We’ve made fun in the past of the lack of basic electrical infrastructure in North Korea, comparing its light footprint from space with the anti human progress Earth Hour, and with good reason – It’s really a dark country in more ways than one.
This is from NASA Earth Observatory:
City lights at night are a fairly reliable indicator of where people live. But this isn’t always the case, and the Korean Peninsula shows why. As of July 2012, South Korea’s population was estimated at roughly 49 million people, and North Korea’s population was estimated at about half that number. But where South Korea is gleaming with city lights, North Korea has hardly any lights at all—just a faint glimmer around Pyongyang.
On September 24, 2012, the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi NPP satellite captured this nighttime view of the Korean Peninsula. This imagery is from the VIIRS “day-night band,” which detects light in a range of wavelengths from green to near-infrared and uses filtering techniques to observe signals such as city lights, gas flares, auroras, wildfires, and reflected moonlight.
acquired September 24, 2012
The next image is also interesting.
The top, wide-area image shows the Korean Peninsula, parts of China and Japan, the Yellow Sea, and the Sea of Japan (also known as the East Sea). The white inset box shows the lights of fishing boats in the Yellow Sea, and many of the boats appear to form a line, as if marking a watery boundary between nations.
Following the 1953 armistice ending the Korean War, per-capita income in South Korea rose to about 17 times the per-capital income level of North Korea, according to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Worldwide, South Korea ranks 12th in electricity production, and 10th in electricity consumption, per 2011 estimates. North Korea ranks 71st in electricity production, and 73rd in electricity consumption, per 2009 estimates.
Learn more about the VIIRS day-night band and nighttime imaging of Earth in our new feature story: Out of the Blue and Into the Black.
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References
- CIA World Factbook. (2012, November 13) North Korea. Accessed November 29, 2012.
- CIA World Factbook. (2012, November 14) South Korea. Accessed November 29, 2012.
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OMG. HOW contrasting & also FASCINATING.
Thank You for that, MUCH Appreciated.
This is what the whole world will look like once Agenda 21 in implemented.
What is ‘Agenda 21’ please Jonathan?.
That’s what sustainability is all about. And they have no cars, not even fridges! Wonder if they take Greens as immigrants.
The lights are on, but nobody is at home!
Agenda 21 is likely a proposal to raise energy prices by Heavily Carbon Taxing them into competition with higher cost and less reliable GREEN ENERGY then altogether eliminating CO2 producing energy sources until electricity cannot be produced for 21 of the 24 hours of each day but that won’t matter because 3 hours per day is all anyone will be able to afford.
The affordability factor comes from the 99%’ers that will be responsible for the complete worldwide redistribution of wealth such that everyone is as rich as the lowest 5% WORLD WIDE (hey we may ALL be poor but we are ALL equal in our destituteness)
This would look so much better for N. Korea if the image happened to be taken at the moment of a nuclear test. Or a nuclear accident, which is becoming more likely by the day…
Wrong Anthony.
Earth Hour is that shiny bit at the middllower mid of the first picture.
typo… mid lower
http://cires.colorado.edu/news/press/2013/globalwarming.html?utm_source=Press+Release+Contacts&utm_campaign=ab114a89b1-CIRES_PR+-+global+land+warming
Half Tide Rock
It is all a cunning strategic plan, hard to bomb a nation back to the stone-age when they are already there.
TrendyH, google ‘Agenda 21’. It is a UN initiative whose essential point is to institute a system of indoctrination in schools around the world where ALL curricula (Math, English, Socials, PE) are dominated by dictated educational themes and content, “sustainability”, “Pluralism”, “social justice”, which as you (surely) know are, in the minds of many, nice words, but in the hands of these social engineers are convenient packages in which to articulate straight-up Marxist doctrine. Yes, it’s a UN-sanctioned worldwide initiative to propagandize children into Marxist ideology. You can find plenty of information of it, both reliable and hysterical, and make up your own mind.
Let’s assume this is new ot you and you are skeptical. After all, what responsible government would assent to implementing such a program in its schools? Well, I can list a number. Agenda 21 has been around for MANY years now, but is only just now gaining a good head of steam, and has many footsoldiers in North America, including in higher echelons of government. They have made far more progress than you might think.
