Starting a Nonprofit, Tracking Pollution, and Developing Public Data with John Amos

Welcome back to Environmental Professionals Radio, Connecting the Environmental Professionals Community Through Conversation, with your hosts Laura Thorne and Nic Frederick! 

On today’s episode, we talk with John Amos, Founder and CEO of the environmental nonprofit SkyTruth, about Starting a Nonprofit, Tracking Pollution, and Developing Public Data.  Read his full bio below.

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Showtimes: 
0:20 - Fun Cheetah Fact!
1:24 - The Importance of Checking In on Others
4:12 - Interview starts
7:21 - Transition from Geology to Environmental Monitoring
35:16 - Future Projects and Initiatives

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This podcast is produced by the National Association of Environmental Professions (NAEP). Check out all the NAEP has to offer at NAEP.org.

Connect with John Amos at https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-amos-34a1117/

Guest Bio:
John Amos is an expert in the use of satellite images and other remote sensing data to understand and communicate local, regional and global environmental issues. Educated as a geologist (at the University of Wyoming for his M.S. and Cornell University for his B.S.), John spent 10 years applying image processing, image analysis, and digital mapping techniques to conduct environmental, exploration and resource assessment studies for the energy and mining industries and government entities.

In 2001, he founded SkyTruth, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to strengthening environmental conservation by illuminating environmental problems and issues through the use of satellite images, aerial photographs, and other kinds of remote sensing and digital mapping. In addition to his role as Chief Executive Officer of SkyTruth, he serves on the board of Global Fishing Watch, a nonprofit organization formed by SkyTruth, Oceana and Google, and on the advisory board of The Ocean Foundation.

Music Credits
Intro: Givin Me Eyes by Grace Mesa
Outro: Never Ending Soul Groove by Mattijs Muller

Transcript

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to EPR with your favorite environmental nerds, Nick and Laura. On today's episode, Nick and I talk about checking in with people. We interviewed John Amos, the CEO of SkyTruth about starting a non profit, tracking pollution and developing public data. And finally, for your weekly dose of positivity, cheetah cubs are the cutest.

And it wants to say, am I right?

I did. And did you know that they hiss and meow instead of roaring? I mean, they're just giant kitties. I know, but they're like, that's the sound they make. It is. I don't know, it has to be a competition between them and that, was that a frog that we shared recently? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true.

Anyway, hit that music.[00:01:00] 

NAEP is partnering with FAEP to host an advanced NEPA workshop on March 12 that will focus on changes to NEPA. With the current administration, the very cool and super unique EPR podcast will also host an event on the 14th. Learn more at www. fap fl. org. Let's get to our segment. If you really want to check in on someone, you know, like I once like heard, like saying, you know, check in with me, isn't the same thing as going, Hey, I know you're having a tough time.

I got Uber eats to your door. Right. That's like a better version of that. So like, just how do you check in with people? What is the best way to do that? Oh, that's so funny. I actually checked in with, I've been checking in with people lately, actually, especially persons that I've mentored and young people that I'm around sometimes, or that I haven't seen in a while to see how they're doing.

Um, and I do just check in. I don't have their addresses to Uber them food and things like that. And I don't want to assume that they're doing bad. Um, but my intention is just to let them know, like, Hey, I'm here. [00:02:00] I think that is important for anyone who is doing well, is content or happy. If you can spread that around a little and make sure the other people around you are okay too, they might just appreciate someone inquiring about them.

Yeah. I mean, I think that's true of everybody or most people, but even people who say they don't want, it's like, I'm fine. I don't want you to check in on me. It's just, Hey, I'm all I'm saying is saying, Hey, that's it. How are you doing? Doing well. Great. Cool. We'll move on. But yeah, even people who don't want to talk sometimes just the act of like checking in is just a nice thing.

Sometimes the strongest people need to be checked in because like you walking around with a mask on and no one's checking in on like. I'm one of those persons. My parents don't check on me. No one checks on me. They just assume I'm fine. And if I'm not, I'll tell them. And so I don't have a lot of people, but I don't, I'm not upset about that or anything.

I'm actually, I'm honored that I am. I'm glad I'm that kind of person. That doesn't, you know, that doesn't mean someday I won't though, you know, and there are times I've been, you know, in a rut. [00:03:00] Yeah, of course. And it's like, you know, that's when you lean on your friends, you know, and I think it's great to have confidence to say, Hey, I had to learn this.

