Now enviro-policy to “end light pollution” has France on track to look like North Korea at night:
From The Guardian:
Lights out – France to force shops and offices to go dark overnight
French light pollution law is expected to save 250,000 tonnes of C02 a year
The French ecology minister, Delphine Batho, said she hoped the law would change attitudes in France and help the country become a pioneer in reducing light pollution.
Full story here.
We’ve come so far to rid ourselves of the dark, only to have the lights forcibly turned off by zealots.
Luboš Motl writes about the issue
“Light pollution” is quoted as another justification. I’ve seen some movies about “light pollution” and although one could a priori think that this could be a legitimate concern, I think that all the people claiming that light pollution is a problem are Luddite lunatics, too. There’s just lots of places on Earth where light pollution is nearly non-existent. You may still go there. It’s probably not too important because not too many people are going there.
Maybe “bad astronomer” Phil Plait will move to France or North Korea now, we can only hope.
Locally, the idea of turning off lights has found favor in plans forged by the lunatic fringe that inhabits our town’s “sustainability committee”, run by Former Mayor Ann Schwab, who managed to sneak in the “climate action plan” in a meeting few attended on the night of the last election in 2012. Predictably, it was approved.
Since these folks on the council seem to worship the European way of doing things, I predict they’ll soon follow with the same edict. We have a lone volunteer staffed Chico Community Observatory in the town’s Bidwell park that they fought tooth and nail 10 years ago (I know, I was a part of it then), and they’ll now likely use it as a means to an end since, “Light pollution” was discussed at the onset.
Stupid is as Stupid does.
I would love to have most lights turned off, I hate the permanent orange glow of the sky that prevents any decent view of the stars. I equally hate my security obsessed neighbour who insists on leaving outside wall lights on all night every night.
The odd thing is however that if you go somewhere without lights, the rural village where I grew up or modern rural France, it is very rarely completely dark.
Go outside at night, let your eyes adapt, and on most nights you can see further and more easily by the natural moon and starlight than with street lights and security lights which dazzle and cause shadows and actually prevent you seeing anything beyond the pool of light they produce.
On the occassional pitch black night one carries a torch!
As an extension to my comment at 1:46 pm and referring to rxc6422 at 3:13 pm
When I worked in the electricity industry in the 1980’s we investigated turning off street lights and building lights as a load shedding and conservation measure. Because we had a coal fired base load it turned out that the generators had to be run over night whether there was load or not, since the turbines could not be turned off. The overnight load was considered a bonus because it kept the generators under some load – anyone who has worked with diesel generators knows that they are recommended to be kept under load – so there turned out to be no benefit in turning lights off. We focused more on finding ways to move peak load during the day to the night when there was excess idle capacity on line. Certainly there was no fuel savings to be made by turning off lights at night. A night tariff at a cheap rate is offered to maintain some load overnight for street lighting and water heating to sell some of this excess capacity that is going to be produced anyway.
This must be the same everywhere?
Of course as rxc6422 and others have noted France is a nuclear powered base load system. I dont see how there can be a conservation advantage here, and certainly no CO2 output benefit. If there is a reduction in load at night – it is almost certainly the most expensive generators with the lowest input that would be shed – in the European context I would imagine that would be wind power.
Being an astronomer, light pollution is a real problem and most of it is totally unnecessary as it is poor lighting which causes it. I am also dependent upon safety lighting as well. The answer is not no lighting but rather proper lighting. Simply put, if you can look around (not up) and see the light bulbs, then the lighting is not doing its job. The bulbs should be shielded and only what is being illuminated should be seen.
Light going out horizontally or even up causes problems. A simple example I have to endure is the baseball stadium lights at a local park which are busy illuminating the other side of the freeway and blinding everyone driving by on the freeway. What’s amazing is that no fatal accidents have happened there yet. BTW, I live 50 miles from the nearest city and 7 miles from the nearest small town so I have to put up with light bubbles only from one direction.
Having lighting without the lightbulbs blinding observers means less light works better than even much more light with the bulbs visible when it comes to seeing things.
As a user of safety lighting, I’ll have to say that it’s vastly overrated. When there’s no patrolling or security cameras present, having poor lighting with visible bulbs is where people tend to hang out and totally blacked out areas are avoided by everyone.
