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September 2024: What is Safe?, Light Pollution News.
Host:
Guests:
Shelana deSilva
Shelana deSilva has been working to help connect nature and people through stewardship for 15 years, with a focus on equitable public lands access, conservation-related policy, and meaningful community engagement. Her background as a community organizer guides her collaborative approach to project and program design, including contributing to the development of Redwoods Rising, the California Landscape Stewardship Network, and several statewide and regional initiatives focused on equity and climate resilience. Her work in stewardship began with land trusts, including The Trust for Public Land and Save the Redwoods League, and she is now the Deputy District Superintendent for the North Coast Redwoods District of California State Parks. Shelana holds a BA in Sociology from San Francisco State University, and a Master of Fine Arts degree from California College of the Arts.
Yana Yakushina
Yana Yakushina is a lawyer, researcher, and dark sky protection educator. Yakushina is actively involved in initiatives related to light pollution mitigation and space law. Yakushina has successfully participated in international legal research projects, collaborating with organizations such as the EU Commission, Dark-Sky International, and the International Astronomical Union, among others.
Currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Ghent (Belgium) as part of the Horizon EU project – PLAN-B, Yakushina is shaping the legal framework for recognizing light pollution as a critical environmental concern. Yakushina also serves as one of the scientific coordinators of the project with the main task of strengthening efforts to establish a robust legal framework for addressing the negative effects of Artificial Light at Night (ALAN) on the environment and biodiversity.
On the space law front, Yakushina serves as the Deputy Executive Director at the Space Court Foundation Inc. Additionally, in 2023, Yakushina became a co-founder of the Belgian dark sky protection organization – Living Night.
John Barentine
John Barentine is an astronomer, historian, author, science communicator, and dark-sky consultant. He earned a Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of Texas and is a member of the American Astronomical Society, the International Astronomical Union, and the Royal Astronomical Society. His interests include history, politics, and law.
- Qantas creates special cabin lighting to combat jet lag on long-haul flights, Jean Carmela Lim, Aerotime.
- The Dark Side Of Reflecting Sunlight To Solar Farms At Night, Jennifer Sensiba, Clean Technica.
- It’s always sunny in space: Michigan startup hopes to beam solar power to Earth, Lucas Smoicic Larson, MLive.
- This Man Is Trying to Put Mirrors in Space to Generate Solar Power at Night, Thobey Campion, Vice.
- SBSP history, The European Space Agency.
- Sustainable development in outer space will need far-sighted governance, United Nations Development Programme.
- City looks to the stars for lighting policy, Robert Steuteville, Public Square.
- Florida Power & Light installing 700 street lights in Fort Myers Beach, Zach Scott, NBC2.
- Light ’em up, Bill Rettew, Daily Local News.
- Spatiotemporal Analysis of Nighttime Crimes in Vienna, Austria, ISPRS Int J. Geo-Inf.
- City To Consider Lighting Ordinance Changes, Common Good Liquor License, Public Art Contract, Beth Milligan, Traverse Ticker.
- Attorney: Traverse City school ordered to dim lights or face daily fines, UpNorthLive.
- Melbourne Proposes Nighttime Blackout for Digital Billboards to Combat Light Pollution, Nicholas Vincent, One Green Planet.
- Streetlights are influencing nature—from how leaves grow to how insects eat, Olivia Ferrari, National Geographic.
- Artificial Light at Night Increases Growth and Impairs Reproductive Success in Budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulatus) in a Duration Dose-Dependent Manner, Birds.
- Artificial light at night on nesting beaches of the green turtle, Chelonia mydas, in the eastern Mediterranean and its possible effect on populations, Turkish Journal of Zoology.
- Effects of artificial light on foraging behavior of the Pacific Kangaroo Rat (Dipodomys agilis), Journal of Mammalogy.
- How legendary dark-sky advocate David Crawford sparked the fight against light pollution, Mark Zastrow, Astronomy Magazine.
This is a really interesting story. From the world of aviation, Quantas is looking to ease you into your next long haul by providing cabin lighting in line with circadian cycles – with obvious hopes of reducing that miserable sapping sensation known as jet lag.
The cabin initially experiences a sunset that transitions into a night sky with moonlight. Then by daybreak, the warm tones reappear to match a synthesized sunrise.
How does that sound for your next long haul trip?
Did you know that the concept of utilizing space based solar panels to collect energy and beam it back to the Earth can be traced all the way back to the 1920s when the great Russian visionary theorist, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, who envisioned beaming light rays back to Earth’s surface? Twenty years later, Isaac Asimov would envision beams of microwave energy powering up the solar system.
With that stage set, this next piece is a tale of two solar powered dreams.
