Seeing the environmental forest

Looking back at my first posts, I realized that I had neglected to explain the greenhouse effect.  This post is intended to rectify that omission. First a basic principle: All energy that enters or leaves the Earth's atmosphere must be in the form of radiation.  And yes, that includes heat.  There's no atmosphere in space so heat cannot be lost from the planet via conduction and convection.  The general process is as follows. 1) Energy from the sun (including ultraviolet and visible radiation) enters the atmosphere. 2) About 30% of the sun's radiation is reflected back into space by aerosols in the air (produced by volcanoes and coal-fired power plants) or via snow, ice, and other light-colored surfaces.  Of the 70% that reaches the ground, most is visible light as most ultraviolet is absorbed by the ozone layer. 3) When visible light reaches the ground, the energy is absorbed by the surfaces on the ground.  That absorbed energy is reradiated as inf...

One of the persistent issues bedeviling public understanding of global warming is the apparent disconnect between CO 2 levels and global temperatures since 1998.  Skeptics claim that warming has slowed since 1998 while CO 2 has risen at an increasing rate.  At first glance, they might have a point—but only at first glance.  Here is the 12-month running average of Mauna Loa CO 2 measurements and GISS surface temperatures: