Then again, they're something approaching scientists of one form or another. They have more attachment to truth than to politics.

I'd like to hear a good explanation why this isn't just self-reinforcing groupthink. For every 10 genuine facts, you'll see some widely quoted falsehood like "1 in 5 women on college campuses is sexually assaulted" promoted by Google as a fact. These kinds of bogus statistics are very common.

Hmmm, maybe not Benford. Nothing in his bibliography strikes a resonant tone. I'll have to fish it off the shelf (I remember feeling somewhat conflicted between the writer's reputation and my lack of engagement with the characters, scenario and underlying re-building of the laws of physics. So I don't think I've sent it off to the second-hand-bookshop in the street.)

I wonder how many comets it kicked out of the cloud and have cause some ruckus here on Terra.

Why do you think any comets etc that were perturbed have already arrived?

There's nothing to prevent (say) a 10km body from having been perturbed 70,000 years ago, into an orbit that brings it into close proximity to Quaor in 10 years time, which then perturbs it into the inner Solar System on a couple of hundred year drop into a field in Oklahoma.

The debris could still be arriving here in several million years.

Oh so that's why everyone in Europe and half of Asia are dead

From Kaos' figures (which I am taking as unadulterated bullshit) he's talking about killing pretty much everyone outside of Africa and South America.

The boy has the "thousand yard stare" : back away from him, while feeling around for useful tools like a clue-by-four. His original case may have had some merit, but by his deranged mumblings, he's tainted it by association.

There's even a few places here in Ontario where radon venting is mandatory in your house, most of the southern part of the province has 50-800m of limestone over the bedrock and that's not enough to prevent seepage.

I'd look at that as a geologist and think - there's a good chance that the limestones would help to concentrate the seepage of radon from the basement into particular areas.

True. Lead poisoning is well understood, and has been for thousands of years.

Hundreds, I'd live with. Thousands? Citation required, I think.

Yes, I did grow up in a house with lead piping. Which is why, to this day, I run the tap for a good 30 seconds before taking water to drink or cook with. There were coping strategies that evolved in the last few centuries when people did understand "lead" as an element (and so "lead poisoning" as a concept distinct from "arsenic poisoning" and "belladonna poisoning") which the Romans didn't seem to have.

I'm trying to remember when the hypothesis that lead poisoning is what did in the Romans originated. I think it's relatively recent - Gibbon in his "Decline & Fall" blamed the de-balling effect of Christianity for the decline and fall, and he was one of the first to try to come up with an overarching explanation. That would put the "lead poisoning" theory at being at most a couple of centuries old, as a disagreement with Gibbon.

Since natural uranium has a half life measured in billions of years, the only way it could kill you in five minutes is if a significantly large chunk of it fell on your head from a great height....

Video or it didn't happen.

Actually, since I'm sharing an office this month with the safety officer and a lifting-slinging-cranes instructor, I've seen more than enough "this is why you wear a hard hat and you still don't get anywhere near (30degree fall angle) of a suspended load" videos this week. the polite ones illustrate using a watermelon in place of a human head. The ones from surveillance cameras are kill porn.

A hard hat is good to around 1kg mass falling through 1m. Anything much more the hat may reduce injury, but there's still a good chance of serious injury or death.

A few days ago, someone had put a half-kilo water bottle on a ledge on a basket load for tubulars. When it was being boomed out over to the cargo boat, it fell from about 20m height - equivalent to about 10kilos through 1m or 1kilo through 10m. Well into serious injury territory.

Sorry, but I work with these dudes and Dropped Objects are a day-to-day conversation , meeting and email subject here.

Sounds bad for rich people with beach houses. Won't somebody think of the rich people with beach houses?!!

Many things may be possible at some time in the future. But I was responding to a post that specifically mentioned "50 years from now".

Exaggerating climate change to alarm people isn't working. Stop doing it. If you want people to take the threat seriously, be honest.

If you just want to troll people, divide people, and score petty political points for your side until the next issue gives you a new opportunity, then keep it up.

Do you think they're panicking there? Or do you think they know how to live comfortably on land that's below sea level?