The Straight Dope 04/20/2007

The Straight Dope -- By Cecil Adams
http://www.straightdope.com

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THE STRAIGHT DOPE 04/20/2007

Dear Cecil:

It seems like everyone is worried about global warming, but you (or at
least I) never hear anything about the lesser-known but possibly more
important phenomenon of global dimming. Could you give us the straight
dope on this, since no one else seems to know anything about it?--G.S.,
Chicago

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Cecil replies:

Too hot! Too cold! Surely if we're patient all the bad stuff will cancel
out and we can go back to driving Hummers with a clear conscience,
right? Sorry. Though I hesitate to make bold pronouncements, global
dimming could mean we're in more trouble from global warming than we
thought.

First some vocabulary. At any given moment earth receives about 174
petawatts (174 billion megawatts) of solar energy, about 30 percent of
which is reflected immediately back into space, mainly by clouds. Though
the remainder drifts off into the void eventually, most of it sticks
around long enough to warm the planet and keep us alive. What concerns
scientists is that over the past 50 years the average amount of sunlight
hitting the earth's surface has markedly decreased, a phenomenon English
scientist Gerry Stanhill dubbed global dimming in 2001. How much
sunlight has dimmed depends on where you are, but overall it's something
like 1 to 3 percent per decade.

The problem isn't that the sun is running out of gas, but . . .

For more, see:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/070420.html

STAFF REPORT

Dear Straight Dope:

Why is there no Nobel Prize for music? Considering every other
discipline is catered to it seems rather silly--or is there a deeper
reason? Let us know!  Yours in hope, Sian and Ian, Britain

SDSTAFF Euty replies:

Happy to. Any time you write about Alfred Nobel, you're sure to have a
blast.

OK, now that the obligatory joke is out of the way, we can go on to
better things. Such as Alfred Nobel. Who invented dynamite. And gave us
the Peace Prize.

Contradictory? Possibly. As a manufacturer of explosives, Nobel worked
with nitroglycerin, which had been discovered in 1847 by chemist Ascanio
Sobrero. He knew all too well how unstable it was his brother Emil had
been killed in a nitro explosion at the family workshop in Stockholm,
Sweden. Eventually he discovered that if nitro were mixed with
diatomaceous earth it could be molded into sticks that could be handled
in relative safety. This invention, along with more than 300 others he
patented plus some shrewd investments, made Nobel fabulously rich. 

Dynamite had initially been intended . . .

For more, see: 
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mmusicnobel.htm

STRAIGHT DOPE CLASSIC - 02/26/1988

Dear Cecil: 

How come archaeological ruins are always underground? Think about it.
Why isn't everything right on the surface? Where does this dirt come
from that keeps burying the past? Is the Earth getting thicker and
thicker, like the trunk of a tree? Doesn't make sense to me.--Nig
Lipscomb, Chicago

Cecil replies:  

Actually, Nig--and listen, you really should do something about that
nickname--I like to think the earth is getting slightly less thick
each year, owing to my selfless educational ministry. Physically, on
the other hand, the earth is getting a bit thicker, since it picks
up 10,000 tons of meteorite dust a year. But that's not why ruins are buried.  

Archaeologists have to dig for lots of little reasons and one big reason.
Sometimes the stuff they're looking for was buried to start with, as in
the case of graves and rubbish pits. Sites that are abandoned for a long
time become overgrown with vegetation that gradually decays and builds
up a layer of topsoil. Places located in valleys may get covered by
erosion from nearby hillsides. Occasionally a site gets buried because of
some natural disaster, such as a flood or the eruption that buried Pompeii.
The great Egyptian temple at Abu Simbel (the one with the giant seated
figures carved into a cliff) was partly buried by drifting desert sand.
The same thing happened to the Sphinx--for centuries all that was visible
was the head. The Roman port of Ostia was also engulfed in sand, which
accounts for the remarkable state of preservation in which modern excavators
found it. 

For more, see:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_351b.html

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