re: #29 LudwigVanQuixote

to continue…

If you have a molecule though, the bonds of the molecule can be thought of much like a piano string. They play a certain note of a certain frequency when they are hit. Again, messing with an electron orbit, means changing energy in some way, and this can be accomplished with light. The case of a molecule though is a little different. While there are different energy bands in the electron orbits that they can go into, absorbing the right frequency of light can also cause the molecule to vibrate.

These vibrations are heat.

We now have the whole picture.

Because CO2 is structured the way it is, it is primed to absorb light of a certain frequency (and hence energy). If light of that frequency/energy hits CO2, it will vibrate and get hot.

It turns out that CO2 is very good at absorbing IR light, and it turns out that our sun gives off a huge amount of IR.

So, if you put CO2 in the sun, it gets hot.

Therefore, if you put a lot of CO2 in the atmosphere, the atmosphere will get hot. This happens again, because energy is conserved, and once the CO2 molecule absorbs the light, it must do something with that energy.

It turns out that CO2 is very very good at absorbing IR, so much so, that even very small amounts of it in the atmosphere, compared to everything else, has a dramatic effect on how warm the atmosphere is.

It is that simple.

If you doubt any of these statement, please understand, that you are not doubting not just climate science, but also, Electromagnetism and Quantum Mechanics and Thermodynamics.

Do you really believe, that E&M, QM and Thermo are all false?

Very interesting. So how much (as a %) of the total light available (in the IR bands that CO2 absorbs) is actually being absorbed by the ~390ppm CO2 concentration now?