World's 2010 nature target 'will not be met'

The world's governments will not meet their internationally-agreed target of curbing the loss of species and nature by 2010, a major study has confirmed.

Virtually all species and ecosystems show continued decline, while pressures on nature are increasing, it concludes.

Published in the journal Science, the study confirms what conservationists have known for several years.

The 2010 target was adopted in 2002, but the scientists behind this study say implementation has been "woeful".

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Evolution Timeline - From first life-forms to Homo Sapiens

The Theory of Evolution is not a mathematical fact but it is a scientific theory.

A scientific theory originates as a hypothesis, is proven once, then tested by a multitude of peers who come to the same conclusion and is well supported by an abundance of facts.

Some people claim there is substantial debate among scientists about its validity. This is simply not true.

Why would people want to prevent our progression and understanding of where we came from? Why would people argue against something that is no longer up for debate? Why would people hate something that's basic principles have lead us to medical breakthroughs in Antibiotics?

I think its because people need to feel safe and comforted in this crazy world, and the only answers previously had been supplied by the superstitions of the past.

This is no longer the case, the answers we have been given are wonderful, they are incredible, we are part of something very special. Each and everyone of us has an ancestral line that goes back 3.5 billion years. That's this many zeros. 3,500,000,000.

To really gain some perspective click on the following link:

Evolution Timeline

The page indicates the time line of evolution on our 4 billion year old planet.

Pay attention to the bottom scroll bar on the page for an indication of the scale.

• The lines on the background indicate inches and feet.
• 1/20th in. = roughly 100 thousand years. (108,000)
• 1 inch = about 2 million years. (2,160,000)
• 1 foot = about 26 million years. (25,920,000)
• The whole page is about 135 feet wide, almost half a football field, representing 3.5 billion years. (3,500,000,000)

One of the things that I am most amazed about is how long the dinosaurs endured on earth, and how briefly humans have lasted, so far.

Zoom in by a factor of 1,000 on the Hominid Timeline, from walking upright to the present day.

It's Time to End the Church of Scientology's Tax-Exempt Status

It's pretty simple. American tax codes are wrongly benefiting and empowering the unethical, potentially illegal, and most assuredly uncharitable activities of an organization using "religion" as a cloak.

For more than 25 years, the IRS denied tax-exemption to the Church of Scientology. The long-running policy flowed from an IRS determination in 1967 that Scientology was in fact a commercial entity operated solely for the benefit of founder L. Ron Hubbard.

Hubbard has been gone for nearly a quarter century, but the questionable practices of extracting huge fees from members, paying lip service to informed consent and employing violence, threats and unfair labor tactics to protect its interests continue today under Scientology leader David Miscavige.

A legitimate religious organization does not use physical, mental, emotional and financial abuse to maintain membership. Nor does it function as a conspiracy to threaten and intimidate others. A valid religion informs people of church doctrine and beliefs before they make a commitment to join. A religious group with even the most basic ethics does not use its constituents as slave labor to reproduce and perpetuate its teachings.

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New evidence may solve mystery of the origin of water on Earth

For chemical compounds to bind together with other chemical compounds, they need to be in something fluid so that they can freely move around. This is why there is no life on Mars or Venus, the water would be either ice or steam.

When water is in its liquid format, then any chemicals inside the water are free to float along until they touch another chemical, which bind together and eventually create large chemical strings and eventually life.

That is a simplified version but if you'd like to learn more about this process take a look at this Made Easy video

This is only part 3 in a series of 11 short videos, that I've linked on the left hand side of this blog.

However, the BBC article below is on the origin of water, the petri dish of life, on our planet:

Scientists have found new evidence that the water on Earth was delivered by asteroids during the earliest years of the solar system.

The development comes after two teams of scientists independently discovered the first “wet” asteroid, paving the way for the first experimental proof of a longstanding mystery surrounding the origin of water on Earth.

Scientists believe that the Earth was formed barren. During a period of intense bombardment, between 4.1 and 3.8 billion years ago, ice-covered comets and asteroids could have delivered water. It had been assumed that these asteroids would have now dried out.

