TRASH. GARBAGE. RUBBISH whatever it is called, it is not going away. Where is the earths biggest landfill? Well it is not on land at all. It is in the ocean! The great ocean garbage patch.
What is the Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch?
A swirling sea of plastic bags, bottles and other debris is growing in the North Pacific, described by researchers who sailed there this summer as ’shocking.’ How did it get there? And is there anything we can do to stop it?
Not all garbage ends up at the dump. In fact, Earth’s largest landfill isn’t on land at all. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch stretches for hundreds of miles across the North Pacific Ocean, forming a nebulous, floating junk yard on the high seas.
What’s it made of?
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch has sometimes been described as a “trash island,” but that’s a misconception, says Holly Bamford, director of NOAA’s Marine Debris Program. If only things were that simple. “We could just go out there and scoop up an island,” Bamford says. “If it was one big mass, it would make our jobs a whole lot easier.”
While there’s still much we don’t understand about the garbage patch, we do know that most of it’s made of plastic. And that’s where the problems begin.
Unlike most other trash, plastic isn’t biodegradable — i.e., the microbes that break down other substances don’t recognize plastic as food, leaving it to float there forever. Sunlight does eventually “photodegrade” the bonds in plastic polymers, reducing it to smaller and smaller pieces, but that just makes matters worse. The plastic still never goes away; it just becomes microscopic and may be eaten by tiny marine organisms, entering the food chain.
How is it formed?
Earth has five or six major oceanic gyres — huge spirals of seawater formed by colliding currents — but one of the largest is the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, filling most of the space between Japan and California, this is also where the trash collects.
The ocean covers 71 percent of Earth’s surface and contains 97 percent of the planet’s water. The ocean plays an integral role in many of the planet’s systems including climate and weather. The ocean supports the life of nearly 50 percent of all species on Earth and helps sustain that life providing 20 percent of the animal protein and 5 percent of the total protein in the human diet.
Considering these and many more incredible statistics about the ocean, it goes without saying that it is one of the most important entities on Earth to protect from environmental harm.
Boat made from plastic bottles sets sail.
Adventurer and conservationist David de Rothschild sets sail on Plastiki, a boat made out of 12,000 plastic bottles, to raise awareness of the Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch.
This could certainly be one answer to the problem. And I am sure that the garbage has other uses but it is a sad fact that unless there is any money in removing it, the garbage is there to stay.
Lima, Peru: The Peruvian National Protected Areas Service has decided to allocate funds to help protect a large swath of the Amazon this year, which is home to several endangered species and indigenous groups.
The Protected Areas Service pledged to allocate USD 280,000 for surveillance activities in the massive area – encompassing a region larger than El Salvador – formed by the Alto Purus National Park and the Purus Communal Reserve. The protected area was officially created in 2004 in part through the support of WWF.
The protected area was officially created in 2004
in part through the support of WWF.
The area spreads across some of the most pristine forests in the southwestern Amazon and shelters jaguars, pink dolphins, arapaimas and other endangered species. It is also home to at least eight ethnic groups, including an unknown number of indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation.
For years, activities such as illegal logging – mainly for mahogany – and poaching damaged these unique forests and disturbed the indigenous communities.
“This represents a major success for all Peruvians regarding the government’s commitment to the conservation of the Peruvian Amazon and will aid to build long term conservation strategies for roughly 3 million hectares of some of the richest forests in the world,” said Biologist Jorge Herrera, Director of WWF´s Amazon Headwaters Initiative (AHI) who has been working in the area for more than five years.
“The recently announced government support will not only help sustain a team of more than 20 park guards, and the heads of the reserve and park, but will also promote capacity building strategies,” said Herrera. “This will enable WWF to focus on other complementary actions and ensure that from now on, Purus is safer than ever before.”
Since 2004, WWF Peru – with funding from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation has supported control and surveillance activities carried out by the park and reserve authorities, equipping and helping them implement seven strategic control posts and form an efficient park guard team, made up of experienced technicians and local indigenous peoples with broad knowledge of the rivers and forests which they now protect.
We live in a beautiful world that is for sure. And we share it with some beautiful animals. Here are a few nature photos of beautiful babies, animal babies that is. And of course a proud parent to show them off.
We all have our own favorite animals. What is yours?
You rely on the diversity of life, what we call “biodiversity”, to provide you with food, fuel, medicine and other essentials you simply cannot live without.
So if biodiversity delivers real benefits to our well-being, why don’t we value it more?
For the first time, WWF movement-activated cameras set up in the forests of Indonesia have captured a tigress and her cubs on film.
