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You don't need to take it to the molecular level to demonstrate climate change. The fact that ordinary CO2 is opaque to infrared is readily demonstrable by expe

You don't need to take it to the molecular level to demonstrate climate change. The fact that ordinary CO2 is opaque to infrared is readily demonstrable by experiment in a classroom. The cause-and-effect from burning hydrocarbons to energy absorption to a warmer environment was explained well over a century ago. The details of the atmosphere's interaction with the land are more complicated, to be sure. But that's not necessary in order to understand that the theory explains the the observations we've been making of a warming atmosphere. That's not sincere argument; that's goalpost shifting.

jiggawatts 3y ago
This is where the oversimplified argument gets in trouble: if it’s already opaque, adding more won’t make a difference, right? The science is something like: CO2 is so opaque to IR that the determining factor for warming is the part of the spectrum where it isn’t so opaque. However the thermal transport still goes through several bounces as it goes up through the layers of the atmosphere. At the higher layers the frequencies shift down and the absorption spectrum changes in complicated ways. This all interacts nonlinearly with water at the lower layers and ionised gases in the higher layers. Actually simulating something that won’t just give you gibberish answers is decidedly nontrivial. It’s not a question of precision — I’m not talking about +2C instead of +1.5C! An overly simplistic model will predict -50C or +100C!