mistermack

It's not a subject that you can get a simple answer for on a forum. If you are interested, do a bit of reading on the subject, and don't expect definitive answers, because we don't have them as yet. Just the best opinions so far from the people who are currently most informed on the subject. As usual, wikipedia is the best starting platform. wikipedia : "Researchers generally think that current life descends from an RNA world, although other self-replicating molecules may have preceded RNA." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis

Maybe a reflection of the fact that the rich are the ones getting richer.

=> More cars, more houses, more cattle, pigs, horses, dogs, cats, chickens, more heating, more air conditioning, more shit, more forest clearing, more CO2, more factory fishing and farming etc etc. I've got nothing against people, but the place isn't big enough for nature and 8 billion of them.

Better education, more womens rights, freely available family planning products supplied free of charge, and better pensions for the elderly, will never be seen as crimes against humanity. As for the rich/poor argument, the surplus population from the poorest areas will always find a way to migrate to the richer areas, and become part of the high consuming problem, as is happening right now around the world.

I doubt if it's the beginning of the end. It might force some changes to be made. I'm not well-versed in what the bot does, but I don't see how it's any different to the web crawler bots that google uses, or how it's more intrusive than people googling the results of that crawler. But as I said, I'm not that well informed about what it does.

It seems certain that the process works. But the big hurdle is scaling it up to practical and economic levels. I wasn't very impressed with the quantities of treated water that they were quoting, and it doesn't seem likely that it would work efficiently in a British winter, with short cool days and low sunlight. But maybe with some selective breeding, or gene manipulation, it could be improved. But of course, there are risks involved in releasing new algae into the environment. I've just bought this : It's by Bonar Menninger, a journalist, written in collaboration with Howard Donahue, a weapons expert who solved the riddle of how Kennedy died. I'm 100% certain that he nailed it, although it will never be officially accepted, and the ludicrous verdict of the Warren Commission still stands as the official description of what happened when Kennedy was assassinated. There have been a couple of tv films, outlining Donahue's analysis, but it's never become mainstream. I think the tag of conspiracy theory is enough these days to stop people even looking, even though plenty of real conspiracies have been confirmed in the past.

Thanks. I'm sure that's the voice of experience talking.

Life started a long long time before the first cell, so really the question is flawed. And once evolution starts, it's composition doesn't need to stay the same, so analysing the composition of a modern cell doesn't necessarily point to the condition for the origin of life. Scientists currently argue about the date of the first life, or last universal common ancestor, but the likely date is constantly being pushed back further than first thought. But most put it about 500 million years before the formation of the first cells.

I wish young women would quit pestering me for sex. Hey ! I think it's working !!

Genie : you can't wish for more wishes. MigL : Oh, I wish I could !

That's a coincidence, there was a news item about a phosphate removal trial in the river wye valley, a few days ago, but I can't find it online. But I did find this, from six years ago, it might be the same system : https://www.thechemicalengineer.com/news/wessex-water-and-bath-trial-algae-treatment/

You have to be careful what you wish for. The last person given three wishes wished that his dick would reach the floor, and his legs fell off.

I beg to differ. The 'greenhouse gas' effect is well understood, and related to the characteristic black body re-radiation of heat fron the Earth at about 10o ( in the microwave range whre it causes bending/stretching of intermolecular bonds ), as opposed to incoming solar, centered at 4000o ( the visble range which mostly affects electron energy levels ). The absorption and re-emission of this microwavw radiation is upsetting the equilibrium ( because a lot of it can be re-directed back to the Earth, instead of into space ) and causing the Earth to retain more heat, and I'm sure someone has probably quantified this effect by now. This is a large simplification, but it is Physics, Chemistry and Math. So do keep in mind we are a science forum. "Climate science" in modern parlance means the study and prediction of climate change, to practically everyone on the planet. And in particular, predicting the effect of human-caused greenhouse gases on the future climate. Physics, chemistry and maths are of course involved in that, but the attempt to model future climate change is brand new and has no track record, unlike maths, physics and chemistry.

Now you're being weird.

We certainly do Pointless semantics then. But even then, you've got it wrong. The number of humans on the planet is artificially altered every time they send someone to the space station. Or bring someone back.

No, we massively improved the infant mortality rate, using modern medicine, and also increased life expctancy in the same manner. Did you not notice any of that? Is that really true, or are you playing dumb? There are many ways to affect population growth, including education, free and available contraception, and financial moves like pensions for the elderly. In many countries that have this sort of thing, the population naturally begins to fall with hardly any need for murder.

No worries. I've seen you struggling with the obvious before, so I'm happy to oblige.

Christ, that will change a few things !

Ah, thanks. I didn't know who it was.

Yeh right, I cherry picked today's image. How very dishonest. Anyway, the relevant thing about the image is the comparison of todays ice, compared to the long term average, which is there for all to see. And from your own link : the Which is showing a flat graph for the last fifteen years.

What's wrong with that? We've artificially hugely increased the number of humans.

I know I'm being pedantic, but this joke is photoshopped, with a different head put on one or both images. It doesn't alter the humour, but I wonder why they did it?

Why don't you quote me then? It's easy enough to do. If you look, you will find that I was replying to to a point made by theVat, and I quoted his words in my reply to make that clear.

This is not true. Climate science is not like physics or biology or maths. It's not hundreds of years old. It's a brand new science and has a track record of nil in the forecasting of climate. You can always find an accurate prediction for this or that, when there are thousands and thousands to choose from. Someone will get it right, just like the national lottery. It doesn't mean that the lottery winner had prior knowledge. A while back, there was a hiatus of about ten years, when global temperatures hardly moved. What did the IPCC say? They pointed out that their predictions were more confident for 100 years from now, and that the immediate future was less certain, and they had said that there could be 'ups and downs' in the short term. So you simply can't win against that. Whatever the climate does, the IPCC will be able to say "we forecast that". And everyone alive now will be dead long before they can be proved wrong. I see climate science at the moment as a bit like the study of vulcanism. But at least the vulcanologists are honest enough to say that they can't as yet make accurate predictions. That doesn't invalidate the effort to study the subject, and one day, they might be able to make confident predictions that turn out right. So my message to the IPCC is, keep at it, you might be useful one day. Weather predictions are certainly better now than fifty years ago. They've gone from one day confidence to about three or four days. But good luck with the 100 year predictions. Still some work to do there.

In that case, you should quote what you are referring to. Because nobody said that sea ice raised sea levels. Maybe throwing your straw men in the ocean might raise it a bit.