Petition to regulate light pollution

[Physopto]

Hi all. 

I just had a couple of reply emails from Matt about the Change.org petition add. He has very quickly added some other info so as to make it very clear which petition to sign. We done Matt. I only emailed him this afternoon about it. 

Derek

[mapstar]

A few retweets overnight about the petition of note Dr Lucie Green. Well done for getting on board with this. 

A lot of twitter activity today with loads of people retweeting the petition. Hopefully it will gather more momentum 

[Physopto]

A few minutes early today but got work to do.

 

Signatures 6703 so up 41 on yesterday, I suspect that the Referendum is taking peoples interest at present, so don't be put off by the low daily count.

Views of the advert on Astro buy and sell 1132 up by 22. It must be remembered that in checking the numbers I also am counted each time so one less in reality. There appears no way I can get around this.

I have still not seen any tweets by Chris Lintott unfortunately, not sure why!!!

 

I still find it strange and almost unbelievable that there is not even ONE  astronomer in the Outer Hebrides, Na h-Eileanan an Iar   !! It is probably one of the darkest sites in the UK.

Derek

[mapstar]

19 minutes ago, Physopto said:

 

I have still not seen any tweets by Chris Lintott unfortunately, not sure why!!!

 

I still find it strange and almost unbelievable that there is not even ONE  astronomer in the Outer Hebrides, Na h-Eileanan an Iar   !! It is probably one of the darkest sites in the UK.

Derek

I have tried through the stornoway astro society website but no response. Also tweeted several times to people that crop up through a search.  Still no joy

I would agree with the referendum taking eyes off this. When its allover tomorrow I hope things pick up again 

[astrotyke]

The  Outer Hebrides  must have the darkest skies in the UK and maybe Europe, so there must be some person up there. Maybe they dont have the internet up there yet  

[Stub Mandrel]

1 hour ago, astrotyke said:

The  Outer Hebrides  must have the darkest skies in the UK and maybe Europe

Not at the moment!

[Physopto]

Signatures were 6703 yesterday, unfortunately site is down at present I will update the figures  tomorrow  I still suspect that the Referendum is taking peoples interest at present, so don't be put off by the low daily count.

Views of the advert on Astro buy and sell 1152 up by 20.

Derek

 

Update signatures are 6738 up 35 on yesterday.

 

[Stub Mandrel]

Great news!

The Bat Conservation Trust have put a blog posting I have written up on their website with a link to the petition!

http://batconservationtrust.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/the-power-of-light.html

[kegstar]

howdo,

The pessimist in me thinks with petitions for / another referendum on the EU / save Corbyn / make the 23 june a national holiday, this petition might stall & get lost amongst others.

The optimist in me thinks with all these people visiting the website they may look through it to see what else is on there find  ours & sign it as well.

Lets hope the latter wins.

[Dave In Vermont]

16 hours ago, Stub Mandrel said:

Great news!

The Bat Conservation Trust have put a blog posting I have written up on their website with a link to the petition!

http://batconservationtrust.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/the-power-of-light.html

A most resourceful find, Stub! I must hunt up a similar site over here for such matters! And I also have a special fondness for our dwindling population of Flying Mice. Who've recently undergone a massive die-off by what has now been named the "White-Nose Syndrome" or just WNS. An illness caused by spelunkers (cavers) who fail to clean and sterilize their gear inbetween exploring different caves in different areas. This allows the transfer of viral-infections that a local population of one group of Bats may have immunity to, but others do not. Estimates are currently that over 90% of Bats have been killed by this!

Sometimes I wonder.....

Dave

 

[Stub Mandrel]

35 minutes ago, Dave In Vermont said:

A most resourceful find, Stub! I must hunt up a similar site over here for such matters! And I also have a special fondness for our dwindling population of Flying Mice. Who've recently undergone a massive die-off by what has now been named the "White-Nose Syndrome" or just WNS. An illness caused by spelunkers (cavers) who fail to clean and sterilize their gear inbetween exploring different caves in different areas. This allows the transfer of viral-infections that a local population of one group of Bats may have immunity to, but others do not. Estimates are currently that over 90% of Bats have been killed by this!

Sometimes I wonder.....

 

I get the feeling that bats are better understood and more appreciated in the US than the UK.

You have had bat towers for pest controls for decades.

[sooot]

4 hours ago, kegstar said:

howdo,

The pessimist in me thinks with petitions for / another referendum on the EU / save Corbyn / make the 23 june a national holiday, this petition might stall & get lost amongst others.

