It appears that radiative transfer modeling is a specialty of the LMD at CNRS in Paris, which is the home institution of the authors: http://en.wikipedia.org/w

It appears that radiative transfer modeling is a specialty of the LMD at CNRS in Paris, which is the home institution of the authors: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEISA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEISA The state of the art in radiative transfer modeling is surprisingly advanced. For more, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_radiative_transfer_codes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_radiative_transfer_... For instance, the use of RTMs for retrieving estimates of gas concentrations on Earth is routine. This idea is what the global CO2 maps produced by AIRS http://airs.jpl.nasa.gov/science/geophysical_science/ http://airs.jpl.nasa.gov/science/geophysical_science/ are based on. You can sense back-scattered radiation, which tells you about the CO2 concentration in the air below the satellite. A good RTM is what allows the inversion of radiation into gas concentration. Another related data point is that lots of investigators have been working for years on climate of Jupiter and Saturn using some of the same ideas. There are conference sessions about this topic, e.g. http://www.agu.org/meetings/sm05/sm05-sessions/sm05_SA24A.html http://www.agu.org/meetings/sm05/sm05-sessions/sm05_SA24A.ht... I'm not saying that this means the authors are right, just that there's more valid science here than you might guess.