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Comment Re:the math bit (Score 1) 69

What do you mean? Denver has frequently been compared with some sea level city, and found to suffer more radiation damage. (The exact radiation damage found depends on the study.) Of course, it's hard to control for the amount of granite, etc. nearby, so they aren't strictly reliable studies, but they *have* been made.

Comment Re: maybe it was... (Score 0) 69

Sorry, that's a bad argument. It may well be true, but any absorbed radiation will raise the temperature, and any raise in the temperature makes unusual chemical reactions more probable. So you need to argue that the factor is too trivial to be significant. This is probably true, but has never been demonstrated, and probably cannot be demonstrated. (I've seen claims that they're demonstrated the harmlessness, but the claims were always logically invalid.)

Comment Re:Generilsation (Score 1) 149

Well, IIUC the actual models generally say more "nuclear autumn". It's still enough to cause massive famines and various other really undesirable effects. (I didn't say side-effects, because they are really components of 'nuclear autumn.)

OTOH, that was the prediction decades ago for a nuclear war between India and ... Pakistan or Afghanistan (I don't remember which).

Comment Re:How far back do the records exist? (Score 1) 149

I doubt those methods give the estimates for 10m below the surface of the ocean. It *is* a short record, but it's what we've got. Also, I don't see any reason to doubt it, except that I'd rather the answer were different.

Still, don't put high certainty in this particular measure. The problem is that it agrees (in general) with lots of other measures that have a much longer span. There are arguments against pretty much every one of them, but they aren't convincing and even so you have to have dozens of special cases happening at once.

Comment Re:Who cares? (Score 3, Insightful) 92

You left out informative, but otherwise I pretty much agree with you. The problem is that I expect MANY jobs are going to evaporate. Whether enough new jobs will appear (that are easy to cross-train into) is another question, and I really find it dubious.

We won't find out the answer this year, but we may find out next year.

Comment Re: The climate is going extreme (Score 1) 114

"Houses" probably predate homo sapiens. They my just have looked like lean-tos, but they did the same job, just not as well. And if you demand mortared foundations, they didn't show up until the very late stone age.

The thing is, when you're mobile rather than settled, a house is a very temporary asset. And they have defects as places that house lice, fleas, etc. So you usually prefer to keep moving. Agriculture is what probably caused what we think of as houses to be created, but the first "permanent" houses were probably organic developments of the pre-existing "temporary shelters".

P.S.: Look into the construction techniques used by Chimps and Orangutans. These are called "nests", but they aren't trivial constructions, and as they're in the trees, their requirements are different from ground based constructions.

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