Domain: palomar.edu
Stories and comments across the archive that link to palomar.edu.
Comments · 49
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Re:Unbelievable
You basically called ~82% of the world population stupid [1]. And over 70% of them are "Minorities" [2]
You are basically everything the nu-Left hates these days...
[1]https://www.pewforum.org/2012/12/18/global-religious-landscape-exec/ [2] https://www2.palomar.edu/anthr...
No, I'm an atheist which means that I'll only believe in your deity if you can prove it exists. Now please prove to me that your god exists or stop bothering me.
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Re:Mental health issues...
There's no such thing as YY. What you meant to say was XYY, which is a birth defect effecting less than 1 in 1,000 males.
There are more than just XYY. There are XXY or XXXY as well.
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Re:Are You Kidding?
I'm willing to bet that the light skin adaption was acquired from Neanderthals, not evolved by Homo Sapian.
You'd lose that bet. The map at the bottom of this page shows a good correlation between skin colour and distance from the equator, both amongst those groups with Neanderthal genes _and_ those without.
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Re:McAfee claims tons of ricin smuggled in by Mexi
Smuggle it? You can grow it in your own front yard! The Castor Bean isn't an illegal plant.
http://waynesword.palomar.edu/plmar99.htm
If the feds want whoever is putting this stuff in letters, just look for a avid gardener with a few of these in their yard.
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Re:The air is not clean
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Blood types
Ya where I live you can't mention this because the whole mytho thing. Very annoying science is science.
I recall reading (maybe 20-30 years ago) that blood types were significantly different between North American and South American natives. According to these maps, South and Central Americans are almost exclusively blood group O, while blood group A exists in North America, especially in arctic and subarctic regions. FYI, native Americans and East Asians often have Diego positive blood, whereas the rest of the world is exclusively Diego negative.
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Re:uninteresting consequence of the decimal system
What number you get depends on the method of comparison. I've read every number between 94% and 99% for the fraction of DNA that humans share with chimpanzees. Since the bonobo is almost but not exactly a chimp, there's no surprise in this article. It's confirmation of what we thought we knew based on morphology. Yep! Bonobos are ALSO closely related to humans and chimps. Here's a site that states different numbers and discusses a number of other species: http://genetics.thetech.org/online-exhibits/genes-common And different numbers here: http://anthro.palomar.edu/primate/prim_8.htm To look at relatedness, there are more subtle measures. We have genetic tests now that can be used to establish probable paternity and measure genetic relatedness of individuals within the same species. These tests focus on differences in detail rather tnan overall similarity. Another thing to look at is chromosomes. People normally have 46 chromosomes. Chimps and bonobos normally have 48. Our chromosome 2 is divided into 2 chromosomes in chimps and I'm guessing also in bonobos.
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Re:makes sense to be
Well, not exactly a crap-shoot...
http://anthro.palomar.edu/mendel/mendel_2.htm -
Re:It's called circumstantial evidence
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That church steeple may be a cell phone tower
Hey, they do it with trees.
Oh wait, it's actually happening already.
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Re:False dilemma
Huh? What age of mankind would you use? I'm pretty sure that Richard Dawkins, when asked about the age of modern humans said 250,000 years.
http://anthro.palomar.edu/homo2/mod_homo_4.htm -
Europa or bust -- Titan sucks..Not trying to flame or troll, but these missions keep coming up. Even proposed and not funded like this one to Titan, take away from where we sorely need to explore. Poor Europa languishes! Europa quite possibly has the best odds of actually having something worth the funding of mission; namely life. While I note the Planetary Society has pushed for a Europa mission for what seems like years now, the date of even some weird overly complex multi-national mission in 2020 is suspect.. Why on Earth is a mission to Europa not fast tracked? A craft much like Cassini/Huygens with some radar to actually see under the ice could have been designed, built and launched 10 or 15 years ago. Titan has already had a lander. Cassini is in orbit around Saturn, and while neat and cool, only Enceladus might have life, but the odds of life on Enceladus seem dimmer and more remote. Despite statements that are politically motivated (read: funding) what is the fun factor of going to Titan when we have a fruit before us in Europa that desperately deserves to be explored? I don't know these answers but when you look at the frozen surface of Europa and notice the red striations that appear in cracks in the water ice it sure looks like iron or possibly sulphur, but most likely something along the lines of halobacteria just like this!
