2020 was an interesting year to be sure. We had disease, civil unrest around the world, government intrigue, and even aliens (sort of). We had almost everything except zombies and the four horsemen. One thing we definitely had a lot of was fire. It started at the beginning of the year in Australia. The island continent has regular forest fires just like the western United States does every year. The fires of 2020 were uniquely bad though, getting so bad that in some places, it literally rained fire.
And speaking of the western US, things got crazy there for a while during the summer. Again, there are wildfires in California, Colorado, and elsewhere every year. 2020 though, saw days that were black as night from the ash, nights that were glowing red from the flames, deep red sunsets in the Midwest thanks to the massive amounts of ash in the upper atmosphere and even fire tornadoes. Yes, fire tornadoes. A person could be forgiven for thinking that the world was ending or at least that the millions of acres burning were setting new records.
Obviously from a climate perspective that’s bad. Millions of trees burned down, resulting in a massive loss of the planet’s capability to process CO2, not to mention the millions of tons of carbon added to the atmosphere thanks to the fires. Yet, what does that data show?
While there were definitely massive amounts of land cleared by flame in some areas, even record-setting amounts, that isn’t the whole story. As the data shows, the amount of forests burned down during 2020 was actually less than it was the previous year. So, there was some good news in 2020 after all.
As good as the news that we didn’t burn down half the trees on the planet is, it begs the question – how? One option that comes to mind is that maybe there is just less forest to burn. It would stand to reason given that we keep cutting trees down and hundreds of thousands of acres burn down in a good year that eventually there is just less to burn overall. Fortunately, the data shows that is not the case. The truth is that we are getting better at managing the forests.
Over the years, we have learned through solid data analysis that there are various ways to manage our forests to mitigate the risk from forest fires. These include establishing firebreaks, strips of land that don’t have any trees, to ensure that should a fire start it will only burn down a section of the forest instead of the whole state. Then there are the controlled burns and clearing out of the underbrush that we’ve been doing more of over the last couple of decades. These techniques starve a potential fire of the dry and readily available fuel that can turn a small fire that can be contained in a few hours into a blazing inferno that takes weeks to deal with.
TARTLE can help improve these techniques or find new ones through the data marketplace. With people already signed up all over the world, we can help uncover fire mitigation methods that are incredibly effective but might be unknown just because they were developed in an African village. With a tool like TARTLE that kind of information can be found and improved upon and put into practice.
We can also help identify the activities that we’re doing that are making fires more frequent and worse or are increasing the damage they cause. There may be types of consumption that contribute to forest fires, or it’s possible we could predict where they would be more likely and either avoid building near those areas or at least better protect ourselves and the forest when we do.
The possibilities to find new solutions to old problems with TARTLE are endless. When buyers and sellers plug into our marketplace they are plugging into a tool that can and will be used to help improve the lives of all of us.
What’s your data worth? Sign up and join the TARTLE Marketplace with this link here.
One thing we definitely had a lot of was fire. It started at the beginning of the year in Australia. The island continent has regular forest fires just like the western United States does every year. The fires of 2020 were uniquely bad though, getting so bad that in some places, it literally rained fire.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome to Tartle Cast with your hosts Alexander McCaig and Jason Rigby, where humanity steps into the future, and resource data defines the path.
Alexander McCaig (00:26):
The trees are cool. From what I understand there's two types of trees, and I guess I don't understand it very well. From the reproductive version of a pine tree versus a tree with leaves, coniferous and non-coniferous trees.
Jason Rigby (00:43):
Yes. There really is.
Alexander McCaig (00:44):
I'm glad I got that. And tress are naturally self-pruning. They'll actually drop their branches.
Jason Rigby (00:50):
Right.
Alexander McCaig (00:50):
So, if you're going through the pine forest and pine barrens of Jersey you'll notice, "Why are these branches on the ground?" And they're all just growing up to the top because there's trying to get that light and that oxygen, but there's an interesting part about trees in the regrowth is that those pine needles when there's a natural burning on the forest floor, a fire, there's a small forest fire, it causes a release of the sap in the pine to open up and it causes it to fertilize in that area. When they do controlled forest burning it's really beneficial.
Jason Rigby (01:18):
Yes. Yeah.
Alexander McCaig (01:18):
Cleaning the floor up, almost wash the area out.
Jason Rigby (01:23):
That's what was happening before us humans took over the world.
Alexander McCaig (01:26):
Before was exacerbated it.
Jason Rigby (01:28):
You had mass amounts of clean up.
Alexander McCaig (01:30):
Yeah.
Jason Rigby (01:31):
Even volcanoes were great because that volcano ash would just ... In Washington State, whenever Mount Saint Helens went, and then a long time ago when you look when Mount Rainier ... Because that's a volcano, that's metric tons, and I know the Philippines experienced this. We talked about that in our Philippines episode. But whenever you look at all of that nutrient-dense lava, and how it counteracts with the soil. You can go to Mount Saint Helens. It's so cool. That was in the '80s, and right now there's these huge tall trees, and very beautiful, and the elk running around.
Alexander McCaig (02:05):
Think about it around here. We get really fertile stuff. We have these big heavy cottonwoods, just soaking it all up. If there was a higher water content here in New Mexico this place would be phenomenal, like lush when I mean phenomenal. But the Earth naturally has had its progression of forest fires, especially in the boreal forest region up to the bottom of the arctic region area, and they have their fires, but the thing is we've exacerbated it with global warming with a much dryer climate in areas where it already is dry.
Alexander McCaig (02:37):
And so, combating the natural release of carbon dioxide into the air from this burning event has become a lot more difficult, and we've increased the amount of carbon dioxide that is occurring globally because of how we as human beings are affecting that, but there's an interesting little positive note in the data that we need to touch on.
Jason Rigby (02:58):
Yeah. This just shows you how far reaching data is, and our philosophy are Tartle in how we can help humanity, and serve humanity, through data.
Alexander McCaig (03:08):
Yes.
Jason Rigby (03:10):
The article says this, "A rare positive climate news as global wildfire recedes," and we look at, for us at Tartle, climate news. We're watching and listening, and anything with data [crosstalk 00:03:22].
Alexander McCaig (03:22):
All the time. Any of the major things that are impacting the longevity of us as a race-
Jason Rigby (03:27):
Yes.
Alexander McCaig (03:27):
... we're focusing on.
Jason Rigby (03:28):
Yeah. We want to focus on that, and that's where we want our efforts to go for data.
Alexander McCaig (03:31):
Yeah.
Jason Rigby (03:32):
Despite wildfires ravaging vast swaths around the world the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by burning forests actually feel in 2020. Like we always do I want to see how they got to the data, and what were their processes, and then what is the news good or bad? What is the outcome?
Alexander McCaig (03:48):
Yeah. They give you the headliner, and then now give me the story that builds up to that point.
Jason Rigby (03:51):
We know, especially if you're in the United States, the wildfire in California, Northern San Diego County, in late December there was 7,000 residents were evacuated, and then we see these dystopian images of wildfires ravaging, and we see cars driving out, and it's just burning red everywhere. We saw the drone footage of San Francisco with it red. I experienced that when I went to Seattle.
Alexander McCaig (04:11):
It's 12:00 in the afternoon and it's completely black outside-
Jason Rigby (04:15):
Yes.
Alexander McCaig (04:15):
... like it's midnight because of the ash, smoke.
Jason Rigby (04:18):
The amount of carbon dioxide emitted by burning forests actually fell in 2020, so how did they get there? Atmospheric scientists at the European Union's ... How do you say this? Copernicus. Copernicus.
Alexander McCaig (04:30):
Copernicus.
Jason Rigby (04:31):
Copernicus Climate Change Service.
Alexander McCaig (04:32):
Yeah, Copernicus. Nicolaus Copernicus.
Jason Rigby (04:34):
Yes. There we go. Here's how they do it, they use satellites to take pictures and collect air quality data from hotspots around the world. Despite this year's widely shared images of the raging infernos, which disrupted economies from Australia, the US West Coast, to Siberia the amount of land that went up in flames declined.
Alexander McCaig (04:52):
Yes.
Jason Rigby (04:54):
And it's a great way. Go ahead.
Alexander McCaig (04:59):
What if we've already ... Just consider this. The stuff that would typically burn we'd already burnt it, and it hasn't grown back, so maybe less of it is going up in smoke.
Jason Rigby (05:09):
Yeah, that could be it. Yeah.
Alexander McCaig (05:09):
Do you understand what I'm saying?
Jason Rigby (05:10):
Deforestation.
Alexander McCaig (05:12):
Yeah. Say we've deforested, or we did already have a bunch of burning. Now, there's just less to burn.
Jason Rigby (05:17):
Yeah, less to burn.
Alexander McCaig (05:18):
Do you know what I mean?
Jason Rigby (05:18):
I didn't even think about that.
Alexander McCaig (05:21):
I like to think about the inverse with how the data stories been told, and percentages worry me sometimes.
Jason Rigby (05:29):
They had a video on YouTube the other day, and a guy had planted five million trees, or something like that. Of course, I click on that because it's like one person planting five million. And Google talked about that. You know how they have talks at Google?
Alexander McCaig (05:44):
Yeah.
Jason Rigby (05:44):
This guy was saying instead of building a military drone, why don't we build drones that can plant trees? Because they can do that. They can drop them off, plant them. It's very easy to plant a little fir tree, or pine tree.
Alexander McCaig (05:54):
It's because 1.5 trillion dollar census data is falsified and it's all going towards falsified spending.
Jason Rigby (05:59):
We just had an episode on that, if you want to hear us at our worst. We were on fire. We were just upset about the data. Data quality is really important to us at Tartle.
Alexander McCaig (06:10):
It's almost one of the number one things, data quality, truth. I don't want lies. You want me to act on lies and a hunch?
Jason Rigby (06:17):
No.
Alexander McCaig (06:18):
That's just a recipe for failure.
Jason Rigby (06:20):
But I like how they came up with the data. The satellites take pictures. We talked about this with in Chile with the Rubin Observatory.
Alexander McCaig (06:29):
Yep.
Jason Rigby (06:30):
And how these cameras are just amazing in the way that these satellite cameras are taking pictures. They have machine learning languages that they look at the picture. We wouldn't see it as looking at a picture, but that machines learn it, so literally millions of pictures can be taken in milliseconds, which is hard to even fathom in your brain, but that's what's happening.
Alexander McCaig (06:52):
They're taking snapshots of time, and they have the ability to compare rather than us. We're like take me a picture now, and what it looked like 10 years ago, and you're like, "Oh, that's very dramatic," but it can see those very small changes.
Jason Rigby (07:02):
And then, being able to get air quality data, which they're doing great at that. They can get in these hotspots around the world, and then decide why are areas such as the Arctic Circle and Western United States suffered wildfires of unprecedented intensity and emissions. 2020 was one of the lowest years for active fires at the global scale. This monitoring service reported this had led to a further decline in emissions following a continuing trend of the past 17 years.
Alexander McCaig (07:28):
Which is nice.
Jason Rigby (07:29):
To reach their conclusion scientists used satellites to measure the amount of heat that was radiated by fire hotspots around the globe. In the near real-time data, so near real-time data, which-
Alexander McCaig (07:40):
So, it's lagging.
Jason Rigby (07:40):
Yeah, which is fine. It's still accurate information as long as the sensors are good.
Alexander McCaig (07:46):
For some satellites it's either in a fixed position, or you have to wait for the world to spin.
Jason Rigby (07:51):
Yeah, exactly. And observations are used to calculate the amount of carbon emitted globally. About 10% less carbon dioxide. Still, think about this, 1,690 million metric tons was discharged from burning forest fires in 2020 compared to the year before.
Alexander McCaig (08:06):
Can you imagine trying to lift that up?
Jason Rigby (08:09):
How many tons are in a big truck?
Alexander McCaig (08:15):
Maybe eight tons.
