The Dark Side: Making War on Light Pollution (2007) | Hacker News Reader

The Dark Side: Making War on Light Pollution (2007)

newyorker.com

60 pointsmhb9 comments

What really bugs me is the many indoor lights in our world that are not (or cannot be) dimmed in the evening/nighttime. Especially at this time of year when much of the US is dark at 5pm, it gets pretty unbearable being in an office, or on public transport, at 7pm which is still lit as if it were noon.

What I would love is to see more intelligent lightning systems that use the current time and location (easy, given most lightning is fixed) to automatically dim a certain amount depending on the time of day, much like the F.lux app [1].

1. https://justgetflux.com/

And don't forget redshift[0]! It needs some more open source love :)

[0]: http://jonls.dk/redshift/

DOE says 14% of homes have dimmers in the US, and the dimmer was invented more than 50 years ago.

Another issue is not all CFL and LED bulbs are dimmable. So if you had a dimmable incandescent bulb and replaced it with early CFLs or LEDs they were not always dimmable (and I think cost more?) andin some cases you have to buy a CFL/LED compatible dimmer.

I'd been doing some thinking several months ago on how to incentivize control of light pollution at the county or city level. A possible solution might involve a country using satellite imagery to determine some metric for light pollution, and giving municipalities tax breaks or funding from a pot for bringing it down.

EDIT: It could even be an independent organization, using donated commercial satellite capacity and rewards for the top X localities improving their ranking.

I just read NDT's Death By Black Hole [0] in which he mentions some cities like New York waste millions of dollars a year on the energy that sends light skyward. So the incentive is there, it's probably they have failed to be long term thinking enough to eat the upfront installation costs until the the reduced overhead pays off 5 years later or w/e.

[0]http://smile.amazon.com/Death-Black-Hole-Cosmic-Quandaries/d...

An effective way, though unpopular, would be to significantly increase the price of electricity and light bulbs. The fixtures the article talks about are important also.

I work in energy investing and we're seeing a lot of growth in emerging market solar paired with LEDs that's bringing electricity to formerly off-grid areas. It's great news generally but bad for light pollution specifically, which is sad. It'd be great if there were a way to get these companies to sell only fully shielded lights.

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