Honestly had to learn, Hey, I don't feel great. My best friend and I, right. We will talk. And afterwards his wife will be like, so how's Nick doing? Uh, I think he's fine. What did you guys talk about? It's like, nerd stuff. He's like, so he's, he's doing fine. He's like, yeah, you'd say if it wasn't right. I had to learn that.

And, you know, and there are times where I've had to call him. Hey, man, I'm not doing great. I need advice. I need support or I just need to hear you. You know, let's just talk about something that, you know, that's boring, whatever it is. I had to learn that though. It's not, it didn't just come to me naturally.

Cause it's like, I take care of everybody else who takes care of me. Don't need it. And that's a lie. Of course I do. Yeah. So I don't know, I don't know where we want to end this, but hopefully that wasn't a whole doom and gloom talk. I know. I mean, I don't know if we succeeded, but I said, maybe be kind and check in on people.

Yeah. And that's like all we can do all the [00:04:00] time. Honestly, that's just good advice in general. Just checking in with folks. There you go. Well, let's check in on our interview.

Oh, that was funny. Yeah. Let's check in on our interview. Hello and welcome back to EPR. Today we have John Amos with us. John is the CEO and founder of a company called SkyTruth. Welcome, John. Hello. Hi, Laura. How are you? Fantastic. Uh, happy to have you here. How about starting off with telling us what is SkyTruth and what does your organization do?

Sure. Yeah. SkyTruth is what we call a conservation technology nonprofit. So we're a nonprofit organization that actually specializes in using, well, technology, but particular technology for us is satellite imagery and other data and images of the earth collected from space to shine a spotlight on environmental conditions and problems around the world.

Okay. So you're the founder. How did this come to be? Well, actually, uh, pretty [00:05:00] circuitous path. I grew up with a father who was a geologist and I got to tag along on field trips and fossil collecting expeditions and, uh, all kinds of stuff like that. I kind of fell in love with geology at a very early age.

As a result of that, I thought it was really cool to look at the landscape and try to figure out, okay, why is that mountain there? And that river valley there? What's going on out here? You know? And so when I got to college, I ended up studying geology. And when I got out. Sadly, like most people who study geology, they end up getting jobs in a windowless office building, staring at a computer screen all day, instead of kicking around out in nature, which was their first love.

And so I did, I followed that same path. When I graduated with a master's degree, I ended up spending most of the next 10 years Looking at satellite imagery to do basic geologic mapping to do exploration work [00:06:00] for oil and gas and mining companies looking for resources around the world, rather than getting to travel to the rainforests in the deserts of Mongolia.

I got this at a computer screen and look at satellite imagery of those remarkable and wonderful places. But over time, as I worked with satellite images, I started seeing these very stark environmental stories on many of the images I was looking at vast areas of, you know, deforestation from wildfires happening in Siberia.

150 mile long oil slicks trailing behind big cargo ships off the coast of Vietnam, all kinds of stuff that was happening out in the world that I wasn't hearing about, I wasn't reading about, I wasn't seeing on the front page of the Washington Post or the New York Times. And I thought, wow, there's a lot of stuff going on.

Here's a great technology to make people aware of it. And eventually I realized I didn't want to [00:07:00] spend my life's career work making climate change worse and making environmental degradation worse. So I took a leap of faith and started a non profit called Sky Truth to show people what's happening in the environment anywhere in the world, if they cared to see it.

Okay, very cool. So how did that transition happen? You're working one day and said, Hmm, someone should expose this stuff. Maybe that's me. And, um, yeah, that's, did you take to, to make that shift? Did you quit the next day or did you hold on? Yeah, it wasn't one light bulb that went off. It was about a thousand, um, you know, and it.

That is a great question. It was a transition. It was a transformation and really a return to what my inclination was in my as a kid. What helped me make that transition were a couple images in particular that I saw. And this was spread out over the course of a few years. But one of those images was.

Actually taken of the [00:08:00] National Forest surrounding Mount St. Helens, and this was such a beautiful image that the company I worked for at the time printed it out as a big poster and framed it and hung it up on a wall outside my office. So I saw this image multiple times a day and it was this beautiful false color infrared of the forest and in the middle of the image was Mount St.

