Light Pollution

Light Pollution is a bad monster that hunts all the stars out of the sky. What is light pollution exactly? According to google light pollution is the brightening of the night sky caused by street lights and other man-made sources, which has a disruptive effect on natural cycles and inhibits the observation of stars and planets.

If you don't trust me about how light pollution is wiping out a ton of stars go ask someone very old who did not live in a very robust and population dense city maybe like a town they will say when they look at their backyard sky on a clear night they could see the whole milky way. Go to your backyard most likely on a clear night you will see 30 stars cap if you lived in that same town.

The main cause of this is useless lighting for advertising looks, and even for no reason at all! Next time you go take a walk you might see lights spaced out only 10 feet from each other more than 10 in a row that is an example of useless lighting you could remove some and get similar results. You might see some tall skyscrapers that have lit up sides for cool looks again, useless lighting! You could do without those lights it could save them a lot of money on the energy fee.

Look at the photo above you can see tons of useless lighting on the top of the empire state building and a ton of added lights for good looks on bridges and building tops if you want to increase the safety of airplanes by lighting up the top you don't need that many lights just cut that in half and worse the lights have pointed the sky!

Another reason light pollution is bad is it could severely disrupt the cycle of marine life many animals such as the sea turtle uses the moon's bright light as a guide and with all those bright tourist points along the beach the light has to be very bright, the animals are going to be lured away from the sea and end up getting crushed by a car, harmed by curious tourists, or get eaten by a land predator.

Another bad effect is carbon dioxide, we all know of this compound as another monster that kills the planet earth. We, humans, release tons of it every year by burning fossil fuels for energy but when spring and summer come the levels fall a lot because plants rise and need more Co2 to survive as new sapling push out of the ground.

Lights emit Co2 a lot of it a single Incandescent light bulb (the round ones) releases around 4,500 pounds of Co2 per year that's a lot of Co2! Lights take up 5% of all Co2 released per year and if you think that's small think again in 2022 (the current year at the time this was typed) the most Co2 in the atmosphere was 421 parts per million! and if you calculate it you end up with a lot of Co2 emissions caused by lights.

Another point to consider is human sleep, are you one of those people who don't get enough sleep at night? It might be light pollution that is creeping into your eyes and body. According to Harvard university/college, the #1 in the USA Exposure to artificial light disrupts our internal clock regulation. Upon light exposure, the SCN starts a signaling pathway that leads to a reduction in melatonin, the hormone responsible for regulating our sleep-wake cycle. Melatonin reduction results in daytime sleepiness and sleep disturbances.

Help the world remove light pollution!

Donate to professional light pollution removers!

List of some Non-Profit Organizations out there

If you want a further list go to this website: List of dark sky organizations

If you made it this far thanks for reading! I hope you have a nice rest of your day!