With only 400 tigers found in this region, and no more then 3200 living in the wild globally, the largest of the “big cats” may soon only be filmed behind bars…
The world is a beautiful place. It is also a very small world we live in and there really is no room in it for hatred.All I ask of you is to be my friend.
Spanish born model Almudena Fernández took her first steps in the fashion industry when she was only 18 years old, she became an international name when she decided to move to Milan where she landed her first international campaigns such as “Byblos”, “Gianfranco Ferré”, “Replay”… and where she worked for the most prestigious magazines being the cover girl for “Amica”, “Grazia”, “Donna”, “GQ”, “Elle”, which meant being photographed by Gianpaolo Barbieri, Marco Glaviano, Ricardo Tinelli, Aldo Falai and most of the world top photographers.
A year and a half later Almudena decided to move to Paris and soon the City of Lights was at her feet and she became the face for worldwide known cosmetics and perfumes campaigns, to name a few: “Hermés”, “Givenchy”, “Cartier”, “L’Oreal”, “Lancel”, “Wolford”, “Kookai”, “Lacoste”, “Olivier Strelli”, “George Rech”… etc. soon she was the cover of every major magazine landing covers in “Elle”, “Madame Figaro”, “Biba”, “Marie Claire”, “Joyce” being photographed by Dominique Isserman, Stephan Sednaoui, Tyen, Marc Hispard, Serge Barbeau, André Rau, Thierry Le Goucs…all renowned photographers around the world.
Only 350 wild tigers remain in Asia’s Mekong River region, according to a new report from the conservation nonprofit WWF, which says the loss is being driven by trade in tiger parts.
The numbers of tigers in the wild in Southeast Asia have dropped by more than 70 percent in a little more than a decade.
That’s the claim in a new report from the WWF. The organization says there were an estimated 12-hundred tigers in the Greater Mekong region during the last “Year of the Tiger” in 1998. Today, WWF estimates there are only about 350 there.
Wild tigers have even been wiped out in several reserves set up to protect them.
The Greater Mekong region includes China, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam.
The reason for the drop? WWF says the tiger crisis has developed because of deliberate and large-scale illegal hunting of tigers for body parts, mostly for use in traditional medicine. Here, tiger parts are seen displayed for sale on a street in Bangkok.
Enforcement of poaching has had limited success, such as these scenes from Vietnam where illegally poached tigers and carcasses were confiscated by authorities. The WWF hopes to raise awareness and funds to stop the poaching.
According to the Chinese Zodiac, 2010 is the Year of the Tiger. And later this month, ministers from 13 tiger range countries will meet in Thailand for a conference on tiger conservation. It’s hoped the governments will agree on future needs in protecting this big cat from extinction.
One of the world’s largest populations of tigers exists not in the wild in Asia, but in captivity in the United States. With an estimated 5,000 tigers, the U.S. captive tiger population exceeds the approximately 3,200 individuals believed to exist in the wild today.
Captive Tigers
Only six percent of the U.S. captive tiger population resides in zoos and other facilities accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA). The rest are found in other private hands, some regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), some under state regulation, and some under virtually no regulation at all.
Continued lax management of the U.S. captive tiger population could have global trade implications. Without tighter regulation, this large population could become a “drip feed” of supply to fill demand for tiger parts, thereby perpetuating this market and further threatening wild tiger populations. Parts and products of wild tigers are always preferred in traditional Asian medicines, the primary driver of demand. Why is it that Asia is still in the dark ages?
Any such activity could derail decades of efforts to suppress demand for tiger parts and products – efforts supported by many governments, traditional medicine practitioners, conservation organizations and others.
The positioning of people’s photos affects how attractive and powerful they seem to be.
Matt Kaplan
Women in a study rated pictures of men that appeared at the top of a screen more attractive.I.Peters/iStockPhoto.com
How high or low an image of a man or woman appears on a screen plays a part in how attractive they are perceived to be by the opposite sex.
When men rate the attractiveness of women in photos, if one photo is higher up than another, they will find the lower image more attractive. In contrast, when women look at similarly arranged pictures of men, they perceive the higher images to be more attractive, according to a study in Social Cognition1.
The authors of the study, psychologists Brian Meier and Sarah Dionne at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, think that perceptions of power might be behind this trend. The concepts of power is thought to psychologically represent vertical space in a way that is consistent with common metaphors such as ‘on top of the corporate ladder’ or ‘king of the hill’. So when people think of power differences, they literally think of spatial differences too, with powerful being viewed as up and powerless as being down.
Some evolutionary psychologists think that males are more desirable to women when they are high in power because they have considerable social status and resources, whereas women are more desirable to males when they carry traits associated with low power such as youthfulness and faithfulness.