For anyone interested, I’d suggest going to the Dark Skies Association and reading about the situation. Full cutoff light hoods and common sense application of lighting produces a better job with less wasted power. BTW neither I nor the DarkSkies organization are part of the lunatic left nor do we advocate eliminating safety lightning or tyranical control of power usage. We do tend to believe in light tresspass as well as in private property rights.
I don’t see the issue here – I used to live in a Vancouver, BC subdivision that only had a street light at intersections. I was wonderful low level lighting. The BC Hydro Building was always fully lit back in the 60’s and 70’s along with many others … it seemed a total waste to me but they justified it on the life cycle of the bulbs being affected by being turned on and off but with new technology, that doesn’t apply. Now I live on a farm where the only light at night is a motion sensor yard light … and a flare from a malfunctioning oil/gas well recently drilled which I definitely consider light pollution. And I don’t worry about crime in the dark cause any idiot knows farmers carry.
There is no better way to encourage looting. These people have lost their fvcking minds. I live in a country where we used to have power outages 1/4 of the day. It was terrible. Today, it is only about 1 hour a day. I can comment on this because I know what it’s like and it’s no fun losing food in the fridge when you have had no electricity for 6 hours, your computer going off mid-paragraph et. al. These fvckers have no idea what it’s like.
Please good people, do not listen to these insane Warmists. They live comfortable lives and their ultimate plan is to wipe out most of humanity while they, and their offspring survive. Just look at the saintly Al Gore 2 mansions, Pachauri the oil extractor technician.
The French have history of dealing with tyrany. Just annoy them enough with edicts.
Add me to the list of amateur astronomers who regret the loss of the dark. I am not against lighting per se but I am against wasteful lighting without purpose or value. I deeply regret that my children do not get to see even the thin sky that I used to see at night. Well, once when we took a family vacation to the mountains but they do not have the chance for casual study on a random summer night. Summer skies to them are gray to orange. If they never have the chance to develop that sense of wonder in the boundless skies, where will our next generation of professional astronomers come from?
Regarding looting and safety? Yes, there is some value. In the vast majority of cases, however, the light is inefficiently blasted out without regard for need, directional control or spill-over. I used to live behind a local school. In response to some minor vandalism (graffiti), they put up klieg lights that would have done any concentration camp proud. Sleeping in any bedroom facing the school became an exercise in futility. Stress levels shot up and property levels dropped. Worst, it didn’t stop the vandalism because the kids quickly realized that the school wasn’t actually watching their new, well-lit perimeter.
The safety issue can be further complicated by the night-blindness induced by modern lighting. It is infeasible to light everything – shadows will always exist for people to lurk in. When your eyes are blinded by gratuitous streetlights, you can’t see as well as if you let your eyes adjust to the dark. I’m not saying that lighting is all bad but neither is it an unmitigated good.
Socially, it’s an issue of balancing rights. Your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose. How far does your right to light the skies (for whatever purpose) go before it unfairly infringes on my right to enjoy the peace and solitude of a starry night?
I just came in from a hot tub naked-eye astronomy session, here in Lake Michigan aboard my little Island ship of state with ~400 souls this snowbird season. The sky is utterly dark and full of hard diamonds. My hope is to see a polar orbiting satellite but it’s usually too late and the Earth’s shadow too high.
About properly loaded generators, we maintain three 2.5 MWe pairs of diesel generators, legacies of when all power was local. Then, to maintain adequate night time load to run a set, the REA subsidized consumer heating electricity, so I have two meters and relatively cheap electric heat. A typical month’s heating cost is $100 for 1000 KWh.
The nearest improperly shielded lights are about a mile away, so a night in the dark of the moon is dark and quiet. It has taken me years to not be awakened by the refrigerator compressor cycling. Now the nights are approaching the coldest of the year and the cottage pops and groans as the deck boards freeze. The Niagara Escarpment, twenty-five feet from the window, talks too as the ice shatters rocks.
I think this is a good idea – I like to see the stars at night – and you don’t to have an opinion either way on AGW to oppose waste.
@Wamron you incomprehensible, illiterate child.
You are a cretin. “gedditt”. So, if people here deny you of your pleasures because you say its the right thing to do onto others. That would be ok will it?
Seems uneducated losers like you come on here when mummy has taken your xbox away so you might get some sleep before school..
People who have a scientific and life interests in the world outside an LCD will count many real world hobbies through their lifetimes as unforgettable experiences that sad little scrotes like you can never comprehend..
I’ll add my two cents on astronomy and light pollution.
