New Scaratings

15 Questions, 1000 Points each, Points decrease rapidly from 4 to 20 seconds after appearance of Question & 5 Choices, and with 3 Clues:

1. Which original member of NATO withdrew in 1966?______________________
[Choices: Denmark, Italy, France, Portugal, United Kingdom ]

2. What the heck is quinsy?__________________________
[Choices: Medical condition, Poetic style, Songbird, Wildflower, Senior citizen ]

3. Who wrote the black power book "Soul on Ice"?______________________
[Choices: Stokely Carmichael, Jesse Jackson, Eldridge Cleaver, Alex Haley, James Baldwin ]

4. After getting his Masters degree in 1591, he decided to become a Lutheran minister:______________________.
[Choices: Johannes Kepler, Jacopo Bellini, Miles Standish, Daniel Dafoe, Christoph Gluck ]

5. A grisaille is a type of:___________________.
[Choices: Drama, Painting, Poem, Dance, Singer ]

6. This leader brutally put down a rebellion by a group known as the Decembrists:_______________________.
[Choices: Thomas Jefferson, Henry VIII, Napoleon, Maximilian I, Czar Nicholas I ]

7. A blue glow called Cerenkov Radiation is the visual equivalent of a:________________________.
[Choices: Muscular twitch, Sonic boom, Whirlpool, Shark's tooth, Rectangle ]

8. Who brought Helen back to Sparta after the Trojan War?______________________
[Choices: Achilles, Paris, Agamemnon, Menelaus, Hector ]

9. Haboob is the name given to storms that occur in ___________________ areas.
[Choices: Polar, Rainforest, Beach, Alpine, Desert ]

10. George S. Patton served as Aide-de-camp to what U.S. general in 1917?______________________
[Choices: David Farragut, John J. Pershing, William T. Sherman, Omar Bradley, George Dewey ]

11. What was the subject of Ken Burns' documentary "Empire of the Air"?____________________
[Choices: Television, Airlines, World War I air battles, Space travel, Radio ]

12. "La Donna e Mobile" and "Caro Nome" are highlights of Verdi's:______________________.
[Choices: Rigoletto, Il Trovatore, Otello, Aida, La Traviata ]

13. In which mountains do pygmy hogs live?_____________________
[Choices: Sierra Madres, Appalachians, Rockies, Himalayas, Urals ]

14. Which part of the body is directly affected by myofascitis?______________________
[Choices: Digestive system, Blood, Brain, Heart, Muscles ]

15. Wilhelm Wien won the 1911 Nobel Prize for:_______________________.
[Choices: Botany, Economic science, Literature, Physics, Peace ]






Answers:

1. France [see the section "French withdrawal" at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_NATO ]

2. Medical condition [some of us at Whispers Bar, Ottawa ON were thrown by this one, looking for "snow shelter" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinzhee ); I (REACH) lost 814 Points, requiring the 3rd Clue. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peritonsillar_abscess .]

3. Eldridge Cleaver [I pre-called this one; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul_on_Ice_(book) ]

4. Johannes Kepler [we deduced this from the date, 1591; see https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jo ... cial-world ]

5. Painting [I deduced this from "gris"="grey" in French; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grisaille ]

6. Czar Nicholas I [Andrew C (GRYFON) pre-called this one; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decembrist_revolt ]

7. Sonic boom [I called this one; see the section "Physical origin, Basics" at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation . In water or glass, the speed of light is slower than the vacuum speed (resulting in the index of refraction greater than 1), so it is possible for a charged particle like an electron to travel faster than the local speed of light (though slower than the vacuum speed). The blue glow seen from a nuclear reactor core submerged in water is given off by electrons beaming Cerenkov (pronounced "Cherenkov") radiation in the forward direction, with the waves forming a conical front similar to a sonic boom when an aircraft is travelling faster than Mach 1 (the local speed of sound). ]

8. Menelaus [I reflexively blurted out "Paris" until I realized the Question said "BACK to Sparta"; Phil (BSLXPN) then gave the correct answer, Menelaus. See the section "Fate" at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_of_Troy ]

9. Desert [see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haboob ]

10. Pershing [Andrew pre-called this one; see the sections "Pancho Villa Expedition" and "World War I" at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_S._Patton ]

11. Radio [see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_of ... Made_Radio ]

12. Rigoletto [I called this one; see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCFEk6Y8TmM for "La Donna e Mobile", and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HXTJ50msyE for "Caro Nome". ]

13. Himalayas [I guessed this, thinking of Southeast Asia (instead of Assam in India); see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmy_hog ]

14. Muscles [myoglobin is a protein in muscles, so we went with "Muscles" for myofasciitis (note the spelling); see https://www.medicinenet.com/script/main ... lekey=7861 ]

15. Physics [I called this, guessing that "Wien's law" is named after Wilhelm Wien; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Wien and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wien's_displacement_law . It is related to the Planck radiation law and the Stefan-Boltzmann law, both essential to understanding the greenhouse effect; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-body_radiation and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan-Boltzmann_law .

