Readers may recall that we caught NOAA NCDC red handed putting in a photoshopped flooded house a couple of years back for an official government report.
Image above taken directly from the CCSP report. Read more here
Then there’s the famous polar bear on the ice floe image ursus bogus.
And let’s not forget Al Gore’s hurricanes for his book cover:
So when Tom Nelson asked today “Who’s got time to investigate BlackSmokeGate?” I decided to take on the task. Here’s the photo in question:
Tom was rightfully concerned that white steam rather than smoke comes out of these plants, as shown in this photo.
This station has been identified in the comment section of the article using it as Eggborough power station. Check out the white cloud coming from the power station in this Wikipedia photo.
I decided to run a simple but well known tool to detect if Photoshop had been used. Bingo!
Output from http://www.pskiller.com/
Basically all that was done was to highlight a part of the steam with the point to point select tool, feather it and adjust the contrast to make it look darker.
[UPDATE: I found a different version of the image on the web at Sky News here and ran it through PSKiller’s detector. It’s even more damning:
PS Quantization tables are a dead giveaway. ]
I’ll bet somebody could find this image original in some stock photo library. It is from John Giles PA Wire. It gets a lot of play according to Nelson. For example here it is used in conjunction with Climategate2:
Nelson asks:
If you have time to compile a list of the mainstream media uses of this photo, please let me know. If you’ve taken some action to protest this propaganda (maybe a letter to an editor?) please also let me know.
By the way, has this photo been altered in any way? [YES – Anthony]
Update: A TinEye search for the top image yields 92 results.
A TinEye search for the bottom image yields 94 results.
To illustrate how easy this is to make black smoke from steam, I located an image of a smoke stack online of the Zimmer Power Plant Smoke Stack in Moscow, Ohio, here
Then I applied the simple technique I described.
- highlight a part of the steam with the point to point select tool
- feather it
- adjust the brightness and contrast to make it look darker.
Granted it was a rush job and I didn’t go all the way to the right in the plume, but this took all of 45 seconds:
See how easy that is to make black smoke where there was only steam before?
UPDATE2: Here’s another example of Photoshop at work. The greens must really hate this power station in Britain. “Black” smoke from cooling towers? Really? Everyone knows they produce water vapor, and even the sun angle doesn’t look right in this one from the Guardian.
It doesn’t survive the test either:
And yet if you do an image search for this power station, you’ll find nothing like this image anywhere else except on the Guardian Website.
UPDATE: Autonomous Mind looks into the photo above, conversing with the photographer is interesting more for what he doesn’t say. Well worth a read here:
Has the Guardian published fauxtography?
– Anthony
I took your Zimmer Power Plant “white smoke” and made it parrot-barf-orange. I have an old version of Paint Shop Pro. It is very easy to make the plume any color desired. If I posted this one, the Company would likely sue me!
Warren in Minnesota says: “I disagree with the identification of the station. The Wikipedia photo of the Eggborough station shows one flue at the top of the chimney. The photo associated with BlackSmokeGate has two flues. This difference is my disagreement.”
Wankerpedia? That says it all. Actually, there are four flues, not all of which seem to be in operation. There appears to be a slight darkening of the flue, below where the black paint ends, which may indicate occasional soot discharges, perhaps from blowing off heat exchangers or boiler tubes of some sort.) After considerable study, I can’t rule out soot coming from one flue.
After playing around with Anthony’s picture, it seems that simple adjustment of contrast can make an ordinary water vapor plume, with slight darkening due to backlighting, look very dark, indeed.
What is ironic is that without scrubbers installed the “smoke” coming from a coal plant in the USA is nearly impossible to see. There is an unscrubbed coal plant south of Lansing, Michigan that can be seen from Interstate 69. You can tell when it is operating based on the status of steam coming from its forced draft cooling towers, and when it is operating you need to look real hard to see any evidence of anything coming from its boiler firebox stack. Even then the visible evidence is primarily because of temperature differences between the exhaust plume and the ambient air. These doctored pictures wouldn’t even be possible if the plant didn’t have scrubbers to clean up SOx emissions.
To Alcheson:
It would work better to print the manipulated image and then scan the print. However you can strip all EXIF data from a file by use of various utilities. Photoshop itself will do it if you ‘save for web’. And the EXIF data does not show a list of everything that was done to an image in PS.
I found the blue channel histogram in this image to be quite suspicious, it is very spiky. Hard to describe but its a very discontinuous histogram with sharp vertical discontinuities. Image manipulation often damages the histogram especially if the original image was a jpeg file instead of a raw image.And images are often manipulated in one color channel.
But at this tiny size you really cannot say much of anything since jpeg compression and size reduction can introduce all sorts of artifacts themselves.
Very interesting Anthony. Nothing surprises me anymore with regard to the propaganda.
Keep up the good work.
To my comment at November 25, 2011 at 1:53 pm I should also add that my sunset photos I considered “Art” because they were created and did not in any way resemble the actual sky and clouds I was photographing.
So while these photos may not be “photoshopped” they still do not correctly reflect reality and therefore are a deception.
@gail combs. You made me smile. We use digital cameras and photoshop exclusively these days. Most of us haven’t seen a roll of film in the last 15 years. Photoshop is filters and contrast exposure and saturation and you-name-it all wrapped up into one wonderful program that is eternally subject to infinite creativity and, of course, abuse for those like Al Gore who are so inclined. There are variables, perhaps too many, to reproducing this stack photo. (Air temp will effect condensation, whether the factory is operating at peak or not, height of the sun, clarity of the sky, etc). It is possible and most certainly do-able to have exaggerated the dark areas of this photo. I can do it in the blink of an eye, and make it look FAR worse. Would I do it? No. Did this photographer do it? You’d have to ask him.
Agesilaus
I was referring to the waste of heat from the Eggborough cooling towers not from the chimney. Ever since I was a child people have been remarking on this waste of heat to the atmosphere from the power stations.
But surely this is just plain silly.
Everyone with half a brain knows heat exchangers do not emit “smoke” – EVER.
Everyone with half a brain who cares to look at the evidence knows that during the 60′ and 70’s all power stations were fitted with filters and electrostatic scrubbers to remove particulates from the emissions. This was done because of public pressure forcing the changes due to pollution from smokestack fallout in close neighbourhoods – nobody wanted the power stations closed just cleaned up.
Everyone with half a brain knows modern power stations have such pollution control equipment – probably even better.
I laugh every time I see the water vapour from a heat exchanger cited as “horrible” pollution in a news broadcast. In Australia that invariably occurs on the ABC – our equivalent of the BBC – a biased climate crusading organisation.
On a side theme it is a shame to see Sir David Attenborough hitching his “wagon” to the AGW camp – it will tarnish his otherwise credible reputation when CAGW is shown to be wrong.
After all, technically the world is in an ice age even now as there are large areas of the Earth permanently frozen yet it seems there isn’t enough for the alarmists – give me a bit of warmth any day.
Ron says:
November 25, 2011 at 2:06 pm
@gail combs. You made me smile. We use digital cameras and photoshop exclusively these days….
__________________
I still love my old 1974 Nikon 35mm and we have the old 4X5 speedgraphic (1950’s) from my father-in-law’s newspaper.
We have a digital too and I hate it after 35 years with my Nikon. The only advantage I can see is the “instant photo” and being able to photoshop more easily. But then I like to drive a horse pair and carriage too.
The playing with the contrast/underexposing still stand though.
At this news site, the photo was used as evidence for this caption. “Eggborough Power Station, a coal fired plant near Selby. The UK Government was this week accused of failing to take responsibility for tackling air pollution which is causing the early deaths of tens of thousands of people a year. (John Giles/PA Wire)” Oh, and the title of the picture? “Polution.”
http://www.thejournal.ie/the-week-in-photos-56-281160-Nov2011/#slide-slideshow9
I am sure the news site would deny any manipulation of public opinion, they are just reporting that someone has made an accusation of the killing tens of thousands of people each year and as a responsible media site, they are merely illustrating what that polution might look like, if it were to actually exist.
This comment follows the claim that the photo was not doctored via Photoshop.
“This photo was taken for greatest visual impact, for better or for worse. The “problem” with it is that most innocent viewers will assume it is filth they are seeing instead of a cloud.”
If the photographer lacked such integrity to take this “for the greatest visual impact” why would anyone buy the claim that it is not photoshopped?
In either event the photographer is a fraudster
Gail. ‘The playing with the contrast/underexposing still stand though.’ Of course, and there is some of that in most photos as a raw image cannot, except under ideal conditions, convey precisely what was seen in a visually dramatic fashion. (To wit, you found that underexposing your sunset produced more colorful results, more like what you saw.) The idea in NEWS photography (as opposed to those trafficking in illustrative photography, a hat that we news photographers also wear) is to use the tools (camera, photoshop) to relate what you see in an honest manner. I am no Pollyanna, however I do absolutely believe the profession has an overwhelming bias through peer enforcement and employer mandate towards integrity in that regard, unlike the climate science profession. Again, I think the photographer himself should weigh in, and perhaps he will eventually. Anthony’s site is widely read.
So sorry, the picture I linked to was a slightly different picture than the one being discussed. It was taken by the same photographer for the same sales point, but was taken either just before or just after the one being discussed. Again, I am sorry for the mistake.
BTW, I am no photo expert but there is a two pixel whiteish area in the upper right hand of the plume that doesn’t make sense.
Wil says:
November 25, 2011 at 1:27 pm
“Lol – I live in Fort McMurray – the most photo-shopped stacks on the planet. In by far the most photo-shopped tailings ponds, landscape – or moonscape if using the photo-shopped version – since this planet was formed 4+ billion years ago. You guys are ALL small time amateurs – we destroy entire planets. ”
I can tell you that the destruction hasn’t reached me yet in Braunschweig, Germany, so, no, you didn’t destroy the entire planet yet. Actually it’s pretty nice around here. Maybe you should solve your local problems?
