Global warming for Geeks

IR is infrared, the wavelengths longer than visible (to humans) light.

http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2011/09/the-worst-possible-idea-at-the-worst-possible-time.html#comment-6a00d83451b33869e2014e8b43d05b970d

eightnine2718281828mu5 said in reply to anne...

Here's a nice little one page description:

http://science.widener.edu/svb/ftir/ir_co2.html

Those spikes in the chart represent IR energies that nitrogen, oxygen, water vapor, etc. don't absorb. So if CO2 wasn't present, that energy would be free to radiate out into space.

But when CO2 is present, it absorbs IR in those bands and converts it into mechanical energy (represented by the vibrational mode animations at the bottom of that page)
Reply Sunday, September 04, 2011 at 05:50 PM
eightnine2718281828mu5 said in reply to eightnine2718281828mu5...

oh, and mechanical energy at the molecular level is just another name for heat.
Reply Sunday, September 04, 2011 at 06:04 PM


http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/

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