Helens and I could vividly remember the photographs. that appeared in National Geographic and in the newspaper following the Mount St. Helens eruption in, God, what was it, 1980? And just this vast area of devastation, as far as the eye could see, trees knocked down, all the branches stripped off, just apocalyptic looking images.

And this satellite image was taken, I think, about 10 years after the eruption. And you could clearly still see the blast zone surrounding the volcano in the middle of this poster. But then, in the National Forest for miles and miles around that, was this [00:09:00] much greater systematic devastation of clear cut logging.

The forest looked like, literally like a checkerboard of these giant tracks that had just been cut down to the dirt. And I looked at that and I thought, Wow, I mean, the devastation from this apocalyptic eruption paled in comparison to the devastation caused by the U. S. Forest Service's management policy for our national forests.

And I remember describing this image to my parents a few days later. And they were both well read people, watched the network news every night, had a daily paper they read every morning. And as I described this, they got really quiet. And at one point, my mother said to me, do you mean they cut down trees in the national forests and that was light bulb.

Number 1, that was like, oh, wow. You know, everybody needs to see this image so that we can [00:10:00] understand this for themselves. And that got me started on the path toward thinking about. Leaving healthcare and a steady salary and starting a nonprofit conservation organization. Yeah. So what were your hurdles then?

Like you had, I mean, like, that's a hard thing to do first of all. Right. So you have to give you credit for doing it, but yeah, that couldn't have been easy. It took me a few years to talk myself into it. And even back then, this was, you know, happening around the year 2000, health insurance was a big consideration, big stumbling block myself and my wife.

It's like, well, we tried to get individual coverage. This is the dark days before the affordable care act, you know, and my wife got rejected because. She had, like, turned her ankle a couple of times and had to get some medical care, and it was just trivial stuff now. Yeah. And we thought, okay, how hard is this going to be?

And are we willing to take that risk [00:11:00] and exposure? And then the, then the other thing was. Yes, leaving a salary, leaving benefits, you got to go out and find the money yourself. Any small business owner as well familiar with that, and it's not going to shed any tears for me in that situation, right? But in this case, you're, you're raising it from philanthropic foundations.

It's kind of a different environment, a different world that we had a little familiarity with, but leaving the comfort. Of those material things to set out on your own might, I have a big hat tip for anybody who takes that kind of leap of faith. Uh, and the other thing I'll say that was really helpful was a very patient and forgiving spouse who ran for the first couple of years before I could pay myself anything was.

I would say SkyTruth's number one supporter for sure, for sure. So you have the company or the organization now working pretty well. So you're looking for environmental activity all over [00:12:00] the globe. How do you go about sorting through data? Do people help you do that? How does that work? Cause it's gotta be a lot, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. Potentially there's a huge amount. And when I started Skype Treat, there were, there was just a handful of what they call earth observation satellites that were in the civilian realm where you could get imagery and where you could get imagery for free. So there weren't a lot of choices when I started.

In the last couple of decades, as you are well aware, there's just been this explosion in space science and in all kinds of players jumping in and launching all kinds of satellites for highly specialized uses, but also just for general Earth observation purposes. The European Space Agency in particular has steadily launched this very, very highly capable fleet of satellites and [00:13:00] we're able to access all the data that they produce for free through, you know, in the cloud.

And of course, NASA continues to operate the Landsat satellite program and other satellites where the data are freely available. So yeah, there's a lot to choose from, potentially a lot to comb through, a lot of needles in a lot of haystacks if you're not kind of focused. But we've been very flexible in our approach that we've been kind of, uh, I think innovative in looking for.

Emerging and salient environmental issues, combining that with our knowledge of, okay, what's the toolkit and space capable of right now? And then based on those, you know, kind of integrating those 2 and figuring out. Okay. Where do we want to focus our efforts now? But also because of my own background, a lot of our work has been focused on kind of shining a spotlight on that.

The impacts of fossil fuel exploration, transportation development, [00:14:00] you know, on the mining side and the oil and gas drilling side, we've done a lot of work throughout our history on that. And our attempt there was really to, to show the impacts that people weren't seeing and hearing about. Even before I started sky truth, people were obviously talking about the greenhouse gas impacts, the climate impacts of burning fossil fuels, but very few people understood what the on the ground local community impacts are of actually living in a place where they're drilling and fracking, uh, for oil or gas.

