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The Illuminati Project Pushes For Dark Skies In 2009
An anonymous reader writes "2009 is the 400th anniversary of Galileo's observations of Venus, Saturn and Jupiter published in Sidereus Nuncius ('Starry Messenger'). To improve scientific literacy, the NOAO and NASA are promoting dark-sky initiatives in 2009 to draw attention to the problem of light pollution which obscures nearly all night sky colors and objects except for the moon and a few bright stars and planets. Project Illuminati is a Flickr project by James Cann to showcase the beauty of light pollution to raise awareness and educate fellow Earthmates to lower energy consumption and become more curious about our place in the universe."
They are trying to promote dark skies (which of course show some amazing celestial bodies) by showing how pretty of a red sky light pollution makes???
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getting out into the middle of nowhere makes. On a clear night out in Yellowstone, for example, there are so many stars in the sky it can be hard to find constellations you're used to seeing in the city. Really beautiful.
People need to get past the idea that you have to try to illuminate every shadow. All you're doing is ruining people's night vision, and thus making the remaining shadows "darker".
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
using pretty art to highlight "pollution" seems incongruous. shouldn't it be more intriguing and a little repulsive?
Here in Quebec, one of our parks is actually also protecting the sky. It's a world premier and it is possible. Also, having more efficient lighting saves money so everyone is much more happy from it. http://www.sepaq.com/En/Pages/COM/popUp.cfm?no=588
In Galloway in Scotland, the local tourist board is trying to set up a dark sky park. The area that they're planning to open it is apparently the darkest place in Europe.
There are already two in the US, in Utah (http://www.nps.gov/nabr/parknews/news040507.htm) and Northern Pennsylvania (http://www.dcnr.state.pa.us/stateparks/parks/cherrysprings.aspx). This BLDGBLOG article mentions suggests World Heritage sites for experiencing darkness, set up to protect dark areas: http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/dark-sky-park.html
I recently visited Poland (Krakow) and there the level of street lighting was a lot lower, resulting in reduced light pollution. Streets were mostly lit with light reflected from buildings. It's surprising to be able to see the night sky from the middle of a city of 1 million. It's not comparable to countryside darkness by any means, but it really changes the character of a city.
I dreamed of Freud: What does this mean?
They'll attract Vulcans and other alien riff-raff!
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Whenever I explain your point to other people, they look at me like I'm from another planet. I usually tell them that if they really want lights, they should use red lights and explain to them why it doesn't ruin their night vision and why astronomers and photolabs use red lights.
Think how much easier it would be to see the stars if we just stopped making electricity. The night skies would be black like they were a thousand years ago. We could all go back to living in caves and wearing fur, no wait, we can't kill animals, and wearing fur is evil and sit by the fire, no burning wood produces CO2, so we'll sit in our dark caves, huddled together to stay warm and slowly starve to death. But then there wouldn't be anyone to look up at the stars. And that is the true goal of "environmentalism".
Light pollution is just one of the by-products of industrialization. Fifteen-hundred years ago the air was a lot cleaner, hence more transparent which means more starlight/moonlight reaches the surface at night, than it is today -less soot, smoke, dirt, suspended aerosols, smog- so much so it is estimated, that the light from the stars alone would have enough to read a newspaper by -had newspapers existed then. If we want to see the sky as Galileo saw it, we're going to need more than just turning off the lights to do so.
I've got your sig, right here.
There are plenty of areas around which are void of lighting. Often times lights are necessary for safety and although you may be able to encourage people to use mirrors and what not to maximize the amount of light hitting the ground rather than going up into the sky, you're not going to have much luck getting populated areas to turn down the lights much. Lighting helps avoid crime.
You can't have a dark city.
The government should just make sure they have large enough plots of land that keep the cities far away so people can go visit and view the dark sky.
Work Safe Porn
Tucson has been working on this for years to protect various local observatories. It's also the home to the international dark sky association: http://www.darksky.org/mc/page.do
They have a city ordinance making it illegal to have a light shining upwards - all lights (street lights, security lights, porch lights, etc) have to have a reflector. It's apparently pretty easy to police - bare bulbs are highly visible from the police helicopter.
Seems to be kinda silly to spend your lighting budget trying to illuminate the universe anyway.
And the worms ate into his brain.
My neighbors are typical americans - they came out into what was the countryside (our house was in the middle of nowhere for decades, now it looks like suburbs.)
After they built their McMansions, closer together than some of the houses in the city, using up the woods and fields I used to romp in, they installed huge arrays of sodium-vapor lighting on their houses, which they leave on 24 hours a day. For "security," or to make it homey, or whatever.
I used to go in the back yard to stargaze, I could even see the aurora borealis sometimes - in NY! We never even bothered to replace the outside floodlight over the driveway for years after it died, but the latest thing for all these new people seems to be to have a gazillion lights. Houses, cars, SUVs, three-wheelers, all festooned with lights - long driveways lined with bright lights left on at all times.
I don't get it. Why do people move out to the country if they don't want it to be like the country?
This space available.
In order for the light to remain the same, you'd probably have to reduce the power to the lamp.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
Flagstaff, AZ, home to the Lowell Observatory has had a black sky ordinance on the books for 50 years now and it works wonders.
There is plenty of lighting for the town and yet you can see stars like you should be able to see stars.
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
Errr, and that's a problem? Sounds like a win-win to me!
... as a knife wielding teenage gang member I welcome any dark sky initiative - and I can assure you that all my victims will be seeing stars when I've finished with them (shortly before they die in a pool of their own blood ...)
At last, the needs of amateur astrologers, penny pinching local councils, and muggers finally coincide! Happy days!
Or is this a different Illuminati Project ?
A little domestic terror could solve this problem! Umm... on second thought, maybe not.
Is it something in his genes that compels a Geek to give a worthwhile project a name that carries a lot of excess baggage?
Whenever I explain your point to other people, they look at me like I'm from another planet.
You'll get used to it, eventually... sometimes the easiest way is to just tell them that you ARE ;)
A Man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties -- Albert Einstein
As the cost of energy rises in the medium future, I think this will sort itself out. Towns will question why they are spending so much on lighting and cut back. Generally, households use all they electricity they can afford so rising prices will make people cut back. People don't (usually) run the AC in the summer with the front door wide open. People don't like heating/cooling the outside. It's too expensive and wasteful. Similarly, I think people will curb their habits of trying to light entire cities at night.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
You don't see the s? I can see the s just fine.
http://www.astronomy2009.org/
2009 is also the International Year of Astronomy.
From their website... "The International Year of Astronomy 2009 is a global effort initiated by the International Astronomical Union and UNESCO to help the citizens of the world rediscover their place in the Universe through the day- and night-time sky, and thereby engage a personal sense of wonder and discovery."
they're going to take over the world while the lights are off. I don't think it's worth the risk.
Earthmate? What's an Earthmate? Is that like an Earth girl posing in the Proxima Centauri edition of Playboy?
Only the first photo of the Group is any good at "showing" light pollution. The rest are terrible.
railing against light pollution by taking pictures showing how beautiful it is... kind of like raising diabetes awareness by building a giant sugar sculpture.
My annoyance with any and all of you who are reading this and use any kind of bright hurricane light while camping. You ruin my night vision. You dont need your stupid light you fool. Grrrr.
Even on the darkest of nights, you dont need any light to find your way around in the dark. Give yourself a couple minutes to adjust and you will do fine. If you really need light, get a maglite and some blue gels for it. Using a blue gel will let you turn on the light for a second or two while you check for the boogie man, and when you turn it off you'll have most of your night vision back right away.
Just buy it, put a covenant on it, and sell it.
Archimedes Plutonium has found a new stomping ground I think. Update on his shares portfolio at 11.
like this one taken on the night of the 2003 blackout, and on the following night
http://www.skynewsmagazine.com/pow/pow94.jpg
Even on a moonless night, in a dense forest, you can still navigate when you are familiar with the area (paths, etc).
It may have something to do with non-visual navigation abilities discussed here recently...
you had me at #!
Sometimes we just have to not do stupid things
Call me when that happens...
you had me at #!
I've been tooling around with the idea of pitching a night sky proposal to the mayor and city council here... I've got some connections, and could at least get listened to. I've been doing a lot of planning based on the New Mexico Heritage Preservation Alliance's Night Sky Program... It looks like I've got some additional resources to go over now, and a great lead-in to it all.
