Dark Skies: A Tool of SATAN!

[elfs]

The Dark Skies Initiative is a collaboration among several groups, notably amateur astronomers, professional astronomers, and people who are just plain interested in saving electricity and money, to modify many various sources of nighttime light. The idea is that by using motion sensors, reflectors, downward-facing shields, high- efficiency directional LEDs, and a lot of other simple technologies we have available, the amount of light wasted by being thrown up into the night sky can be severely reduced. This saves power and money, reduces maintainence costs (LEDs need replacing less often than lightbulbs), and, for the astronomers, returns the night sky to an earlier state full of stars.

Right now, less than 40% of the kids living in America can see the Milky Way galaxy. It's drowned out by light pollution. I used to think this was a sad thing, and that the Dark Skies Initiative was a good idea.

No More! I Have Seen The Light! This morning, Tim Kimmel, widely touted to be one of the more "accessible to the mainstream" Christian talk show hosts, explained to me in a ten-minute RANT that the Dark Skies Initiative was the work of the Devil! Yes indeedeedo. There is no such thing as light pollution! Light is the gift of the Lord, yessiree, and the Dark Skies Initiative is fueled by a force older than the lightbulb, a force that wants to keep us in the dark, keep our souls from being exposed to the light, allow us to scuttle about, stumbling over the obstacles of life, doing what men do under the cover of darkness. It is EVIL!

I am not making this up. I laughed so hard I had to pull over to the side of the road. Stuff like that almost makes the OECs look sane by comparison.

[Edit: It now appears that what I was listening to was a replay of an old, recorded message, since the date on the written version appears to be May, 1999.]

Comments

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Personally, I think the dude has a badly misplaced sense of jealousy.... see, he's not Getting Any, and if all the lights are on all the time, nobody else will Get Any either.

[jenkitty.livejournal.com]

Must point dr_nebula at this...

[kyriani.livejournal.com]

Wow... I thought I had heard all forms of crackpot philosophies related to the stars, but this is a new one to me. >_<;; I'm constantly amazed at the convoluted psychosis that spawn these ideas, there is no way I could even imagine a concept like this. Sigh.

[damiana-swan.livejournal.com]

*blink blink blink*

Okay, I did know that to Christian fundies, light = good and dark = bad, but ... geez. Talk about taking things to their literal extremes!

[sarekofvulcan.livejournal.com]

I stopped going to my local parish when, at a baptism, they had the parents face the east, and the rising sun.

[slfisher.livejournal.com]

Oh, man.

Actually, I've been meaning to look up the Dark Skies initiative and encourage my city to join, so thanks for the pointer.

actually, I side with the fundies on this one

[drewkitty.livejournal.com]

The "Dark Skies" initiative and similar attempts by astronomers to control what they call "light pollution" causes people to be mugged, raped and murdered every year.

Light deters crime. Good security lighting, especially in institutions such as schools, colleges, and hospitals, literally saves lives. It is one of the few truly inexpensive things that can be done to deter crime. The light gives victims warning, allows patrollers (both police and security) to detect and challenge loiterers, and creates a hostile environment for criminals.

The high rates of car theft in institutional parking are directly attributable to the lack of lighting. Even the much higher density of police and security patrols (sometimes three to four times that of the surrounding community!) is not enough to keep dark lots from becoming a car thief's paradise.

When the "Dark Skies" crowd got to UC San Diego and the city of San Diego, nighttime crime rates skyrocketed.

Through the efforts of astronomers, many cities and institutions have been pressured into:

1) using fewer lights, which reduces the areas covered by security lighting

2) poorer light spectra, such as sodium vapor, under which it is impossible to distinguish colors. I have viewed CCTV videotapes of crimes committed under these lights, and it is barely possible to determine make and model, let alone color -- and you can forget license plates.

3) not using efficient overhead mounting systems, in favor of lights mounted much lower to the ground, with correspondingly lower light densities -and- much less area covered

4) using "spot lighting," which creates pools of shadow in which criminals can and do loiter, especially when going from a brilliantly lit area (i.e. a stairwell) to a low-light area (i.e. the parking lot or garage) . This gives an overwhelming advantage to the attacker, whose eyes are already dark-adapted in a place where he -knows- that the night vision of his (typically distracted) victim has been ruined by a "spot" light.
The most effective defense against crime one can carry anywhere at night continues to be a powerful flashlight.

Re: actually, I side with the fundies on this one

[neowolf2.livejournal.com]

Lighting up the undersides of clouds and passing aircraft does not deter crime.

It's perfectly possible to light up the ground without wasting energy on upward going photons, IF the lighting fixture is properly designed. And for a given electricity budget, you can illuminate *more* ground that way.