To get an idea just how much, you needn’t look any further than the Mandate, Mission and Vision page of the Ministry of Education in my home province, Manitoba. Check out how the appropriate keywords have been inserted, here:
http://www.edu.gov.mb.ca/edu/mandate.html
Pay particular attention to the 4 “overarching goals” and the 6 “priority action areas”.
It’s particularly enlightening to understand that the first version of the new mission did not include the only two actual EDUCATIONAL considerations, in action area 1. Apparently someone decided this looked bad, and added these in as an afterthought — see the original version here:
http://web.archive.org/web/20100713115210/http://www.edu.gov.mb.ca/edu/mandate.html
And this is not simply an on-paper piece of silliness. Anyone with kids in the system here can verify that this stuff has become up-front and center as part of the public school program. Check out this recent conference sponsored by the Ministry, attended by senior school staff, and at which the Minister herself spoke:
http://www.educatingforaction.ca/
Check out the talk by Paul Betts here, and some of the other titles:
http://www.educatingforaction.ca/thurs_am.html
And this is only one of a series of such meeting happening here.
And Manitoba is no exception, by any means.
NK here we come…
An environmentalists wet dream, this is center fold material for any environut.
Let’s hope the soda nazi doesn’t see this article.
trendyhammer says:
April 10, 2013 at 2:24 pm
What is ‘Agenda 21′ please Jonathan?
I am not Jonathan, but Agenda 21 is the United Nations Environment Programme.
North Korea – alarmist heaven.
CO2 output per head amongst the lowest in the world, “the science/system is settled” and no dissent to the Team leaders’ great thoughts is allowed.
So the fishing fleet is producing more light than North Korea…astounding
Every cloud has a silver lining.
Kind of a paradise for the ‘garden telescope’ astronomers.
This is what Warmists want in a locality near you today. Many countries around the world suffer from severe electricity poverty. And what do middle class Warmists want for THEM? Use less coal or else. I am so angry. Al Gore uses a lot of electrictiy. So does Pachauri. So does the UK Prime Minister. So does Obama. So does……………………………… but the poor people of the Third World should use less!!!! Less of how much I ask you????? I will end my rant here (for now at least).
Well, North Korea is mostly rugged mountainous territory, and we’re not going to see lights there. And their young leader subscribes to the idea of sharply reducing their carbon footprint in an Al Gorian way to save the planet from annihilation from warmer temperatures, so there’s just the minimum illumination as needed, like in Pyongyang. … Just joking, lol. / / /
If it were true about North the Korean leader un being all in for radical carbon cutbacks, he’d be right in league with his possible military opposition in US Admiral Samuel Locklear, commander of U.S. Pacific Command. Insane. Maybe NK’s un and Locklear should join forces and together do their little turn on the catwalk, if you know what I mean. http://newnostradamusofthenorth.blogspot.se/2013/04/admiral-locklear-head-of-us-pacific.html
Let’s pray for the North Korean people. Surely light is good.
Below are just a few comparisons between North Korea and South Korea:
Life expectancy:
North Korea – Men 65.6
South Korea – 79.3
I was going to carry on with a similar comparison but then I found out friends at the Guardian did it all for me. It does not make good reading at all. If you are a communist DO NOT read the following link.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/datablog/2013/apr/08/south-korea-v-north-korea-compared
Further references:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/22/north-korea-life-expectancy-falls
http://www.businessinsider.com/life-in-north-korea-vs-south-korea-2013-4
Anthony / Mods,
Maybe it’s my browser or something else but my comments are no longer awaiting moderation. Delete this if you want as it’s just something I noticed.
REPLY: Welcome to phase 1 of the new WUWT, see main page – Anthony
To RC – Thank You for your reply. MUCH Appreciated. 🙂
The nighttime view of North Korea is exactly what the warmists would like the rest of the world to look like. Of course, the area where the power is on is where they and the political elites plan to live in comfort while they govern everyone else who manages to survive in their dark and dreary utopia.
I wonder if the DPRK suffers from any bias in temp recording given that waste heat and UHI would be next to non-existent. It’s pretty much unchanged in 60 years. Watermelons may like to see what the world would be like under their agenda if it was imposed on us in the future, but they may not like the data that today destroys their argument for it.