Posted on 05/12/2005 9:06:45 PM PDT by Congressman Billybob
Edited on 05/12/2005 9:18:18 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
No, this is not about theology. Nor about a sudden discovery, or a blinding insight. It is literally about light. It’s also about a NASA photograph, a Southern front porch, and global political theory.
Begin with this NASA composite photo. It shows the whole globe photographed during clear nights. Named “Earth at Night,” it is shown here in a small file.
Admire that photograph, and hold that thought.
Three years after the end of WW II, when rationing had ended and people could travel by car again, my parents packed two adults, three children, an elderly dog and a pile of suitcases into a large, lumpy maroon car, a Buick as I recall, and headed south. We came to Highlands, NC, to the house where I now live, to visit with my mother’s folks.
I mention two aspects of that trip today. One is the comforting sound of a warm spring rain on a tin roof. The other is the lights at night that were visible from the porch. There were, as I recall, three or four lights near the horizon at night, the center cities of small towns in South Carolina and Georgia.
Today, especially in winter when the air is bitter cold and clear, there are thousands of lights strung across the horizon like tumbled quartz stones, a necklace of white, red and blue. There are the turning white and blue tower lights, and the pulsing red outer markers of ten airports. And when the Clemson Tigers play in “Death Valley,” we can see the glow of that stadium from this porch.
To understand the geography I’m describing, go to the Amtrak website and click up the route map of that venerable American train, the Southern Crescent. The Crescent leaves New York City in the morning, headed southwest. Twenty-four hours later, it rolls into New Orleans headed due west. What we see from our porch are the cities on that route in the 150 miles from just west of Gastonia, North Carolina, to Gainesville, Georgia.
The towns have mostly grown into cities. More than that, they have all become alive at night, with lights that burn until dawn. The explosive growth of those lights is due more to the advance of civilization and development than just to numbers of people.
This view is a small version of the composite photograph of “The Earth at Night,” which NASA published about five years ago. It tells a very powerful story with no words, but merely the evidence of light – harbinger of development and civilization – in a telling pattern around our world.
The spread of these global light sources marks the great cities of the world along all the coasts, and also on the major rivers within each nation. But the lights are neither uniform nor in proportion to population. The most lighted, most advanced nation is the United States, though its population is only about 300 million. One of the darker nations on the planet is China, despite its population of about 1 billion people.
Note especially the Korean peninsula. Mapped by the lights alone, South Korea looks like an island, separated from the Asian mainland. One of the most backward and benighted nations in the world, North Korea, nearly disappears on this light map of the world.
India, also with a 1 billion population, is marked with more and brighter lights than its neighbor, China. Eastern Europe, whose population is about as dense as Western Europe, is markedly darker. The “four Tigers” of Asia are all much brighter than all the other nations of Asia. And Africa is literally the “Dark Continent.”
What conclusions can be drawn from that photograph?
In general, the brightest lights (marking the greatest development) are in the nations with free societies and free market economics. The darker nations are the socialist nations and dictatorships. The darkest of all are the communist nations. The major exception to those general rules is in Western Europe. But those nations were largely developed and civilized before they turned to socialism as a philosophy, and stagnated economically.
This single image, with no words added except a brief knowledge of the nations involved, refutes the philosophies of many who attack the United States for leading the world in the wrong direction. The nay-sayers range from the “leaders” of many of the depressed nations, to street demonstrators in the US, to a majority of the faculties at most American universities.
Yes, I have seen the light. Now you have seen the light as well. Eventually, even the faculties of American universities will see the light – I hope – for the sake of the next generation of Americans and the next generation of all the nations of the world. Based on evidence to date, the last group to see the light will be the Ambassadors and staff of the United Nations.
About the Author: John Armor is a First Amendment attorney and author who lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. John_Armor@aya.yale.edu
As for "more recent data," this photograph is a professionally-done composite of perhaps hundreds of individual photographs to get all parts of the Earth at night, and in cloudless weather. If and when NASA does this detailed work again, the photo will be updated.
John / Billybob
. . . because that would be a portrait of the middle class.Excellent idea! Calling all Photoshoppers!
. . . and the population of Canada is concentrated primarily within 100 miles of the US border.So on an image of this scale you might easily mistake most of the lighted area of Canadian for part of the US.
Here's a similar NASA image of global population density:
http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/images/116/pop_density.jpg
It shows primarily that dimming the light picture for population would drastically reduce the brightness of China and India. And to a lesser extent, Europe.
Awesome photo.
That is amazing, just by looking at the lights you can tell which nations are the advanced ones and which are not. Africa literally is the "dark continent".
Well they do say that about a quarter of the energy used by the entire world is used in the US . . . this is pretty much a picture of that!
The large file (approx 30 MB) is an amazing one!!
Thanks for the link.
Okay, then dim the lights with the appropriate real population density(cultivable land area divided by no. of people), and not just population.
With regard to the North Korea / South Korea comparison, neither climate or geography or any other factor than the contrast in governments and economies explains the radical difference between North and South.
This is not just a "pretty picture." It is a global, clear, factual proof of the differences between societies, governments and economies. And the answer is clear. We have done it best; the others have done it progressively worse.
John / Billybob
You're welcome!
Thanks for the article Congressman. I found it most interesting.
Why wouldn't N. Korea burn flares by the millions to upstage their neighbors? They could as well use them as misinformation. That is unless they don't have any.
My mind is a quagmire of humor that even I don't understand. I laugh at my own joke that I thought were never funny in the first place.
Furthermore, I don't doubt that the effectiveness of American air cover, indirect artillery, and NGF support during the Korean War was so superb that North Korea would have black outs even if they did have energy to spare.
If I may be the spoilsport today (and my apologies), there is one strange thing and one probable strange thing about that Earth by Night thingy.
1. Cuba is all lit up. I’ve been to Cuba (Havana) and there are no lights to speak of…a rare light here and there coming from an apartment here and an apartment there, but one can say there are really no lights at night.
When Carter was there, I was amazed to see how the Malecón (the seawall which is paralleled by a boulevard) was suddenly all lit as if it were daytime. That isn’t true in real life. It’s dark.
2. That little strip of light going through Panama. It can only be the Panama Canal; except, the Panama Canal runs NW-SE and not NE-SW.
I think if you look at the large image, you can see that while Havana is visible, it's not anywhere near as bright as the Florida coasts, or most any medium sized US city. Most of Cuba is indeed dark. Except the GitMo area of course.
2. That little strip of light going through Panama. It can only be the Panama Canal; except, the Panama Canal runs NW-SE and not NE-SW.
A quick look at a map reveals that little strip of light is actually the southern coast of Panama. The bright light at the northwest end of it is Panama City, while the little spot of light to the northwest of Panama City is Colon. The canal itself runs through pretty unpopulated territory with few lights, and the largest part of it is the big lake, which contains no lights other than a few sets of ship's lights.
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