Maybe our agencies don't want to find life yet, as some societal and religious aspects of there being life somewhere else would drive the religious folk crazy, or maybe they don't want to contaminate Europa. Whatever the reason they need to get off of their collective rear ends (asses) and do a mission there before even going back to Mars. I just get tired of the new bright and shiny and unpaid for missions, and some of the more dumb funded one that just go in circles snapping images of useless real estate, when Europa truly deserves, on all levels, a serious series of missions that bring light to what resides under the ice.
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Velcro
Speaking of mimicking natural materials for human purposes, the invention of velcro is a good example as it is based off of hitchhikers.
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Similar to..
They also have similar "red snow" in the glaciers of the high sierra. Although in the high sierra's, the sun is extremely intense.
http://waynesword.palomar.edu/plaug98.htm -
Simple corrective action: Deny admission.
Were I a college or university official selecting students from various national high schools, I would immediately exclude all graduates from the State of Louisiana starting three years hence. This would apply to all fields of study because science, along with reading, writing and mathematics, makes up a central core of educational training essential to High School graduation.
There is one simple reason: The students may not have been taught scientific rigor, that for a hypothesis to be proven it must be supported by observable, repeatable facts. And any science teacher who teaches that "science" permits a hypothesis or theory to be supported by wishing, conjecture, supposition, acts of unobservable forces and so on is not appropriately training students for any future in higher education. And I would have to say that it is not the job of my college or university to teach remedial science to students who ought to have been correctly taught the basics in high school.
I should mention that the Pope has stated that Darwin's theory of evolution [is] compatible with Christian faith. And anyone who has actually read Darwin's Origin Of Species By Natural Selection and The Descent Of Man will quickly come to the conclusion that Charles Darwin was a very religious man and couched his arguments in terms of his own beliefs, but never once deviating from scientific rigor in his statement of his hypothesis.
The Christian wing-nuts who would teach religion as if it were science have managed to confuse the English definition of the word "theory" with the scientific definition of that word. In English, the word allows for considerable uncertainty whereas, in science, a hypothesis becomes a theory only upon rigorous peer review and only when not disproved by physical evidence. During Darwin's lifetime, his book was always seen as a hypothesis and it graduated to the level of theory as actual evidence that supported his statements came rolling in.
There is genetic and physical evidence for Darwin's statements on natural selection. And we have evidence supporting evolution and none, whatsoever, for any other hypothesis for how plants, animals and humans appeared on the earth.
I would urge any college and university admissions offices to consider denying admission to any and all students who have not appropriately learned science, which means they have been taught to not follow the rules of scientific enquiry in schools in Kansas (in the past) and Louisiana (going forward).
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Re:That's the beauty of open source...
You're right, '*Nix shortcuts' isn't accurate but 'default *Nix shortcuts' is. So, thanks for defecting from the meat of the post: the usability of the Gnome interface.
BTW, ctrl-k should work (as "expected").'Should work'? I tested it before posting. Did you BOTHER to test it before 'shoulding' on your post?
Even if it did, compared to ctrl-u ctrl-k is almost never used in GUI dialogs: that would be but a pittance of support from the Gnome designers... even if were something like GTK's fault.
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Re:Assumption check, please
>"If you have a long-lived ocean, it's going to have salt in it,"
Just like Lake Michigan?
Yes, just like Lake Michigan.
