Dr. John Barentine

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55 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 10 Jul

Dr. John Barentine’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Science Friday · Reconnecting with the night sky and reining in light pollution · 10 Jul 2026 podcast

And for the reasons that you mentioned, it's cheap, it's convenient.

People think there are no consequences to its use.

So why not put more of it out into the world?

But I have to be clear at the same time that LED has a lot of really great characteristics that if it were used correctly and consistently, I think it could solve this problem of light pollution definitively.

But we're not using it very well.

And we're using too much of it and we're putting out more light than we need, etc.

And all of these things add up, I think, to help explain why we're seeing light pollution taking off at such a quick rate around the world.

It's the idea of having these switch-offs for birds.

It's been around now for, I would say, on the order of maybe 15 years or so.

And it's happening here in Europe and other places.

And it's really beneficial to the birds during migration season.

So if we could switch off some of those lights during their migration, we'd really be doing them a favor.

But then if people start realizing how much excess light we're using, maybe it's not just a special period of time in the year, but they think, you know, do these lights need to be on all night anyways?

Right.

And it would have a lot of beneficial effects for other organisms besides birds if we dealt with the problem more broadly rather than just, you know, a couple of weeks in the fall, for example.

Yes, I've been to many of them, not only here in the U.S., but in other parts of the world.

And I have seen evidence in certain places that these designated locations are driving a tourism economy.

It's still small relative to other kinds of tourism, but it does appear to be growing.

And I was also heartened to find that many of the conservation professionals that work in these places at parks and nature reserves have really taken to heart

the messaging around dark skies and how beneficial it is for the ecological world, probably even for humans, and are incorporating that into their practice.

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