In order to overcome the obvious problem of cloud cover, the array would push microwave radiation back toward a receiver on Earth.
Then, there’s a company we touched on a couple of months back, named Reflect Orbit. If you recall, Reflect Orbit plans to beam physical light back to Earth to power solar power plants well into the night.
This isn’t the first time that the idea of harnessing space to provide terrestrial power has entered the zeitgeist. During the 1970s, the US government began to seriously study the feasibility of such an operation. Then in 1988, the USSR apparently deployed the experimental Znamya 2, a 65 foot mirror that shot light beams across Europe with the intent on brightening up nights.
A little closer to now, in 2017, a Norwegian accountant decided it’d be a great idea to erect huge mirrors above the town of Rjukan to reduce instances of seasonal depression in the dark northern winters.
While these ideas previously were only the prevue of science fiction, it appears that actual funding is starting to flow to test all of the concepts above as we slowly head toward the coming boom in the space economy.
I stumbled across an article by Jennifer Sensiba at Clean Technica. I want to run her thoughts and fears by you guys to see if we can get an over under on the probability of these fears taking place.
Sensiba rips into the Reflect Orbit satellite plan run to deploy 57 mirrors which would bounce light beams back to the Earth. Light beams that I may add would create a ‘construction site’ like halo – per the last time I discussed this article – I’m still not sure what the hell that means!
Anyway, Sensiba asks, what about extension services for Alaskan towns in the winter – to enable them to essentially have daylight for a few hours? And how about special utilization by militaries engaged in combat who want to keep 24-7 daylight on operations?
There was a piece that was released this month from the United Nations Development Programme that cited the growth of the space economy to become a $546B marketplace. It makes the point that without a unified plan for space, we’re going to end up repeating the many issues we created in ocean faring, this time including issues such as space debris, light pollution, space access inequity, and more. The short piece advocates for open exploration and resource pools.
We had an intriguing study on crime this month. It appears to represent the conflict in the data quite succinctly. The study assessed crime, assault, theft, burglary and robbery against VIIRS images of street light density in Vienna, Austria. The researchers utilized crime data from Vienna since 2004. This type of data is also readily available here in the US for most major cities via the city’s police or public safety website, for those who weren’t aware.
Vienna switched over to LED street lights starting in 2017. At this same time, Vienna began to experience a reduction in overall crime. The study utilized two different methodological frameworks to assess lighting’s impact on crime.
First, the descriptive analysis – appears to indicate that the LED conversion reduced crime and emphasized the success of tactical lighting systems to enhance safe environments, as is apparent by a steady decrease in crime over the time span of the study.
Then, the inferential analysis – indicated a strong relationship between street light density and nighttime crimes, most notably from burglaries, but others including assaults, theft, and robbery shared in a positive association to a lesser degree.
So what does it all mean? Well, the authors appear to have about as much a clue, as you or I.
This study comes out at the same time that we have this fascinating and weird story playing out in Traverse City, Michigan. Amelia Hasenohrl sued the Immaculate Conception Elementary School essentially for light trespass by arguing that the school was in violation of the city’s lighting ordinance.
The courts then ordered the school to apply shielding to the lighting. The courts also demanded that the school turn off the offending lights until the mitigation efforts were applied. At the time of this story, Immaculate Conception Elementary School has yet to install shielding on their lighting.
Instead of complying with the court order, the school was fined $100 per day for leaving the lights both on and without appropriate shielding. The court awarded Hasenohrl $1000 in attorney fees.
Cathy Nelson who’s affiliated with the school, unsurprisingly, has a different take. Nelson justifies leaving the lights on out of fear for safety and security. Per the article in the Record-Eagle, “The school’s security system needs the lights to function properly…with teachers potentially arriving after dark to prepare their classrooms.”
Now to her credit, the school has installed a $30,000 dimming system and ordered $20,000 in new lighting to meet the ordinance’s requirement. However it should be noted that the dimming system’s effectiveness has been disputed by the neighbor contesting the lighting.
It should also be noted that Traverse City decided to update its ordinance to allow for 1,125 lumen emissions from outdoor lighting – a sharp change from what was in place before. And as far as I can tell, it has no real authoritative backing other than that 1125 is a lower tiered midway point between 450 lumens and 2500 lumens of the previously variable code requirements. Then, of course, you have this seemingly bizarre quote from City Planning Director for Traverse City, Shawn Winter “Plus, 100% cut-off shielding on all outdoor lighting is almost impossible to enforce.”
Here’s a positive story out of West Chester, Pennsylvania! Some folks wanted to protect fireflies at Everhart Park from the new “very bright, white, clean [street light] light designed to cascade light in all directions” per West Chester Borough Councilman Bernie Flynn.