1 cubic foot of sea water evaporates it yields about 2.2 pounds of salt, but 1 cubic foot of fresh water from Lake Michigan contains only one one-hundredth (0.01) of a pound of salt, or about one sixth of an ounce. Thus, sea water is 220 times saltier than the fresh lake water. -
Re:It cuts both ways
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opportunity costs
What they fail to figure is the opportunity cost of turning all of that cellulose into ethanol vs. its current use, which is largely animal feed and compost that is used to make products, as cover for off seasons, and to enrich soils for another season of crops. What is the energy cost of destroying your soil or offsetting the loss in other areas of the economy?
Actually there still is residues left after converting cellulose to ethanol and that residue can be used as fertilizer. Better is that what's left is fiber which can be used to make stuff like paper, cordage, and clothing. And if the foodstock used is edible the fiber may be edible as well, and everyone needs fiber in their diet.
The big energy inputs are equipment, water, and soil enrichment.
Take the residue left from the conversion and mix it with manure from factory farming of cattle and pigs, which are currently creating Dead Zones along the Atlantic coast and in the Gulf of Mexico, then compost it. It'll make an excellent soil additive.
Falcon -
Re:now the counter argument... ?
A quick Google reseach reveals the Inuit have only been where they are now for 5,000 years From the article:
"The Inuit people of the American Subarctic are an exception. They have moderately heavy skin pigmentation despite the far northern latitude at which they live. While this is a disadvantage for vitamin D production, they apparently made up for it by eating fish and sea mammal blubber that are high in D. In addition, the Inuit have been in the far north for only about 5,000 years. This may not have been enough time for significantly lower melanin production to have been selected for by nature."
According to this article you're totally wrong on the Ainu, and they are a great example showing that people lighten up as they move north:
"Another example is the Ainu of northern Japan, who have light skin but overall are very similar genetically to the darker-skinned groups that surround them. The evolution of skin color was apparently not a onetime event; it has occurred repeatedly during the history of our species. "
I can't find anything in the skin color of Mongols, but any reply has a picture which doesn't seem terribly dark skinned to me. -
Re:Difficult concept: that more complex != better
Chimps have not been around for billions of years. Just thought you might like to know.
(primates all come after dinosaurs, probably sometime around 60 million years ago: http://anthro.palomar.edu/earlyprimates/first_prim ates.htm) -
There's a way to stop it
but nobody knows what will happen to marine life if we do it: http://www.palomar.edu/oceanography/iron.htm The Iron Hypothesis suggests that introducing enough iron into the Southern Ocean will lead to a marine life explosion that will consume vast amounts of greenhouse gas "give me enough iron, and I'll give you an ice age"
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Re:ideologies
"evolution theory is extrapolated from one observation: the variation of species"
Um no, start here...
http://www.gate.net/~rwms/EvoEvidence.html
and try here...
http://anthro.palomar.edu/evolve/evolve_3.htm
better yet, allow me to assist...
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=evolution+evi dence -
Oh really?
Back before my wife was a stay-at-home mom, she helped publish an article demonstrating that two "species" of a certain flower were actually one of the same. Gene flow between the populations was reduced, as their flowering times didn't overlap much, but it was still possible.
There's also "jumping genes", bacteria passing genes around, and forms of horizontal gene transfer. -
Re:Evolution is predictable?
I'm afraid I can't point you directly to any research, but the general idea is that we can predict with some accuracy how a species will adapt to a chance in its environment. It is also something we have witnessed on a limited scale in real-time. One example is moth coloration in response to air pollution. We have actually witnessed and documented phenomena such as this, which demonstrate evolution via natural selection happens on a pretty regular basis, even now. Here is a (very brief) link, with discussion of the moth phenomenon: http://anthro.palomar.edu/evolve/evolve_2.htm
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Re:Why not big pharma?
