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Take some time out of your hectic life to appreciate the Earth you live on. With so many events celebrating Earth Day around the Southland, there’s got to be one near you where you can let your hair down, recycle something, and learn a new tip about how to honor Mother Earth.

U.N. Prepares to Debate Whether 'Mother Earth' Deserves Human Rights Status By Jonathan Wachtel Published April 18, 2011 | FoxNews.com United Nations diplomats on Wednesday will set aside pressing issues of international peace and security to devote an entire day debating the rights of “Mother Earth.” A bloc of mostly socialist governments lead by Bolivia have put the issue on the General Assembly agenda to discuss the creation of a U.N. treaty that would grant the same rights found in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to Mother Nature. Treaty supporters want the establishment of legal systems to maintain balance...

UNITED NATIONS — Bolivia will this month table a draft United Nations treaty giving "Mother Earth" the same rights as humans — having just passed a domestic law that does the same for bugs, trees and all other natural things in the South American country. The bid aims to have the UN recognize the Earth as a living entity that humans have sought to "dominate and exploit" — to the point that the "well-being and existence of many beings" is now threatened. The wording may yet evolve, but the general structure is meant to mirror Bolivia's Law of the Rights...

On the heels of the pronouncement by one of the gurus of global warming that any decrease in the earth’s temperature could be a thousand years away, another scientist has stepped forward with the warning that a new Ice Age could be right around the corner. Professor Tim Flannery, the head of Australia’s Climate Change Commission, sparked the latest scandal in the global warming community when he recently declared, "If the world as a whole cut all emissions tomorrow, the average temperature of the planet's not going to drop for several hundred years, perhaps over 1000 years." As reported previously...

The long, feathery lines of condensation that form behind aircraft, called contrails, have more of an immediate warming effect on the Earth's surface than the carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases that the aircraft emit, a new study calculates. However, the researchers add, contrail clouds disappear within a day or two; the potent greenhouse gas carbon dioxide lingers in the air for many years. Contrails form when the hot, moist plume of exhaust generated by an airplane's engines mixes with cold air in the upper atmosphere. Liquid droplets form and then freeze, forming a straight, white line. Over the span...

A new record was set on 29 January 2011 when the science team operating a new prototype telescope discovered not one Near-Earth Asteroid, not two, but nineteen in a single night! “This record number of discoveries shows that PS1 is the world’s most powerful telescope for this kind of study,” said Nick Kaiser, head of the Pan-STARRS project. One of the most difficult jobs astronomers have in outreach is encouraging spending in asteroid discovery programs, to give us sufficient warning of any potential asteroids that will collide with Earth, while avoiding the temptation to whip up false panic. The risk...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – A wave of charged plasma particles from a huge solar eruption has glanced off the Earth's northern pole, lighting up auroras and disrupting some radio communications, a NASA scientist said. But the Earth appears to have escaped a widespread geomagnetic storm, with the effects confined to the northern latitudes, possibly reaching down into Norway and Canada. "There can be sporadic outages based on particular small-scale events," said Dean Persnell, project scientist at NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory at Goddard Space Flight Center. He told AFP the official forecast is "for generally quiet conditions today, perhaps some minor storming...

Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter (Revelation 1;19)The instruction given to the apostle John, by the Lord Jesus Christ, was threefold, “write the things which you have seen”, that is the vision of Jesus Christ, standing among the lampstands, in glory, as described in Revelation 1. Second he was to write the things which are, that is the condition of the churches, in this world, as described in the seven letters to the churches. From the vantage point of the things that are, the sight of the...

Take a moment and consider your place in the bigger scheme of things~ And while that's indeed illuminating (sorry)....  it's a  big universe with plenty of other stars out there: Jupiter only one pixel on that scale. But this behemoth Arcturus -25x the Sun's size and 110x as bright-is just 5th largest here...our own sun down to a single pixel: The monster above -Anteres- is the 15th brightest star in the sky, and is over 1000 light-years away. Feeling your place yet? Now try to wrap your mind around this: the photo below was taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, and ultra-deep-field infrared shot of...

Okay, you FR sky watchers, what is the very bright planet I see each morning as I make my way into the city of Chicago? It is in the SE sky. Just asking and yes, I've checked Uranus...