I fondly remember seeing flashes of the aurora from my childhood home. If I was to go there now and look to the north, all I'd see was streetlights and haze - and it's still a small town. I feel for those who've never had the chance to view a truly dark sky, it's a wondrous sight. If you ever have the chance, when you've got a cool clear night ahead of you, drive out as far away from it all as you can (In Oregon, I recommend heading out to the high desert, out on BLM land - people in other locales will have to find something suitable for themselves) - near a new moon if you can manage it. Watch the sun go down, and the sky fill with stars and planets, satellites both man-made and natural, and take in the amazing scape and wonder of it all. If you've got a telescope, great, take it along - but if not, you'll still have quite a show. It's good for the soul - and with natural light becoming ever more pervasive, there's no time like the present.
Are they willing to pay for all of the overtime required for all of the extra police officers needed to handle the additional crime caused by the lack of adequate lighting? Criminals love darkness because it greatly decreases their chances of being caught.
I recommend walking around in such areas at night while drunk. Either it was my imagination, or there really were little bits of the path I could see. I dont remember.
My point still stands. You dont need a fucking hurricane lamp to walk to the bathroom while camping. Oh, and if you have a bathroom and it has any kind of water-based flush, you aren't camping. True believers will (correctly) argue that even a pit-toilet invalidates the claim to camping.
So I guess this applies to psuedo-camping trips you go with when you hang out with your wussy "need a daily shower" friends. If you were really camping, you wouldn't have one of those bright monster lights anyways... they are too heavy to pack in.
My Dear Sir, the gnomes of Zürich are not amused.
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
I live 7 miles from a city of over a million and 1/2 a mile from an Air Force Base and I can see thousands of stars in the sky. Mind you, I do enjoy camping out in the backwoods and yes, the sky is much crisper and the number of visible stars greater, but I am going to have to dock them a few points for exaggeration.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
We Earthlings must consume everything we can see, until we cannot see any longer.
The (primary) meaning of Illuminati: 1. People claiming to be unusually enlightened with regard to a subject.
'claiming' is the key. Unfortunately for you and me that means we are oxygen wasters to them.
Just because people associate a word with something other than its meaning doesn't mean we should stop using the word. In this instance, I think it's quite a clever piece of word-play.
Stop using the word? It's not even English..
Here's a shot I took the other night of the sky here in the south east of Africa. Sorry it's small (internet here ain't cheap, hehe) but the clouds and trees show that those are real stars in the sky not just sensor noise. enjoy, http://edified.org/external/africa-stars.jpg
win win???? doesn't the word pollution mean anything to you???
Light pollution is when light intended for one purpose is directed in a manner such that it is wasted. For example, why should light from a streetlamp also emanate upwards? The light that doesn't serve the mission of having the source in the first place is considered pollution.
Last year, the New Yorker printed a great article on the subject of (lack of) dark skies to watch stars in.
Anyone interested in proper darkness, or even just improved outdoor lighting, should check out the IDA - International Dark-Sky Association.
The image in WormholeFiend's above post is an awesome example -- but we needn't a power outage to achieve this; it's really not very difficult to plan much better lighting solutions (curiously, the problem is often too much spotty light, and the solution is often simply to use less light, but in the right places).
"Good news, everyone!"
Efficiency is good, here. Skyglow is an evil thing, and stupid, in my estimation. If all those lights could be replaced with LEDs of limited frequency spread, perhaps filtering the interference could be enabled. Legislation, anyone? I am not an astronomer, but this is one more area where I feel violated, and fuck all of y'all if you think ruining MY night sky is alright.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
Perhaps the rest of you could finally kill each other off so I can enjoy the night sky. Its a sacrifice I'm willing to make.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
Do you understand that running the lamp at lower power would mean lower pollution from power plants (as less energy would be needed to power the lights already in existence) and lower light pollution? I'm giving the the benefit of the doubt here that you really misread and aren't just trolling...
After all a lot of crime goes on in red light districts.
From Flickr: "(james_cann is the only person who has used "illuminatiproject" as a tag.)"
