Dave Burton, via his Facebook page writes:
The Washington Post’s caption says “…emissions spew from the smokestacks at… coal-fired power plant…”
Do you want to know what propaganda looks like?
Take glance at this article from the Washington Post. The photo at the top is purest propaganda, blatantly and deliberately deceiving readers and smearing a private company:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/epa-may-delay-climate-rules-for-new-power-plants/2013/03/15/28e9d37e-8cda-11e2-b63f-f53fb9f2fcb4_story.html
Here’s the letter I wrote to the Washington Post’s “Reader Representative” (now that they’ve terminated their longstanding Ombudsman position):
http://www.burtonsys.com/climate/Ltr_to_Washington_Post-propaganda_not_emissions_spewing.htm
| From: David Burton |
Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 1:21 PM |
|
To: “Doug Feaver, Washington Post Reader Representative” <readers@washpost.com>
|
|
Dear Mr. Feaver,
Now that there’s no Ombudsman at the Washington Post, do the reporters and editors think truth doesn’t matter?
Here’s a March 15 story by the Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin:
This is the lead photo, of Westar Energy’s Jeffrey Energy Center “spewing emissions” from coal:
Charlie Riedel/AP – Silhouetted against the sky at dusk, emissions spew from the smokestacks at Westar Energy’s Jeffrey Energy Center coal-fired power plant near St. Mary’s, Kan.
And what do you suppose those black, deadly-looking plumes of “emissions” really are?
Condensing steam, that’s what. Just plain water.
Plumes of condensing water vapor normally look white and benign, but by artfully choosing a vantage point to the east of the plant, and a time just after sunset, AP photographer Charlie Riedel managed to make the pretty white plumes look black and threatening.
That power plant has state-of-the-art “scrubbers,” which which cost over $400 million, and which remove 95% of the SO2 and nearly all of the particulate matter. Almost nothing visible is left except steam. Here’s what those same stacks really look like, under normal lighting conditions:
You’ve got to grudgingly admire the AP / Washington Post’s mastery of the propaganda craft.
I sent an email similar to the above to Westar Energy, and got back the following reply:
———- Begin forwarded message ———-
Date: Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 10:35 AM
Subject: Re: Washington Post / AP propaganda photo – “emissions spew” from power plant
Hello, and thanks for forwarding this information.
We have contacted AP numerous times regarding this photo. We agree that it is a skilled photographer using lighting to create a dramatic image that reinforces the story.
Here’s the latest that Gina Penzig, Director, Corporate Communications, sent:
I appreciate that Charlie is a skilled photographer who used backlighting to capture a dramatic image of the plant that reinforces the emissions story and the perception that power plants are dirty. I fully acknowledge that plants are a source of emissions and the EPA work to reduce emissions has been important. We’re in the midst of spending billions of dollars to change the make up of that plume from our coal plants to almost completely steam. In fact at JEC, we’re very close. (I’d love to set up a tour and talk about what we’ve done. We’re pretty proud of it.)
I’d like to point out that the photo is nearly four years old. I’m not asking that it be replaced with a photo that we provide. I’d challenge the photo editors to look up Jeffrey Energy Center on Google images. You will see a variety of photos from a variety of sources that show a more accurate representation of the plant and what it emits. A photographer can easily capture a plant photo from off of our property, but I’d gladly set up an escort for a photographer who would like to go onto the plant site.
Thank you again for sharing the information with us!
Communications Representative
———- End forwarded message ———-
What shameful, shameful misbehavior by the Washington Post!
Please print an apology, and appropriately discipline the responsible parties, and tell me what action you’re taking.
Dave
|
|
EPA likely to delay climate rules for new power plants
www.washingtonpost.com
Move could bolster agency’s legal case, but worries environmentalists.
Like this:
Like Loading...
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
The “smoke” in the foreground of the Washington Post photo appears to be from some sort of cooling system that cools the water before returning it to a river.
