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> On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 7:38 PM, Sandy Harris <sandyinchina at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Blog post:
>> http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/03/the-triumph-of-coal-marketing.html
>>
>> Dose chart:
>> http://xkcd.com/radiation/
These graphics illustrate my point too, oddly enough, at least the one I find more intellectually entertaining than estimates of the water remaining in pools nobody wants to risk examining.
The latter chart has been widely circulated and is by a fellow whose background is in robotics and programming. It looks about right as far as it goes, and in ordinary circumstances provides a useful scale for the radiation doses people normally get. But in the current circumstances it doesn't tell you much useful about risk (here's the hint) anywhere not in direct sight of the Fukushima plant. It tells you nothing about why the feds want everything, including the navy, cleared out for 50 miles. It doesn't even tell you why fears of impending "radioactive clouds" in North America are overblown, or why the plant workers with the high boots got burned while the guy with the waders was unscathed.
Now, I suppose it helps to have some background in physics and radiation safety to see this. Yet an awful lot of technically learned people are appealing to that chart for reassurance, even while they evidently have little understanding of what it means in current events.
Isn't that interesting, sociologically speaking? Or should I be talking to an anthropologist?
-- Andy