But the new observations, by teams using infrared telescopes at Johns Hopkins University, in Maryland, and the University of Central Florida, show that 24 Thermis, one of the largest asteroids in the solar system’s main asteroid belt, is covered in a thick layer of frost

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TED: James Randi's fiery takedown of psychic fraud

Legendary skeptic James Randi takes a fatal dose of homeopathic sleeping pills onstage, kicking off a searing 18-minute indictment of irrational beliefs. He throws out a challenge to the world's psychics:

Prove what you do is real, and I'll give you a million dollars.

(No takers yet.)

James Randi has an international reputation as a magician and escape artist, but he is perhaps best known as the world's most tireless investigator and demystifier of paranormal and pseudoscientific claims.

Randi has pursued "psychic" spoonbenders, exposed the dirty tricks of faith healers, investigated homeopathic water "with a memory," and generally been a thorn in the sides of those who try to pull the wool over the public's eyes in the name of the supernatural. He has received numerous awards and recognitions, including a MacArthur "genius" grant in 1986. He's the author of numerous books, including The Truth About Uri Geller, The Faith Healers, Flim-Flam!, and An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural.

Watch the video

Aussie Sausage 'Solution' to Cane Toad Invasion

Scientists in Australia have designed a cane toad "sausage" that could help protect vulnerable predators from the poisonous toads.

The researchers developed the sausage as a bait that could help train animals to avoid eating the large toads.

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Legal doesn't always mean right

So in March 2006, Westboro protesters showed up at St. John's Catholic Church ("St. John's Kennel" in their formulation) in Westminster for Mr. Snyder's funeral, reportedly carrying signs depicting male anal sex and slogans like "Semper Fi Fags."

For the record, no one has claimed Matthew Snyder was gay. Not that that should matter. But the church's bizarre argument is that the death of "every" dead serviceperson should be celebrated as God's punishment of a gay-tolerant nation.

Cpl. Snyder's father, Albert, sued the "church" for disrupting his son's funeral. In October 2007, he won a $10.9 million verdict. Last September, an appeals court tossed that verdict out.

The worst of it is that the court recently ordered Mr. Snyder to help pay Westboro's legal bills. You heard me. Mr. Snyder, who makes $43,000 a year, must pay $16,500 to the people who made a circus of his son's funeral. "You can do the math," says his attorney, Sean Summers. Snyder has been forced to seek donations online (www.matthewsnyder.org).

Westboro says it will use the money to give the same treatment to another grieving family.

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Amid Calls for Transparency, Pope Describes Dangers of Digital Age

A report by Margret Warner of PBS Newshour from the Vatican to investigate how the Catholic Church is planning to deal with the Child Sex Abuse scandal, and instead describes the dangers of people communicating their opinions more freely over the internet.

VATICAN CITY | We've come to Rome for a week to explore how the new wave in the Catholic clergy sex abuse scandal is being seen and dealt with by the Vatican, the power center of worldwide Catholicism. Pope Benedict XVI is coming under increasing pressure, as hundreds of charges of alleged priest abuse of minors explode throughout Europe -- so we were eager to see him at the earliest possible opportunity.

It was the last morning of a three-day conference on how the church should use and deal with the digital media of today. "Have they talked about the sex abuse scandal?" I whispered to a young reporter for Avvenire, the country's dominant Catholic newspaper. She smiled and shook her head: "Not a chance."

So what did the Pope have to say to the masses of people wanting answers and guidance from their religious leader when he arrived?

"The times in which we living knows a huge widening of the frontiers of communication," he said (according to our Italian fixer/producer) and the new media of this new age points to a more "egalitarian and pluralistic" forum. But, he went on to say, it also opens a new hole, the "digital divide" between haves and have-nots.

Even more ominous, he said, it exacerbates tensions between nations and within nations themselves. And it increases the "dangers of ... intellectual and moral relativism," which can lead to "multiple forms of degradation and humiliation" of the essence of a person, and to the "pollution of the spirit." All in all, it seemed a pretty grim view of the wide open communication parameters being demanded by the Internet age.

We'll be keeping a close eye on what happens and what is said on this issue from the Vatican in the coming weeks.

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The Internet: Where religions come to die

Kind of speaks for itself, but don't take my word on this... please watch this video and if you think its worth the effort, send it on to a friend.