This is exactly what countless studies from the U.S. Department of Justice, municipalities, and other organizations around the world have shown. Here is a quote from the DOJ study abstract:
ALTHOUGH THERE IS A LACK OF UNIFORM DATA, RESEARCH INDICATES THAT WHILE IMPROVED STREET LIGHTING DOES NOT RESULT IN A SIGNIFICANT REDUCTION IN CRIME, PARTICULARLY IF CRIME DISPLACEMENT IS TAKEN INTO ACCOUNT, IT DOES SIGNIFICANTLY REDUCE FEAR OF CRIME. IT IS FURTHER CONCLUDED THAT A DEFINITIVE STATEMENT CANNOT BE MADE ABOUT THE IMPACT OF STREET LIGHTING ON CRIME
Other studies have demonstrating that removing lights (e.g. from schools ad night) reduce the incidence of certain crimes, particularly vandalism, "Hey lefty, I can't see where me spraypaint is going." "you painted me you gob****". So why did we populate our cities with these glare prone lights which at worst help criminals hide in shadows and glare and at best do nothing? Why do we call the halogen/mercury lights hanging from houses and barns "security lights?" Someone once proposed that the utility companies have excess load at night and wast lights help balance their load.
But the real reason is that "feeling safer" is what homeland security is all about. Just like "feeling wealthy" works well in a keynsian based fiat currency system.
-- I must be old, I remember when reality had a bit more reality in it.
Go about fifty miles north of Gerlach, Nevada on a night with no moon and no clouds. Stay outside for at least two hours after midnight.
Then you'll understand what you're missing.
What?
Why legislate? If the lamps were cost effective, then the municipalities would make the switch. Right now in central Ohio the primary electric provider charges in the neighborhood of $5 per lamp per month for power. The muni is responsible for purchasing the bulbs if I am remembering correctly. If the cost of power and the cost of the bulb are figured in, the LED street lamps take an insane amount of time to recoup the cost. Even when you figure in the labor to replace the bulbs every couple of years it still doesn't add up. When many budgets are being stretched to the breaking point would you advocate for your town to install LED street lights that will cost more? Would you vote for your taxes to be increased to purchase the lights, or would you prefer that a couple of employees be terminated to pay for the cost difference? I, myself, am not opposed to the idea of installing power saving, pollution reducing equipment, but there has to be a balance somewhere.
The shields over the lights have been shown to reduce the amount of light being thrown into the sky, but they also increase the amount of glare on the road. In order to be effective, the entire fixture head needs to be replaced with one that has been designed to cast the light downward in the right way, another cost for the muni to absorb.
Legislation will do nothing to improve these conditions, it will likely pass costs on to the states or local government that they do not have the money to work with.
One way that this might work is for residents, local or state government to work with the manufacturers in a test situation. Let the manufacturers perfect their processes for building the lamps and they can be field tested. But until the funding situation is improved, these efforts are full of problems.
Sigh, wasting a good thread for modding by replying to this but since no one else has I'll bite.
Why legislate? If the lamps were cost effective, then the municipalities would make the switch. Right now in central Ohio the primary electric provider charges in the neighborhood of $5 per lamp per month for power. The muni is responsible for purchasing the bulbs if I am remembering correctly.
First, you legislate it since its the only way to get it done. Sad but true. Next, you only need LED light bulbs. You don't have to replace the full lamp, at least if these consumer sites are anything to go by.
If the cost of power and the cost of the bulb are figured in, the LED street lamps take an insane amount of time to recoup the cost. Even when you figure in the labor to replace the bulbs every couple of years it still doesn't add up.
Per the source Wikipedia provided the extra initial cost is paid off within two years just from the electricity savings, and barring a physical disaster (such as the streetlamp falling over or getting shot with a gun) you don't have to change the bulb for 20 years. Really, it is a better choice but it would require work by city employees to actually make the change happen. They may even have to do a slide show!
When many budgets are being stretched to the breaking point would you advocate for your town to install LED street lights that will cost more? Would you vote for your taxes to be increased to purchase the lights, or would you prefer that a couple of employees be terminated to pay for the cost difference? I, myself, am not opposed to the idea of installing power saving, pollution reducing equipment, but there has to be a balance somewhere.
Hell yes I would advocate for this. Budgets don't magically get bigger on their own. You have to work for it. You have to plan and invest for it. This is a very, fucking, simple, means to save the city/town a lot of money and power, and it cuts down on light pollution as an added bonus!