What's that like to have somebody drill a well, you know, just down the street or on the neighbor's property. What's that coal mining and Appalachia actually look like that's powering so much of the national electricity grid. So, a lot of our work has focused on that throughout the years. And originally it was all manual.

It was us downloading images one at a time. Right. Um, you know, on our [00:15:00] desktop computer and bringing it up on the screen. Yeah. What interesting thing is this image showing us? We're not, right? Right. Um, But data technology has come a long way in the last 20 years. Um, now we have all these satellite images available to us in the cloud.

You don't have to download anything onto your desktop, your laptop anymore. You can build. Analytical solutions in the cloud, apply them to imagery in the cloud, and then just download the results if you want to see it. And often that download takes the form of populating a public interactive map with the results and perhaps sending notifications to people who have subscribed to be notified if you see anything interesting in the places they care about.

So that's allowed us to scale our operation tremendously. Yeah, I can imagine. And so when you're, I mean, gosh, it's still, [00:16:00] even so it still seems like quite a bit. So when you find something like, I guess, how do you go through that process of being like, okay, this is worth publishing. Maybe this isn't, maybe give us an example or two of things that you found interesting over your career that you guys have found and like, what's kind of come of that.

I feel like, okay, you see something you've got to have a fact checking process. Right? Right. Yeah. Yeah. Those are great questions. And I'll just say, you know, we are targeting the imagery that we're analyzing. We're not just looking at every satellite image that's coming down from every day. We can't afford the coffee to keep all the interns awake to be able to do that kind of thing.

But we do have a new tool in our toolkit, which is artificial intelligence. So we are using techniques like machine learning to take our human experts, create high quality. What they call label data sets sample data sets and feed those [00:17:00] into a program to build and train a computer model how to recognize patterns in the imagery that our human analysts care about.

And so you got to be very intentional about that. There are some artificial intelligence techniques that just look at changes from one image to the next in kind of a non, a non definitive way. Just pay something changed over here. We don't know what, but, but our approach right now is much more targeted.

And the example we have, we started first with is called global fishing watch. That was our first foray into using. Machine learning to develop intelligent models to be able to analyze data. And in this case, the data wasn't imagery, it was ship location and identification broadcasts collected by satellites, radio frequency broadcasts from a system called automatic identification system, AIS.

And we realized when [00:18:00] we started working with that AIS data, that often some ships don't broadcast. Honestly, who they are, what they are and what they're doing, but we found by reconstructing their broadcasts as they moved across the surface of the ocean, we could tell from their pattern of movement, what they were actually up to.

And in some cases identify, Hey, this, this vessel that says it's a passenger ship, a cruise ship. It's actually engaged in long line fishing activity for tuna out in the middle of the Pacific ocean, right? Yeah. So that became the essence, the inspiration for taking all of that broadcast data from all of the ships in the ocean every day.

And now I think that's on the order of about a hundred million new data points every day. And then building us. Mark system in the cloud that could process all that data and extract all of the [00:19:00] patterns of movement that look like gear in the water fishing activity and just put that on a map for everybody to see and that just was a game changer for understanding the pervasiveness of commercial fishing activity throughout the ocean I would say like, um, you know, there's obviously implications for like people here, you know, nonprofits would be interested in that NGOs, but like governments would probably also really want to know, yes, are there people who are breaking our laws or are there other countries breaking our laws?

Do you get requests from different agencies, different organizations knowing? Hey, so, you know, We were curious about your data. How does that work? Yes, absolutely. Once we launched that and everybody picked their jaws back up off the floor after looking at all of this fishing throughout the ocean, governments definitely started approaching us.

And we set up Global Fishing Watch as a stand alone [00:20:00] non profit entity. Shortly after the public launch and now they've got more than 100 staff and they're working in 30 countries around the world working very closely with coastal governments so that they can understand what fishing activity is actually happening in their national waters in their exclusive economic zone, who's out there and what are they doing?

And now the challenge is to start establishing protected areas beyond national jurisdictions, out in the 60 percent of the ocean that's called the high seas. There's a big conservation push for that. And so understanding the human extractive activities that are happening beyond the reach of any national government is kind of the next frontier in policy and understanding and sustainable management of.

Resources in the ocean. Yeah, that's all is, you know, I can imagine how important this is when you think you're monitoring and tracking and reporting conservation efforts [00:21:00] and then finding out that there are people off grid completely combating. Those are counterproductive to those goals, but again, once you see them, how does the government or whoever's responsible get alerted and then fact check and make sure, yes, this is not a cruise liner.