The initial lighting plan from West Chester, of course, paid zero amount of attention to the health or ecological implications of their actions. This spurred Pennsylvania State Senator Carolyn Comitta to move in and work with the borough on trying to carve out a small ecological space in the borough. At first, they dimmed the lighting to 85%. Not seeing much of a change in apparent brightness, the two officials, Flynn and Comitta, then worked together on installing shielding on lights around the park. Going forward residents should also expect to see one light in the park turned off.
The end goal of all of this is to see if properly angling and the elimination of light trespass into the park can help to grow a repopulation of firefly activity.
Well, down in Australia, Melbourne is contemplating requiring digital billboards be turned off after midnight to sunrise most days of the week, with a 1 am curfew on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. One exemption to be noted, if a business is open, it may continue lighting its digital billboard through that time period.
Cited in the city council proposal are the ecological, environmental, and health effects of light pollution. This is part of a general revision to Melbourne’s lighting code that aims to direct the city towards its own identity versus that of other major cities in the general Asia-Pacific region. I highly recommend you at home, should you feel so inclined, to take a look at the policy proposal. It’s well done and could aid other communities looking to implement the same. I will note that there have been no updates on this story in the lead up to the recording of today’s show.
Moving over to ecology.
We kick off the ecology segment with an article by Olivia Ferrari at National Geographic. Researchers in China took to learning about artificial light at night’s impact on tree populations in Beijing. They found that under artificial light, the two trees they looked at, the Japanese pagoda and the green ash tree, universally had tougher leaves – showing reduced evidence of insect activity on them. There appeared to be a correlation between light intensity and a reduced sign of insect predation.
The researchers involved weren’t able to identify the cause of the toughening leaves but hypothesized that perhaps the artificial light is extending their photosynthesis. Their concern, in this case, lies with that of our ever disappearing insect populations – specifically, artificial light at night providing an environment inhospitable to nighttime insect activity. And, hence, it goes without saying the up-the-food-chain risks posed to insects that prey on those insects, then the birds that prey on that predatory layer of insects, etc.
From the Journal of Birds, it appears that artificial light at night affects the circadian rhythms of the captive budgerigars. The birds, commonly known as Budgies, were exposed to shortwave violet-blue light between 200 lux to 460nm for durations of anywhere from 0 to 90 minutes during the night.
Researchers measured the body mass, the number of eggs laid, the success of hatchlings, and the circadian rhythm marker of melatonin sulfate. From this, researchers found a correlation between the duration of blue light exposure at night to increased body mass, decreased number of eggs laid, decreased hatching success, and suppressed melatonin sulfate levels.
Turtles made the news this month, pretty much for everything you expect. A Turkish team set out to measure ALAN at 13 Mediterranean beaches in Turkey. Their study in the Turkish Journal of Zoology found that many of the most important beaches for hatchlings also experienced high degrees of artificial light at night. The obvious recommendation is for such communities to become aware of their impact and institute improvements to help protect sea turtles.
And wrapping up the ecology news for this month, a piece from the Journal of Mammalogy. Researchers looked at the native rodent, the Pacific kangaroo rat, and California sage scrub habitat. Specifically, the team wanted to understand how the increasing coastal nighttime brightness impacted the rat behavior. Researchers found a correlation between artificial light intensity and reduced foraging behavior. This aligns with past studies on rodent activity and artificial light at night.
Before we close up tonight’s show, I’d be remiss to not mention the passing of David Crawford.
Many of you know David Crawford as a founding member of the International Dark-Sky Association. Crawford was also a tenured astronomer at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Tuscon.
Crawford obtained his PhD from the University of Chicago while working at the Yerkes Observatory. In 1960, he moved over to Kitt Peak where he founded the Dark Sky Office with Bill Robinson. The duo worked with municipalities around other observatories to help promote filterable low pressure sodium lights.
However, similar to our LED conversion, this low pressure sodium conversion didn’t go off without hiccups – an amateur astronomer named Tim Hunter found his skies orange as a nearby facility utilized unshielded lighting. That oversight on shielding eventually formed a friendship and alliance between Hunter and Crawford that culminated in the founding of the International Dark Sky Association in 1988.
Crawford became a member of the Illuminating Engineering Society and collaborated with individuals across multiple disciplines, including lawyers, light professionals, manufacturers, and government. Due to Crawford’s dogged efforts, he helped make shielding standard.
David Crawford passed on July 22nd at the age of 93. His impact on promoting awareness of the need for nighttime protections garnered Tim Hunter to consider Hunter to be “one of the greatest environmentalists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.”
Rest in Peace David. Unfortunately, the crucible that Mr. Crawford went through remains a battle today as we’ve shifted back to a reckless world of nighttime lighting in our haste to install LEDs.