All-night stadium lights hit the news...

[John Nodding]

Signed.

[Aramcheck]

Sadly it looks like Brighton & Hove council have decided "not to call these polluting light rigs in for planning permission". So the Put That Light Out campaign is now seeking to get a judicial review funded.

Updated info: https://www.change.org/p/brighton-and-hove-albion-fc-put-that-light-out/u/27185921

(Mod's - hope this is okay to post)

Cheers
Ivor

[maw lod qan]

One other thing that I haven't seen mentioned amongst the members here, as terrible as this is for the light pollution, I always wonder, what does it cost to run lights like that?

Over here, every new shopping center leaves the parking lot lights on at night even when the shops are closed. That adds to the rent of the units.

My pocket isn't as deep as it once was.

And for those to be used to grow cannabis, the lights need to be a bit lower. It likes the heat from the light too!😎👍😁

[tooth_dr]

7 minutes ago, maw lod qan said:

One other thing that I haven't seen mentioned amongst the members here, as terrible as this is for the light pollution, I always wonder, what does it cost to run lights like that?

Over here, every new shopping center leaves the parking lot lights on at night even when the shops are closed. That adds to the rent of the units.

My pocket isn't as deep as it once was.

And for those to be used to grow cannabis, the lights need to be a bit lower. It likes the heat from the light too!😎👍😁

Unfortunately the advent of LEDs means it probably costs next to nothing to run these lights compared to the old fashioned 500W halogen bulbs.  

[MarkAR]

Wow, led's are cheaper to run all night than halogens.

Wow, turning them off is even cheaper.

[tooth_dr]

12 minutes ago, MarkAR said:

Wow, led's are cheaper to run all night than halogens.

Wow, turning them off is even cheaper.

The price differential to having them off is probably so small it's almost incidental.

[maw lod qan]

It's just so sad, with all the technology lights like these cant be designed to dim themselves or turn themselves off at certain times.

Where I work, all the lights in the milk, meat and frozen areas come back on automatically at either 6 or 7am.

[carastro]

Almost at 12,000 when I signed a minute ago. 

Carole

[happy-kat]

1 hour ago, carastro said:

Almost at 12,000 when I signed a minute ago. 

Carole

.

Edited July 3, 2020 by happy-kat

[ScouseSpaceCadet]

Signed.

[Swoop1]

It seems that architecture and street planning is increasingly involving higher levels of illumination.

Opposite where I live is a small, 3 storey office building that has recently been refurbished. Part of this refurbishment involved rendering a large proportion of the red brick frontage and colouring it light grey. Having done this a number of permanantly illuminated floodlights have been installed to light up the newly rendered walls. So now, at 3 o'clock in the morning, the odd passing motorist and pedestrian can see this 'beautiful' grey facade....... Farcade more like.

[Second Time Around]

Signed.

[jonathan]

On 03/02/2020 at 09:40, Barry-W-Fenner said:

I personally would like this conversion sooner rather than later. However I dont think that all the lights should be on at night. After peak hours maybe the Council could consider every other Light being switched off to save Money as well as reduce carbon and LP??

Be careful what you wish for.  Although at first it might seem like a vast improvement, the actual thing that would make any lamps vastly better for the environment and night sky is shielding; some street lamp designs are good, some are as bad or worse than the old orange lights.  Some LED lights are so much more powerful than the old orange lights that the light is simply reflected back from the road surface, resulting in a different spectrum of light pollution but one that is still noticeable none the less.  I think our village LED street lamps could easily be 1/3 dimmer than they are and still provide adequate lighting to see by without any additional lights or torches, and the shielding could be better too.  We have a golf driving range just outside the village (to the South, annoyingly) which is floodlit for all those late evening golfing sessions, fortunately I can't see the range itself but I can see the skyglow from it, that uses white lights which are probably LEDs pointing at about a 45 degree angle down, so plenty spills horizontal and upwards too.

There is only a certain amount of light required for drivers and pedestrians in built up areas and at junctions, it doesn't need to reach every corner of every gutter, cars have lights after all and cyclists are still required to have reflectors and lights on at night.  Frankly it's like padding the sides of the roads with cotton wool, I think as a society we should remove some of the cotton wool and accept that being out and night requires us to be more alert and use our eyes rather than rely on fake daylight 24hrs a day.

I heard one idea a while ago, why not dim or turn off the street lights entirely in rural areas after 11pm or midnight, as soon as the traffic has died down to a minimum; who is going to be needing that light for 98% of the time?  Nobody.  Anyone walking or cycling can carry a torch.  Burglars aren't going to be bothered either, since when do they ever come in through the front door anyway?

[Aramcheck]

So far £715 has been pledged against the £5k target required to force a judicial review, with just over 3 weeks to go.
If successful it would pave the way to force councils to include appropriate measures against light pollution in planning applications, so I think it's worth supporting even though this action relates to Brighton.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/put-that-light-out/

BTW - There is a study ongoing at the moment (https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/architecture/news/investigating-road-lighting-and-effects-safety) which hopefully will provide scientific evidence on road lighting requirements. The current BS standards are based on very limited (& flawed) empirical data, and if I remember correctly only suggest minimum lighting levels. On major roads, the standards are based on traffic flow rate, with brighter lighting specified at junctions & other collision zones. In Residential areas the specification as it stands is fixed, so there's nothing on making levels variable based on time of night.

With insect numbers dropping 2.5% a year (a fall of about 70% over the last 30 years - partly due to light pollution), there is an urgent need for action. It's also possibly the only environmental problem that can be solved literally by the flick of a switch...

Cheers
Ivor