enough depth of field to render the entire image in focus. There on the top rim of the ice are what look like feces and yellow stains (urine?) You can’t fake this shyte. It is a simple enough matter to contact the journalist directly and get the tale from the horse’s mouth.
If I may add, the photo shows a familiar ‘ghosting’ around the edges of objects, penguins included, that comes hand-in-hand with oversharpening. We all do that, to give an image some digital visual snap.
And one more. The lady who took this photo is a writer in the main (I looked it up), who also takes photos for some of her stories. Reuters will not have felt like paying a photographer for this trip. That’s how that happens. So we call them ‘two-way’ journalists. n general, with two-way, writing is the first discipline and photography is of the point-and-shoot variety, ‘good enough’ auto-everything. A real (good) photographer would have ensured the entire scene was in focus by stopping down in advance, as there is little to be added by having the foreground out and nothing but clarity to be added otherwise.
That was the way it worked for me Heysues but in the opposite. I was a motorsport photographer who had the good fortune to have an in with Ducati. I did some work for them and ultimately ended up doing PR for a race team. But I always took the photos. I think most of us do, whichever side of the fence we start on. There are few ‘union’ rules amongst photogs. We just fight to get there first.
So, you are saying that if you did stationary high res timelapsed photos , through an entire 10’~ tide cycle, of the ice you could not easily merge photos to show penguins who were on ice at high tide, at low tide, without water. I believe if we could obtain the source imagery, you would find the one shown above, was altered.
I find it interesting that the most vocal here are two photographers who fully admit to altering photos with photoshop but claim this photo is not photoshopped. Reality says one may or may not be able to determine if a photo has been altered, but photographers who alter photos on a regular basis insist they can tell. Confirmation bias? Protecting the brotherhood? (A quick Google tour reveals many, many examples of altered photos—two photos combined, elements added, etc. So Google would say there are fakes out there. Should I ignore that? Should I ignore the many articles that say proving a faked photo is difficult if not impossible without the original inputs?)
Since the dawn of photography, photos have been faked. I don’t know if this one is or not, though if it isn’t, both the photographer and the media took a very questionable photo and used it to show “reality”, which it doesn’t. It shows a very unusual event that is not related in any way to the story at hand. So blame the editor if you’re a photographer and the photographer if you’re an editor. The blame game.
Photography has become art, rather than science. Photoshop allowed home photographers to use a computer and alter photos in ways only experienced photographers could in the past. As technology advances, photos will become useless as “proof” of anything. They are art, pure and simple. I am told the iPhone has some incredible photo altering capabilities. We gave up the “photographic proof” a long, long time ago.
(As for the over-sharpening, color-altering, etc, this seems to be encouraging people to distrust photos. Consider if you will a 65 year old woman with no wrinkles, perfect body shape and bright red hair. Many would assume plastic surgery, liposuction, and hair dye—because the majority of the 65 year olds do have wrinkles, bulges and graying hair. Perfection generally is a lie and altering a photo to make it “better” has the same effect. Besides, many of us have created awesome photos at home on our computers that were pure fiction. We know of the hair dye, liposuction and plastic surgery game and have played it.)
‘The most vocal’? I’ve made exactly five comments here, two in reply to myself. That’s vocal? Well then. Photojournalists operate under strict controls of manipulation. There are written rules for compliance. Yes, we correct color. But what does that mean? Artificial light renders itself unreal to the human eye – tungsten bulbs turn a scene orange for example – and we attempt to correct that so that the photo looks like the scene looked to the naked eye. Yes, we sharpen images, especially for soft newspaper reproduction. Yes, we lighten or darken certain areas of a photo, again to bring the latitude of the image into line with what the naked eye saw. Any other ‘fakery’, such as placing penguins into scenes where there were no penguins, is an immediate firing offense, with cause. And yes, that has happened too, not too often, and rather famously. As you point out, Sheri, digital photo tools give anyone the power to create, but in journalism circles, one MUST never use or abuse that power. In general, you can take the photos produced by employed photojournalists and reporters at face value. Yes, you can. Because it is that integrity that we sell to the public. If a journalist stands accused of the fakery alleged here in this thread, in this post, that is a very serious accusation that, if proven true, would lead to that journalist’s termination.
I have a great deal of difficulty believing integrity is what is being sold to the public by photojournalists. Maybe in the past, but the competition and the political nature of photographs leads me to believe that is no longer true. I am not picking on photographers alone—there’s a tremendous amount of pressure to produce dramatic news and studies of all kinds. It’s the mentality of people that looks for more and more sensationalism and the need to deliver that flashy story.
Adjustments to “reality” are acceptable, but I have a problem calling some enhancements “adjustments to reality”. Some are meant to give the picture more flash—to catch someone’s eye. Increasing contrast or sharpening, brightness, etc, may be closer to reality but it also can be an enhancement that goes beyond reality. You are out there to sell—marketing is vital. The temptation is there—conscious or not.
If you get caught, there are serious consequences, but there are serious consequences for most transgressions. Yet, people transgress all the time. Not a convincing argument.
(I guess I consider five very long comments as being very vocal. Yes, I am very vocal too and will not deny it. Photography is something I am very familiar with and understand well. Same for yourself. Admittedly, most readers seem to side with “fake” and they have no need to repeat comments as others are commenting in the same direction.)
False captioning enters into the classification as “fake”, too. As the picture was of somewhere else, at a different date.. . .
Tom. You say false captioning is also ‘fake’ This may well be the case. However the caption under the image in the article reads:
“© REUTERS/Pauline Askin/File Photo FILE PHOTO: File photo shows two Adelie penguins standing atop a block of melting ice on a rocky shoreline at Cape Denison, Commonwealth Bay, in East Antarctica”
Which is exactly what is in the picture. The fact that it’s unrelated to the story is another debate. But the caption is true.
Sheri It is impossible for a photographer who shoots in RAW format not to use Photoshop or some equivalent because RAW is in an of itself not an image format. The RAW data is used in conjunction with the program to create and image with levels relating to contrast, saturation, brightness etcetera. It is purposefully taking away the control of the camera to produce an image as it would with a jpeg for instance and giving it back to the photographer. It’s sometimes likened to having a digital negative and is the closest we can get to going back to the darkroom as we would with film.
As for using photoshop to manipulate images it is often a required skill and many people have a valid reason for requiring images made in that fashion. It’s a skill I teach alongside digital art skills in a weekly class for adults with learning difficulties. They greatly enjoy what we do. There is a big difference in creating a scene that a client requires than creating a false image intended to deceive a client. A vast difference. And your passive aggressive accusations are noted. Nobody has said there is not photo manipulation going on, it is often required. But for myself I merely stated that with as much confidence as I can have that this image has not been manipulated. It’s not even had a great deal of post-processing of any kind as far as I can see. I thought I was doing the author a favour by pointing out his error. I’ll know better in future.
@Craig, I’ve taken some time to read quite a few of the above comments, belatedly. Bangarang, fella, you’ve completed an astounding stint in public service schooling some people who clearly prefer hanging onto prejudices and/or stubborn suspicions over learning new and interesting things. Well done – and take heart. Though there is little evidence of your lessons having ‘sunk in’, you’ve found one supporter here. Yes, I’m clapping. Let us know if Reuters returns to you. The photo at the center of this inquiry is, actually, one lousy photo; meaning, it is no prize winner. If one were going to fake something, one should fake it spectacularly, wouldn’t you agree? 😉
Obviously…. I had some trouble posting earlier as a ‘reply’. So I then added a sentence and tried to comment in the general feed (see further along the feed). Neither worked, so I gave up. Now, much later, they both have appeared.
Again, the photo may be “real”- penguins really were on top of a chunk of grounded ice. Penguins are curious critters. It is clearly unusual, and I have been served well by meditating on the proverb that “truth is stranger than fiction.” But does the photo tell a story of climate doom, as the deceptive release of a two year old story with a seven year old photo seeks to do?
The photographer may have simply something cool and taken a snap shot showing the coolness of two penguins stuck on a chunk of ice. The part of the chunk that stabilizes it so it can stand like that could easily fit in the unseen depth of the photo.
And she may have shot more photos of the scene that would tell the story more clearly but did not fit the editorial need of the climate doom article.
In a way this thread has been a demonstration as to how easily “fake news” can grow in both the content producer intent and failings, as well as an audience already highly sensitized to look for “fakeness”. I for one take back any implications I may have given that accuses the photographer photo shopped in whole a non-existent scene when the photo was taken in 2010. Steve Mosher makes a good point, in his rather direct way. There is much we are justified in being skeptical of. But the order of engagement that serves skepticism best is to observe, hypothesize, test. Not Ready! Shoot! Aim!. The climate obsessed consensus does that plenty.
@Craig, I’ve taken some time to read quite a few of the above comments, belatedly. Bangarang, fella, you’ve completed an astounding stint in public service schooling some people who clearly prefer hanging onto prejudices and/or stubborn suspicions over learning new and interesting things. Well done – and take heart. Though there is little evidence of your lessons having ‘sunk in’, you’ve found one supporter here. Yes, I’m clapping. Let us know if Reuters returns to you. The photo at the center of this inquiry is, actually, one lousy photo; meaning, it is no prize winner. It looks like what it is: a grab shot by someone drifting by in a boat. If one were going to fake something, one should fake it spectacularly, wouldn’t you agree? 😉
Yesterday have asked Pauline Askin for help. I asked if she had a photo of the back side of the ice chunk. That would be the definitive proof of the photos realism. Still no reply
Jim Steele,
Any response yet?
Andrew
I don’t care if it was photoshopped or not. If bias rules this news story, a search for an appropriate picture that matches the narrative can usually be found. And it matters little if there is continuity in time and space to the written event. You will find a picture of whatever your bias says is out there and if close enough, it is good enough for today’s media. This bleed and lead story is what the media is all about these days. That doesnt bother me as much as the fact that premadonna climate researchers are prone to these very same bait and switch presentations.
Wonder where at Base Esperanza that reading was taken?
For five months of the year, its average temperature is above freezing. Almost for six months. The record high for every month is 52.5 F or higher. The record highs not only for March, but April, May and October are in the 60s F.
It has four fossil-fuel-powered generators producing electricidad.
Its climate is milder than many if not most cities at higher than 63 degrees. Fairbanks, AK, at 64 N, also enjoys five months with mean daily T above freezing, for instance. Ditto Dawson, Yukon, but colder.
Being at sea level on a coast, Nome might be a better comparison:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nome,_Alaska#Geography_and_climate
Also ave. T above freezing for five months.
The northernmost part of Antarctica is closer to the equator than is the southernmost part of Iceland.
As long as “Fiction Photos” are considered journalism…
http://double-eband.com/Squanch-penguin.jpg
Isn’t Bigfoot in more danger of extinction than Penguins?