BBC Liked It Better When India Was In The Dark

By Paul Homewood

h/t mothcatcher

The BBC have been showing their usual bias again on news programmes today.

The report below includes a brief video that has been shown on TV:

A study of pictures of Earth by night has revealed that artificial light is growing brighter and more extensive every year.

Between 2012 and 2016, the planet’s artificially lit outdoor area grew by more than 2% per year.

Scientists say a "loss of night" in many countries is having negative consequences for "flora, fauna, and human well-being".

A team published the findings in the journal Science Advances.

Their study used data from a Nasa satellite radiometer – a device designed specifically to measure the brightness of night-time light.

It showed that changes in brightness over time varied greatly by country. Some of the world’s "brightest nations", such as the US and Spain, remained the same. Most nations in South America, Africa and Asia grew brighter.

Only a few countries showed a decrease in brightness, such as Yemen and Syria – both experiencing warfare.

The nocturnal satellite images – of glowing coastlines and spider-like city networks – look quite beautiful but artificial lighting has unintended consequences for human health and the environment.

Let the Sun go down

In 2016, the American Medical Association officially recognised the "detrimental effects of poorly designed, high-intensity LED lighting", saying it encouraged communities to "minimise and control blue-rich environmental lighting by using the lowest emission of blue light possible to reduce glare. The sleep-inducing hormone melatonin is particularly sensitive to blue light.
A recent study published in the journal Nature revealed that artificial light was a threat to crop pollination – reducing the pollinating activity of nocturnal insects.
Research in the UK revealed that trees in more brightly lit areas burst their buds up to a week earlier than those in areas without artificial lighting.
A study published earlier this year found that urban light installations "dramatically altered" the behaviour of nocturnally migrating birds.

Lead researcher Christopher Kyba from the German Research Centre for Geoscience in Potsdam said that the introduction of artificial light was "one of the most dramatic physical changes human beings have made to our environment".

He and his colleagues had expected to see a decrease in brightness in wealthy cities and industrial areas as they switched from the orange glow of sodium lights to more energy-efficient LEDs; the light sensor on the satellite is not able to measure the bluer part of the spectrum of light that LEDs emit.

"I expected that in wealthy countries – like the US, UK, and Germany – we’d see overall decreases in light, especially in brightly lit areas," he told BBC News. "Instead we see countries like the US staying the same and the UK and Germany becoming increasingly bright."

Since the satellite sensor does not "see" the bluer light that humans can see, the increases in brightness that we experience will be even greater than what the researchers were able to measure.

Prof Kevin Gaston from the University of Exeter told BBC News that humans were "imposing abnormal light regimes on ourselves".

http://ift.tt/2hJt4Lr

As mothcatcher points out, the whole report is completely negative. There is no mention of the obvious upsides, or how wonderful it is that poorer countries are beginning to get access to cheap, reliable energy.

Perhaps we should all aim to be like North Korea!