If you want a good example of single celled organisms evolving into multicellular ones, I've got two words for ya: slime mold
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Re:Where they went...Uh huh. What a cynical attitude! A certain amount of evidence has been discovered that suggests at least a certain amount of interbreeding happened between neanderthal humans and modern ones. It's possible that as modern humans migrated into the areas inhabited by neanderthals, they were simply overwealmed.
And as for "primitive", neanderthals had brains that were 10% larger than modern human brains and had poorer speech capabilities. They were the first to adapt to sub-arctic conditions, and were adept stone tool makers. Physically, they were shorter, and very possibly stronger.
Don't believe everything you see from Hollywood. Movies are not required to accurate, merely entertaining. Reality may be far more boring than fiction.
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Re:Ahh, Europe!
Intelligent Climate Control states that the movement of celestial bodies is too complicated to understand through the laws of physics, and therefore climate changes must be the result of arbitrary control by a higher being.
Huh? What the HELL are you talking about? The Earth is closer to the Sun during winter for the Norther hemisphere. Are you that stupid to know that in the USA, during OUR summer, we are actually further from the Earth than during the winer in the USA? This has nothing to do with "Intelligent" _anything_! The Norther hemispher is tilted tword the Sun during Summer yet we are a little further away. Go and do something called reading before you spout out your crazy crap.But sometimes people wonder if seasons have anything to do with the distance of the Earth from the sun. We know that can't be the case, because the seasons are opposite in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. However, if we look at the Earth's orbit closely,we find that it is not exactly circular. Rather, it is an ellipse, which is an oval shape, or a very slightly flattened circle. The sun is at one focus of the ellipse. This means that the Earth's distance from the sun does vary. The point where the Earth is closest to the sun is called perihelion (from the Greek peri, close or near, and helios, meaning sun). Perihelion takes place on January 3, which, of course, is during _winter_ for the __Northern Hemisphere__, and summer for the Southern Hemisphere.
What the HELL are you talking about with all this "Intelligent Climate Control" crap? -
Re:so you're the scientific authority?
suicide isn't the best example of uniquely human behaviour
... Yeah, but not a lot of human males would go this far. -
Re:Answer to devil's advocate
English is by no means the universal language. It's just a language that's very common in a lot of places in the western world. http://anthro.palomar.edu/language/language_1.htm
And every language has slang. Every language has a second language within a language. Every language has misspellings and mispronunciation that leads to misunderstandings between native speakers and non-native language learners. It's not just English.
Native speakers do learn to use correct English. Quite often, they use it in school all through their education. But later they choose to use slang words more professionally and adopt parts of a new internet language to their casual conversations. That's the reason that the foreign languages section of the book store offers entire books on foreign language slang--so you can understand regional dialect. -
Re:ugly image
It is a square bumpy pomegranate?
I don't know why it is square and bumpy because pomegranates are usally round and smooth.
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Re:What bullshit
But they only have those free hours to spend because of modern economics making it unneccesary to spend _all_ your time feeding yourself and your family.
This is such a sad misconception. Subsistence living actually left more time free for recreation than our "gotta work for my dreams" modern economy. Just a quick look around finds http://anthro.palomar.edu/subsistence/sub_6.htm. Here's a choice quote:
"In the United States, only . 84% of the entire population are still farmers. Those farmers not only provide food and fiber for all of the non-food-producing Americans but also for millions of people elsewhere in the world. It is ironic, that this dramatically increased food production has not resulted in more leisure time. Far from it, Americans now individually work more hours during the year than almost all other nations."
I'm not saying that there are not advantages to the society we live in (be it the United States, Europe, Japan, whatever), I'm just saying that the "uncivilized" didn't really have it as bad as "civilized" people are conditioned to believe. -
that worksI like it. A quick search shows it bears fruit. Gibba Jabber, awesome name.
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Re:Meanwhile, in Argentina
Ah... it talks about them attacking drywood termites here
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Re:The horrors of the deep
Do Shoggoths qualify as a new species of jellyfish?
No, shoggoths qualify as fungi, or more precisely slime molds.