It's a fishing operation. And as it. Mhm. Are you getting pushback from any other entities who are saying we don't want you fact checking us? Uh, we have a history of getting that kind of pushback. Um, I'm sure sometimes in a semi threatening way, at least legally, but no, that's a great question. There's a difference between sitting at your computer in your office.

And seeing some activity happening out in the ocean and then having the assets to be able to go out in the ocean to do something about that. Right? So that's what we call, you know, it's the sort of administrative use of this information in these tools versus the direct enforcement support [00:22:00] use of it.

And. One thing we had to do to make global fishing watch affordable to make those hundred million new data points every day that are coming from a commercial source affordable was to put in a three day time delay between us receiving the data enough publishing and a result from it because the really.

high value commercial part of that data is supporting countries that have enforcement assets to bring to bear on the water. You know, European and North American countries that have coast guards and navies that are patrolling our waters. But that leaves out the developing world where those countries don't have those kind of assets.

They don't have the financial resources to buy big commercial data sets. Even if they did, they wouldn't be able to do what we can do. Send steel on the water out there to that point at that [00:23:00] time and intercept that vessel. So that's why one of our, kind of our ethos, it's, it's SkyTruth. And also at Global Fish and Watch is to make all of this information and insight that we're producing available for free, just to maximize the uptake by people who are in a position to actually make change happen based on the information we're producing.

So that was the long and winding detour. I don't know if I answered your question. I think it was in there somewhere. Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. Well, I mean, there have to be things that you're, you're pretty proud of that you guys have accomplished over the years. Do you have a few that off the top of your head, you're like, that was, that was pretty cool.

We got to, you know, sort out what was going on in, there was some action that they kind of kept that from continuing to happen. Anything like that? Yeah, definitely. You know, one of the first things. Was working on an issue that was very, it's very close to home [00:24:00] for sky trees again. We're headquartered in West Virginia, which always surprises people when they find out that we're, you know, working around the world on environmental issues from the rain forest to the middle of the ocean, but also right in our own backyard.

So this problem of mountaintop removal. coal mining in Appalachia. That was one of the first issues that we started to address in the early days of Skytruth with satellite imagery. I mean, this is just an apocalyptic destruction of landscape. To scoop out the coal and again, another piece of that fossil fuel story of impact that was being really overlooked by people who are focused just on the problems with burning coal, right from the climate perspective, but just the wholesale destruction of the West Virginia landscape to, to produce this energy source [00:25:00] was something that was really overlooked.

And even when you're on the ground there in West Virginia, it's hard to see because most of the roads are following the streams and rivers in the valley floor. Yeah, and this mining is all happening up above over your head, up on the mountaintops and behind fences with big, no trespassing signs. Yeah, yeah, I grew up near there, so I understand.

Yeah. And, you know, occasionally a big boulder might roll downhill and hopefully not through your house. That has happened actually to real people, um, but it's hard to see. And so satellite imagery really was able to provide a point of view, not only literally a point of view from 250 miles up, but also allowing us to do a little time travel.

Because the satellite image archive goes back to the early 1970s, and so we can show [00:26:00] people not only what is happening right now, but what the landscape look like 5, 10, 30 years ago. So, you can see how fast and dramatically things have been changing. So, we started doing that work. We had a group of purchase called Appalachian voices really.

Great little environmental advocacy group working on this and other problems in Appalachian. They, they said, Hey, SkyTurf, can you use your satellites to tell us how many mountains have been destroyed by mountaintop mining? And my answer was, sure, we can do that. But I mean, aren't there government documents, you know, permits showing where all the mining activity has occurred?

Couldn't you just. Do it that way. And they went, yeah, there's documents, but we recently did a study that showed that in one part of West Virginia, some 40 percent of the actual observable mining [00:27:00] activity was not recorded on any of the official. Mining permit documents. It was happening outside of permit areas.

And I thought, how could that be? First of all, that's just an incredible story right there. And then I thought, well, yes, we can do this. So we started systematically looking at satellite imagery and mapping the observable impact of these mining operations and measuring it. And we published the data. And we started updating that data set every year.

