Glenn writes:

> I agree, but I have one question:
>
>     Why are the lights so bright in northeastern Alaska?
>
>  (It looks like the area around Prudhoe Bay.)  The area looks at least
>  as bright as do Anchorage and Fairbanks.

Those a gas flares from the oil wells. The same is true of much of the light
coming from Saudi Arabia. In every oil producing region, they need to burn
off the excess gas that accrues. It's an enormous waste of energy, but no one
has yet figured out a truly economical way of capturing it.

See:

     http://spidr.ngdc.noaa.gov/biomass/usa_doc.html

Also see for a before-and-after map of the damage done by Hurricane Mitch to
Central America:

     http://cindi.usgs.gov/events/mitch/briefing/brief15.html

It literally turned the lights out in most of the region.

Wirt