The optimist in me thinks with all these people visiting the website they may look through it to see what else is on there find  ours & sign it as well.

Lets hope the latter wins.

Hard to believe they have anything else on their minds than signing the referendum petition 

[Mr Spock]

Be careful not to stray into politics

[Physopto]

Signatures were 6770 up by only 32 on yesterday.  I still suspect that the Referendum is taking peoples interest at present, so don't be put off by the low daily count.

Views of the advert on Astro buy and sell 1163 up by 11.

Derek

 

We now need an average of over 120 signatures per day. Unless hell freezes over this is not really going to happen. But we can hope. I think there are now much bigger worries out there than this so it is probably the worst time for the petition now. I hope I am speaking for all of us when I say thanks for all the efforts made  by everyone here. 

But "it is not over until the fat lady sings!"

[caracol_uk]

Whilst driving home after spending a week away on holiday I couldn't help but notice all the advertisements on the side of the motorways and bridges. It does make me wonder how much attention they attract and whether a catchy/memorable advert would help our cause. It would certainly be seen by a large number of people and if only 0.1% of them subsequently signed we'd easily meet our 10k target. 

Simon

[Physopto]

58 minutes ago, caracol_uk said:

Whilst driving home after spending a week away on holiday I couldn't help but notice all the advertisements on the side of the motorways and bridges. It does make me wonder how much attention they attract and whether a catchy/memorable advert would help our cause. It would certainly be seen by a large number of people and if only 0.1% of them subsequently signed we'd easily meet our 10k target. 

Simon

A nice idea but far too costly and to late I am afraid!

[LukeSkywatcher]

Only just over 6000 signatures?. I signed this months ago and doesnt seem to be doing very well since.

Shame. 

I guess only a very very small percentage of people even give a second thought to light pollution.

[Stub Mandrel]

3 hours ago, caracol_uk said:

Whilst driving home after spending a week away on holiday I couldn't help but notice all the advertisements on the side of the motorways and bridges. It does make me wonder how much attention they attract and whether a catchy/memorable advert would help our cause. It would certainly be seen by a large number of people and if only 0.1% of them subsequently signed we'd easily meet our 10k target. 

Simon

Ironically the CPRE (Campaign for the preservation of Rural England) was set up in response to the proliferation of advertising along trunk roads. They won the battle then, but sadly the idjuts have figured out you can get away with 'non-permanent' signs like on wrecked trailers and 'haystacks'.

[caracol_uk]

I know people are likely to be more focussed on other matters at the moment but given the limited time I'm planning to try and raise further interest in the petition over the next few days. I should be able to promote it a little while presenting some other material, and I'm also planning on contacting as many potentially interested groups as I can think of. I'm confident this should give us at least a temporary boost in numbers, so let's hope we see the figures jump a bit over the next week.

Let's just hope the petition website doesn't keep crashing under the load of all the other more popular petitions!

Simon

[kegstar]

Apologies all it wasn't meant to be political merely an observation of people.

If inappropriate then hope admin just delete it.

Back on track & sorry if this has already been thought of & tried but has anyone tried contacting there local universities, as I believe some of them have astro clubs.

I've tried UEA but as yet no reply. Have since found out that their club hasn't used their twitter account since 2014 so not holding out to much hope.

might be worth a try? 

[Physopto]

Signatures were 6846 up by only 76 on yesterday.  Referendum is still affecting results I think and may well continue for the foreseeable future!

Views of the advert on Astro buy and sell 1180 up by 17.

Derek

[caracol_uk]

At least the number of daily signatures has nearly doubled since the day before and I think this is attributable to some of the emails I sent to various groups last night. I've had several responses which is good, but I suspect it being a weekend things might pick up a bit more on Monday. I'll continue working through my list later today so let's hope the numbers increase further over the next day or so.

Simon

[CSM]

I have reposted this to a couple of organisations in case anyone had forgotten to sign it.

[Physopto]

Sorry folks a bit late today.

Signatures were 6930 up by only 84 on yesterday. 

Views of the advert on Astro buy and sell 1205 up by 25.

The  way I look at this is if only 2/3 of the people who take the time to view this add sign then it was certainly worth the effort setting the add up, as it adds a constant few every day.

Derek

[caracol_uk]

I've worked my way through the list of contacts I had put together and the response has been quite good. My concern is that the number of daily signatures is going to start gradually dropping unless we keep trying to increase awareness of the petition. I'd guess that we can get about 1,000 further signatures without any further input, so that's going to leave us 2,000 signatures short of the target.

Simon