Pope Francis Calls for Greater Actions On World Environment Day

God is always going to be a philosophical, mystical and controversial topic. Spirituality and religion have always seemed to be a delicate issue. However, the key issue does not necessarily rests on the idea of having to care for the environment for the sake of God or what the bible says. 

I like to believe that money and our self-interests play a bigger role on our lack of motivation or consideration for the environment. As long as we have a roof under us, comfortable clothes and sufficient food above everything else, the world seems to be fine. 

The ultimate obstacle that keeps us from reaching out to our world is our refusal to leave our comfort zones and do something for others without expecting in return. God will be fine even if we destroy this world. After all, he is believed to be all powerful and divine. But it is ourselves, our family, our friends, our children, our future and the future generations that will suffer from our lack of consideration for Mother Earth. 

So, the ultimate question should not be upon whether you can take care of the environment for God or not, but more on can you take responsibility in taking care of our world for your loved ones and the future generations...

Pope Francis took the occasion of World Environment Day to slam the influence of money and profit in the "human ecology" making the connection between the issues of the environment and poverty.

"When we talk about the environment, about creation, my thoughts turn to the first pages of the Bible, the Book of Genesis, which states that God placed man and woman on earth to cultivate and care for it," the Pope explained to the crowds of pilgrims and visitors to St. Peter’s Square. 'And the question comes to my mind: What does cultivating and caring for the earth mean? Are we truly cultivating and caring for creation? Or are we exploiting and neglecting it?'

The pope went on to talk of the relation between how humans treat the environment and how they treat one another:

The popes have spoken of human ecology, closely linked to environmental ecology. We are living in a time of crisis: we see this in the environment, but above all we see this in mankind ... Man is not in charge today, money is in charge, money rules. God our Father did not give the task of caring for the earth to money, but to us, to men and women: we have this task! Instead, men and women are sacrificed to the idols of profit and consumption: it is the 'culture of waste.'

Pope Francis went on to stress what has become a recurrent theme for him: the contrast between how culture views the well-being of the financial world with the well-being and needs of the poor and the homeless.

If you break a computer it is a tragedy, but poverty, the needs, the dramas of so many people end up becoming the norm. If on a winter’s night, here nearby in Via Ottaviano, for example, a person dies, that is not news. If in so many parts of the world there are children who have nothing to eat, that's not news, it seems normal. It cannot be this way! Yet these things become the norm: that some homeless people die of cold on the streets is not news. In contrast, a ten point drop on the stock markets of some cities, is a tragedy. A person dying is not news, but if the stock markets drop ten points it is a tragedy! Thus people are disposed of, as if they were trash.

The Pontiff also addressed food waste, which is the theme of the United Nation's World Environment Day 2013.

"We should all remember, however, that throwing food away is like stealing from the tables of the the poor, the hungry! I encourage everyone to reflect on the problem of thrown away and wasted food to identify ways and means that, by seriously addressing this issue, are a vehicle of solidarity and sharing with the needy."

More from Reuters:


VATICAN CITY, June 5 (Reuters) - Pope Francis denounced on Wednesday what he called a "culture of waste" in an increasingly consumerist world and said throwing away good food was like stealing from poor people.

"Our grandparents used to make a point of not throwing away leftover food. Consumerism has made us accustomed to wasting food daily and we are unable to see its real value," Francis said at his weekly audience in St. Peter's Square.

"Throwing away food is like stealing from the table of those who are poor and hungry," he said.

Since taking office in March, Pope Francis has said he wants the 1.2-billion-strong Roman Catholic Church to defend the poor and to practice greater austerity itself. He has also made several calls for global financial reform.

Around 1.3 billion tonnes of food, or one third of what is produced for human consumption, gets lost or wasted every year, according to the United Nations' food agency.

In the industrialized world the majority of waste is by consumers, often because they buy too much and have to throw away what they do not manage to eat.

A U.N.-backed study released on Wednesday said simple measures such as better storage and reducing over-sized portions would sharply reduce the vast amount of food going to waste.

In U.S. restaurants, diners wasted nine percent of the meals they bought, partly because of a trend to increase the size of everything from cheeseburgers to soft drinks, said the report by the World Resources Institute and the U.N. Environment Programme.

Francis said the "culture of waste" was especially deplorable given the prevalence of hunger in the world. The United Nations says hunger affects some 870 million people, while 2 billion suffer from at least one nutritional deficiency.

The Argentinian-born pontiff warned that too much focus on money and materialism meant financial market dips were viewed as tragedies while human suffering had become normal and ignored.

"In this way people are discarded as if they were garbage," he said. (Reporting by Catherine Hornby in Vatican City, Alister Doyle in Oslo, Terrence Edwards in Ulan Bator, Deborah Zabarenko in Washington; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky and Gareth Jones)

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13 Amazing Facts About Our Beautiful Environment

You already know the basics: Climate change is a real and imminent threat, fracking has more to it than meets the eye and mother nature will never cease to amaze us. But if you really want to impress everyone over Thanksgiving dinner, here are 13 exceptional facts about all that surrounds us, thanks to the cleverly titled book "1,227 Quite Interesting Facts to Knock Your Socks Off."

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  The amount of water on Earth is constant, and continually recycled over time: some of the water you drink will have passed through a dinosaur. 
   
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  40 percent of all bottled water sold in the world is bottled tap water. 
   
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   27,000 trees are felled each day for toilet paper. 

   
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  Paper can be recycled only six times. After that, the fibers are too weak to hold together. 
   
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  There is no known scientific way of predicting earthquakes. The most reliable method is to count the number of missing cats in the local paper: if it trebles, an earthquake is imminent. 
   
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  Cat originally means 'dog.' The word comes from the Latin catulus, a small dog or puppy. 
   
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  Humans and elephants are the only animals with chins. 
   
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  Beavers have transparent eyelids so they can see underwater with their eyes shut. 
   
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  Octopuses have three hearts. 
   
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  The 100,000 trillion ants in the world weigh about the same as all human beings. 
   
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  As soon as tiger shark embryos develop teeth they attack and eat each other in the womb. 
   
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  There are more than 1,200 species of bat in the world and not one of them is blind. 
   
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  Dolphins shed the top layer of their skin every two hours. 
   
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Lake Turns Animals into Statues

There is an ancient story of King Midas who turns everything he touches into gold. It seems like this ancient story is not as magical and unrealistic as it seems. Apparently, in the northern part of Tanzania, there is a mysterious lake, the Lake Natron, that has similar capabilities as the legendary King Midas. Their only difference is the Lake Natron doesn’t have anything to do with gold making but turning animals into statues. 

Lake Natron appears to have high alkalinity that range between pH 9 to 10.5. It has sodium carbonate compound, Natron, which originates from volcanic ash of the Great Rift Valley that calcifies animals once they ­­­get in the water. Bad news for our lovely animals who have no idea they are dipping into the water of death. Now that we have this information, some remedies must be done about the relationship between the animals and Lake Natron. 

ACCORDING to Dante, the Styx is not just a river but a vast, deathly swamp filling the entire fifth circle of hell. Perhaps the staff of New Scientist will see it when our time comes but, until then, Lake Natron in northern Tanzania does a pretty good job of illustrating Dante's vision.

Unless you are an alkaline tilapia (Alcolapia alcalica) – an extremophile fish adapted to the harsh conditions – it is not the best place to live. Temperatures in the lake can reach 60 °C, and its alkalinity is between pH 9 and pH 10.5.

The lake takes its name from natron, a naturally occurring compound made mainly of sodium carbonate, with a bit of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) thrown in. Here, this has come from volcanic ash, accumulated from the Great Rift valley. Animals that become immersed in the water die and are calcified.

Photographer Nick Brandt, who has a long association with east Africa – he directed the video for Michael Jackson's Earth Song there in 1995 – took a detour from his usual work when he discovered perfectly preserved birds and bats on the shoreline. "I could not help but photograph them," he says. "No one knows for certain exactly how they die, but it appears that the extreme reflective nature of the lake's surface confuses them, and like birds crashing into plate glass windows, they crash into the lake."

When salt islands form in the lake, lesser flamingos take the opportunity to nest – but it is a risky business, as this calcified bird (top) illustrates. The animals are all arranged in poses by the photographer. Above, on the right we have a sea eagle and on the left a dove, in what is surely the most horrific depiction of the "bird of peace" since Picasso's Guernica.

Brandt's new collection of photos featuring animals in east Africa, Across the Ravaged Land, is published by Abrams Books.

This article appeared in print under the headline "The lake that petrifies"

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Animals that Say their Name

Animals are smart. Apparently, many of them can say their name just like how we, humans, say our name or call others with their names. This article highlights the list of animals that say their name, which just shows how amazing and diverse the world we live in.

Anyone who's heard an English cuckoo knows where it got its name. Cuckoos make a two-note call, the first sounding like the vowel in "cook" and the second like the vowel in "coo." Between the two, there's even a little catch. This bird says its own name.

Or maybe not.

Aside from not knowing that that's its name, there's that matter of how the bird actually "says" it. Birds don't really use their tongues as we do. They don't make an actual "k" sound, or pretty much any other consonant sound either. They also don't move their tongues around to make vowel sounds as we do. And, obviously, they don't have lips.

So why do we hear cuckoos saying "cuckoo"? There are a couple of reasons.

First of all, birds have other ways to alter the shape of their resonating space. They can control the opening of the beak and the size of the space at the back of the throat. They also have a more complex voice box that can change a lot of the tonal details before they even go into the throat. You don't need a human mouth to make sounds that sound like speech, after all — the speakers on your stereo aren't shaped anything like your mouth.

Secondly, the sound cuckoos make isn't really exactly "cuckoo." It's really more like a "woo-'oo" than a "cook-coo" or "cuckoo." But humans tend to process animal sounds into the kinds of sounds we would make. And we like the crisper onset and the clearer break of the "k" sounds. So when we imitate the bird, we make an English-sounding word out of it, "cuckoo," and so we call the bird a cuckoo. And when we hear the bird, we hear it saying "cuckoo" because we're expecting that.

Let's look at some other birds that seem to say their names — plus two mammals that do as well.

Chickadee

You've probably heard this bird. It has two calls, one a three-note song and the other two quick high chirps followed by several lower, raspy notes. It's the latter one that is said to sound like "chickadeedeedeedee." But listen again: You won't hear a "ch" or a "k" in there anywhere, just a couple of sharp breaks in the notes. We humans are completely unable to imitate those quick breaks. The best we can do is to give an impression of the quickness and the high pitch with "chicka" — and then we approximate the repeated part with a "dee." When we hear the chickadee, we can hear that "chickadeedeedeedee" — but a human saying "chickadeedeedeedee" sounds exactly nothing like a chickadee. Still not sure exactly what it does sound like? Listen to it, and many other birds — including some of the other ones I mention here — at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's site, allaboutbirds.org.

KeaThis New Zealand bird has a simpler, easier name call. It makes a sound that starts high and tight and then breaks to a lower, more open-sounding note. An acoustic phonetician would tell you that speech sounds are made and identified by the relative strength of sets of harmonics of the base note, and when a kea makes its noise, the first strong set of harmonics above the base note moves from low to high, while the next strong set above those moves from high to medium. But if you watch one of these parrot-like birds make the sound (as well you may if you visit New Zealand's South Island, because they're not exactly shy), you won't see it move its tongue like you would for "eeaa"; it modifies the sound by other means. You also won't see it say a "k" before the "eeaaa" — because it doesn't. Again, we just want to insert one there to emphasize the sharp beginning of the sound — that's how we would do it.

Hoopoe

This bird makes a sound you'd probably hear more as "whoooop-whoop," though if you said "whoop-whoop" the way you would read it off the page, you wouldn't sound like this bird. The ancient Romans called it "upupa," and in English we used to call it "hoopoop." Somehow that came to be change to "hoopoe"; I don't know whether that was for reasons of decency or dignity, or simply random mutation, but I do know other versions of the name from earlier centuries include "whoophoo" and "whopee." Meanwhile, the hoopoe doesn't give a whoop whether it's getting its name right… it just gives a "whoooop-whoop."

KiskadeeThe three-part song of this bird has gotten it the Portuguese name "bem-te-vi" and the Spanish name "bien-ti-veo." If you listen to it, you will probably hear something like a raspy "Ih! Ee weeo," largely due to the first note being high and short, and then next holding a little lower but dipping in the middle and then gliding downward. How does this make it "kiskadee"? Well, you insert "k" and "sk" to indicate the sharp start and almost as sharp end of the first part, and then stick in a "d" instead of a "w" probably because you're thinking of a chickadee…

CurlewOne sound the curlew (or one kind of curlew) makes has a long liquid sound between two high chirping sounds, and it seems that a long time ago people in France found that "currrrrrrleu" was a good approximation of it. I think it sounds more like a squeeze toy or someone cleaning a mirror, but, then again, if someone were to try to spell either of those sounds, they might end up with "curlew" too. Because how do you spell a sound humans can't quite make?

Whip-poor-will

If you know this bird's name, you can hear it when you hear its call. On the other hand, if someone told you it was called a "Quaker reel" you'd hear that. Or "potpourri." Or any of quite a few other possibles. What is clear is that there's a sound at the start that reminds us of an "o" or "u" or "w" sound (because the first and second sets of harmonics are both low); there's a catch between the first and second parts that we'd think of as a version of a stop consonant like "p" or "k"; the second note is longer and lower than the first and is mainly a trill; and the third note is much higher and quicker and trails off a little at the end. There just happen to be a lot of plausible sets of English sounds that match that. Picking one is sort of like seeing animals in clouds.

BobolinkThis bird's name comes from its call — or some part of its actually incredibly varied vocal repertoire — supposedly sounding like "Bob o' Lincoln." To my ears it sounds more like an excited R2D2. But the many little notes coming quickly one after another have a little resemblance to the sound we make it we say "Bob o' Lincoln" quickly — or "little kitty litter" or "abalone goblet" or… Well, someone picked this version, and it stuck. Meanwhile, the bobolink goes on babbling and doesn't care what it's called.

Tuco-tucoThis cute little South American rodent spends a lot of its time burrowing, but when it makes a sound, the sound is something that sounds like "tuc-tuc-tuc." So why call it "tuco-tuco"? Because you find it in countries where they speak Spanish and Portuguese, and in either language "tuc" is not a well-formed word, but "tuco" is. And we got the name from them.

Ai

Here, at last, is an animal that we can actually think of as able to say its name as we do. It's a sloth, a furry slow-moving three-toed jungle creature — but a mammal with a vocal tract a bit more like ours, although of course not able to carry on a conversation. When a female ai calls out for a mate, or when a male or female is in danger, it makes a high-pitched sound like a woman screaming (not very laid-back for such a chillin' creature), and sure enough, the way its mouth starts wide open and then closes down makes the cry sound sort of like a human "ay" or "ai" — but a very high one!

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Let's Get to Know Greenhouse Gases

Greenhouse gases have become a household name since global warming issue has become more pressing. Though we hear a lot about them, it is likely that not everyone knows about greenhouse gases and why they are so important in our climate change.

As Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) describes them, greenhouse gases are gases that trap the heat in the Earth's atmosphere. When the sun emits heat to our beautiful earth, certain amount of it is absorbed while some heat gets reflected back into space, which is called infrared radiation. Overall, the amount of heat the sun emits to Earth should equal to the amount of heat that bounces back into the space, so the Earth can achieve some balance. Increased levels in greenhouse gases disrupt this balance. The more greenhouse gases we have, the more heat gets trap in our atmosphere and less amount that gets reflected back into space. There goes global warming.

There are several popular greenhouse gases that have been constantly associated with global warming:

Carbon Dioxide (CO2)

Carbon Dioxide surfaces in our atmosphere from burning of fossil fuels, such as coals, natural gas and oil. It also forms through solid waste, trees and wood products. One way to eliminate or reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is when plants absorb them.

How to reduce CO2?

• Reduction in fossil fuel consumption is the key. 
• Less use of energy in homes, commercial establishments, businesses and transportation.
• Energy conservation is very important. 
• In homes and commercial establishments, we can conserve energy by turning off electricity, lights and electronics when they are not in use. 
• Use of renewable sources of energy that contain less carbon is also important.

Methane (CH4)

Methane also comes from production and transportation of coal, natural gas and oil. Also, methane is emitted from livestock, agriculture and decayed organic waste we can often find in solid waste landfills.

How to reduce CH4?

• Better equipment and machinery on production and transportation of oil and gas in order to reduce leaks that add CH4 emissions. 
• Capture CH4 emissions from coal mining.
• Implement different practices in manure management of animals. 
• EPA's AgSTAR program, which highlights the use of Biogas recovery system (anaerobic digester that product electricity, heat from handling and capturing animal manure).
• Using landfill gas as energy resource to capture and reduce CH4 emissions and use it instead to fuel vehicles, homes, manufacturing industries, power plants and commercial establishments.

Nitrous Oxide (N20)

Nitrous Oxide is emitted through fossil fuel and solid wastes combustion. Agricultural and industrial practices also contribute to nitrous oxide emission. Use of fertilizers is a large factor in increased N20 emissions.

How to reduce N20?

• Reduction or elimination in use of nitrogen-based fertilizers
• Different strategy in manure management (see AgSTAR program)
• Reduction in fuel consumption for vehicles
• Less fossil fuel consumption by upgrading to more efficient machinery and renewable sources (just like CO2) to reduce fuel combustion that emit N20

Fluorinated Gases (F gases)

Fluorinated gases consist of hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride that come from industrial activities. Fluorinated gases are usually emitted in small amounts but they have high potency among all greenhouse gases.

Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) - commercial refrigerants, air conditioning system, heat pump system, fire extinguishuants, aerosols and solvents

Perfluorocarbons (PFCs) - electronics, cosmetics and pharmaceutical products

Sulfur Hexafluoride (SF6) - found in insulation gas, high voltage switch gear and magnesium production

How to reduce F gases?

• Alternative use for refrigerants in homes and businesses 
• Adapting the fluorinated gas recycling method
• Use of alternative gases for fluorinated gases
• Improved air conditioning system for vehicles to prevent leaks of HFC gases from AC refrigerants
• Impose standards for clean engine vehicles

Greenhouse gases play an important role in heat regulation of Earth.  Greenhouse gases in large amounts can do damage as they can increase the amount of heat trapped in our atmosphere, which leads to global warming. Greenhouse gas emissions mainly come from people's energy consumption. Hence, we are held responsible for implementing a lifestyle and industrial practices that can reduce greenhouse gas emissions where we can manage to live, make societal progress and take care of our beautiful Earth.

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Our Beautiful Earth as a 'Pale Blue Dot'

“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”

― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

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