Guest post by Indur M. Goklany
Lately, North Korea has been very much in the news. Its population—or should I say, “captive population”—greets the passing of the baton from one ruler to another in the same spirit as “Kim is dead, long live Kim!” probably because they are unaware of the following satellite photos. Many readers here have probably encountered them previously.
East Asia at night. Top photo from 1994-95 which outlines North Korea is from MSNBC at http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/19/9564314-satellites-document-north-koreas-dark-ages?pc=25&sp=25. Bottom photo is from 2009. Source: http://agora. ex.nii.ac.jp/~kitamoto/research/rs/stable-lights.html.en.
Not only do the photographs illustrate the lack of economic development in North Korea, they show that it has one of the lightest carbon footprints in the world. And the various indicators of human well-being reflect that dark reality, as shown in the following table.
It wasn’t always thus. In the early 1950s, to the extent data are available, the two countries were about equal in terms of economic development and human well-being. In fact, in 1960, according to the World Bank data, North Korea’s life expectancy was marginally higher than in the South (55.2 yrs vs. 53.0 yrs). Of course, the North’s data may have been fluffed up a little bit by its government before being adopted by the World Bank, but I don’t know for sure.
But over time, South Korea’s freer economic system pulled it ahead. Then, the loss of external support because of the collapse of the Soviet Union turned North Korea into a basket case in the 1990s (see the following figure). Finally, the South also became more democratic and its economic and social systems became more transparent. The consequences are evident in the above photographs and the following figure.
Per capita GDP and per capita CO2 emissions, 1950-2008. Sources: Maddison (2008) and World Bank (2011).
The photographs and the figure are, among other things, also a stark warning of the dangers of excessive zeal in limiting a country’s carbon footprint.
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Keith W. says: December 22, 2011 at 12:14 am Plutonium is one of the most poisonous substances on the planet
Wrong. I used to have a block of plutonium on my desk as a paperweight. Then some greenie nark official confiscated it because I tossed it in his direction. There are no obvious health effects of that ownership. We disposed of that poison myth in the 1970s, which suggests you have not kept up with your reading. Try some modern nerve gases or even natural anthrax or botulism vectors instead if you have to invent a ‘most poisonous’.
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GeoLurking says: December 21, 2011 at 11:29 pm re ANFO explosions
Again, decades ago, possibly pre-1960s, geophysicists analysed seismic properties from large explosions, natural and otherwise. Nuclear had a distinctive fingerprint. It’s unlikely that the fertilizer in the bat cave would trick the system.
Why does the North Korea CO2 line plummet around 1996? What happened? Some change in government policy? Some connection with events in Russia, or China?
The idea that the UN could field ‘Green’ troops is a non starter. The UN can’t even keep the peace when asked let alone anything else. The people it would be trying to control, the West, are those that control the purse strings and even now the US is behind in its contributions and undoubtedly the UK is as well.
North Korea, living relic of The Dark Ages. Pity they don’t allow history tours.
Truthseeker says:
December 21, 2011 at 11:12 pm
North Korea is clearly the CO2 free paradise that the IPCC want for the whole world. I know, lets move the UN to Pyongyang and let those bureaucrats enjoy what they want for everyone else.
Not quite, it’s what they want to impose upon everyone……………except themselves. Just as Kim Jong Il enjoyed his pies looking at the photos of him, & his son, yet I daresay “his people” would probably have preferred a bit more in handfuls of rice than their Beautiful Leader gave them!!!
Happy Christmas to you all & a Happy & Prsoperous New Year! 🙂
AtB SIgning off till 2012!
Plutonium is not one of the most poisonous elements unless you are trying to scare people.
@SAMURAI
“This North Korea evening satellite photo is exactly what the Warmist would love to accomplish for the entire world. A very dark future indeed…”
Astronomers would also love to accomplish this. Difference is, they don’t try to force it on people….
I blame Hans Brix.
Those clever North Koreans – they have invented “dark light” which can’t be seen from space…
Going on from GeoLurking and mayve a wee bit OT…..perhaps there is a God, but maybe not any ‘joined-up thinking’
Why…
Not far from me, in SW Scotland, the British Geological Society (BGS) have an ‘outpost’ measuring and recording seismic activity in all its guises. One of their ‘proudest’ achievements was recording a 1.6 Richter quake when PanAm 103 hit the ground. But, one of their important jobs, if not THE most important, is listening out for nuclear tests as they occur (or not) around the globe.
Of course this listening tackle is very sensitive and as a consequence, BGS have effectively (via objection(s) to the planning permission you need) banned the erection of all large wind turbines within a 50 km radius of their station.
Who’d have guessed, wind turbines sound like earthquakes or nuclear bomb tests?
GeoLurking says:
December 21, 2011 at 11:29 pm
“This is going to sound callous, but bear with me.
