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Originally Posted by Gumshoe-Mystery
I'm sorry but the findings of this report are just not true. Firstly the mechanism for 'greenhouse warming' is simple and thermodynamically sound. Electromagnetic radiation enters the atmosphere. Some is reflected back into space, the rest is absorbed and turned into heat energy. Some things are simply better absorbers of heat, while other things, such as polar ice, better reflecters. I haven't studied the absorption characteristics of carbon dioxide since I was at school, but there's nothing fancy here, it's basic stuff.
As far as measuring average temperatures there's many ways this could be done. I don't know precisely how quoted temperatures are being validated, but it's not rocket science. Not only that there are many means of cross-correlating readings. Finally, you must surely be aware of the retreat of polar ice in the last 50 years, and if it's not rising temperature thats doing that then atmospheric pressure must be increasing at an enormously worrying rate!
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They are right and you are wrong. The ground and water are heated by solar radiation, but they transfer heat to the atmosphere through conduction rather than radiation. Only the ground produces any significant radiation because water which covers 70% of the earth's surface doesn't radiate well. Generally radiation heat transfer requires that the source be much hotter than the recipient because the source converts only a small amount of its heat energy to radiation. Heat lamps for example only provide heating while they are turned on even though they produce radiation even when they are turned off.
Even if the air were heated by radiation from the ground, it could not heat the ground in return because each molecule only produces a quantum of energy when it emits radiation according to the Nobel winning research done by Niels Bohr.
Incidentally as is note in the essay physicist R.W. Wood proved that greenhouses don't become hot be trapping radiation but by trapping heated air.