Guest Essay by Kip Hansen
The latest scare story flashing across the ‘Net from nearly every main stream media outlet is the frightening image of a world on fire released by NASA yesterday. Headlines abound as the story spreads like wildfire:
NASA posts satellite image of ‘world on fire’ showing every fire burning on the planet right now
Stunning NASA image shows a ‘world on fire’
Climate change sets the world on fire
Anthony Watts covered the original release of this story here at WUWT.
My wife and I spent over ten years on the island of Hispaniola, where both Haiti and the Dominican Republic are found. I am personally very familiar with their agricultural system having organized several humanitarian projects that furthered agriculture there.
I was surprised by the image presented by NASA:
In the image above, splashed across the front pages of the world yesterday, we see, circled in white, Hispaniola, covered in red — indicating fires (day and night) on 22 August 2018.
Always alert to bias in journalism covering science issues, I took a bit of a closer look…literally….
In a close up of the island of Hispaniola shows how many fires and the extent of the fires — I’ve circled every one in white — had I not, they would be too small to see.
It is August and time to burn and then harvest the sugarcane fields….the pungent smoke will be rising from fields all over the DR and blowing on the gentle trade winds wafting a distinctive burnt sugar aroma across the island.
“Sugarcane is harvested by hand and mechanically. Hand harvesting accounts for more than half of production, and is dominant in the developing world. In hand harvesting, the field is first set on fire. The fire burns dry leaves, and chases away or kills any lurking venomous snakes, without harming the stalks and roots. Harvesters then cut the cane just above ground-level using cane knives or machetes.”
In an earlier career, I designed and built web sites for major sporting events and by necessity learned the fine art of photoshopping to improve the quality and appearance of images on the web. One problem almost impossible to overcome, especially back in the 1990s, is “monitor pixel size” — the size of individual dots on your computer monitor. Monitors are vastly improved today, but the problem persists for web graphics. This is the true source of A World On Fire.
When NASA wants to present an image of where the fires are, each fire must be at least one pixel in size — you can’t really make the data point any smaller. When presenting the whole world view, each little burning field requires one bright red pixel. Thus, the three dozen burning cane fields in the Dominican Republic, when shown on the world map, cover the entire island of Hispaniola.
It’s all in the pixels.
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Author’s Comment Policy:
I am not a web artist by any means — I did once have our web team’s “artist” dismissed because I had a better eye for web images than he did and thus had to re-do all of his work. Today’s web graphics are a dream compared to the 1990s, when we were restricted to the 216 “web safe colors”.
Lesson: It always pays to take a closer look.
Start with “Kip…” if you are speaking to me.
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Quick Links:
image of a world on fire released by NASA yesterday.
NASA posts satellite image of ‘world on fire’ showing every fire burning
Stunning NASA image shows a ‘world on fire’
A world on fire: Shocking NASA image reveals the fires ravaging the globe
Climate change sets the world on fire
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According to NASA, where there’s smoke there’s fire.
Nick ==> Well, where there is a “thermal anomaly” ….
The old any thermal anomaly in climatology gets a red pixel trick.
I recommend “How to Lie with Maps” by Mark Monmonier.
In this case they should have accepted that a pixel will cover many square miles and used colour coding to show how much of the pixel is on fire; e.g. less that 5% = no colour, 5-10% = dark blue, and so on until 95-100% red. Then the map would have a lot less colour and most of it dark blue.
Bill ==> At the whole world scale, single pixels are barely visible and would visually be washed out when viewed that way….it is an interesting display problem.
See some comments above to the link to the app and zoom in until each data point is one pixel….
Kip —
You could not be more wrong.
I just looked at the image viewer Anthony gave the link to yesterday, the EOSDIS Worldview.
They use a *Dot* to represent the feature. As you zoom in, the dots are redrawn to be the same size on your monitor. Therefor, the dots cover a smaller and smaller area as you zoom in.
(This holds true from minimum zoom, {world view}, until Max zoom-1, then on the last zoom step, the dot does draw to a larger size.)
There is the distance scale on the lower right of the viewer. You can drag the image so that a dot is just above the distance scale, and estimate the dot diameter in meters or feet for any given zoom factor.
Pixels have nothing to do with it, except perhaps on the Satellite imager.