Seattle cartoonist: May 20 is ‘Everybody Draw Mohammed Day’

As a snarky response to Muslim bloggers who "warned" Comedy Central about an episode of South Park showing the Prophet Mohammed wearing a bear suit, one Seattle cartoonist, who calls laughter her form of "prayer," is asking artists all over the world to create depictions of Mohammed on May 20. A Facebook page has been set up to cache the images for all to see.

Speaking on a Seattle radio show on Friday, cartoonist Molly Norris said she announced her idea as a way of countering the fear exhibited by Comedy Central in censoring episode 201 of South Park.

After Comedy Central cut a portion of a South Park episode following a death threat from a radical Muslim group, Seattle cartoonist Molly Norris wanted to counter the fear. She has declared May 20th "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day."

Norris told KIRO Radio's Dave Ross that cartoonists are meant to challenge the lines of political correctness. "That's a cartoonist's job, to be non-PC."

At the South Park Studios website, a message was posted that notes, "After we delivered the show, and prior to broadcast, Comedy Central placed numerous additional audio bleeps throughout the episode. We do not have network approval to stream our original version of the show."

The New York-based Revolution Muslim group's Web site was largely unavailable Wednesday but a CNN report said the statement was posted alongside a graphic photo of slain Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who was murdered by a Muslim extremist in Amsterdam in 2004.

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Majority of Israel's Jews back gag on Human Rights

Oh to be a Jew. This interesting article by an Israeli Newspaper explains that the majority of Israelis believe it is ok to stop human rights organisations from doing their job if it exposes bad stuff done by Israel. If its a majority vote is it ok, or is that democracy gone crazy? Democrazy?

More than half of Jewish Israelis think human rights organizations that expose immoral behavior by Israel should not be allowed to operate freely, and think there is too much freedom of expression here, a recent survey found.

The survey, commissioned by the Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research at Tel Aviv University, will be presented Wednesday at a conference on the limits of freedom of expression.

The pollsters surveyed 500 Jewish Israelis who can be considered a representative sample of the adult Jewish population.

We would have gotten away with it too if it wasn't for those pesky kids at Amnesty International.

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8: The Mormon Proposition

Some interesting questions are raised in an up and coming documentary about the Gay Marriage Bill in California and how the people behind the Mormon faith was able to have it removed 6 months later.

Created by several disaffected members of the Mormon Church who are gay, it lays blame for the passage of California’s Proposition 8 squarely upon the Mormon Church. According to the makers of the film, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has spent the last three decades engaged in a vendetta against gays, employing evil “secret combinations” among its members in LDS temples to effect the trashing of gay rights. This venomous film production employs every possible lie to portray the Mormon Church as an oppressive and evil money machine.

I honestly do not understand how people can see homosexual marriage as a threat to anything. They make it to this huge horrible debate, when we should be focusing on much more important things like world poverty and genocide. Its so pathetic.

Watch the Trailer

Gordon Brown: Wiring a web for global good

TED Video: We're at a unique moment in history, says UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown: we can use today's interconnectedness to develop our shared global ethic -- and work together to confront the challenges of poverty, security, climate change and the economy

Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown played a key role in shaping the G20 nations' response to the world's financial crisis and has been a powerful advocate for a coordinated global response to problems such as climate change, poverty and social justice.

Watch the video

The Four Horsemen

You may have heard about this little informal discussion between Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, during which they discuss the level of attacks on them by theists and by their fellow atheists and agnostics.

The so called Four Horsemen of Atheism comprises of two one hour videos and they hit on a number of different topics regarding the reaction to their own books as well as criticisms and common misrepresentations about their ideas.

Anyway, although I know my dad would say, they are just a bunch of pompous, self-righteous cretins I found the videos quite interesting nonetheless:

Video One

Video Two

The Improbability Pump

The following extract is from an Article in The Nation by Jerry A. Coyne:

Imagine for a moment that a large proportion of Americans--let's say half--rejected the "germ theory" of infectious disease. Maladies like swine flu, malaria and AIDS aren't caused by micro-organisms, they claim, but by the displeasure of gods, whom they propitiate by praying, consulting shamans and sacrificing goats. Now, you'd surely find this a national disgrace, for those people would be utterly, unequivocally wrong. Although it's called germ theory, the idea that infections are spread by small creatures is also a fact, supported by mountains of evidence. You don't get malaria unless you carry a specific protozoan parasite. We know how it causes the disease, and we see that when you kill it with drugs, the disease goes away. How, we'd ask, could people ignore all this evidence in favor of baseless superstition?

