This article has some great tips and a ~ stepwise algorithm on data recovery including recommendations on what tools to use and lots of links. I use this every time I encounter someone who comes to me whinning of data loss, it always seems to get the job done. It was made by someone who had the same problem, now he just tells them 'here's a link, stop asking me'...

http://blog.econtech.selfip.org/2008/05/hard-drive-recovery-101/

A short preview

..."3) Make a copy of the hard drive. Once this is done, we can work on the copy and not worry about messing up the original data. Making a copy of the copy is not a bad idea. This is NOT a copy and paste operation. Iâ(TM)m not sure if the best way of doing this is even possible under Windows. Never fear, though. Just download ubuntu, burn it to disk, and boot it up. We donâ(TM)t need to install it, just run it in âliveâ(TM) mode. If you are using Apple/OSX, this step can also be done with MacPorts. Technically, you can also install in cygwin on Windows, but I find installing cygwin more difficult than just grabbing the ubuntu live cd, so we are going down that path. 1) Enable universe in Ubuntuâ(TM)s repository and update the package database 2) Install GNUâ(TM)s ddrescue (sudo apt-get install gddrescue). Note, this is not the same thing as the original dd_rescue (ddrescue in apt) or dd_rhelp. GNUâ(TM)s ddrescue is like dd_rescue + dd_rhelp, only written in C instead of the sh frontend that dd_rhelp gives you. 3) Figure out which hard drive is the one you want to recover and the one you want to write the copy to. cfdisk and file will be your friends in this area. (Amusingly, it turns out fdisk (which Iâ(TM)ve always used) should be avoided, from the fdisk man page: âoefdisk is a buggy program that does fuzzy things - usually it happens to produce reasonable results. Its single advantage is that it has some support for BSD disk labels and other non-DOS partition tables. Avoid it if you can.â). For now on, assume hda is the troubled device, and that the current directory is a folder on a drive that has the capacity equal to or greater than hda. 4) In your workspace, make a copy of the partition table (cfdisk -P t /dev/hda > hda.part). This will come in handy. I have seen this return non-sense results in OSX. Donâ(TM)t know why, but it is actually less important there (continue reading for why).".......

Diatoms have been the limiting factor in ocean fertilization recentlly, fears you will throw off the ecosystem by proliferating potentially harmful diatoms. The fact that this wasn't found is a success! Organisms will eat the plankton...no surprise. However, that doesn't mean its a failure! Fish are not 100% efficient at using all organic mater from the food they eat. Anywhere from ~30- 50% of the small percent of the plankton that is eaten is still going to be released as ORGANIC waste which will then fall to the bottom of the ocean sequestering carbon.

This is like being against tree planting because it encourages bugs to come eat the leaves, birds to eat the bugs, and bacteria that eat the dead leaves

In ocean seeding theory, it would not be done in areas where there are many fish around to eat the plankton. The idea is to seed 'dead' areas of the tropic ocean where fish typically avoid because of its lack of iron. I believe in practice the idea is to seed very large areas of the ocean with less intensity than this experiment. I.E slowly release Fe off the back of shipping vessels for 100's of miles Regardless, i believe an externality of this is potentially treating some of the effects of overfishing.

Encouraging the ocean to absorb CO2 (NOT HYDROCARBONS!!) boosts its acidity. Unless someone has a reference on this, their suggestion is entirely wrong. The article they reference does not mention anything about this! Yes, CO2 increases in the ocean lead to carbonic acid and increase its acidity. But, fertilization TURNS THE CO2 into ORGANIC MATERIAL! Organic material DOES NOT INCREASE ACIDITY of the ocean, please read any book on photosynthesis.

I feel this article shows signs of some hard bias against ocean fertilization and I'm not sure why.