An actual satellite spectrum looking down on a cloudless Earth is shown in the third Fig. at https://climateaudit.org/?p=2572 ; it shows a 295 K Earth's surface emitting Planck black-body radiation with bites taken out of the spectrum due to absorption by greenhouse gases CO2, ozone (O3) and methane (CH4), with water vapour (H2O) absorption not labelled. This spectrum is very closely modelled/matched by a MODTRAN computer calculated spectrum available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiative_forcing for a 288.2 K (15.0 Celsius) Earth's surface; the very small difference in area between the blue and green curves is the effect of doubling CO2 from 300 ppmv to 600 ppmv (parts per million by volume).

The physical theory of molecular absorption spectra is settled science; see http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hb ... ibrot.html for an actual absorption spectrum of the HCl (hydrogen chloride) molecule, showing widely separated vibration-rotation lines forming P- and R-branches on either side of the "band origin", a frequency which would correspond to zero change in rotational quantum number (rotational angular momentum). Because the photon is a boson with spin 1 (I.e. it is a particle that follows Bose-Einstein statistics and carries one unit of angular momentum), there must be a change by 1 in the molecule's rotational quantum number on absorption or emission of a photon. The spectrum shows separate lines for molecules containing the Cl-35 and Cl-37 isotopes, because the separation of lines depends on the mass of the vibrating atoms. Because there are roughly 3 times as many Cl-35 atoms as there are Cl-37 atoms (explaining why the average atomic mass, the weighted average, of Cl is around 35.5), the author of the article is puzzled why the HCl-35 lines are not 3 times as high as the HCl-37 lines. The author has failed to understand that absorption is linear with concentration only at small values of concentration. For large absorptions, "saturation" means the marginal increase in absorption is not linearly proportional to increased concentration.

HCl absorbs infrared (IR) photons because it is a polar molecule (the H end is slightly positive, and the Cl end is slightly negative) which can increase in vibration when the changing electric field of the photon matches its frequency of molecular vibration. By contrast, nitrogen (N2), oxygen (O2) and argon (Ar) are non-polar molecules (have zero permanent electric dipole moments) and therefore cannot and do not absorb or emit any significant amount of IR radiation. Therefore the main components of the atmosphere cannot act as a Planck black-body, and the commonly asserted "255 K Planck black-body radiation" emitted at the Top Of the Atmosphere (TOA) does not exist (the literature is all wrong on the mechanism of the greenhouse effect).

However, greenhouse gases do absorb IR radiation emitted from the Earth's surface, becoming vibrationally excited molecules, but almost immediately they are quenched during collisions with N2, O2 and Ar molecules, and the absorbed energy is transferred to translational and rotational motions of the departing molecules. Because N2, O2 and Ar molecules outnumber CO2 (at 400 ppmv) by a ratio of 1,000,000:400 = 2500:1, and since Cp (the heat capacity at constant pressure) equals 7k/2 per linear molecule (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_capacity ), almost all the heat absorbed by greenhouse gas molecules ends up stored in non-radiating molecules (i.e. the air as a whole warms up, the greenhouse effect).

CO2 is a linear molecule, O=C=O, and by symmetry has a zero electric dipole moment even though the O atoms are slightly negative & the C atom slightly positive. But in bond bending vibrations there is a changing electric dipole moment perpendicular to the O=C=O axis, so CO2 strongly absorbs IR at 667 cm^-1 (there are 667 wavelengths of changing electric field in each cm).
Absorption is so strong that frequencies near 667 cm^-1 are completely saturated within metres of the Earth's surface. Kirchhoff's law says that a good absorber is also a good emitter (that's why dish antennae are used both for transmission and for reception). So EMISSION of CO2 frequencies must be considered as well as absorption, and we must look at Schwarzschild's Equation (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwarzsc ... e_transfer ).

Schwarzschild's Equation contains a Beer-Lambert absorption term on the right side, but also an emission term, involving the Planck black-body emission formula. Because the CO2 667 cm^-1 frequency is close to the peak of both the 288 K and 220 K Planck black-body emission maxima, the shift in maxima given by Wien's law is small, and the relative emission at 220 K compared to 288 K may be approximated by (220/288) raised to the 4th-power = 0.3405. This explains why the CO2 absorption ditch (in the observed satellite and the MODTRAN calculated spectra) is truncated at about one-third height rather than extending all the way down to zero transmission. The 4th-power is used because the Stefan-Boltzmann law involves the 4th-power of the absolute temperature, and if the peak maxima occur at the same frequency, all the heights of the Planck black-body emission spectra would vary as the 4th-power to match the change in the total area under the curve.

Because temperatures in the stratosphere from 10 km to 40 km altitude actually increase, not decrease, due to absorption by ozone of incoming Solar visible and ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the Sun, the 667 cm^-1 TOA emission from CO2 actually increases as CO2 is doubled (since final escape to outer space would occur at higher altitudes where the temperature is higher). This would mean that for energy balance, the Earth's surface need not emit as much IR (i.e. doubling CO2 would mean global cooling, not warming).