An airport in Tampa, Florida, has had to temporarily close its runways to keep up with Earth's magnetic north pole, which is drifting toward Russia at a rate of 40 miles per year. Fox News reports that the international airport was forced to adjust the signs on its busiest runway Thursday because pilots depend on the magnetic fields to navigate. The runway will be closed until Jan. 13, and will re-open with new taxiway signs that indicate its new location on aviation charts, the Tampa Bay Tribune reports. Paul Takemoto, a spokesman for the FAA, says the Earth's magnetic fields...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – An international team of researchers has found that the atmosphere's ability to cleanse itself of pollutants and other greenhouse gases, except carbon dioxide, is generally stable. The study, published in Friday's edition of the journal Science, comes amid a fierce debate over whether, as some experts believe, the atmosphere's self-cleaning ability was fragile and sensitive to environmental changes. The research team, which was led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), measured levels in the atmosphere of hydroxyl radicals, which play a key role in atmospheric chemistry. Levels of the agent only fluctuated a few percentage...

In a speech to the Oxford Farming Conference, Mrs Spelman will set out the UK’s position on reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). ....“We need a CAP that will help producers and consumers alike move towards a model where the true cost of producing food is included in its price – one where the industry no longer relies on subsidies for its commercial viability and recognise the economic imperative of environmental sustainability,” she said. At €55 billion (£48.5 billion), the CAP accounts for 42 percent of the EU budget, making it the largest agricultural aid programme in the world....

The Sahara, the world's largest desert, was once fertile grassland. This fact has been common knowledge in the scientific community for some time, but scientists are still grappling with historic data to determine whether that transition took place abruptly or gradually. At the European Geosciences Union General Assembly held in Vienna, Austria earlier this year, researchers presented new evidence showing that the eastern region of the Sahara desert, particularly the area near Lake Yoa in Chad, dried up slowly and progressively since the mid-Holocene period.

I've often imagined what the world would be like if things were different, like for example if Dick Cheney had announced the theory of global warming in 2003. Undetected for decades, NASA scientists had discovered that a colorless, odorless, tasteless gas, was warming our planet and posing a threat to our very existence. After a briefing from NASA scientists, the Vice President crawled out of his secret lair to announce the discovery to the world. Dick being Dick, the discovery was reason to immediately begin the construction of 10,000 nuclear power plants across the country, post haste. I'm just wondering...

What may be a new outermost layer of the Earth's core has been found, geoscientists have revealed. This discovery could help solve mysteries of the planet's magnetic field, researchers say. The Earth's core is composed mainly of iron, divided into a solid inner center roughly 1,500 miles (2,440 kilometers) wide covered by a liquid outer layer about 1,400 miles (2,250 km) thick. Even though the bulk of the core is iron, researchers also knew it contained a small amount of lighter elements such as oxygen and sulfur. As the inner core crystallized over time, scientists think this process forced out...

A tiny asteroid will zip close by Earth tonight (Nov. 16) at a range much closer than the moon, but poses no threat of striking our planet or even entering the atmosphere, NASA has announced. The asteroid 2010 WA will pass Earth at 10:44 p.m. EST (0344 GMT), missing the planet by about 24,000 miles (38,000 kilometers), NASA's asteroid-watching team wrote on Twitter. It is nearly 10 feet (3 meters wide), so small it would simply break apart if it encountered Earth's atmosphere. NASA officials said the asteroid is a "very small space rock" that will pass the Earth at...

There is a song entitled, “I’ll live in Glory” that is sung at many congregations. Its first line reads “I’d like to stay here longer than man’s allotted days”. The reference is to staying upon the earth. Many people, including myself, have said, “What!” The reason for this response is that we want to go home to God. We are tired of living in a world of sin, jealousies, violence, hatred, and evil. Don’t worry, there is nothing wrong with this response. It reminds me of the words of Peter regarding Lot and his deliverance from Sodom and Gomorrah: •...

The soils in large areas of the Southern Hemisphere, including large parts of Australia, Africa and South America, have been drying up in the past decade, a new study finds. The study is the first major one of its kind to look at the movement of water from the land to the atmosphere, called "evapotranspiration," on a global scale. This phenomenon returns about 60 percent of annual precipitation back to the atmosphere, in the process, using more than half of the solar energy absorbed by land surfaces. .. Most climate models have suggested that evapotranspiration would increase with global warming,...

...For all environmental nonprofits nationwide, Charity Navigator said the median salary for the top executive is $120,000. In other words, the median salary for the top officials with these 15 groups is $96,720 higher than the regional average for all nonprofits.