The ruling entity in North Korea is kept in place by the civilized world. We feed his hungry with aid since short and stupid, (or whatever the new corpse wanted to call himself when he was alive) focused the entirety of his effort on being a malcontent and developing weapons. If the food dried up, all he had to do was rattle his cage and we (the civilized world) would pony up the goodies.”
You are wrong. N Korea lost support by the Soviet Union but gained support by China (less subsidy than by the Soviets, but still, that’s what keeps the system from collapsing). N Korea is today a buffer zone for the Chinese empire.
Keith W. says:
December 22, 2011 at 12:14 am
“GeoLurking, just him having a reactor that can produce plutonium is enough of a threat. Plutonium is one of the most poisonous substances on the planet. Its lethal dose is unbelievable small. ”
This is disputed. There’s no obvious reason for this legendary toxicity of Plutonium; it should be expected to be about as toxic as similar heavy metals like Cadmium, plus, of course, being radioactive, it would add a cancer risk, but as its half life is way higher than that of say radioactive Iodine, it radiates accordingly less.
http://atomicinsights.com/1995/05/how-deadly-plutonium.html
Shocking numbers in the table. Circa 3 tonnes of carbon to freeze through the winter and grow barely enough rice to survive the year. Ten tonnes gives an industrialised economy. Six times the infant death rate.
@John West. Do you think South Koreans should give thanks to the British and Australian forces who died defending South Korea from the north? Or do you think that they shouldn’t be thanked because they were not American?
Plutonium is not the most lethal by a long way.
http://www.fortfreedom.org/p22.htm
“The photographs and the figure are, among other things, also a stark warning of the dangers of excessive zeal in limiting a country’s carbon footprint.”
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The Obama EPA is going to take how many mega watts of coal fired electricity offline???
The so-called “carbon footprint” was dreamed up as a way for western governments to make their taxpayers feel guilty enough to pay for their “sin” of generating “emissions” with an ever-lengthening list of carbon taxes. The latest example of this is the new EU carbon tax of about $20 added to every ticket for anyone flying through EU airspace from Jan 1st. This is on top of the Air Passenger Duty (APD Tax) already added to tickets bought in the UK which has been justified by the government as an environmental tax on “carbon emissions”.
The ruling entity in North Korea is kept in place by the civilized world.
Yes. The west covertly funded Russia, the soviets and communism from 1917 onwards. Why? It was an cover excuse to smash up competitor economies, such as Korea i.e. send the soviets in, then intervene and get the country to pay for your intervention, then parry the soviets rather than defeat them. result – half the country subdued by the soviets, the other half heavily in debt to western banks. Win.
This system was useful before the internet stock market made it more viable to subdue economies with a few mouse clicks ( the shooting of the east tiger economies in the 1990s ). The stoppage of funding for the soviet system was substantially due to the internet.
North Korea exists today to keep Korea malleable to western interests.
A pity that in the North Korean model low carbon means low carbohydrates as well. But that is what you get when dogma is more important than reason and freedom.
That´s the ideal world of the United Nations, the “Brave New World” of the beatnik, hippie, subterraneans´generation, who survived (nobody knows how) to the massive intake of stimulants, some of who still survive through having powdery white “aspirations”.
Their ideology was summarized in John Lennon´song “Imagine”:
Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people living for today
Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace
You, you may say
I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people sharing all the world
You, you may say
I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will live as one
And in a more detailed form, in the UN´s AGENDA 21:
http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21
/[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2c9LGBkYo0&w=420&h=315%5D
Makes you wonder why our “green” Hollywood elite are immigrating in droves to North Korea to enjoy the environmentalist’s paradise, huh?
Low per capita carbon foot print. Strong, central government that can tell people how to live and how not to consume…anything.
This is the Green Heaven. This seems to be what they are working toward–with themselves in the Kim Jong Il role.
I think you could have added another thing to ….”economic systems, carbon footprints and human well-being…” namely, “environmental health”
I sometimes wonder if the concept of environmental health is actually meaningful, but for the sake of argument I assume that it does – land and life is more productive and can be said to thrive more with more environmental health.
With that addition, it is clear that the poverty of North Korea is one of the things that creates environmental degradation along with its two brothers-in-arms, oppressive government and an absence of private ownership. I’m biased, but if I compare the environmental paradise in which I live (the green and pleasant land called England) I notice that we are wealthy, we have a democratically elected un-oppressive government, and everything and everywhere in the country is looked after – someone has responsibility for it, manages it and cares for it – not least because they may profit from its health. The ‘tragedy of the commons’ is something that afflicts undemocratic, dispossessed people, and yet it is an unobserved irony that environmentalists wants to restrict not only wealth and freedom, but also private ownership.
North Korea is a ‘living’ example of what those three paths will lead to.
Think of all the carbon credits we in the west must owe them;>)
Maryland’s Governor, Martin O’Malley, wants to do the same for Maryland.
North Korea must be an environmentalist’s wet dream, as long as they are inside the palace controlling the world’s population.
These kind of satellite images should be censored an WUWT, it is just going to drive visiting warmists to reach for silk handkerchiefs.