I see lots of people complaining about increased light pollution and skyglow . My question is if everyone is so worried about it then WHY are so many different lighting methods used that point High wattage lighting straight up at the sky ? 95% of billboard and sign lighting I see is pointing up . Same thing with most "accent" lighting on tall buildings .  Regardless of the light source , If more lighting was pointed downward , used full cut-off optics and wasn't a zillion watts the problem wouldn't be an issue .  Thoughts ??

Yeah, I’ve heard all about it. Where I live, there really isn’t any ordinances dictating how lighting designer should install their fixtures. Therefore in my area, lighting designers are pretty much free to do whatever they want.

In my opinion, it may seem like a lot of people are complaining, when in reality it’s just smaller groups of people (like astronomers, observatories, environmentalists) that are trying to make things sound worse than it actually is, as they are trying to simply persuade the public on a minor issue. Otherwise (in most places around here) it’s typically ignored, but that’s my thoughts.

I am strongly opposed to light pollution because it has a negative impact on nocturnal wildlife and also the sleep cycles of diurnal wildlife including us humans. An example of a consequence of light pollution is the disruption of the migratory paths of nocturnal animals that naturally follow the moon for migration such as moths and many other flying insects. I personally think that light pollution is a huge waste of electricity because artificial lighting is typically left on whenever it is not needed such as street lights illuminating an empty street.

I see lots of people complaining about increased light pollution and skyglow . My question is if everyone is so worried about it then WHY are so many different lighting methods used that point High wattage lighting straight up at the sky ? 95% of billboard and sign lighting I see is pointing up . Same thing with most "accent" lighting on tall buildings .  Regardless of the light source , If more lighting was pointed downward , used full cut-off optics and wasn't a zillion watts the problem wouldn't be an issue .  Thoughts ??

The thing is, the ones who operate these lights just don't care whether it is damaging the environment. It is the same as when at the 19/20th century people didn't care what they were emitting in all the chimnies.
"I canafford it, so why shouldn't I do it" was all they were caring for. And the fact the technology made the thins efficient so cheap made the thing way worse.

Skyglow isn’t light pollution it’s just the stargazers whining that they can’t see the Milky Way.

Light pollution cannot be mitigated by the cutout optics and lights pointing down by themselves, almost all the light gets reflected by the surrounding houses and the streets, specially in rainy days when the streets become "shiny", reflecting even more light, so it is inevitable. The real way of controlling light pollution is by emitting as few lines in the spectrum as possible, like SOX lights, or red LEDs. Nor better options, nor regulating lights pointing upwards will help much.

Lighting pollution caused by too much lumens and luxes on the ground by streetlights with too high wattage lamps, and LED lighting with too much blue output.
The original streetlighting in Israel, was 80-125W MV lamps, and when we moved to HPS, these lanterns were been replaced mostly by 250W HPS lamps.

Lighting pollution caused by too much lumens and luxes on the ground by streetlights with too high wattage lamps, and LED lighting with too much blue output.
The original streetlighting in Israel, was 80-125W MV lamps, and when we moved to HPS, these lanterns were been replaced mostly by 250W HPS lamps.

Yep, I forgot to mention that. New LED streetlights are way brighter than the previous HPS or MV ones, and irradiate way more blue light. That's because in most cases they replace e.g. a 100w HPS with a 100W LED, or in my neighborhood they put 90W LEDs replacing the 150w HPS ones. They should put LEDs with the same light output as the original HPS or MV fixtures.

The problem with LED is that they have more candelas than previous lanterns, regardless of their wattage.

The thing is, the ones who operate these lights just don't care whether it is damaging the environment. It is the same as when at the 19/20th century people didn't care what they were emitting in all the chimnies.
"I canafford it, so why shouldn't I do it" was all they were caring for. And the fact the technology made the thins efficient so cheap made the thing way worse.

The reason that the 19th/20th century had such issues as chimneys belching forth smoke is that they simply didn't know it was harmful. Once that was realised, legislation was passed to stop it.

The reason that the 19th/20th century had such issues as chimneys belching forth smoke is that they simply didn't know it was harmful. Once that was realised, legislation was passed to stop it.

The thing is that, the LED ambient impact is known, unlike the 19th century with the chimneys, yet nothing has been done about it, it is more like a jungle law.

The reason that the 19th/20th century had such issues as chimneys belching forth smoke is that they simply didn't know it was harmful. Once that was realised, legislation was passed to stop it.

And the same could be said about the light pollution 100 years later, in the border of 20/21 century.
No pollution is that much of a problem, when it happens only on small scale. But once it becomes wide spread thing, it starts to become quite a big problem.


For the lighting: It is clear we can not live completely without street lighting. But bright illuminating advertisement or buildings 365/year just because "it is part of the architecture and I may afford it" is not the necessary illumination. It is the same as someone releasing color smoke patterns all day "because it is the part of the architecture and I can afford it".

Yes, light reflected from illuminated city streets does contribute to the light pollution. But without illuminating them, we will have quite a safety problem. Same could be seen about illuminating the outdoor industry equipment (technology towers in chemical plats,...), where it allows early detection of faults releasing dangerous chemicals. These we may try to design such way it still serves the purpose while minimizing the impact, but we can not eliminate it

But pointing bright lights up to buildings just "to look good", all the illuminated/lighting advertisement banners is not something we can function without.
And the "light pillars into the sky" is really ridiculous, really equals ejecting smoke all day long just "to form an effect".
Doing so on few occassions is OK, but polluting permanently is not.

I came up with the idea for this topic after walking by the 3 - 400w MH floods pointing upwards to light the sign where I work . The job could have easily been done with 2 - 250w MH mounted above the sign , pointing down .