But that's fiction, right? Well, not entirely, for it applies precisely to another "theory" that is also a fact: the theory of evolution. Over the past quarter-century, poll after poll has revealed that nearly half of all Americans flatly reject evolution, many clinging to the ancient superstition that the earth was created only 6,000 years ago, complete with all existing species. But as Richard Dawkins shows in his splendid new book, The Greatest Show on Earth, the theory of evolution is supported by at least as much evidence as is the germ theory of disease--heaps of it, and from many areas of biology. So why is it contemptible to reject germ theory but socially acceptable to reject evolutionary theory?

One answer is religion. Unlike germ theory, the idea of evolution strikes at the heart of human ego, suggesting that we were not the special object of God's attention but were made by the same blind and mindless process of natural selection that also built ferns, fish and rabbits. Another answer is ignorance: most Americans are simply unaware of the multifarious evidence that makes evolution more than "just a theory," and don't even realize that a scientific theory is far more than idle speculation.

While Dawkins has produced several brilliant books on the marvels of evolution and natural selection, he's never before written at length about the evidence for evolution. The Greatest Show on Earth can be seen as his response to ongoing and nonscientific opposition to evolution. In his previous book, The God Delusion, Dawkins mounted a withering attack on belief that was surely motivated in part by his incessant battles with faith-based creationism. In The Greatest Show on Earth he finally addresses the problem of ignorance, drawing together the diverse evidence for evolution to show that "evolution is a fact. Beyond reasonable doubt, beyond serious doubt, beyond sane, informed, intelligent doubt, beyond doubt evolution is a fact." Dawkins has two goals here. The first is to change the minds of those who doubt or deny evolution by presenting them with more than 400 pages of scientific evidence. But changing minds is a big job, at least in the United States: in a 2006 Time magazine poll, 64 percent of Americans declared that if science disproved one of their religious beliefs, they'd reject the science in favor of their faith. (The British aren't quite so defiant: one week after its publication, The Greatest Show on Earth debuted at No. 1 on the Sunday Times bestseller list.) More realistically, Dawkins hopes to bolster those who already accept evolution but "find themselves inadequately prepared to argue the case." And here he succeeds brilliantly.

Read the rest of the Article

Reviving the Spirit of Rio

Following the near collapse of the UN climate negotiations in December and the seeming paralysis of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in March, the whole idea of solving the world's environmental problems through multilateral negotiations seems to be in crisis. But, argue Maurice Strong and Felix Dodds, another recent development holds out the promise of reversing the trend.

In two years' time, Rio de Janeiro will host another Earth Summit - 20 years after the first.

The idea was proposed in 2007 by Brazil's President Lula da Silva at the UN General Assembly.

It was clear to President Lula and to a growing number of others that the world has changed enormously since 1992, when the world agreed to Agenda 21 - the blueprint for creating a sustainable way of life in the 21st Century.

Rio 2012 could provide much-needed new momentum to international co-operation, not only on environment and sustainable development, but also on the problems that underpin the global financial crisis.

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Australia shelves key emissions trading scheme

The Australian government has put plans for a flagship emissions trading scheme on hold until 2013 at the earliest.

The move comes after the scheme was rejected twice by the Senate, where Prime Minster Kevin Rudd's government does not have a majority.

Mr Rudd, who came to power promising tough climate action, blamed opposition obstruction and slow global progress on emissions cuts for the plan's delay.

Mr Rudd has said climate change is "the moral challenge of our generation"

Australia is one of the highest per capita carbon emitters in the world.

Australia has some of the highest per capita carbon emissions of developed nations.

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Earth from Mars

Above: the first image ever taken of Earth from the surface of a planet beyond the Moon. Photographed by the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit one hour before sunrise on the 63rd Martian day, or sol, of its mission. (March 8, 2004)

Large Image

Not Even in South Park?

The article below by Ross Douthat of the New York Times has got me thinking about freedoms.

Two months before 9/11, Comedy Central aired an episode of “South Park” entitled “Super Best Friends,” in which the cartoon show’s foul-mouthed urchins sought assistance from an unusual team of superheroes. These particular superfriends were all religious figures: Jesus, Krishna, Buddha, Mormonism’s Joseph Smith, Taoism’s Lao-tse — and the Prophet Muhammad, depicted with a turban and a 5 o’clock shadow, and introduced as “the Muslim prophet with the powers of flame.”

That was a more permissive time. You can’t portray Muhammad on American television anymore, as South Park’s creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, discovered in 2006, when they tried to parody the Danish cartoon controversy — in which unflattering caricatures of the prophet prompted worldwide riots — by scripting another animated appearance for Muhammad. The episode aired, but the cameo itself was blacked out, replaced by an announcement that Comedy Central had refused to show an image of the prophet.

Assembly, Association, Movement, Press, Religion, Speech, Information, Thought

I don't think anyone can deny that a person's freedoms and liberties should be the most important thing to them. Therefore, as well as ensuring our safety and providing basic public services, maintaining those freedoms for every person within our society should be top of any government's list of priorities.

When certain people threaten this principle using intimidation and fear to prevent or scare members of our society from using that freedom, we should all stand up and take note. When people use intimidation and fear to scare people from using that freedom in the name of a God. We should all start to be very concerned.

If some omnipotent being really did create the world in all its splendor and majesty, created all the plants and animals, all the planets, stars and solar systems, do you really think they give a fuck if Trey Parker and Matt Stone make a joke or two about them at their expense!?

In the same way I despise the Fox News in America from instilling fear in its people, I think anyone with an ounce of reason is starting to get very tired of these fear mongering extremist assholes.

If someone told me I couldn't show an image of the Easter Bunny because Santa Claus would be angry and wouldn't give us any presents. Or worse that someone threatened me harm for that same reason, they would be locked up for encroaching on my freedom of thought and speech.

So why are we tolerant of these idiots, solely because they do it in the name of religion.

Hopefully, very soon, we as a society can start to use reason and common sense to stop these pillocks in their tracks.

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National Day of Reason

The following article is in relation to the Pentagon's plan to have a Muslim hating preacher, Franklin Graham, speak on a National Day of Prayer.

It sparked outrage amongst the Muslims working at the Pentagon and he was then pulled Mr Graham from speaking.

Religions are divisive, and there is no such thing as a prayer that's inclusive for all. To honor our members in the service, and to inspire them to act responsibly in difficult situations, perhaps our government should sponsor a National Day of Reason. I may be a bit naïve, but who can be opposed to reason?

The piece asks from very interesting questions.

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Gulf Oil Slick: Visible From Space

Four hundred miles out in space, NASA's Aqua satellite has taken pictures of the oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico caused by the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. In this image from Sunday, the center of it is about even with the mouth of the Mississippi River. We're told it covers 400 square miles.

Take a look

Susan Savage-Rumbaugh Plays with Apes to Find Out What Makes us Human

Into the great debate over intelligence and instinct -- over what makes us human -- Susan Savage-Rumbaugh has thrown a monkey wrench. Her work with apes has forced a new way of looking at what traits are truly and distinctly human, and new questions about whether some abilities we attribute to "species" are in fact due to an animal's social environment. She believes culture and tradition, in many cases more than biology, can account for differences between humans and other primates.

Her bonobo apes, including a superstar named Kanzi, understand spoken English, interact, and have learned to execute tasks once believed limited to humans -- such as starting and controlling a fire. They aren't trained in classic human-animal fashion. Like human children, the apes learn by watching. "Parents really don't know how they teach their children language," she has said. "Why should I have to know how I teach Kanzi language? I just act normal around him, and he learns it."

Savage-Rumbaugh's work with bonobo apes, which can understand spoken language and learn tasks by watching, forces the audience to rethink how much of what a species can do is determined by biology -- and how much by cultural exposure.

Watch this Video

The Third Strike

This article by Andrew Sullivan of the Daily Dish is a few weeks old, but as I'm creating this blog by adding things that I found interesting from todays news, I figured I'd add a few things I've found interesting recently as well.

