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Comment by phendrenad2 | Hacker News Reader

It's crazy that some of the most valuable items on earth are made in huge quantities, whenever the plate tectonics feel like it. Makes you realize how limited our power over the earth is (except for the slow, plodding, yet disastrous pollution of the environment).

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Our power over biosphere is currently quite immense, our power over geosphere is practically nil

For me, the term “power” denotes a combination of will and capability. The human impact on the biosphere often seems less than intentional, more bull in a china shop than ship’s captain.

But to agree, human impact on geological features is much more limited than biological ones. I can thing of just a few with very localized effects:

* water wells :: subsidence

* fracking :: small earthquakes

We've eradicated insect life and deforested large swaths of the planet pretty effectively and intentionally.

How do you know that diamonds are made in huge quantities? The common knowledge is that it's rare.

Thats common knowledge because De Beers wants us to think that.

https://archive.ph/eFwVj

Natural crypto

Quality diamonds are rare. This discovery relates to quality diamonds.

Diamonds aren’t rare. Diamonds that can be cost effectively extracted are rare.

that only debeers diamonds are real diamonds and those "blood diamonds" are bad.

i thought the real diamonds campaign was fighting against lab grown diamonds. are they disputing blood diamonds in that campaign as well?

oh no. real in their terms mean diamonds that have a profit margin for them. the theft of those african diamonds mean those diamonds are now untraceable and that scares debeers

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