Down and out
To see how these psychological phenomena might apply to human interactions, the authors examined how the perception of attractiveness might be altered by the positioning of a photograph.
The researchers asked 29 men and 50 women, all students at Gettysburg College (19 years old on average), to look at images of people and rate their attractiveness on a scale of 1–750. The study used 30 photos of men and 30 photos of women.
Participants were shown images of the opposite sex at the top and bottom of a screen.B. Meier & S. Dionne
Each individual was shown, in a random order, all of the photos and advised that they would see photos repeated during the study. Each photo was both seen and rated twice. The only difference between the two viewings of each image was that image position was adjusted. For example, if a photo was first viewed on the bottom of the screen, it would later appear on the top.
Men rated the same photos of women as 1.8% more attractive when the images were on the bottom of the screen than when they were on the top. Women, in contrast, rated images of men at the top of their screen as 1.5% more attractive than when those same images were at the bottom.
The percentages may sound small, but because the participants were rating the same photo in different screen positions, they were effectively acting as their own controls, says Meier. “There should not have been any variance at all yet we found significant differences,” he says.
Always somebody taller
Most work in this area has looked at reaction times as a measurement, says psychologist Thomas Schubert at the Lisbon University Institute. For example, in a 2005 study2, Schubert asked people to identify as quickly as they could whether words on a screen were ‘powerful’ or ‘powerless’. The study showed that a word such as ‘master’ was identified as powerful more quickly if it was placed above a word such as ’servant’. In the same way, people were quicker to recognise words as powerless when they were placed below a powerful word. The delay when words were differently placed is thought to be the result of cognitive interference, where the meaning of the word conflicts with the meaning of its on-screen position.
By Shaun Ellis
Last updated at 10:13 PM on 16th January 2010
The huge wolf’s fangs hovered over my neck. I was frozen to the spot, waiting for his jaw to clamp around my throat – and bring instant death.
It didn’t happen. Instead, the young male with him gave me a gentler nip on my knee while the older male knocked me over. As I fell, I put a hand out to steady myself and found it resting on the pup’s shoulder.
He didn’t pull away. In that split second, I was overcome by an incredible surge of love for this creature and his family, and an overpowering need to be part of it.
Unlikely bond: Shaun Ellis has an extraordinary affinity with wolves
I had been alone in the Rocky Mountains for ten months, searching for wolves to befriend. Being close to the creatures was not new to me. I’d infiltrated captive packs at Dartmoor Wildlife Park in England and at a wolf research centre in the American state of Idaho.
By staying with them in their enclosures, I learned about their body language, what their howls and whines meant, their smells and pack hierarchy. To become part of a wolf family, you must fit into their social order, rather than trying to rule it.
That means showing you come in peace by exposing your vulnerable throat area to them, as I had done with the big black male. Wolves have the power to kill but, unlike humans, they only use it when they must.
In Idaho, I also added scientific knowledge to my theories, working with biologists and studying wolf behaviour and communication.
Levi Holt, a native American who ran the centre there, believed wild wolves had moved into the area using old corridors between Idaho and Canada, living alongside animals bred in captivity but later released. I wanted to see if I could be accepted by a pack that had never seen a human.
The biologists at the research centre were against me going into the rugged, unforgiving landscape. To them I was a maverick from a foreign country with no qualifications. If the cold or wolves didn’t kill me, a bear would. Despite this, I didn’t take a gun, radio, sleeping bag or any shelter. I wanted to be like a lone wolf.
I had the SAS training I received during my seven years in the British Army and one ‘get out of jail free’ card: a rendezvous point agreed with Levi. If I wanted to get out, I was to wait there.
I never anticipated how long I would be gone, since at the time I was single, although I had a daughter from a previous relationship. Levi and I arranged that I would leave notes for him at the rendezvous point to let him know I was safe and well.
I set off on a bright autumn day, when the Rockies reminded me of my childhood in rural Norfolk, although the colours were intense: deep rich reds, oranges and gold lighting the forests.
I was in shock for the first few weeks, so frightened of predators I didn’t dare move after dark. For the first four nights I slept in a tree. Only after I fell out did I start sleeping on the ground.
Gradually I became more confident and began to venture out by day, making rudimentary snare traps and catching my first rabbit before my rations of beef jerky ran out.
Daredevil: Shaun Ellis romping with wolves at a wildlife park
I was eating a diet, like the wolf’s: one meal of raw meat gave me enough slow-release energy to keep going for up to two days. I would supplement it with nuts and berries and always tested it to avoid being poisoned.
