[[The atmosphere has so many CO2 molecules that every single outgoing IR photon hits a CO2 ]]
‘so many CO2 molecules’ In the atmosphere? Only 0.00136% of the atmosphere has any CO2 molecules in it due to man- it contains only 0.04% due to all sources- that means 99.96% of the atmosphere doesn’t have any- surely there are far far more IR photons than CO2 molecules-
And here’s something else to consider- the heat rises, gets trapped by CO2 and as you say ‘almost instantly releases it to surrounding molecules’ (I’m assuming you mean atmospheric molecules) And I say “Yeah? So what? Heat is doing what it does- rising into atmosphere- the only thing now is that it BARELY gets delayed by seconds because a very small portion of it gets trapped briefly by CO2 then released almost instantly- The fact is the heat is going skyward whether there is CO2 or not-
There is NO thick blanket of CO2 holding heat indefinitely causing an electric blanket like effect on the earth
You have never explained how just 0.00136% of our atmosphere is aBLE to capture and back radiate enough heat to cause global climate change- How is it possible?
You analogy about the stadium is wrong- there aren’t trillions of seats of CO2 in the stadium one 0.00136% of the stadium would have a CO2 seat in it- the rest of the seats would not be CO2 seats- so your analogy actually illustrates the silliness of the idea that mans’ CO2 could be causing climate change- you throw trillions of baseballs into the stadium, and only a few of htem will wind up in the one CO2 seat- The rest will not because there are simply not enough CO2 seats to capture enough baseballs to cause any kind of change within the stadium (assuming for he sake of argument that those baseballs that get caught in CO2 seat are heated up slightly) The vastness of the stadium will be unaffected by those few baseballs that are slightly warmer (not the best analogy, but it shows the futility of trying to exclaim that man is causing climate change- or that CO2 for that matter is-)
[[Because of the CO2, the entire atmosphere is warmer.]]
Sorry, but this is nonsense- The heat was rising anyways- (and incoming from the sun) what insignificant amount of CO2 there is does absolutely nothing to change how warm the atmosphere is, and it certainly has nothing to do with how warm surface temps are back on earth There is no way 0.00136% of the atmosphere can even capture enough heat to cause 99.96% of the atmosphere to ‘heat up’ beyond what it normally does naturally
First part is true, there is no way to say how much the added warmth in the atmosphere affects the earth because of weather complexities. But for the second part, the warming of the bulk atmosphere is true. The reason is that the CO2 molecules bump into the O2 and N2 molecules roughly 10^10 times per second and transfer a portion of any extra energy that they contain.
About 0.1 nanoseconds after the interception of and IR photon the CO2 molecule bumps into an O2 or N2 molecule and transfers some of that extra energy to the O2 or N2. The O2 or N2 is warmer due to the CO2. All IR photons are intercepted in roughly 100 feet of atmosphere by one of the 10^41 CO2 molecules (there are 10^44 total molecules).
The alternative to the CO2 transferring some of the extra energy to the bulk atmosphere is that it reradiates it towards earth or into space. But that is a slow probabilistic process.
Here's a post at WUWT that disagrees with what I say above: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/05/co2-heats-the-atmosphere-a-counter-view/ but the commenters add lots of corrections. The main one is that the IR flux invalidates the LTE claim. It would be true that the temperature of the atmosphere is independent of the amount of CO2 if there were no IR flux passing through it.