First off I ain’t dead yet despite some of the assumptions 🙂 Life just has a way of keeping you too damn busy at times. Now back to the scheduled programming.
Researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have developed a computational tool that enhances, and I quote: “our understanding about the relationship between human activities and socio-economic factors at a global scale”
Interestingly it shows a direct negative correlation, where the existence of heavy night lighting influences some things we may never have thought of. Not to mention some reasons I highlighted from this post a while back :
The researchers noted that locations with heavy night light activity suffered from, and again I will quote, though note my interjections in parenthesis: “Higher electricity consumption and CO2 emissions (obviously). Correlations with population, N2O (nitrous oxide), and CH4 (methane) emissions were still slightly less pronounced (compared to previous research) and, as expected, there was an inverse correlation between the brightness of lights and of poverty.” That little factoid there about increased poverty levels lining up with increased night lighting surprised me. Though I suppose it does make sense when you think about it.
I should also note that the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) in these brightly lit areas is also higher which I suppose is a good thing, but the question in my mind remains, is it worth all of the negatives to achieve the positive? And is it really necessary to keep these areas brightly lit at night? There are a lot of good reasons not to do that. Just no one seems to care… As I was outside just last night observing Jupiter and a few other astronomical objects, I’m one of those who do care, and I guess this is my soapbox.
Source material here:
https://www.seas.harvard.edu/news/2017/03/night-lights-big-data
On a side note I may have enough pics to get another Picture Day day up, but I have to get the time and energy to do it all. I will work on it. Finally, I hope this post finds you all well and getting along just dandy 🙂
Evidence Based Reality 
Yes, it has found me well.
Good to see you
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Good to know Mak 🙂
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I’m well, too. Very interesting article.
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Thanks, and glad to hear you are well 🙂
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The poverty thing struck me as a little strange and I wondered how the correlation and causation thing worked. I guess it’s not clear to me exactly why this would be the case. My inkling is that the cause and effect is more likely the other way. In that higher lit areas are a response to areas of poverty rather than causing poverty. I don’t think the article necessarily claims that bright lights are causing poverty, but given their other correlations which you can see how bright lights would cause those factors, it’s not clear why bright lights would lead to more poverty, other than not being able to get a solid night’s sleep because of lights coming through your window and people being awake outside your door! I would expect impoverished areas to be full of people working fairly regularly and perhaps even multiple jobs where stores might be open later to cater to those people. I would expect vice also has something to do with it. Places to drink or buying cigarettes. Perhaps even because homes are small and have less amenities would cause more people to leave their homes in order to do laundry, or get something to eat. I also thought crime might be more of a problem leaving the simple solution to have things well lit so that crimes are more easily witnessed thus trying to prevent some of the crime if every street was like a dark alley. Definitely interesting though.
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Well when I thought about it, it made sense to me that the highly lit areas are also the most populated areas (Big Cities) which tend to have a lot of poverty level people living there. (Also supports the correlation about electricity usage and C02 emmissions) Of course poverty strikes in rural areas too, but just the simple population numbers, I assumed, would be cause for the correlation. I honestly did not research it 🙂
The thing about areas being better lit deterring crime has been studied and found generally not to be the case as cited in my previous post linked in this writeup. It actually just helps the bad guys see what they are doing better. 🙂
Thanks for your thoughts Swarn 🙂
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Yeah at first I thought they were looking at straight head count if people in poverty but it was percentage (head count ratio). So I’m not sure what’s going on. Lol
And I don’t doubt that lights might not reduce crime… I’m just saying cities might do that in impoverished areas because it sounds good and they don’t have to give a fuck. Lol
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Great point. “Give em street lights and we can say we did something to help!” I can see that happening in the political environment.
And after that? “Ah fuck em!”
Kind of like defunding Planned Parenthood…
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