It explains why the media, and anyone with an ounce of compassion paying attention, was so angry at the Catholic Pope recently.

In fairness to his holiness it was not he who tied up and sodomized innocent children, it was a priest in America called Father Kiesle.

However, when Bishop Cummins who was in charge of this particularly nasty piece of work started to get complaints about this asshole, he wrote a letter to Cardinal Ratzinger (who later became Pope Benedict) asking for guidance and permission to defrock this poor imitation of a man.

"It is my conviction that there would be no scandal if this petition were granted and that as a matter of fact, given the nature of the case, there might be greater scandal to the community if Father Kiesle were allowed to return to the active ministry," Cummins wrote in 1982.

Instead Cardinal Ratzinger concluded that removing this child molester from his position, even if it was temporarily for investigation, not as important the good of the universal church, which is bad enough but when added that this was the case because he didn't see the potential threat it could case particularly regarding of the age of the petitioner (sodomized child) it makes you sick.

This court, although it regards the arguments presented in favor of removal in this case to be of grave significance, nevertheless deems it necessary to consider the good of the Universal Church together with that of the petitioner, and it is also unable to make light of the detriment that granting the dispensation can provoke with the community of Christ's faithful, particularly regarding the young age of the petitioner.

This letter is signed by Cardinal Ratzinger (the now Catholic Pope) himself.

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Chimps 'feel death like humans'

Chimpanzees deal with death in much the same way as humans, studies suggest.

Scientists in Scotland filmed a group of chimps grooming and caressing an elderly female who died, and remaining subdued for several days afterwards.

Other researchers saw females carrying around the bodies of their dead children. Both studies are reported in the journal Current Biology.

The scientists say this suggests other species, particularly apes, are more like humans than we might think.

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Is it Right to Ban the Burka?

A firm believer in women's rights, the only thing Afghan lawmaker Shinkai Karokhail finds as appalling as being forced to wear a burqa is a law banning it.

Now as someone who detests the idea that women should be forced to wear any particular item of clothing to please either their husband or God, I am not blind to the hypocrisy in banning women from wearing it.

"Democratic countries should not become dictatorships and Muslim women should not be deprived from all kinds of opportunities. It should be their choice," said Karokhail.

"Otherwise, what is the difference between forcing women to wear a burqa and forcing them not to? It is discrimination."

However, there has to be a certain level of dress code when entering government or financial buildings, such as banks, for safety and security reasons. If I walked into a bank wearing balaclava then I'd rightly be forced to leave.

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Scientists make Cancer Cells Vanish in 10 Days

Anyone who has suffered first hand from this horrible disease or has seen family members wither away in front of our eyes knows how fantastic this breakthrough really is

Scottish scientists have made cancer tumours vanish within 10 days by sending DNA to seek and destroy the cells.

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Girl tries to convert audience during graduation speech

It doesn't look as though devote faith is any good for this girls mental health.

Watch the Video

Church scandal’s Next Wave: Abused girls

Can we please disband this collection of stone-age imbeciles? Has all compassion been lost in the Catholic Church.

"Father Charlie told the girl with the cascading brown curls and frilly frocks that she was pretty. Special. One of his favourites.

In the small Ontario town of Pain Court, a French-Canadian community near Chatham, Father Charlie’s attention was prized by devout Roman Catholic families like Cecilia McLauchlin’s. His interest in their daughter meant the popular priest, once described as “next to God,” publicly approved of how she was being raised.

So when a gynecologist examined the girl for recurring vaginal infections, it didn’t occur to anyone that Father Charlie was the cause of her physical pain.

Cecilia McLauchlin was only 5 years old."

Now I'm not perfect, and I wouldn't necessarily recommend myself as a people turn to me everytime they have a moral dilemma but why people continually turn to "the church" for guidance is beyond me.

"Now 32, the Chatham woman is the youngest known victim of Father Charles Sylvestre, the smooth-talking priest who groomed his young prey with candies, trinkets and praise. He was convicted in 2006 of sexually assaulting 47 girls over four decades in southwestern Ontario — despite abuse complaints from victims to police, school and church officials during that time."

Can someone tell me why this continues to happen?

