Earth Is Lit And That's A Problem : The Two
Christopher Kyba
"The areas that are getting brighter rapidly are developing countries " says  Christopher Kyba  a researcher at the German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam . "So a lot of places in South America  Africa and Asia are brightening really  really rapidly  up to 10 percent or more per year  even  in some cases."
With new solid-state lighting technology becoming available  some areas have started making a switch to LEDs. And because this satellite is not able to see all of the light emitted by LEDs   Kyba  says the brightening that's actually happening is probably greater than what's been measured.
"For the United States  for example  we don't see much of a change. But we know that a lot of LEDs are going in. And that means that the United States is almost certainly getting brighter  in terms of how people see the world with their human eyes "  Kyba  explains.
Some have suggested that energy-savings from LEDs will reduce the cost of lighting. But the researchers found that "as light gets cheaper  we use more of it  nearly proportionately to the rate at which it's getting cheaper  " Kyba  says.
On a global or national scale  all this wasted light is expensive   he  says: "It costs a lot of money to radiate that light into space and it's not doing anybody any good."
 He  and others argue that lighting efforts must be well-designed to reduce the amount of light going out into space while still providing a safe and comfortable experience for people on the ground who need to see at night.
The rapid increase in night lighting has been a profound change  a kind of global experiment  that has happened in just the last 100 years. "My mum  for example  grew up on a farm in Saskatchewan  in a time before they had electrification  " Kyba  says. "So  she  grew up with an amazing starry sky  and now  she  lives  within one lifetime  under a very light-polluted sky."
"The areas that are getting brighter rapidly are developing countries " says   [TGT]   a researcher at the German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam . "So a lot of places in South America  Africa and Asia are brightening really  really rapidly  up to 10 percent or more per year  even  in some cases."
With new solid-state lighting technology becoming available  some areas have started making a switch to LEDs. And because this satellite is not able to see all of the light emitted by LEDs   Kyba  says the brightening that's actually happening is probably greater than what's been measured.
"For the United States  for example  we don't see much of a change. But we know that a lot of LEDs are going in. And that means that the United States is almost certainly getting brighter  in terms of how people see the world with their human eyes "  Kyba  explains.
Some have suggested that energy-savings from LEDs will reduce the cost of lighting. But the researchers found that "as light gets cheaper  we use more of it  nearly proportionately to the rate at which it's getting cheaper  " Kyba  says.
On a global or national scale  all this wasted light is expensive   he  says: "It costs a lot of money to radiate that light into space and it's not doing anybody any good."
 He  and others argue that lighting efforts must be well-designed to reduce the amount of light going out into space while still providing a safe and comfortable experience for people on the ground who need to see at night.
The rapid increase in night lighting has been a profound change  a kind of global experiment  that has happened in just the last 100 years. "My mum  for example  grew up on a farm in Saskatchewan  in a time before they had electrification  " Kyba  says. "So  she  grew up with an amazing starry sky  and now  she  lives  within one lifetime  under a very light-polluted sky."