Oh and something else to chew on: as more demand for LED lights increases, in the form of cities and towns using them for streetlights, the manufacturing process will be improved as companies compete with one another to produce a cheaper light bulb to sell. That's basic market principles. Demand drives innovation. Yet another long term economic bonus by mandating a switch to LED lights.
Apparently the Department of Energy in the US thinks they're a damn good thing that should be improved so they can become the defacto light source. They're hosting a contest since May 2008 to create a better LED light bulb. They call it the L-Prize.
Really, once you look at the known facts and the future potential you have to ask yourself why not? A handful of employees might lose their job? Taxes may go up a fraction of a percent? You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, and you can't make improvements for the future without paying for it. To hold back on something as simple as this for the reasons you gave is petty, just petty.
I guess I was thinking about how swell it would be if street lamps were restricted to specific frequencies of output, to improve the abilities of light-filtering astronomical equipment. Not likely in this world, just a thought. LEDs will be feasible soon enough, human will is less likely to meet the need.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What? Turn a bushel over the most gorgeously noctiluminescent species on the planet? Not bloody likely. Bright city lights are where the human species goes when it goes forth to multiply. You can't argue with a bower bird about the importance of bent twigs, and you can't argue with the starry-eyed on their way to a billion private paradisios.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
Look, this is about using reflectors to *increase* illumination on the *ground* where it is desired, instead of wasting it causing skyglow which can be seen for 100 miles. And have more streetlights, closer to the ground, with reflectors, and you will have greater safety, greater night vision for drivers, cutting down on hitting pedestrians, and allowing people to see the sky. Those of you still afraid, go buy a sidearm for crying out loud.
Perhaps the rest of you could finally kill each other off so I can enjoy the night sky. Its a sacrifice I'm willing to make.
Yeah, but then you'd go and drop your thick prescription glasses, which would shatter into a million pieces and you wouldn't be able to see your precious night sky - and I bet then you'll wish that everybody killing each other off hadn't included your local Lenscrafters!
Bow-ties are cool.
"$5 per lamp per month"
Times how many lamps? $60/lamp/year isn't bad if there's only a few lamps, but a lot of places run lamps every 50 feet or so down every decently populated street, and that could mean hundreds or thousands of lamps in an area... even a fairly small improvement in per lamp cost can be dramatic once multiplied out across that many units.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
I personally just keep a hobo-wacking golf-club and a hobo-stabbing knife around for boogymen like cougars (and hobos). I also carry a small but bright LED flashlight that has a very narrow path of illumination.
I'm talking fuckers with broad-spectrum, 360-degree hurricane lamps and such. Those annoy everybody, not just snakes, cougars, forest-hobos or the occasional hobbit. Nothing wrong with pocket, unidirectional LEDS.
And those of you who are "well, I need to see the child-rapist who will jump out of the bushes and attack" need to consider something. If you are walking in a dark area like a cemetery or park at 3am and cross paths with another group, they dont know who you are either. For all they know, you are down there causing even more trouble then they are.
RAPE RAPE RAPE
Krauser-san raped time itself and became Abraham Lincoln??!?
Bow-ties are cool.
Outdoor lighting with good optical efficiency is and has been available, but it can be costly and when public funds are used, the lowest dollar is usually the determiner. Right now high-intensity discharge— high pressure sodium and metal-halide (not halogen)— have a higher efficacy (lumen/watt) than the best LEDs, though LEDs render colors better. Color rendering may seem unimportant, but if the lights are there for security and you can't tell the color of a vehicle or garment, you might not be able to identify an offender.
...I was thinking about how swell it would be if street lamps were restricted to specific frequencies of output
See my note above about color rendering.
It's all about instinct. Humans evolved on the African savannah where our main predators were big cats which had much better night vision than us. We fear the dark. Our first game-changing invention as a species, fire, scared our predators and helped deepen the light = safety, dark = danger concept in our psyche.
Criminals aren't big cats. They have the same eyes that we do.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
Seriously, let's just get rid of the lamps. Street lamps cause nothing but glare and power draw. The ones around here are horrible and they keep putting more up. When it rains it's impossible to see the lines on all but the newest roads. Reflectors are cheaper, more efficient, use no power, and cause no light pollution.
