16 September 2012
With the amount of people who believe that global warming doesn't exist I decided to tell them how it works, to let them decide the magnitude of the problem for themselves.
All but the physicists will be familiar with the observation that the sky is blue. This effect is surprisingly similar to global warming. Now imagine each oxygen molecule as emitting blue radiation in all directions, such that where ever you look you would intercept this photon. I think we can all imagine the amount of molecules of oxygen in the atmosphere. So this would lead us to a point where if we look at enough oxygen molecules we would see the culmination of this radiation.
The same explanation applies to global warming, except that the emission is in at infrared frequency. Infrared is less prone to causing energy dissipation through particle escape, such that the object in question heats up quicker.
Therefore, as the path length from entering to escaping the atmosphere is longer because of this diverging effect, with greater distance through the atmosphere the chance of the light being dissipated along the path will increase asymptotically to certain of dissipation.
Global Warming • Opuss № I