Rosco – when you burn coal and oil (and other fuels) there is no escaping the need to dispose of combustion products. For power generation at the scale of terra watts, the volume of flue gas is immense.
Scrubbers do not remove CO2. I don’t think this gas is a pollutant although it does produce a weak acid when mixed with water. Like it or not, there are people who consider it to be a pollutant, and in the market for ideas, perception counts.
Scrubbers remove the great majority of dust and sour oxides in percentage terms, although total volume is still considerable. It is not reasonable to imply that there are no emissions. And a power station boiler is a heat exchanger.
Wil says:
November 25, 2011 at 1:27 pm
“Lol – I live in Fort McMurray – the most photo-shopped stacks on the planet. In by far the most photo-shopped tailings ponds, landscape – or moonscape if using the photo-shopped version – since this planet was formed 4+ billion years ago. You guys are ALL small time amateurs – we destroy entire planets. ”
Ah, that natural Oil spill cleaning operation. I have good news for you. You’re surrounded by millions of square miles of pristine forest. So if that small operation bothers you just move 10 miles in any direction.
And I thought it was something big.
The use of photos steam on cold days is a standard trick. With or without photoshopping it is designed to mislead.
But maybe AGW photoshoppers ought to invent some new terminology. They can call pixels proxies and then mix them up in the fine Hockey Schtick tradition. And then ‘adjust’ them to account for Chinese aerosols and all that.
A few dead polar bears lying beneath some of these stacks would have been nice.
Gail Combs says: November 25, 2011 at 1:53 pm
I think I agree with the Prof. Photographer. The Photo was not “Photoshopped” It was created using filters and high contrast type film.
I would also guess a polarizing filter would darken the steam’s diffuse light. I still have my old Pentax Spotmatic 35mm I got new in ’71. Things were done in the darkroom, if you did your own film, that are/were the equivalent of Photoshop in digital photography. The chemical process produced a lot more unique, unexpected and unreproducible results in my experience.
Because of a Kalifornia moonbat law that required the neutering of all Pit-bulls, and a panicking landlord, I was forced to neuter my dog. Afterwards, I wanted to make a statement. I set about trying to take a photo of him looking all miserable and dejected in his Elizabethan Collar, and caption it, “This is what the Lefties want to do to you!”. Being a normal happy and care-free Pit-bull, he did not cooperate (he though the stupid collar was a toy!). I ended up taking some 30 photos before I got what I wanted.
Was the photo genuine? Yes it was.
Was it propaganda? Most certainly. Though the photo was real, it misrepresented my dogs response to his situation.
To thous commenting that Photoshopping means nothing, The fact remains that the image is being used to create a false impression. Using the truth to lie is still a lie.
Anthony,
I predict, with certainty, another coffee table art publication looming……. just in time for Christmas.
“…..It was this drive, like a ship powering through Antarctic waters, pushing aside floes, which left in its wake relationships, family life and, most damaging from the point of view of posterity, a shadow over his photographs through his manipulation of images. It wasn’t called manipulation back then; it was called composite photography. One famous Hurley image of Shackleton leaving on his rescue mission for South Georgia in 1916 after their ship had been broken up by ice has a sky background of sun rays radiating from behind a cloud, much like a religious fresco from the Middle Ages. Hurley added it to the scene for dramatic effect.
The commercial success of Antarctica adventures depended heavily on the money that could be recouped afterwards from exhibitions and films. Hurley threw himself into the tasks, often accompanying the film to theatres and providing the narration. He even made a second trip to South Georgia for the Shackleton film to capture wildlife he missed on the first.”……
http://www.theage.com.au/news/Reviews/Frank-Hurley/2004/12/15/1102787136584.html
bold added 🙂
Just a minor point: steam is invisible. I know this because I just boiled an egg for my wife’s breakfast. The white stuff that got sucked up by the exhaust fan was not steam – it was condensed steam, i.e. cloud, fog, mist.
Readers might be amused by a municipal law in Tasmania. The smoke from a wood fire must not exceed 15 metres, or is it 10 metres, who cares it is unenforceable … or is it? On cold, humid mornings the plumes from wood heaters are long and white. The local council hasn’t prosecuted anyone yet. How would they meausre a plume from a flue, and how would they prove that it was smoke not water? I suppose they could change the colour of the plume, by engineering a photo, to convince a magistrate that a flue was emitting planet-killing pollution.
Anthony, have you noticed, if you put both images
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/carbon-dioxide_1395149c.jpg?w=400&h=250
and
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/pskiller_output.jpg?w=514&h=412
into Google image search, Google automatically comes up with a search proposal co2 for those images!
The words “carbon-dioxide” in the first image might trigger this, but what about the 2nd image?
Google seems to be very biased!
I don’t understand why they should want to turn steam clouds black. Why not pink? Or even worse, Green.
There are a number of pictures taken by John Giles at the same time as this one viewable (albeit with an appropriate watermark across them) at
http://public.images.pressassociation.com/
Search for the word eggborough