Sure there are probably areas that lamps are beneficial (downtown areas where people walk more than drive, parking lots, etc.) but highways and major roads with no pedestrian traffic warrant no street lamps. I suppose there are people that think they give an illusion of safety for people who are broken down, but in all actuality someone will mug someone on a busy highway just as much with or without lights.
Driving on roads with reflectors and no over head lights is like a dream. Hell, even no reflectors is awesome.
-=JML=-
Since it is the 400th anniversary, the red sky could actually be the angry villagers and clerics burning down all those awful, evil, and very non-Catholic Centers of Witchery (formerly known as schools, laboratories, observatories, etc.)
Here is a page full of light pollution examples. Look at those and think in terms of the energy wasted.
If the light was simply directed at the ground you could get away with fewer fixtures, lower wattage and actually *improve* nighttime visibility.
If it isn't one thing, it's two or more...
This is a very, fucking, simple, means to save the city/town a lot of money and power, and it cuts down on light pollution as an added bonus!
Except that it doesn't, it costs them more money. I just put in a $10 led bulb for my porch light - at 4w vs 11w for the old CF bulb it replaced, which I could have replaced for $1, the led will never pay for itself. It does use less power, but not that much less.
You're right. There's absolutely no difference between looking at the rings around Saturn or stargazing in an open field.. and looking at some pictures of stars on your 17" monitor.
No difference whatsoever.
Hey, I'm not anticipating a "Road Warrior" future, but neither do I believe we can sustain things to a "Coruscant" or even "Blade Runner" world. Something will seriously fail prior to that. Some of us won't make it, surely, but in my analysis when the dust settles, those who remain will have realized the importance of having a life-sustaining planet, and won't want to squander energy illuminating empty space. Perhaps I'm being overly optimistic, but I am trying not to let the bastards get me down.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
it depends with the source of energy you use to power up the lamp....solar energy doesn't give off ANY "pollutants", so generally it's hardly a win win situation.
lol....directed to the ground...mhhh...great idea as long as the ground doesn't reflect it. And EVERY body has a absorption/reflection ratio.
I don't really understand what your talking about so instead heres a video.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=JX9Z4nkSMBE
Skip to 4:30 and you'll clearly see Greenpeace lying.
If you're trying to say "They lie so it's ok for us to do it too", well I don't agree with that at all. In fact I think environmentalists do more lying and harm then they do good.
I hope that next time you'll produce something a little more readable because your last post is gibberish.
I don't know why the Slashdot censor crowd is modding these points down. I'm somehow being marked as "flamebait" even though I'm 20% flamebait and 40% insightful.
And not a single flame in reply. Every one of these replies has been intelligent, and has brought up fine examples of why we might consider light to be "pollution."
Go figure.
In any event, responding to you, you echo my point. I think you can't "pollute" darkness. You can, however, see darkness as a natural state, and that we are evolved to function within that natural state, and therefore the natural state is the ideal.
But what we are then saying is that the natural state is the ideal. Therefore, it's enough to call it "artificial light." It says the same thing as "light pollution."
And at that point, we start having a rational discussion about the drawbacks of "artificial light," if there are any. There is no debate as to the drawbacks of "natural darkness." And what we have is a choice between drawbacks, with it all on the table, instead of viewing "artificial" as bad and "natural" as good.
"Light pollution" is a term born of a false dichotomy. That somehow nature is good and artifice is evil, when in fact, both have drawbacks and benefits in a spectrum.
I think the overriding drawback of city lights is the carbon footprint, for instance, the actual tritium leak that occurred at the nuclear power plant near me. You know, actual pollution, and would kindly like the "think of the squirrels" and the "consult your pineal gland" people to stop distracting from the real issue of industrial pollution with their desire to star gaze, or become latter day cave men.
Oh dear, that last sentence may actually qualify as flame bait. Never mind. I have karma to burn.
--
Toro
It doesn't matter how many fixtures the charge is per fixture, regardless of the power used. There are no meters on these streetlamps, just a fixed charge for them being there.
I will agree that all of the bulbs listed above are more energy efficient than the ones in your house, well at least in mine. The problem is that street lights do not use the same type of fixtures. Street lamps use sodium vapor lamps that are more energy efficient and use different bases. The cost per bulb is much different as is the energy usage.
And this cost can't be renegotiated to account for lower power consumption? For some reason I find that to be extremely unlikely.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.