As a note:
The image displays fires *and* what they call Thermal Anomalies.
On one cluster in the D.R., i moved the date marker back to June, and the anomaly is present in all time slices. Therefor, an industrial source, not a wildfire.
TonyL ==> I’m not sure what your objection is…you describe what I describe and show visually. Ron Long left a comment and seems to be familiar with this type of software. If you zoom in far enough, each data point eventually becomes one pixel-ish.
Some of the “fires” are industrial sources and gas flares, and incinerators — all thermal anomalies.
NASA fails to mention this in their press release.
Tony,
I did the same thing and don’t know about pixels but one large red spot resolved into a bunch of neatly arranged dots that I took to be vents or smoke stacks.
JimG ==> You can use Google Earth to zoom in on the same location and see if you can make out what it is. Power Plant or a big factory, oil refinery with lots of gas flares, etc.
“On one cluster in the D.R., i moved the date marker back to June, and the anomaly is present in all time slices. Therefor, an industrial source, not a wildfire.”
I also did the same thing … except with a known entity fire (that started last week). The anomaly is present in all time slices. Therefore, a mapping/programming/lying error.
Issues a statistician would complain about. Not compared to 30 year average (or some other average), no key that lists or leads to a blog about the fires in question, a one day image has no statistical value of its own but feeds the anecdotal snake oil monster, no coding for man made versus wildfire versus human/weather/resource management caused. There is culpability enough to share. I overheard a conversation about getting prepared for a US West coast hurricane season if global man made climate disruption continues. That little piece of information came from watching CNN/ABC/CBS/NBC. But I also hold the conversationalist to blame for not remembering her intermediate/middle school science lessons. Only stupid people believe everything they hear. A mirror sign should be affixed in the bathroom reminding the conversationalist of his/her stupid condition.
Pamela ==> I grew up in California (Los Angeles, born and raised). We don’t have hurricanes, except remnants of the rare hurricanes that hit Baja.
The wiki lists them at California Hurricanes.
Anyone who has surfed the California coast knows that the Pacific waters there are generally c o l d.
I’m pretty sure that dog poop would’ve made most of the map red due to so many pixels.
I thought Trump had fixed up NASA being used as a political tool? The same kind of thing happens in the government (taxpayer) funded ABC in Australia. This obvious left agenda is an annoyance. Sad thing is, a varying percentage of the population (sometimes alarmingly high), swallows this nonsense.
https://youtu.be/1T3_4zWMspo
Of course, the gentile old ladies at NASA were wrong. 8- )
I don’t get it; Bushfire battle across NSW and Queensland (Eastern Australia) is dated 21 August:
FIREFIGHTERS in Queensland and NSW are dealing with hundreds of fires amid fears strong winds could whip up the flames.
https://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/bushfire-battle-across-nsw-and-queensland/news-story/1b3cf6c6a1494c2f9f2f4c01e9f3a8e6
So, if there were hundreds of bushfires (wildfires) burning in eastern Australia the day before the NASA image, why can’t I see any red on the map? Six alleged arsonists charged BTW
Kip,
Today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day APOD
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap180826.html
to my surprise used the term “Forest Fire” instead of the recent meme “Wild Fire” that is so much scarier.
APOD in their caption said:
“Large forest fires on Earth are usually caused either by
humans or lightning and can be visible from orbit.”
I wonder if there was a discussion about word usage between the keepers of that web page. In the past they’ve been strongly in the Catastrophic Global Warming camp. I know, I am banned from posting on their discussion board for my views to the contrary.
Looks like the Greenland surface melt ended yesterday, one week later than last year, but still fairly early in the year.
Blimey, the situation is so bad even parts of the North Sea are on fire! Maybe the Viikings are invading us again, which is useful to know seeing as the Royal Navy is now so small it probably can’t stop the rampaging horde.
Fake news from the deep state.
Let’s say you’re a globalist with a “climate change” agenda and you have a few million dollars in your pocket itching to make a statement. Hire a few arsonists to set fires worldwide, then leak the idea that NASA should investigate all the fires? Not everything is a conspiracy, but how tempting would it be if you were worth several billion dollars to feed your pet projects with a few well-placed conversations (conspiracies)?
It’s human nature to be selfish. The “climate change” scam wasn’t an accident, stupidity or incompetence.