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Willie Smits restores a Rainforest

TED Video: By piecing together a complex ecological puzzle, biologist Willie Smits has found a way to re-grow clearcut rainforest in Borneo, saving local orangutans -- and creating a thrilling blueprint for restoring fragile ecosystems.

Willie Smits has devoted his life to saving the forest habitat of orangutans, the "thinkers of the jungle." As towns, farms and wars encroach on native forests, Smits works to save what is left.

Watch the Video

China To Sterilise 10,000 To Curb Births

Health authorities are planning to sterilise nearly 10,000 people in southern China over the next four days as part of a population control programme.

Some of the people in Puning City will be forced to have the procedure carried out against their will.

Amnesty International says forced sterilisation "amounts to torture".

Reports in the Chinese media say that Puning Health authorities in Guangdong Province have launched a special campaign to sterilise people who already have at least one child in order to ensure local birth control quotas are met.

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Sam Harris: Can the process of science answer moral questions?

Questions of good and evil, right and wrong are commonly thought unanswerable by science. But Sam Harris argues that science can -- and should -- be an authority on moral issues, shaping human values and setting out what constitutes a good life.

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In the Beginning...

Some may wonder where the connection between being Atheist and being "Environmentally Conscious" comes from, or why I find the connection important enough to mention it on the start of my blog.

Well I guess I've recently been questioning faith in a higher power; not just my own but other peoples faith, the history of faith and whether we still need faith in modern day society.

Indeed, there are those with faith who see the destruction of our planet, or the mistreatment of our fellow man, as blasphemous. Surely these people should be sympathized with, they certainly seem to be good people with good intentions.

Of course the most important thing is that when we hear of something inhumane, or detrimental to the environment, we act to remedy those atrocities. Therefore, it doesn't matter if someone has faith, just that we have a good understanding of own moral consciousness.

However, a lot of people have the belief that religion or even the concept of a divine creator automatically helps them to develop a strong moral compass.

I think this concept that creating an allegiance with a particular religion, instead of using our naturally inquisitive mind, as a way of choosing what is right and what is wrong, completely misguided.

Throughout this blog I'll try to explain why I believe this, and more importantly why it is important that we must question what we hear from others, especially those who have power over the actions of others, be that political power, or religious power. We must be conscientious and use our own minds to make up what we think is right for a better society.

Today, I'll start with a little background on who I am. I am an Atheist, I have no belief in the supernatural and until someone can prove otherwise I can't see that changing, but it wasn't always that way.

I was born into a Roman Catholic family; my Grandmother, my father's mother, is the matriarch of our part of the Family Clan and is a devout Catholic. Throughout my childhood I remember my Granddad, attended church services with my Grandmother, and as far as I'm aware still does.

My father, has a certain level of spirituality or at least a theological idea on "God", that I've since learnt is called Pantheism, and he always taught us that we should feel connected to our planet, our environment and our fellow man, but he is not taken in by the dogma of any particular church.

My mother, comes from a Protestant family but did not attend mass unless it was for a wedding, christening or in the unfortunate event of a funeral.

Neither parent ever felt the need or desire to force religion on their children, so although we attended Catholic School which taught us the quaint traditions and superstitions of Catholicism we really saw it as just that, quaint traditions and superstitions.

At home we would pray and talk of God, as this is what we were taught at schools, but I was one of four brothers and as we grew up we preferred to spend our time outdoors, or learning about nature, animals, dinosaurs and anything else that sounded fun and dangerous.

When at school I learnt the theory of evolution all that exploration into the English countryside with my brothers and learning about various types of wildlife either native or exotic suddenly had an explanation that just made sense.

However, there was no need to question, or even think about labeling my faith, or lack thereof, until recently when I found out that a close friend of mine believed that the earth was 6000 years old. I just couldn't understand that people in 2009/2010 still believed something science had proven so wrong just because of her faith.

I've since tried to read as many books or blogs on faith and theology that I can get my hands, and listened to lots of great videos or podcasts available online and can now proudly call myself an atheist. Not just an atheist but an Eco-Atheist.

I believe that in order for Mankind to move forward and become a sustainable, environmentally conscious global community we must ditch the stone age theory that we are here on this planet to please a supernatural being, but instead work to build a society upon the principle of doing what is best for all human beings, all animals and this wonderful planet we call home.

This is my blog.