This website has the Jeffrey Energy Center featured along with photos taken four years ago:
http://www.kansasriver.org/river-atlas/electrical-power-generation
It has a slideshow of 15 photos taken in February 2009. This is the URL for the slideshow:
https://picasaweb.google.com/104513640129119475252/JeffreyEnergyCenter?feat=flashslideshow#5454436600068146210
See the cooling system? And, of course, in these photos the steam appears to be steam from both the cooling system and the smokestacks.
It is absolutely outrageous that a respected major newspaper, one that has no need whatsoever to mislead the publice, nevertheless engages in presenting an outright lie such as this.
The Wall Street Journal is much more attuned to conveying the truth, and that includes its articles and opinions involving global climate matters.
I strongly urge Mr. Burton, Mr. Watts, and the good people at Westar Energy to bring this information to the attention of the editors at the WSJ who might just take it upon themselves to use this outrageous incident to inform millions of readers of the juvenile Wapo shenanigans.
It’s a damn shame that some subscribers can’t sue the WP for a defective product or mal practice or something like that. Isn’t it defective advertising to claim to be a NEWS paper but instead provide blatent propaganda?
Cut off their power.
Keep those chimneys belching black, pile on the subsidies, cancel regulations – freedom to make piles of cash. It’s the only way forward!
Just like in Beijing.
There is nothing wrong with the picture, so the request to correct it sounds strange. What needs to be corrected is the legend. Had they used another picture, taken during the daytime, with the same legend, the effect would have been the same. A lie that their brainwashed readership wants to hear.
I imagine, you can just show these morons a picture of an inactive smokestack shot against the blue skye and tell them it is a chemical factory spewing toxic “chemicals” into the air they breathe. Or something radioactive. Or mercury. It does not matter what you say; they are trained to take everything for granted, as long as it is a lie.
Good work . The take-away point is that photographs can and do lie, as we’ve seen.
It’s said that a picture is worth 1000 words, but which 1000? Only the photographer knows for sure, and unless we know all the circumstances of its capture and processing, we should be wary of any photograph that seems to prove a point. The same caveat is no less true for video.
Well, H2O is an EEEEEEEEEEEVIL GHG, let’s ban this toxic emission!
What normal, expected behavior from the Washington Post. They aren’t going to change, you have to go around them.
MattS and nemo and artwest
Been there, done that, but let’s not stand on reputation.
Here is a gallery of 9 images of smokestacks taken from the web with the same
9 images color inverted. I include WAPO’s. http://postimage.org/gallery/b2dhbad0/
Now you tell me which are the oddities. “nothing fake” you say?
So what you sayin’ bro? no smoke but only mirrors?
There’s light from behind? Well, I suggest you sit down and consider this:
The pixel values are the only reality so ipso facto there is no reality
that cannot be artificially made in a picture.
Naivete is touching but here the media circus took the easy way out.
Texture analysis of the white areas in WAPO show typical water vapor
evaporation at the edges where droplets disappear. You can use Gabor or Fourier.
Smoke does not have this texture signature, granted the resolution is very poor.
The chimneys have texture and detail which means my guess at
plain fill is wrong , it’s just whitened/darkened.
I don’t know if dedicated WAPO photographers spend months of their time in
the frozen wastes of the artic circle waiting for the right lighting and a
polar bear to come floating by on piece of ice, but the media I know much prefers
their ice in a glass and the unbelievable ease with which a mouse can be clicked.
So I call MattS’s “nothing fake about this picture” and
nemo’s “incredibly complicated” mouse click and raise you, hmmm let’s see,
a brand new photograph of a half-submerged luxury seaside villa on the Maldive Islands
which as you know is in grave danger from rising sea levels 🙂
A little learning is a dangerous thing. I thank those who commented for causing
a suspicion to become a near certainty.
Newspapers are not the only ones stooping to deceit.
The Australian government used similar doctoring a couple of years ago to sell their stupid concept that carbon (dioxide) is a pollutant which must be taxed.
In fact the power station they used as background in their advertisements was not even in Australia and had been closed for decades!