As the weeks went by I established a routine and found a sheltered spot where I felt comfortable. Then I experienced my first reality check. For four days a storm raged around me. I became bored and depressed, but then the Army training kicked in and I remembered what I’d been taught about how vital it is to keep thinking positively.
It was four months before I saw my first wolf. I was walking down a track when a big black one crossed my path 150 yards ahead. It stopped fleetingly and looked straight at me with piercing yellow eyes before disappearing into the forest.
I also established a new resting place where I felt safe, some miles from the track where I saw the wolf. It was in a clearing, with a big rock behind me and a good view of the area in front of me. Although I never allowed myself the luxury of sleeping for hours at a stretch, I could doze in short bursts.
There were more sightings of the wolf over the coming months, and others joined him, each time coming closer, nipping and sniffing me. At times we exchanged howls. There were originally five in the pack: the dominant female, two older males, a younger male and a young female, the latter two being siblings.
After one of the older males went missing, I decided to try to infiltrate the pack, following them clumsily on all fours. But where the others were welcoming, the dominant female was hostile, growling to warn me away. She bared her teeth and let out low barking noises before disappearing into the forest with the young pups. The others followed.
A week-and-a-half later I was sitting on a rock when the big male and the pups came towards me. The female stayed back and I respected her distance. And so it went on for two weeks, if not a month.
I continued to interact with the other three members of the pack, however, and the bond with them quietly intensified. In some ways, they were like captive wolves I had known. The language they used was similar but these wolves were stronger and alert to every sound and scent.
They played as hard and roughly with me as they did with each other. My all-in-one jumpsuit was quilted but it didn’t protect me from the bone-crushing strength of their jaws. I was covered in cuts and bruises.
Early one morning I was in a clearing when the four of them appeared after a long absence. As usual, I lowered my body as they came towards me, and this time even the female came to greet me.
Suddenly, the big male barged at me and I crumpled to the ground under his weight. Before I realised what was happening the female was snarling and growling three inches from my face.
Allies: Ellis with Levi Holt, who runs the wolf research centre in Idaho that Shaun used as his base
I could feel the warmth of her breath, her lips were lifted right back from her teeth. I lay there helpless: I had no choice but to take whatever was coming to me. Those were the longest two or three minutes of my life – but she didn’t harm a hair on my head. When she finally let me go she loped back to the others; my disciplining was over.
The incident didn’t seem to change her attitude towards me but it radically changed my view. She could have killed me easily but had chosen not to. Now I thought of her as an intolerant aunt: knowledgeable, respected, but always bad-tempered. We would learn to live with each other.
Every night I battled with my better judgment over leaving the wolves. I had begun to feel safer with them than away from them, but I left them as darkness fell and returned by first light.
One evening tensions were low, they had all had a good feed and even Miss Grumpy seemed relaxed. I decided to stay.
I didn’t sleep a wink, kept awake by fear and excitement, but they all slept soundly until morning. The male pup lay alongside me. I could hear his breathing and feel his every twitch. When morning broke I was walking on air because I knew I had been accepted.
In the early hours of the second day, they took off. I tried to follow, but as soon as we were among trees they were invisible in the darkness and they were gone. Dejected, I went back to the clearing and waited.
Many weeks later they reappeared, the young female bringing me the leg of a red deer. After months of snared rabbits, it tasted fantastic, although raw. For the next few weeks, they would go hunting and leave me, but they would always bring me something.
By this time I had been in the wild for about 18 months, and winter was on its way again. That would make getting about more difficult, but would let me to follow the wolves at my own pace. At last I’d see where they went in their long absences.
The day they left, I followed. Their pace was slower and they seemed to be waiting for me. We must have covered 15 miles before coming to a steep, forested hillside, with a river running along the valley below.
Anti Global Warming Scientists Claim CO2 Isn’t Heating the Earth. Global Warming is Simply the Latest Hoax Played by the Elite to Lead Us Deeper Into the NWO Trap.
Anti global warming scientists claim the major global issue as the media presents it is not global warming. On one side of the matter we have scientists who are government-friendly.
These scientists are claiming with vigor that global warming is caused by human behavior and human actions need to be sanctioned. On the other side anti global warming scientists are giving us quite the opposite opinion on the matter, stating the entire global warming issue is a hoax.
What is the truth? Let’s look at the facts. On one side we have a dramatic climate change said to be caused by humans which is leading the planet into a stage of global warming. On this side we also have a money factor, meaning as soon as the issue was publicly declared manmade, government officials announced new laws that would create new taxes. The new announced tax was called the carbon tax.
