An Enlightened Look at an Over-Lighted World

Saige writes "Every night, as darkness descends, countless street lamps and lights turn on to keep the darkness at bay, bathing countless square feet of the planet in light that sometimes rivals daytime. But has anyone stopped to consider what effect all this light may have on people and animals that have evolved to fit an environment where a significant part of the 24 hour day is spent in lightless conditions? Some scientists have, and they are claiming that all this light is causing numerous problems."

Comments

Re:Sensationalism...

[BFKrew]

It is not quite as simplistic as you make out.

For a start, light at night makes it difficult to sleep at night. Try having a streetlight outside your bedroom window and you will quickly (as I found out!) find your sleep patterns are disturbed as you wake up easier and therefore find it difficult to sleep.

Consider that for many of us in major cities, we cannot view the natural beauty of space. Our views are blocked by artifical lights that stop us from seeing the sights our ancestors looked upon and first asked the great philosophical questions.

You imply that light is a good thing. It isn't. Well, not always. Of course we need light, but it needs to be used appropriately.

Artificial light isn't a replacement for natural light. Aside from the voluminous amounts of electricity a lot of it wastes it does cause problems for people.

Daylight is a good thing for animals, plants and humans on the planet. For people who live in northern Europe and the US/Canda there are higher incidencies of suicide, alcoholism and drug abuse than there are in places which recieve more natural light, and this has been attributed to a lack of natural light. Artifical light just isn't the same. You could have 12 hours of artifical light in a polar region and it wouldn't make any difference.

On a small, and possibly more irrelevant scale to you, consider the number of insects that congregate around lamp posts thinking the worlds most beautiful fly/wasp/bee/moth/whatever is in front of them. In time, it will affect their and predators natural actions!

It is very easy to mock and joke about this, but it is a very, very important issue for a lot of people, plants and animals! :)

NASA image of man-made light.

[Alsee]

Ah, a perfect opportunity to post a link to my favorite NASA photo! It is a composite image called the Earth at Night. It shows the intensity of man-made light on earth. The brighness level is a facinating combination of population density and economic development.

An interesting feature is the the Nile river on the top right corner of Africa. Each bank of the river is densly populated, beyond that is uninhabitable desert. That makes it an insanely narrow bright white line in the middle of the pitch black desert.

Another interesting feature is North/South Korea. They are just to the left of super-bright Japan. South Korea is a bright square just below North Korea. North Korea is a pitch-black area. The dividing line of bright to dark is like a knife-edge. North Korea is so dark it looks like empty ocean, making South Korea look almost like an island.

North Korea and South Korea have roughly equal population density. The entire difference is due to development. South Korea is quite prosperous while North Korea is suffering famines while they allocate a crushing 30% of their gross national product to supporting the third largest army in the world (China has the largest, USA is second). North Korea says they want to "Liberate".

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