Humans Are Turning Mammals More Nocturnal
outsideonline.com
outsideonline.com
We actually started fixing this by switching to sodium bulbs, which was better for humans too, but now with the push to LED, we're undoing the fix that we did, again hurting both the wildlife and ourselves in the process.
What's the tradeoff on electricity use, though?
The more important reason to switch is that the LEDs give a whiter light, which improves driver reaction time at night.
However, there have been no studies comparing if accidents have actually gone down in cities that switched to LED, which would in theory account for increased sleep deprivation due to more white light at night.
It doesn't matter what energy source any individual application is using, it only matters what happens at the margin. For example, if a city switching to slightly more efficient lightbulbs allows a coal power plant to be mothballed one year earlier, then it saves an entire year of coal power emissions from happening.
Furthermore, streetlights operate on a complete inverse power curve to solar, meaning that additional solar is very unlikely to benefit streetlight power.
The idea being that the removal of blue light reduces the likelihood of dazzle, especially in rain and fog.
> Whilst yellow light improves visibility in wet or foggy conditions, it can also be harder to see with yellow lights in clear conditions. As a result, many vehicles today use yellow lights only as fog lights.
> White lights are the most popular colour for the headlights of today. In many countries, headlights are no longer allowed to be yellow and must be white in colour. European regulations, for example, require all new vehicles to be manufactured with white headlights.
Current UN regs do indeed require white. Definitely not "much worse", more like simply different. They were very yellow, right out there with sodium lighting and obliterated colour acuity. So highly unlikely to be coming back. :)
Regardless, I'm not sure your opinion is universal. There was a pretty big protest against them in my city, Montreal, and the mayor relented.
Yellow light is more romantic and it creates melatonin. White light keeps people alert due to the blue light in it. What you prefer, depends on your interests. On the road, people need to be awake. For that purpose white light does make sense.
> Another skeptic was the Tribune’s legendary architecture critic Paul Gapp. “[Sodium vapor lamps] are more than twice as bright as the blue mercury vapor lights which they would replace and produce an artificial daylight effect whose peculiar offensiveness must be visually experienced to be understood. How can it be said?” Gapp wrote in 1974. “One looks at the eerie, ominous quality of sodium vapor illumination and thinks of the bizarre paintings of Hieronymous Bosch, the frightening futurism of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, and other nightmares.”
> The jaundiced weirdness of sodium light has become a vexing challenge to photographers (one filmmaker, Tenolian Bell, called it “the ugliest light known to the cinematographer”); movie cameras simulate its color by using a gel filter named Bastard Amber. Significantly, retailers have avoided inflicting the unpleasantness of sodium lights on their customers—most commercial parking lots and shopping malls use the costlier white metal halide lights.
The LED lights are even more like daylight. This would appear to undermine the original poster who preferred LED.
It can be addressed with warmer LED's, filtered LED, narrow-band LED... trouble is the bulk of the market is at 4K & 5K white balance, so that's the default choice to put in.
The good news about LED is, due to more even color profile, they can use dramatically less lux, but that requires adjustment to lighting level too.
They can, but at least what I've seen around California is that they don't. The one outside my window is a good example. It was replaced with LED and now it's like a spotlight right into my window. I didn't even realize there was a light there when it was HPS.
Every night I look up at my exterior lights to admire the horde of geckos waiting patiently around each one for the onslaught of bugs to begin bumping into the lights.
I always wondered how different the gecko vs bug population would be without night lights. I've always felt bad for bugs.
I suspect you can find more wildlife per square mile in a rural neighborhood than you could in true wilderness.
I prefer a gentle mooing. Who cares what my burger thinks?
What makes you think terrestrial animals are smarter than young children, or that something less intelligent than a young child has any coherent commentary?