Of course, this is not the complete picture, because there is increased net absorption in the flanks of the CO2 absorption ditch (the difference in area between the green and blue curves in the MODTRAN computer spectrum), and the global warming due to this increased net absorption is greater in magnitude than the cooling due to increased emission at 667 cm^-1. The difference between the green and blue curves is due to absorptions in sidebands centered at 618 and 721 cm^-1 . These absorptions involve photons absorbed by molecules already in the first excited state, 667 cm^-1 above the ground vibrational state (see http://www.barrettbellamyclimate.com , "Spectral transitions", Diagram 3). Since at 288 K to 220 K only 3% to 2% of CO2 molecules are in the first excited state at thermal equilibrium, the lines in the sidebands are not totally saturated, so doubling CO2 will indeed lead to increased net absorption (although only by around 9%, not 100%).

Note that the MODTRAN computed spectrum is calculated only to 20 km altitude, where the temperature is the same 220 K as at 10 km, so the increased emission on doubling CO2 in the stratosphere had not been discovered (but see the section "The hard bit" at http://www.barrettbellamyclimate.com ).

The literature explanation of the greenhouse effect described by Sir John Houghton at http://climateaudit.org/?p=2572 is all wrong. A TOA outgoing IR flux of 240 W/m^2 would correspond to a perfect Planck black-body (emissivity 1) at 255 K (as given by the Stefan-Boltzmann law), but the Earth's atmosphere is not a perfect Planck black-body (the observed spectrum is not a smooth Planck curve, but a 288 K Planck curve with huge gouges taken out of it). Calculating an altitude "at which photons escape to outer space" by using the observed temperature profile of the troposphere (255 K occurs at 4.85 km if surface temperature is 288 K and the lapse rate is -6.8 K/km) compounds the error of not understanding the physics of the atmosphere.

Note that the MODTRAN calculated spectrum shows a TOA flux of 260 W/m^2 at 300 ppmv CO2, a whopping 20 W/m^2 higher than the generally accepted average value of 240 W/m^2 from satellite measurements. The reason is that computer calculations necessarily are for a cloudless 10 km of the troposphere. But the Earth's surface is 62% covered by reflective clouds. Cloud particles (liquid droplets or ice crystals), unlike individual gas molecules, act like perfect Planck black bodies. So effectively 100% of the IR emitted from the 288 K (15 Celsius) Earth is absorbed by cloud particles and re-emitted at a lower temperature by the upper surface of the clouds. So the initial black-body emission to the TOA will be smaller, leading to lower CO2 net absorption. Doubling CO2 below the cloud tops will have no effect on global warming because any extra net absorption by CO2 means exactly that much less absorption by the cloud particles which exchange energy constantly with colliding air (N2, O2, Ar) molecules. So the extra net absorption by CO2 must be in the shorter path length from the cloud tops to the TOA (at 10-20 km altitude), and because the extra absorption is by CO2 molecules in the first excited state, there will be proportionately fewer of these molecules which decline in % as temperatures drop with increasing altitude. And line widths shrink as temperatures decrease with increasing altitude, accentuating the difference from computer calculations which assume a cloudless 10 km of the troposphere which include higher temperature lower altitudes where fatter line widths mean proportionately more net absorption on doubling CO2. The bottom line is that when 62% cloud cover is included, climate sensitivity before feedbacks will be closer to 0.6 degrees, not 1 degree, on doubling CO2. 0.6 degree warming will increase water vapour pressure by 4%, and water vapour is twice as important as CO2 in the greenhouse effect, so this could increase climate sensitivity by 50% to 0.9 degrees. Ah, but increased water vapour would also increase reflective cloud cover (in the tropics, a clear dawn is followed by increased evaporation, and increased cloud cover resulting in afternoon showers or thunderstorms); this is really hard to accurately calculate, and so has been ignored in the literature. My best estimate of climate sensitivity is between 0.6 and 0.7 degrees on doubling CO2, a factor of 4 to 5 smaller than the long-quoted 3 degrees.

For decades the IPCC has said that climate sensitivity is 3 degrees, plus or minus 1.5 degrees, with the lower limit of 1.5 degrees "highly unlikely". What are the historical facts (data)? From 1850 to 2018, the Earth warmed by 0.8 degrees, plus or minus 0.1 degree, while CO2 increased from 280 to 400 ppmv. Because of saturation effects, warming is logarithmic, not linear. This means that climate sensitivity including all possible feedbacks cannot be more than 0.8[ln2/ln(400/280)] = 0.8[0.693/0.357] = 1.55 K, plus or minus 0.19 K. This simple calculation could have been done in 1989, with similar results. Three degrees was wrong from the start. Judith Curry, formerly of Georgia Tech, came to the same conclusion last year, after an exhaustive search of the literature and historical data. So now the media and the IPCC have without comment talked about 1.5 degrees being the tipping point, not 3 degrees. Yeah, but that 1.5 degrees is probably another factor of 2 too high, given that there has not been a monotonic increase in temperature since 1850, even as CO2 has continually increased.]