Jason Rigby (08:16):
Yeah. Four to eight tons, or something like that. 1,690 million metric tons. How many dump trucks-
Alexander McCaig (08:23):
Dude, metric tons of just an element.
Jason Rigby (08:28):
Yes. Carbon dioxide, yeah.
Alexander McCaig (08:30):
What?
Jason Rigby (08:31):
Just imagine. Just think of all these dump trucks full of this, and where do we go with it?
Alexander McCaig (08:39):
If you go to a chemist and you're like, "Can you tell me how much an oxygen molecule weighs?" And they're like, "Well, I can tell you, but you can't really put it in the palm of your hand and feel it," but you're talking metric tons. That is awesome. Could you imagine how many molecules that would have to be to create that much weight?
Jason Rigby (08:56):
Yes. And this European Union Climate Change Service they took the data, and the senior scientists there, Mark Parrington, and this is what their conclusion was, and I thought this was interesting. They said that the emissions across the world had been lowered due to better fire management, and mitigation measures.
Alexander McCaig (09:15):
Yeah, and that's fantastic, because we're learning. And a mitigation measure is also-
Jason Rigby (09:20):
To me, this is truth, and I want to talk about this.
Alexander McCaig (09:21):
Yeah. In Massachusets, where I grew up for a good majority of my life, we had fire breaks. It's these huge dirt areas that separate the state into specific blocks, so that if you do have a forest fire it's only going to burn this area rather than burn the whole state down. That's a fire mitigation technique. And also, the way we're doing this with the data, and it's fantastic, is we need to realize that beyond the natural cycles that the Earth is going through we can analyze the data of our impact, and our consumption, and our behaviors in our daily life, and how that systematically affects a forest fire burning in the state of California.
Alexander McCaig (10:02):
So, what I'm doing it New Mexico, or Canada, or Brazil, is offsetting dust that is carried, bird migration, weather patterns, and now it's making that area dryer, even though I'm bombing around my car in Southern Sudan. That is an important aspect of that data. Data shows you the reach, the impact, positive or negative with what we are doing, and I love the fact that they have this focus, and it's a positive focus from this analysis by taking a macro view of satellites to analyze what is going on, but it's also very important.
Alexander McCaig (10:34):
Even though that data may be real time it's important to understand what behaviors are causing that to happen outside of natural events that are happening on this planet, and 99% of that, it's maybe less, over 50% I'd say with just natural changes is probably akin to what we're doing as human beings.
Jason Rigby (10:52):
Yes. And I think what we need to understand, and through this article, is that the responsibility lies-
Alexander McCaig (11:00):
With us.
Jason Rigby (11:00):
... with us.
Alexander McCaig (11:01):
Yeah. And it lies with the information we create, and how we analyze it.
Jason Rigby (11:04):
Yes.
Alexander McCaig (11:05):
And how we bring that back to solve issues like this specific one here. I think it's fantastic that there's a decrease in carbon dioxide, but what is the true [inaudible 00:11:15] of why that is actually occurring? Why do I have to look for a positive part about a decrease in carbon dioxide and fires burning? I don't want any of the fires to burn. We need to look to how we are causing and exacerbating it rather than measuring it after it's already burning.
Jason Rigby (11:30):
Yes. And one way I was thinking of how the total marketplace could work with this is to get these experts together, and I imagine there's tens of thousands, and maybe even a hundred thousand that are experts in wildlife management, and then to survey them, to have them speak to what they feel would be the most important, collect that data, and see what the consensus is.
Alexander McCaig (11:52):
That's cool.
Jason Rigby (11:53):
And if there's people that agree on things that say these are the five biggest things, these are the 10 biggest things, then we can look at that data as being pure because it came directly from them, and say these are the things we believe we can work on, and this is what we unite in.
Alexander McCaig (12:08):
I can believe it. These are things we know we can work on-
Jason Rigby (12:11):
Yes.
Alexander McCaig (12:11):
... because we're experts and we do it every day, so let's share what we think is the fundamental data packet for preservation of these lands. Nobody has any sort of consensus on how medical information should be stored and shared. Why is that? Why do we have no baselines for social determinants of health? Why does it work in the US, but it's not going to work in a developing country? Then it's not really a social determinant of health, is it? It's nonsense.
Alexander McCaig (12:41):
We need to bring all these people together, and we need to test these junk models we put together frankly, and say that those really aren't truthful, and if we want to manage a fire we have to see how it's managed globally. Maybe there's a technique in Indonesia with how they're managing fires around their tropical rainforest that could probably work very, very well here in the US, and something we're doing could also be shared with them.
Jason Rigby (13:02):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Alexander McCaig (13:03):
How do we unlock that value and share that knowledge effectively?
Jason Rigby (13:06):
That 80-year-old that's been out there doing it for 80 years. You just do this, you just do this, this, this, this, this is how [inaudible 00:13:12]. That's so simple.
Alexander McCaig (13:13):
That's really interesting.
Jason Rigby (13:16):
How many times have we seen that?
Alexander McCaig (13:18):
Yeah. And then, someone else who's not even in forest preservation. The scientists come in, "I've been studying the behaviors of humans, and now I want to make a connection between this data packet and the one that I've been creating. I think there's something here to actually analyze. Wait a minute. I want to bring in five more data packets, and I want to do a cross analysis of all these different things and say does that affect forest fires."
Jason Rigby (13:41):
Yeah. And instead of blaming that one guy that threw the cigarette out in the redwoods. We always want to blame that, or the power line.
Alexander McCaig (13:47):
Here we go. I'm not going to blame the cigarette. Why are we still making cigarettes? We know it kills us, we know it's not good for us, but we still produce it.
Jason Rigby (13:55):
Yes.
Alexander McCaig (13:55):
Is it the cigarettes fault? No. Is it the guy's fault for smoking it? Yes. Is it the person's fault for producing the cigarette? Yeah. Stop it. It's stupid.
Jason Rigby (14:06):
Right. Yes, exactly.
Alexander McCaig (14:08):
I drive by a hospital, and I see nurses and doctors outside on a smoke break, come on. I'll stand outside and be like I don't want you taking care of me, I don't want you taking care of me. If you can't take care of yourself how are you supposed to take care of anybody else?
Jason Rigby (14:25):
Yeah. And it comes back to the responsibility and those that have the ability to implement responsibility to do it, and to do it effectively, and with the best means possible in 2021, and we know the best way to solve these problems is through Tartle.
Alexander McCaig (14:42):
Is through using Tartle. I'm not just saying that because it's us. We're saying it because it's the only thing that's made the most sense up until now.
Jason Rigby (14:49):
Yeah. And I want people to understand, it's not us because we're wanting to filter all data through us, or whatever. It's us because we know that our intention and the model is good.
Alexander McCaig (14:59):
It is good. And we know that we are trying to solve these most pressing problems that we have, and if we've created a really effective tool for doing so why wouldn't we want to push that out there?
Jason Rigby (15:11):
Yes.
Alexander McCaig (15:11):
Why wouldn't we want to share to people and be like, "Hey, have you used this mining pick yet? Have you used this type of cellphone?" Or whatever the heck you want to call it. We've reinvented the shovel. It doesn't matter. Look at how using this is going to solve these problems right now. If we're looking at 70-year timeline before this whole thing goes up in flames, and we wipe ourselves out as a species-
Jason Rigby (15:33):
Literally.
Alexander McCaig (15:34):
... no joke maybe we should hop on this tool right now. Maybe we should just use it. Maybe we should really connect with one another and be very collective in our information, in our data, to solve this problem. It's not affecting you in Ethiopia, but what I'm doing is killing 30,000 birds in the Northwest Coast of the United States or Canada. I should probably jump on that.
Jason Rigby (15:58):
Yeah, exactly. I agree.
Alexander McCaig (16:01):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
Thank you for listening to Tartle Cast with your hosts Alexander McCaig and Jason Rigby, where humanity steps into the future, and resource data defines the path. What's your data worth?