We still update it every year. We've automated the process now. So once a year we can kind of push a button. You know, and it goes. But we've always made the data available. And uh, scientific researchers started to find it. And they started to ask us about it. And we're like, yeah, take it, use it. Here's how we produced it.

And now I think we're closing in on, uh, nearly a dozen peer reviewed scientific studies have been done. Based on our data set that are looking at things like [00:28:00] the hydrological alteration of the landscape and the resulting downstream flash flooding risk, the changes to the ecosystems and quantifying that and the loss of habitat for endangered species like cerulean warblers and other creatures.

Most importantly, the human health impacts associated with living near one of these mining operations. But one of the first studies was done by Duke University, and it correlated the amount of mining upstream, based on our data, with the concentration of drinking water contaminants of concern in the downstream water.

Including arsenic, cadmium, lead, other registered contaminants controlled by the EPA. Um, and when they published that study, it encouraged the EPA to do something that they had never before done, but always had the authority to [00:29:00] do, which is to reject, to overturn a permit for new mining issued by the U. S.

Army Corps of Engineers. EPA had always deferred to the Army Corps of Engineers on that, um, and they overturned a permit and the mining industry challenged, and it went all the way up to a federal appeals court that affirms the EPA did indeed have that, that legal power to overturn a permit. The plaintiffs in the mining industry took it up to the U.

S. Supreme Court. And the U. S. Supreme Court said, no, we think that appeals court decision can stand. So that data actually resulted in a successful legal affirmation that the EPA. Indeed had final say and could overrule the poor of engineers. It sounds wonky. It is wonky. It's a policy thing now. Yeah, but that's that's [00:30:00] the world we live in.

That's the world we live in. So we were proud of that. Another 1 was after Hurricane Katrina. And Rita went just buzz song through the Gulf of Mexico in 2005. We begged our friends at radar set international in Canada. If they could give us a couple of radar satellite images of the Gulf of Mexico in the aftermath of those storms, because we knew there were thousands of oil and gas platforms out there.

And we knew that these had went roaring through the Gulf as category five hurricanes, extremely powerful. And we were worried, how did that infrastructure fare that onslaught of wind and wave? And so we got a couple of free satellite images. And when I opened them up and looked at them, my jaw dropped because there were oil slicks covering a 700 square kilometer area out in the Gulf of Mexico.

Clearly there were sources of [00:31:00] oil from multiple known platform locations in the Gulf. And sources that were likely from pipelines on the seafloor, dozens of points of leakage were apparent on the imagery. And we started publishing these images with very precise latitude, longitude coordinates. My hope was that the government actually used these to send response assets out and to notify the companies, hey, you got, uh, you got something broken out there, fix it.

Greenpeace also started using the images to say to counter the industry and government narrative. U. S. government officials and oil industry officials were saying repeatedly on news broadcasts into the media, not a drop of oil has spilled from the offshore infrastructure as a consequence of these storms.

And we were like, no, not a drop, more like [00:32:00] 9 million gallons. Of oil has spilled. So Greenpeace started using this imagery. And then about a week later, we got a letter in the mail from a law firm that worked for one of the oil companies operating out there in the Gulf saying that Our imagery was being used by others to claim that their client was polluting the Gulf of Mexico.

And that's not true. And we insist that you take these images offline and in their place post this apology that we very helpfully written for you. Otherwise, we may have to take some action. So we were a one person operation at that point, me and a board of directors. And so that was pretty threatening.

That was pretty intimidating for us, but we ended up being right about that. And the U. S. Coast Guard published a report about a year later that they gave to Congress saying that, yeah, [00:33:00] there was at least 9 million gallons spilled by industry account alone. So self reporting from the industry, what their spills were.

And yet a year later, there were still people talking to the media saying not a drop of oil was spilled in the Gulf of Mexico, which was just astonishing. But it's such a strange thing to me because if it's something that can be verified and also. No one would blame the company that, that for a storm, that's just something that's an act of nature.

It's what you call it. So it's almost like reverse PR themselves. It's almost, it would be much better for them to say, we know this is an issue. We'll fix it because they're going to have to fix it anyway. It's better to do that than pretend like it's not happening. I would agree with you there. If you're trying to get government approval to expand oil drilling into more areas, if you're really eager to get into the Eastern Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida, which has a huge tourism industry, If you [00:34:00] really want to expand drilling up the East coast of the United States, you don't want it to look like something like a storm, which highly predictable is going to cause a big mess like this off the beaches of the Carolinas and New Jersey and New York, right?