See: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/tv-campaign-spreads-lies/story-e6frfifx-1226066785305
I hope that pixel analysis will be done to see if any fingerprint of photoshopping can be detected. If it is there, it would be a huge embarrassment to the MSM.
“That power plant has state-of-the-art “scrubbers,” which which cost over $400”
Too many whiches spoil the brouhaha.
legaltrex2013,
“Did you know with the help Government subsidies Germany is the leader in solar power accounting for over 30 percent of their residential energy.”
Does that include the contributions from the solar plant that got caught using diesel generators and flood lights to generate “solar” electricity at night.
four-of-them says:
March 20, 2013 at 3:04 pm
———————————
I’m with MattS on this. Anyone who has spent time “fixing” a digital image (Photoshopping) knows that you are far better off capturing a good image in the first place. Sure, anything can be faked in editing software, but most journals will look for an original, high res image that doesn’t need editing for exactly the reasons this discussion raises. They are aware of the thousands (millions?) of digital experts that make a hobby out of catching the Photoshopped image.
As for the photographer – he lives in this general area (Overland Park, Kansas) which is less than 100 miles from the power station. I imagine he didn’t give up much of his social life to catch this image. He probably took the picture in passing anyway, and left it as a stock image for the AP.
four-of-them,
Oh, you won’t find me claiming that it’s impossible to fake a photo. All I said is based on experience as a photographer and in fact your own link to the set of normal and negative images proves that the picture on this story isn’t faked. It’s a perfectly normal and natural result of lighting conditions.
Go back and take a good close look at all the photos at your link. I can tell you exactly which ones are real and which are the negatives. You simply don’t get the same qualities that the WaPo photo has by taking a photo under clear sky and daylight and turning into a negative. Look at your own pictures the negatives of the daylight photos don’t look like the sunset photos and the negatives of the sunset/sunrise photos don’t look like the daylight photos. Any competent photographer can tell the difference. Hell most idiots who wouldn’t know which way to point the camera could tell the difference with them side by side.
All WaPo did is take a perfectly normal sunset photo of a power plant and put a deceptive caption on it.
four-of-them,
“Now you tell me which are the oddities. “nothing fake” you say? So what you sayin’ bro? no smoke but only mirrors? ”
Nope, not even any mirrors, just light and shadow.
four-of-them,
One last comment. It’s highly unlikely that WaPo staff photographers took that image. I saved the image off of the WaPo site and ran it through a Google image search. I got 131 hits. It’s almost certainly a stock image.
Greg says:
March 20, 2013 at 11:06 am
Which is why every time a reporter is laid off, an angel gets his wings.
—————–
lol
MattS says:
March 20, 2013 at 4:53 pm
legaltrex2013,
“Did you know with the help Government subsidies Germany is the leader in solar power accounting for over 30 percent of their residential energy.”
Does that include the contributions from the solar plant that got caught using diesel generators and flood lights to generate “solar” electricity at night.
—————————————–
MattS, I have never heard of that.
Please tell me you just forgot the sarc tag.
cn
Chuck Nolan,
Nope: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/13/the-insanity-of-greenery/
Although I was misremembering the country. This happened in Spain not Germany.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-solar-subsidies-to-remain-high-with-consumers-paying-the-price-a-842595.html
“Photovoltaics are threatening to become the costliest mistake in the history of German energy policy. Photovoltaic power plant operators and homeowners with solar panels on their rooftops are expected to pocket around €9 billion ($11.3 billion) this year, yet they contribute barely 4 percent of the country’s power supply, and only erratically at that.
When night falls, all solar modules go offline in one fell swoop; in the winter, they barely generate power during the daytime. During the summer, meanwhile, they sometimes generate too much power around midday, without enough storage capacity to capture it all. The distribution network is also not laid out in a way that would allow the country’s thousands of owners of photovoltaic arrays — a term used to denote an installation of several panels working together — to feed into the grid as well as draw power from it.
To keep the lights on, Germany ends up importing nuclear power from France and the Czech Republic. Grid operator Tennet even resorted to tapping an aging fossil fuel-fired power plant in Austria to compensate for shortages in solar power.
