SETI public: search for artificial lighting

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This is a long shot, but I'm wondering- what about
searching for artificial lighting? What if ET uses
sodium vapor or mercury vapor lights, and they're on a
huge, brightly lit planet with heinous light
pollution? What if we swing our largest telescope
towards some of the known extrasolar planets and try
to look for a pre-supposed spectral change over time?

I think what a fixed outside observer would see on
Earth (if they could) is daily and yearly cycles of
artificial light intensity changes of various types as
earth rotates and revolves and seasons change.

I could easily talk myself out of the practicality of
this, the distances, the low signal strength, the
inability to distinguish between what's natural and
artificial, the inability to resolve details right
next to a star and once we see something, the
inability to prove that it comes from an
intelligence...just throwing out a line for some
feedback. What might we speculate that remote
artificial lighting like ours looks like from this
vantage point, or what clues might give it away?

cheers,
Pete

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