On the side of anti global warming scientists we have no visible evidence of their interest for involvement. They aren’t taking our money or anyone else’s that we can tell. The only possible conclusion we can draw from these facts is that these scientists have no other interest in this matter but to inform the public of the elite’s new fraud and give the facts on the topic.
WHY THE NEED TO FOOL THE PUBLIC?
The question we may ask is why our government officials and the media want to fool us? Why are they giving us false information of this kind which is contrary to our well being. Creating mass fear in the public is a very serious issue.
Somehow a pattern of the elite’s doing appears: scare the public, manipulate, control through tax. The need for this is simple. How to make people believe in something that is totally false? Stage the events, show frightening pictures, create a sense of guilt and then tell us it is for our own good and become the saviors.
Most people don’t bother nor have time to get into the matter deeply. Just by seeing a few scientists on the TV giving their opinions makes the public secure that the story is true. After all, the elite own the media outlets and brainwashing the public is something they do all the time.
THE CARBON TAX
Placing a tax on the carbon emissions our vehicles apparently release into the atmosphere has raised great concern, but what can an ordinary person do? He needs the car to get to work or for the work itself and so he will need to pay for its usage. It is interesting how this tax is absurd.
Even if the emissions of CO2 would contribute to global warming how can a tax can help? Is it going to stop it? This all leads us to believe the whole global warming fear campaign is just staged to fill the pockets of the giants that sit behind the curtains.
Anti global warming scientists are definitely right when they say the public should be educated on the matter and become aware of the truth. We shouldn’t be slaves to our own lack of knowledge and lack of interest for our well being. The global elite are happy to lead us down the garden path toward their New World Order if we let them.
Sometimes life can be hard on the nerves, tough on the muscles and a visit to a stress relief clinic may be in order. But wait before you go off and spend a lot of money on therapy, let me tell you about the best stress relief program in existence. Oh, and I might add, IT IS FREE. if you live in the countryside your half way there, if you live in the city you will need to find a nice big park.
At the top of the list is a woodland or small forest, taking a stroll through a woodland on a warm summers day is true stress relief. BUT. You have to be in tune with nature. True beauty is all around you, nature is supplying all of the music you need to relieve those stresses, just listen. Listen hard and learn about nature’s stress relief. Do you here the birds singing, if you do listen carefully, realy listen to it and let it wash over you. do you see that colorful leaf? Like the ones in my pictures. appreciate the colors, the shapes and the textures. if all of the leaves are still green how many shades and tints of green are there?
Take notice of the little things around you, do you see a bee? watch it closely follow it as it goes about it’s daily and I might add never ending business of collecting pollen and in doing so it ensures the flowers continuing survival by spreading pollen around to other flowers in an endless cycle. That little bee is making the honey that you enjoy on your fresh bread so much, now would be a great time to get out that sandwich you made, you didn’t make one! well remember next time as it is part of the stress relief. Why you ask, well a honey butty in the woods on a summers day tastes better that anything you can imagine. And if it tastes good it does you good. You could also take that other honey with you as sex in the grass is quite delightful also.
Natures stress relief, works it’s miracles upon you as you listen to the forest sounds around you, can you here the breeze in the trees, a sort of whispering sound coming from all around you. A soothing sound that calms the nerves and relaxes the muscles, let it wash over you and through you. if you have found a small woodland with a river or stream running through it you will also here the music of nature as the water babbles it’s way the the sea. This is stress relief at it’s very best, it’s the most potent of stress relief medicines and it is all free, maybe just the cost of the gas to get there and the honey and bread. But was it worth it? My woodland is the Florida Everglades. But do you know it does not have to be a woodland, it could be a secluded beach, a desert, a mountain all you really need is mother nature to soothe away those aches and pains.
Not all garbage ends up at the dump. In fact, Earth’s largest landfill isn’t on land at all. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch stretches for hundreds of miles across the North Pacific Ocean, forming a nebulous, floating junk yard on the high seas.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch has sometimes been described as a “trash island,” but that’s a misconception, says Holly Bamford, director of NOAA’s Marine Debris Program. If only things were that simple. “We could just go out there and scoop up an island,” Bamford says. “If it was one big mass, it would make our jobs a whole lot easier.”
Earth has five or six major oceanic gyres — huge spirals of seawater formed by colliding currents — but one of the largest is the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, filling most of the space between Japan and California, this is also where the trash collects.
governments, traditional medicine practitioners, conservation organizations and others.
Women in a study rated pictures of men that appeared at the top of a screen more attractive.I.Peters/iStockPhoto.com
Participants were shown images of the opposite sex at the top and bottom of a screen.B. Meier & S. Dionne
Allies: Ellis with Levi Holt, who runs the wolf research centre in Idaho that Shaun used as his base
