If carbon dioxide reflects heat...?

Question

...then won't increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere actually cool the planet by reducing the amount of heat that gets in? By that same logic, won't reducing CO2 levels actually warm the planet up even more?

Answer 1

It doesn't reflect heat, it absorbs it by trapping the heat within the atmosphere. Sunlight checks in, but it doesn't check out.

Along that same line, though, the polar ice caps DO reflect heat, and when they melt (due to heat from increased CO2 levels), more sunlight will be absorbed by the earth, making global warming that much worse.

Answer 2

No, because the waves coming into the atmosphere from the sun are too energized. Heat waves have a long wavelength and low frequency, therefore low penetrating power. The suns waves, mostly UV and higher, have very small wavelength and very high frequency, therefore having more penetrating power.
Think of your car as the Earth and the windows as the CO2. The suns energy can penetrate the windows to enter the car, but the loss of energy from penetration and absorption by the interior turns the high energy UV waves into low energy heat waves that cannot escape.
The same thing happens in the atmosphere. The high energy UV waves from the sun can enter the atmosphere, but once absorbed by the earth and turned into heat waves the waves no longer have enough energy to get past the CO2 in the atmosphere to escape.

Answer 3

Actually Carbon Dioxide traps heat within a planet's atmosphere. Having CO2 in the atmosphere will warm the planet, not the other way around.

Note: This is what's happening in the planet Venus.

Answer 4

No. The energy that radiates from the sun to the earth is visible light and ultraviolet light. These wavelenghts of light pass right through CO2. They are absorbed by the earth and then re emitted as infrared light, which cannot pass through CO2. Look up black body radiation, attenuation coefficients of gases as a function of wavelength, and solar radiation spectrum.

Liars like Rush Limbaugh have tricked people into thinking that they can understand everything with simple logic, like yours. But the fact is there is a GIANT gap between the people who listen to conservative talk radio and real scientists. Do you know how an MRI scanner works, for example? Do you know how a laser works? Real scientists build and use these devices every day. But they are far too complicated for someone like Rush Limbaugh to understand. Still he calls scientists "whackos".

Scientists have been warning us about global warming since the 1980's. Polluters and people who profit from the emission of CO2 have been fighting to prevent us from making the changes necessary to stop this process before it gets out of control. Switch all your light bulbs to CF bulbs, get rid of your SUV and get a more efficient car or better yet a motorcycle that gets 75 mpg. DO something to slow global warming now; don't sit there and use your bible school logic to try to argue with environmental scientists.

Answer 5

Most CO2 is within 6 ft. of the surface . With it that low I would think your premise was correct. CO2 is not the problem ,it is the first step in the earth's atmosphere recycle system. That is why GOD put plants here on earth in the first place . If u look further u could find that the plants is a step in fossil fuel recycling. It is how GOD intended that us and the plants live on the earth together.