I’m a member of the local amateur astronomy society, and we try to address it by education and persuation. Heavy-handed proscriptive edicts only raise people’s hostilty (sound familar?).
There are plenty of lighting options available that lower electricity use, provide more pleasant light, and still serve as a deterrent.
Most people listen when it’s presented in those terms. We even got cooperation from one of the local billboard companies, who agreed to install downward-only lighting near our moutain-top observatory (well…hill-top really).
I never knew the French were so enLIGHTened. 🙂
On the plus side, this is certainly good news if you are a Wolverine living in France. Wolverines are primarily nocturnal creatures and thrive in darker environments. I foresee a resurgence in the French Wolverine population as a result of this.
Viva Le Carcajou!
Apparently, you, Americans, have a problem with the French. There are a few things which you have not realiased yet : 650 murders a year for a population of 65 millions, that is about one tenth of your rate…
Seeing the Milky Way is a pleasure.
My thanks to all the science oriented astronomers visiting this thread!!
To all of you urbites who dread the dark places in the night, keep your light usage private within your house!
Civilizations that founded the beginnings of science both studied and revered the stars. Stars that allowed them to navigate and measure things across this earth. Now mankind fears to see evidence of existance and grandeur far beyond their dreary life.
Nowadays, the city dwellers who’ve grown up thinking that night skies are and should be a dim murky gray brown emptiness, well, perhaps their comforting night lights should be turned off.
I can not fathom why, in a world of efficient machines we tolerate lighting equipment that wastes so much light in directions where it can not be used or is even blinding. Why stick a hundred watt bulb in an outdoor fixture that then sends a large portion of that wattage into space?
Forget CO2, French, North Korea, WW wackies and whatnot; use light efficiently and let everyone see the majesty of the night sky. It sure would be a pleasure when the amateur astronomers amongst us try to educate young’uns, if they wouldn’t look so disbelieving when we describe the Milky Way, constellations, planets and stars in our night skies.
Support the idea of using light efficiently! Scoff at their reasons perhaps; with a guffaw or two at the CO2 hawkers. Just tell them they’re doing the right thing, but for doofus rationale.
Whoops, my sarc /sarc lines went missing
Office lights are usually high frequency fluorescent tubes and are extremely efficient.
Offices full of computers nobody ever turns off is another matter entirely. A 300W pc is approx 5 EU cents/hour to run. Unused 16 hours/ day for say a banks 1000 units. .. 800 Euro’s/day. For 365 days (we’ll assume no holidays) is a grand total of 292K Euro’s/year.
.
Now lighting costs aside. That money would buy me a nice bacon buttie for my birthday.
http://www.ras.org.uk/news-and-press/219-news-2012/2156-red-is-the-new-black
Why don’t they install street solar lights, instead of turning off all street lights for safety sakes.
Different people will have different views on this matter. People in Las Vegas and all similar places will not like it. People in safe suburbs and all similar places will probably like it. The I-4 corridor in central Florida is light pollution central, surprisingly enough. I prefer the dark. I had lights removed from utility poles in my backyard when I bought the house – and totally outraged the community who had worked to get them installed as a safety measure. The long and the short of it is that I would not change the existing character of the corridor and I will drive up to McAlpin to see the stars.
I’ve said it before Anthony, and I’ll say it again to everyone here. Light pollution is not a joke. Entire generations of people are raised entirely in cities now, and they have no concept of the majesty of the universe because they do not see it except by NASA’s good graces. The night sky belongs to everyone and being able to see it affects you personally whether you realize it or not
I consider some lighting to be akin to pollution, but it bothers me more in a rural setting… I don’t expect to see the Milky Way in the city.
A lot of outdoor lighting could be directed downward, for example, not scattered in every direction. For things like store signs, I wouldn’t want to tell store owners to turn off their signs, it’s cheap advertising, or not to light the interior at night for security.
“Darkness works both ways, the bad guys can’t see the people to mug.”
A half-decent pair of night-vision goggle costs about $300 last I looked. You wouldn’t want to try flying a plane with them, but they’d be fine for mugging.
“250,000 tonnes of C02 a year” costs what in terms of GDP productivity (loss), taxes (loss), input to retirement accounts (loss), balance of trades (loss) ad infinitum (do the French still understand Latin?) or have they lost THAT with their minds too.
Well on a combative economic playing field, France gave up and seeded the game to their Opponent. Who the is the vilest Opponent to France ? ENGLAND !
Fools !