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[omorka]

The Cities At Night video, photos taken from the ISS plus narration. While I strongly disagree with the narrator on his aesthetic judgement - I think these are horrifying - and wonder why we get to see Vegas but not Paris (WTF, mate?), the cultural differences in city layout between the different regions are fascinating. Especially the European vaguely-polar system versus the USian cartesian maps.

Who are these racist idiots and why do they keep sending them to us? (thanks to redneckgaijin for the link)

Mentioned this to the Spouse earlier today - an amusing take on McCain's 1992 faux pas. Video link, and NSFW due to language (and one somewhat out-of-place bit of slapstick violence). (thanks to next_bold_move, among others, for the link)

Comments

[awbryan.livejournal.com]

While I strongly disagree with the narrator on his aesthetic judgement - I think these are horrifying...

Why?

1) Because the light pollution is terribly wasteful?
2) Because cities are intrinsically evil?
3) Because city *sprawl* is intrinsically evil?
4) Because there are too many people?

As an astronomer, I totally agree with 1); I sort of agree with 4) but we're doing all we ethically can about it. (I'm in favor of ecological balance, but that doesn't mean I'm rooting for the trees in The Happening.) 2) is not my problem; I'd rather have the excess people in high-density cities than using low-technology farming to frak the environment up even further. Once we get farming ecologically balanced -- which it wasn't ever before, not really -- we can all go live out in the fields again.

3), however, is IMHO a fixable problem. We have introduced two new ecosystems to the Earth, namely, the farm and the city. Farms had some ecological integration before the population explosion took off around 1700; cities were then too small to worry about. Since then, each have taken over large sections of the planet. It is our duty to better integrate them ecologically.

Cars enabled sprawl, but I don't blame them for it. Sprawl is the expression of the human desire to be surrounded by forest and grassland, not a human hive. We rebounded from the environment we ourselves built --it was too crowded, and too far away from our natural one. People wanted trees and lawns because that's what we're evolved to live around, dang nabbit. I can't blame 'em for that, but we'll have to find a way to have our green cake and eat our high-technology, high-density living too. And it would be good if we can find it as quickly as possible, before India and China bury themselves in even more concrete...

[quantumduck.livejournal.com]

I may not have the same fundamental reaction that Omorka does, but the nighttime views of the planet make it clear that the human species is radically transforming the planet. There are very few unspoiled places left. That's kind of sad.It doesn't have to considered evil to be considered scary.

Also, none of city light we see from space is useful light. It's all being dumped into space. We're burning coal and gas to pour huge amounts of light, most of which serves no useful purpose. Does McDonald's need the restaurant and all the signs lit up at 3 in the morning? They're closed! Even if they wanted to advertise with the signs they could still shut off the inside lights and save a few bucks. I've never understood why so few businesses have a reasonable policy about this.

We need to shut most of these lights off at night so we can get back to sustainable energy demands.

[omorka.livejournal.com]

1 and 3, with 4 as a corollary. In particular, the light that makes it to the ISS is unnecessary light, light that feel upwards rather than being where we can actually use it. Darkness is a natural part of life - not the pitch-black of an unlit subway tunnel, sure, but the depth of a moonless night. And yet we chase away the stars with sodium and halogen lamps, LEDs, neon, fluorescents, even old incandescent filaments. What is it we're afraid of?

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

We're afraid of each other, with some justification.

We're also afraid of tripping, falling off cliffs, running into sharp edged objects, stubbing toes, and other mishaps that occur because humans don't see well by starlight. (To me, starlight is the same as no light- I can't see a damn thing outside after dark unless the moon is really close to full and the sky is clear. On a moonless clear light it's all black and blacker.

Darkness is inconvenient.

[awbryan.livejournal.com]

Well, people do see perfectly well by the light of a full moon -- enough to navigate and to avoid pratfalls of the type redneckgaijin is talking about. That's also about the light level that old headlights give (not the newer, super-duper ones) at long range. If it were just about seeing at night, we'd have eternal full moon in the cities.

But of course it's NOT about that. It's about being able to see an oncoming predator. The chief predators in cities happen to be fellow H. sapiens, sometimes with the symbiosis of Automobilus combustii internii, but the principle is one that cavemen with infinite fuel could have conceived of: moving from campfire to campfire, since any predator that depends on stealth won't come within range of a campfire.

There are secondary considerations as well. For instance, we don't adjust to dark conditions quickly, so the streetlamps stay turned up to prevent us losing vision as we step out of doorways (always a good place for ambush).

Unless we want to dome our cities - or paint all surfaces matte black - there will be some inevitable scattering of reflected light from pavements and walls. We can eliminate the waste of light sent upwards without purpose, but cities are still going to glow.

In my techno-Episco-pagan fantasies, one thought I had was to develop and plant integrated lightpole-trees. These are based on my memories of certain streets in Mississippi towns where the branches of trees lining the street had formed a full canopy over the pavement, so that you drove down a tunnel formed of living leaves.

Growing to a certain height only, a lightpole-tree would have lamps (powered by solar-power-leaves at the tree's crown) pointing generally down from a ring just below the branches. The branches would grow more or less horizontally until they met each other, met the wall of a building, or reached a certain distance from the trunk -- say 15 feet. Crucially, the organic leaves would face both up and down. The result would be streets shaded by day and lit by night, but with much of the light re-captured for photosynthesis.

It doesn't solve 3), of course, but lightpole-trees would solve much of 1) while giving us the solar-powered anti-predator campfire chains that the masses demand.

[quantumduck.livejournal.com]

Reflected light is certainly going to happen, but simple methods can be employed to minimize light pollution and save vast amounts of energy in the process.

As to predators - I don't think most of the lights in a city are there to stop predators. None of the neon trim, running lights, lights left on in more than half of the downtown offices, GIant signs, or light decorations are keeping predators away or assisting in allowing us to navigate. Studies have shown that most of these lights interfere with driving safety.

In Santa Monica street lights are dimmer than elsewhere, and have large covers over them that direct the light downward. They are generally powered by a self-contained solar panel and battery built into the lamp post. I wish these were ubiquitous everywhere.