I grew up in in the country in Arkansas before street lighting. I have seen the sky so full of stars that it was difficult to discern the constellations. Now I live in a rapidly developing city in California. I frequently walk the trails on the nature preserves in the dark of morning, around 3 and 4 a.m. The most number of stars I have counted is about 20. I can only barely see 6 of the 7 stars in the Big Dipper and the Pleiades does not exist. Walking on trails in the nature preserve a good quarter mile from the streets I can clearly see the trail and can just barely discern colors. This spring I am wanting to go mothing using a light under a white sheet.
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Light pollution disorienting turtle hatchlings is a problem in Hawaiâi too. It doesnât help that some places insist on having unnecessarily bright lighting for sports fields, quarries, parking garages, etc⌠I understand lighting for safety concerns but there are ways to dim the lights and still provide enough lighting for safety. For instance, in some neighborhoods near the beach here, they have replace the white street lights with amber-colored bulbs, which apparently are not as disorienting for the turtles.
Seabirds like the Wedge-tailed Shearwater here also are affected by light pollution. When the young Shearwaters leave their burrows for the first time at night, they can get lost and end up going inland instead of out to sea. The problem is, they really canât take off from flat surfaces, they need a cliff-ledge to jump off or water to get a running start, so when they end up on the ground theyâre stuck and vulnerable to cats, dehydrations, etc. The local wildlife center that helps rescue them gets about 600-700 birds during seabird fallout season in November-December, and thatâs basically just on the island of Oâahu.
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Load-shedding is an intentional scheduled power outage, when demand is expected to exceed supply. This avoids unintended black outs and the whole system falling down. They can last from 2 hours/day, up to 12 hours/day in separate blocks, depending, and you can find the schedule on various load-shedding apps and plan your day around it.
While itâs peaceful at night when the lights go out, it is an incredible cost to business and research through diesel and generator costs, and for people, through the loss of perishable goods in their fridge/freezer etc. (more!) affordable solar PV makes the problem becomes very much smaller : )
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In general, âwarmerâ temperature lights (less blue) often have less of an impact on physiology (via melatonin). These lights feel less bright and are the opposite of the piercing, cool blue, Death Star laser beam headlights many cars come with nowadays (ok, ok, the Death Star lasers were more yellow and green). So choosing a less blue light can reduce impacts (and will help you sleep better).
One issue is that different LEDs make their light in different ways, so they vary in the exact spectrum produced. Different spectra, even if they look similar to the human eye, might impact other species differently. We just donât know about how all the different species respond to different spectra to know.
Two other good things people can do to reduce light pollution/itâs impacts:
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Donât have a constant outdoor light source. For animals attracted, they may be drawn in and then just stay, trapped with the light. If it turns off periodically, they can escape. Better yet, just have a light that turns on when needed.
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Make sure that lights are downward facing/shielded and directed to where they are needed. This is both more efficient (why pay to beam light into the sky?) for humans and better for other organisms.
A good overview is https://darksky.org/resources/guides-and-how-tos/lighting-principles/
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Ah. So things are done a little differently here. We will sometimes (but rarely) have blackouts announced but the announcement will be something like, âDue to stress on the grid, there will be rolling blackouts in multiple neighborhoods that will last from 60 - 120 minutes.â No further information will be given.
And then you just sort of shrug when the lights go off but know that is what it is when they go off exactly at 7:00 PM or 8:00 PM on the dot. But you also do not worry because you know they will come back in one or two hours and then it will be another neighborhoodâs turn.
They do not do these during the brightest sun hours, usually, because it is so hot here and also there are efforts to minimize effects on businesses.
(They are building two new additional power plants within the state that are expected to be more than adequate for the power demand for the next few decades. One is within this city, and I suspect the construction of that may have something to do with this weekendâs outage.)
@cthawley thank you for this wonderful resource. I am exploring the whole of the darksky site now. Thank you again.
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I currently live in a city of 460,000 neighboring a city of 9.6 million and the light pollution is fairly bad here, especially when I compare it to growing up on the outskirts of a logging town with a population of 2,800.
However, several years ago I visited Hahoe Folk Village, which is comprised of traditional buildings and just a few dim street lamps to help guide the way in the dark. (Cars were all parked at a dirt lot outside the village as well.) The night sky was absolutely mesmerizing â various shades of navy and purple with more stars than I could count in a lifetime.
On a semi-related aside, though perhaps contradictory when it comes to light pollution, I was also able to experience the traditional fireworks in Hahoe Village â mulberry charcoal and bark powder mixed with salt and put in a bag, strung across a sandy bank of the Nakdong River, and set alight â which was also a rather special memory and a lot different from what I tend to think of when I hear âfireworks displayâ.
Here is a two minute YouTube video showing Hahoe Village, the traditional fireworks, eggshell lights floating in the river, and bundles of pine twigs lit on fire and thrown off a cliff on the opposite shore. Background context here.
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Between loadshedding and our electric car, we got solar panels years ago. Apart from not being able to cook electric during loadshedding life is easy at home. Shopping malls are going solar one by one - two near us are done, and the third is on their list. Medical practice - done. We were the first in our street, but now have a few solar neighbours.
https://sokolicsolar.co.za/poweralert/ Today ⌠the lights are on.
When we first had loadshedding. There was. No. Warning. Food production for example baking bread. That whole factory batch binned! With a schedule businesses can plan - okay - we can bake from ⌠to ⌠on Tuesday.
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When I was in the Navy, the Sonar Control Room had blue lights. The intention was to disrupt our circadian rhythms because of the watch rotations.
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