Saturday, February 4, 2023

I Misunderstood the Greenhouse Effect. Here's How It Works.


John Coffey:
I thought that actual Greenhouses prevent convection, which is different than CO2 which absorbs and re-emits infrared photons.

 I heard that convection is an important part of how our atmosphere loses heat.

I also had heard that the infrared photon knocks an electron to a higher orbital, and then 3 nanoseconds later the electron falls back down to the lower orbital and re-emits an infrared photon.  The net effect is to scatter the photons in a random direction since quantum physics acts somewhat randomly.

Photons are force-carrying particles.  They carry electromagnetic force.  In order for the temperature to increase, there would have to be a gain of kinetic energy because heat is the motion of molecules.  Does the vibration of the molecule convert electromagnetic force to kinetic energy?   So I am wondering what percentage of the infrared photons gets converted to kinetic energy, and what percentage gets re-emitted?

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