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Re:How sex works for other species
Another weird one, the anglerfish. The male bites the female, taps into her bloodstream, and most of his organs wither away, except for his sexual organs.
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Re:Correction...
I see. This is why Los Angeles have big smog problem? Btw, fyi, high smokestacks don't make air cleaner - it moves pollution further away but it eventually falls down.
Actually L.A.'s smog problem has gotten better over the years. But you forget to add that weather conditions and geography play a lot into the concentration of smog in the L.A. area. That and the 10 million people that live in the region. -
Imagine this other African language.....
as loud as that. The Ju/'hoansi language made famous by Nixau in the Gods Must Be Crazy. Could you imagine that kind of clicking radiating for two miles?
It's so nice that they are keeping it going. It was Stalin that said "Take away their language, take away their souls". Imagine the good that the Navajo talkers did in WW II. Would've been a shame if we didn't have them. The war would have been WAY tougher. -
Other living fossil plantsThis was really interesting so I googled. Cavet: IANA Paleobotanist.
Apparently ginkos are also extremely old and resemeble a Jurassic variety. And Cycads, which are woody plants that create seeds. They also seem to be quite poisonous although they are eaten as "beach tucker" after processing in the jungle. (link) Anyway here are some links.
Finally I there are also the extremely visually (and biochemically?) wierd Gymnopsperms like Welwitschia And Ephedra, which seem ancient, maybe same era..
All this because I was trying to figure out if the inch-long stem/leaf in my pocket which I snapped off a huge pencil plant was one of those. Not sure yet.. I remember my mother also has some kind of ancient plant which looks like a gray rock and does nothing, but then one day suddenly splits in half, and then each half will continue to split in the same way recursively. A very cool plant if anyone can figure out what it is!
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Re:Fluoride...
Did you know water is also toxic? Heck, even your blood could be toxic!
Convincing people it's good for them is a clever trick.
Or is it? -
Re:How old are they?Your assertion
But given that K-Ar dating is typically used for age ranges in the 10s or 100s of millions of years, these results show that the uncertanty due to primordial argon is small, and hence the method is accurate.
does not agree with sources that believe in K-Ar dating. For example, from here you seePotassium-argon dates usually have comparatively large plus or minus factors--they may be on the order of ¼ million years for a 2 million year old date. In addition, this dating technique usually is of use only where there is rock rich in potassium. Essentially, it is used only where there has been local volcanic activity. Theoretically, however, it can be used for samples that date from the beginning of the earth (4.6 billion years) down to 100,000 years ago or even more recently. (emphasis added)
And from here:Potassium/Argon Dating (K/Ar): Based on the radioactive decay of 40K Age is a function of the 40K/40Ar ratio Application restricted by the formation of potassium Used mainly for dating basalts. Age range 100,000 -> 3,000,000 yrs (emphasis added)
And from here is an even more interesting range:40-Potassium/40-Argon Geochronology - 40-K/39-Ar geochronology is one of the most widely used absolute-dating methods. The method relies on samples rich in mineral grains containing potassium, typically an igneous volcanic rock rich in sanidine feldspar. 40-K undergoes natural radiogenic decay through time (converting to argon-40 at a known rate). As the potassium gradually decays to argon, the naturally inert gas accumulates, confined within the mineral crystal lattice. As a result, the ratio of 40-K to 40-Ar derived from mineral grains is compared with the known rate of radiogenic decay of 40-K. By eliminating possible sources of error, this absolute dating method can be used of on selected rock samples typically ranging in ages from ~10,000 years on back in time to billions of years. The USGS maintains a 40-K/39-Ar laboratory (sample extraction equipment and mass spectrometer) in Menlo Park, CA (emphasis added)
So in conclusion, K-Ar dating is widely accepted for a far younger age than the age supposedly found in the Mt. St. Helens or the other sites. -
Prior Art?