Yeah. Until it does happen. And then you have an even bigger mess on your hands. Anyways, I know, I know, you know, I know I'm preaching to the choir is an opportunity for them to. Improved technologies and they're building systems and just like you would for housing where the windows in Florida withstand 200 mile an hour winds.

That's that's standard, right? Like, I would think you're now going, okay, where our infrastructure needs to withstand a cat 5 storm because otherwise this is going to happen. We're worse. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, but that's really awesome. It must be rewarding to actually see the results good and bad. Um, just to know that you're having some sort of impact because I know a lot of people in their environmental careers.

Just aren't feeling that [00:35:00] or seeing that. So they're wondering what's the point, you know, like you said, from their cubicles with no windows. And so, but what we're getting a little short on time. What's the, what's the future for, for skywatch? Do you consider yourself as a watchdog organization? Well, we're sky truth.

There is an entity called Skywatch, and there's even one called, I believe, Skynet, believe it or not, and have they not seen the Terminator movie? It's actually surprising I didn't call you Skynet. Yeah, that's true, actually. Anyway, uh. Well, there's a couple of things. There's two big environmental crises that are firmly on our radar.

One is the biodiversity crisis. It's just the shocking loss of species and populations of animals and insects around the world, mostly because of human activity altering habitat. And so the world's biggest coordinated conservation effort right now [00:36:00] That's targeting that biodiversity crisis is called 30 by 30, and it's an effort to get countries around the world to commit to protecting 30 percent of their land and waters by 2030.

Well, 2030 is coming up pretty quick and we're way off track. We're at about 17 percent coverage on land globally and about 8 percent out in the ocean. So we were approached by Bloomberg Philanthropies, which is very interested in promoting this conservation effort, particularly in the ocean. And they said, hey, there needs to be an easy way for non experts in the public to be able to learn something about this conservation effort.

Let's get it out of the ivory tower of conservation scientists and government policy people, and let's get it out in front of the general public. So it's gotta be accessible to the public and, and there also needs [00:37:00] to be a way for them to see how far off track we are, right? Mm-hmm . Because we need to build public awareness and public pressure on governments to jump in and participate and to participate in transparent.

Equitable and effective ways, not just draw a line around the place and say, okay, it's protected and then not actually do anything, right? So, we've built this tool called the 30 by 30 progress tracker. So, anybody can go on our website and pull up that map and see, hey, how's my country doing? How's my country participating in this effort?

They can even have a little fun with a little sketch up your own scenario tool and draw their own hypothetical protected areas and see what that would do to help close the gap. Um, and then if they're really interested and want to get in more sophisticated, actual geospatial planning, or if they want to get involved in helping advocate.

To their [00:38:00] government to get involved. We provide a curated list of other resources that they can go to get engaged in other meaningful ways with this. Well, the other major project we're working on now is another AI powered project. And this one is also focusing on oil pollution in the ocean. But rather than the, just the big catastrophic spills that people hear about, we're shining a light on a hidden problem, the chronic day to day oil pollution in the ocean that accompanies Human industrial activity and the two industrial activities were focused on that caused most of the soil pollution or commercial shipping, you know, moving all the cargo and goods around the world in these gigantic container ships.

And also, of course, moving cargos of crude oil, liquefied natural gas and other fossil fuels around in these giant tankers pollution from offshore [00:39:00] oil and gas infrastructure. As we expand further and further into the ocean, chasing the last drops of oil, we're building these platforms in new places that are often chronic pollution sources.

And that's something that people haven't been able to see. It's been happening over the horizon, out in the ocean, kind of hidden, swept under the rug with problem. That satellite imagery and AI are allowing us to bring to light so check out cerulean and you can see in almost real time everywhere. Our computer model detects what it thinks is a new oil slick out in the ocean.

And in many cases, identifying who we think is responsible for that pollution. Interesting. I mean. That almost seems like it'd be overwhelming to see all of that all at once, but maybe that, I mean, that's kind of the point. I know, but, uh, it's, uh, quite intense. That's kind of wild. I never thought about using satellites.

That way. It's a very interesting stuff really is. It can [00:40:00] be overwhelming and yeah, that is the point for the pollution coming from vessels. In many cases, this is pollution that's been illegal under international law since I was wearing bell bottoms. Um, and like early 1970s, they outlawed the discharge of untreated oily wastewater from ships at sea.

And, but they've been getting away with it ever since then. So now we're tightening the noose on that problem and making it visible and hopefully actionable. Yeah. I mean, I think that's very cool. It was like, I wish we had more time. It's amazing how fast this goes by every time we do it. But we have a couple of things we love to end on, and one of them is something we call hashtag field notes, where we ask our guests to tell us share memorable moments of their work in the field.

So we encourage our listeners to share their stories with hashtag field notes as well in social media. But we did hear that you once climbed into a tree to rescue. Well, actually, you just tell us this [00:41:00] story, your staff kayaking trip. How did this go? How did it go? What happened? Okay. First of all, caveat, I have the most boring field notes.

Which is to say, I have none because again, I spend all of my time and interacting with the environment from a work perspective during a computer screen. And so sadly, I don't get out in the field very much, but, you know, every now and then the sky true team gets together in person. We're a mostly.

Distributed remote organization, but we gather together on a semi regular basis to see each other in 3D. We like to do things when we're on those trips. We like to get outside and do stuff. And on one of these gatherings, we got some kayaks and we went kayaking down Antietam Creek. Not far from Skytree's headquarters, we were pulled up on the banks of the creek, having a break, having a snack, and we heard these little mewing, meowing sounds [00:42:00] that appeared to be coming from the air, and we looked around, and we looked up, and there we saw two little kittens clinging to a tree on the banks of the creek, about 20 feet up, and Looking like they were stuck and confused and making the most pitiful little noises.

And so, uh, I thought I'd have to do something about that. Although my cat owning friends have told me you never see cat skeletons up in trees. Do you, they always figure it out eventually, right? That's funny. They knew what they were doing. They were doing. Do they or do they always use their little meal to get someone to get them down?

Well, that could well be a very good survival mechanism in itself. And it worked on me. So I, uh, got, I clambered up this tree very precariously. This tree turned out to have Thorns in it, um, [00:43:00] and, uh, tore myself up, but I managed to hand off two kittens to one of my team members down below. And I just had such a satisfied feeling that I had done something hands on, you know, for the environment that day.

I guess if you consider cats part of the environment, which they shouldn't be, taking them out of the environment and returning them to their home, I think is probably a good thing to do for the environment. So yeah, probably. Yeah. A little adventure. That's very cool. Well, we are out of time, but is there anything else you want to mention before we let you go?

Yeah, I just wanted to say we're living in a particularly chaotic, turbulent time for a lot of us. And a lot of people are concerned about really tangible things. Their job, their career, how are they going to make [00:44:00] a living? What they thought was their life's work. You know, they may need to make a sharp turn.

And figure out something else. That's I just want to acknowledge that that's a very scary place to be. I've been there doing it intentionally and it was scary to have it done to you is is really hard. And I just and going along with that is this loss of faith in government to provide a lot of the basic things.

That we were kind of counting on in society, one of those things being knowing what's around you in the environment that could be harmful to you and your family, knowing what's in the food you're eating in the water. You're drinking and I just see a situation now where. That emphasis necessarily has to shift to action at a more local level, people getting hands on, getting involved [00:45:00] with monitoring, data collection, publishing information and making it accessible and available to people, rescuing government data sets and putting them in places where people can still get at it.

There's going to be a huge amount of work to do there to pick up the slack that's happening right now. And I also think there's going to be a lot of need for Skytruth like entities that are using data to act as a watchdog publicly and calling the alarm when we observe things that aren't right. I feel there's, that could be happening in many areas of society right now.

And if SkyTruth can stand as any kind of model and inspiration for people to be doing the same in public health, public safety, social justice, that would make me incredibly pleased and proud. Awesome. That's definitely a good message to end on, especially now. And [00:46:00] lastly, where can people get in touch with you if they'd like to chat more?

Oh, of course we have a website sky truth. org sky truth is on LinkedIn and Instagram and blue sky. You can find me personally, John Amos on blue sky and LinkedIn as well. And you can always email us, drop us a line to hello at sky truth. org. Awesome. Thank you. It was great having you as a guest today.

We'll see you soon. Thank you. Wonderful talking with you. That's our show. Thank you, John, for joining us today. Please be sure to check us out each and every Friday. Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review. Bye. See you [00:47:00] everybody.