The Greenhouse Effect is a mote in the Official eye and a beam in the public eye. It says carbon dioxide in the air, about 383 ppm and growing 0.35%/year simple interest, will by its infrared absorption convert Earth into a convection oven. Polar ice caps will flash into steam, asphalt and concrete will boil in every city, endangered species might be stressed. Government is forced - against its will! - to levy punitive all inclusive Carbon Taxes on Everything, upon every aspect of life and private possession, lest we burn.
The past ten years' winters set Northern Hemisphere records. Europe suffered glacial weather echoing legendary 19th Century disasters. Urban areas, vast sources of anthropogenic emissions, have carbon dioxide hovering around 500 ppm in air. Facts have no place in Enviro-whiner polemic. Facts are our weapon. Journal of Chemical Education 74(3) 316 (1997).
Carbon dioxide has two major optical absorption bands. The most intense band is 600 to 830 wavenumbers, rather deep into the infrared. A weaker but more instrumentally accessible band is 2390 to 2275 wavenumbers in the near-IR. A cabal of four scientists, no doubt to be denied tenure, committed the heretical act of physically measuring this weaker infrared absorption of carbon dioxide. Real men erect complex computer models based upon ab initio theoretical assumptions and heavily reliant upon obtuse sheaves of indeterminate differential equations. Real men are awash in scaling parameters - unrevealed fudge factors - to reliably conjure up answers demanded by their funding agencies. Then they scream "HETEROSKEDASTICITY!" and get performance bonuses.
99% of Earth's atmosphere resides below 100,000 feet altitude. What depth of atmosphere is required for its carbon dioxide to absorb 99% of infrared radiation in the weak absorption band 2390 to 2275 wavenumbers? According to measurements, not theory, there is required a full 82 feet. No infrared radiation from the ground makes it past the roof of an eight story building without being absorbed. One presumes the remaining 99,918 feet of air are stockpiled as backup, infrared-wise.
Total atmospheric depth sums to a carbon dioxide infrared absorbance, A, in the 2390 to 2275 wavenumber band of 490 (pure number - no units). Percent transmittance is (100)x10-A. An absorbance of 1 gives 10% transmittance. An absorbance of 2 gives 1% transmittance. An absorbance of 3 gives 0.1% transmittance. An absorbance of 490 give no transmittance to 487 decimal places. IS THAT OPAQUE ENOUGH FOR YOU? 100% carbon dioxide would not leak any less infrared radiation.
Water is a much stronger and broader molecular IR absorber than carbon dioxide. 71% relative humidity at 77 F is 21,900 ppm water in air. This is bigger than 383 ppm. If your eyesight were in the infrared, air would be mud over any but short distances and perhaps through sporadic narrow wavelength windows.
The Greenhouse Effect is cheap propagandistic swill manipulating the polity and opening wallets to Official plunder.
Whoa! What about forbidden and strongly forbidden IR absorption bands? Water has a near-IR vibrational absorption band that barely tails into the visible, absorbing a negligible speck of red light. A glass of water is colorless. An ice cave or the ocean is a lovely blue. Long pathlength is necessary to expose minor absorptions. One need only compare the color of water 200 feet deep to that of water 15,000 feet deep to see... there is no difference at all. Diddling with stuff five zeros to the right of the decimal only has so much effect upon numbers to the left of the decimal. The technical term is "optical cutoff."
When carbon dioxide and water vapor run short of incremental infrared horror, eco-shamans fill in with methane (natural gas), chlorofluorocarbons (freons), tetrafluoromethane (from aluminum smelting), and sulfur hexafluoride (electric arc quencher in power stations). Trillions of tons of methane hydrate overlay the continental shelf. Nature says "pookie, pookie." Chlorofluorocarbons, banned because they have atmospheric half-lives of centuries and paradoxically rapidly decompose to foment the Ozone Hole, are in steep atmospheric concentration decline after seven years of legislated reduced use and vast black market supply. Who is cooking the numbers? Let's put Greenhouse taxes on aluminum and electricity to save ourselves from notional predicaments, substituting real ones at a horrible price. Gee, it's the electric car.
Removing freons from the world, if that did anything at all useful like the March of Dimes curing polio, would be a social activism disaster. Enviro-whiners hedged their bets by demanding hydrochlorofluorocarbons replace freons. Those puppies rapidly decompose to rapidly feed the Official Ozone Hole. They are also marveleously inefficient in refrigeration systems - corrosive, too. Not to worry! They are also carcinogens, though all rodent studies are backdated to before the first murine oozing putrescence gave up the ghost.
Whoa! What about subtle effects we have not yet discovered? Enviro-whinerism is philosophy and dialectic opposing every form of progress. Luddites see the Devil everywhere people are healthier, richer, and happier. The Carbon Tax on Everything might be our only protection against the Devil! More likely a Carbon Tax on Everything is our entry fee into another Hell. Feel the burn.