The figures on peak performance of photovoltaic arrays lead to misunderstandings, the German Physical Society writes in an expert opinion, stating, “Photovoltaics are fundamentally incapable of replacing any other type of power plant.” Essentially, every solar array must be backed up with a conventional power plant as a reserve, creating an expensive double infrastructure.”
Sounds familiar……….
legaltrex2013,
“Did you know with the help Government subsidies Germany is the leader in solar power accounting for over 30 percent of their residential energy.”
============
nonsense. The actual amount is 3%. From wikipedia, the climate bible:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Germany
The German new solar PV installations increased by about 7.6 GW in 2012, and solar PV provided 18 TWh (billion kilowatt-hours) of electricity in 2011, about 3% of total electricity.[4]
Reuters. 29 December 2011. Retrieved 2 January 2012.
The real problem for all power generation is the wholesale price of power. Many people are not aware that when power is plentiful on the grid, prices actually go negative? That is because you can’t simply shut off power on the grid by throwing a switch as you do in your house.
Real power on the grid is more like a mighty river. It is a flow and if you try and stop it suddenly it will overflow the banks of the river and flood the countryside, doing immense damage in the process. Thus, if you have coal powered plants producing enough power on a cloudy day, and the skies suddenly clear and the solar plants start producing a large amount of power you have a serious problem. There is too much power of the grid for the load to absorb. Voltages are going to start climbing and equipment will start to burn out unless you cut power in a hurry.
So, when this happens, the wholesale prices drops to zero – and even goes negative – so that everyone that can stop producing power will stop producing. The pricing mechanism works because once the price goes negative, for every bit of power you put on the grid, you are now going to have to pay money. Instead of getting paid to produce power, you are in effect going to pay a fine for producing power.
The problem with green energy is that governments in their infinite wisdom have bypassed the priding mechanism and instead have guaranteed solar and wind a fixed wholesale price. No matter how much power they produce, no matter how much supply is available, the green energy sources are guaranteed a positive wholesale price. So, when there is too much power on the grid they have no incentive to reduce supply.
This is a disaster in waiting for the national power grids of every country with substantial green power, because the grids were never designed to handle this sort of situation. They have no way to deal with run-away power generation from suppliers that are not controlled by the price mechanism, except of course for the grid to fail.
ferd berple says:
> Real power on the grid is more like a mighty river.
Real power on the grid, if we are to use a mechanical metaphor, is more like a spring mattress with its covers removed, shaking violently. The shaking is induced by vibrators placed at a number of point locations across the mattress. For loads, imagine a few people sitting on the mattress at some random locations. Their soft behinds damp the vibrations, absorbing the energy. The moment a person stands up (disconnecting the load), the whole thing starts shaking more violently, including remote corners of the grid. Same if you connect or disconnect a vibrator.
The art of Green propaganda photography unfortunately is a world wide reality. Presumably done in the misguided belief that their “noble cause” justifies this kind of deception.
Here is a picture of the Hazelwood brown coal power station in Victoria as it appears on the web site of Environment Victoria, note how atmospheric conditions have been carefully selected to emphasis the plumes of flue gas “condensation” . In reality more than 95% of the time this is what you’ll see.
Hazelwood is an old station (first unit commissioned in 1964) its 8 x 200MW units were retro-fitted with new electrostatic precipitators around 15 years ago. The station is still vital to power security in Victoria, where no one has been prepared to build a new coal station since the early 90s, partly because of the risk presented by unfavourable legislative regimes e.g. the recently introduced $23AUD per tonne carbon dioxide tax – the growing sovereign risk.
MattS wrote on March 20, 2013 at 4:53 pm, “Does that include the contributions from the solar plant that got caught using diesel generators and flood lights to generate ‘solar’ electricity at night.”.
Chuck Nolan wrote on March 20, 2013 at 6:01 pm, “MattS, I have never heard of that…”
I had not heard about that, either, MattS! Can you please share a citation or link? Or were you joking??