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Re:I don't have the book but...In that link (and in his book) he says he's a "theistic evolution" believer; but that is most certainly not in accord with the claim as written that
he concedes macroevolution in all its guises
since macroevolution has as a basic tenet that it is unguided and uses random mutations as its basic fuel. That is what is currently referred to as "neo-Darwinian" evolution, using Darwin's basic concept merged with an understanding of DNA based genetics.
In fact if you read the link you posted, it talks about how Eugenie Scott criticized Behe's book but she is the one who clearly had not understood (or perhaps had not read) the book, since she was the one who made the claim that Behe does not believe in evolution.
On the topic you brought up of credentials, I have found that those engaged in discussion with creation science types routinely make an attack assuming an utter lack of scientific training on the part of the creationist. I've also learned to short-circuit the most absurd counterpoints in order to move the discussion to more useful arenas, such as the topic at hand, rather than the very typical ad hominem attack used as a first pass. -
Re:Performances ban cameras, etc- why not cellphon
This is offtopic, but a reply to the reply.
It's a decade (at least) since I last spent any serious time looking at sex chromosomes - I may have written the wrong combination - XYY may be what I was thinking of - refer the section on http://anthro.palomar.edu/abnormal/abnormal_5.htm. -
Re:screwing with food "cues"..?
I'm pretty sure we haven't evolved to detect cues in McNuggets for their edibility, but we can still figure it out. All seriousness aside, Humans have only begun eating tomatoes fairly recently. They are part of the nightshade family (as well as potatoes and eggplant), and were thought to be poisonous until the 1800's.
As for purple potatoes, they are not genetically engineered or out of the ordinary in anyway other than lack of popularity. I've actually bought "blue" potatoes at the market that look purple to me, and are definitely purple after being cooked.
Even if they were rainbow colored, I really don't think it matters too much. We eat rainbow candy and icecream, chicken feet dim sum, oysters, bird nests made of spittle, pig's blood cakes, and all sorts of other things that our bodies probably aren't built for. So no need for the deity to decree that purple potatoes are "unclean".
LS -
Wrangle Island Mammoth, Neandertals Killed By Man?
Actually mammoths didn't die off as long ago as everbody thought. There was an isolated group on an island that survived until only 5000 years ago. The thinking is that being on a remote island protected them from hunting by man which is why they survived so long. Details here, including the quote: "...surprisingly recent dates on woolly mammoth remains from Wrangel Island in 1990, ranging between 7390-4740 BP. The finds were remarkable for two reasons: they indicated mammoth survival on Wrangel Island for as much as 5000 years after the last known date of mammoths on the Eurasian continent, and they documented the evolution of a distinct dwarf mammoth population on Wrangel Island." Other theories include a virus induced extinction , but I think it was man... To me, even more interesting is whether or not man killed off Neandertals. These guys were all over Europe for a very long time, and they were smart enought to fight back. A war with them would have truly been "World War One". There is so far only one possible example of a possible human-Neandertal hybrid , so their disappearance probably wasn't from interbreeding...Let's take a poll, did humans deliberately destroy neandertals or were they the original Homer Simpsons that just died out???
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Re:Non 4 year college .edu domain
www.palomar.edu It's a two-year community college that operates in northern San Diego, CA.
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Treating climate change as a technical problemReason magazine ran an article by Gregory Benford a few years ago that suggests many possibilities for a technological fix, giving the pros and cons to each proposal. Some of the ideas explored were to plant a lot of trees, to seed the oceans with iron, and to increase the reflectivity of the planet My favorite idea is what Benford calls "the geritol solution" of seeding the oceans with iron filings to produce plankton blooms to soak up the CO2. This might even be done at a profit if the resultant fishing rights are properly exploited.
That approach, invented and pioneered by scientist John Martin, definitely shows promise.
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LinkageHere are some articles that illustrate how life on Earth discredits the criterea for designating a planet of being capable of supporting life: