So what I’m reading is that these gas absorb the light from the sun and keeps it trapped on the earth.
What I don’t get is how is it letting the light and heat in from the sun in, but not the light and heat reflected from the Earth out? If it’s a barrier, shouldn’t it block both ways? If it’s not a barrier, how is it trapping the heat?
In: 950
It’s not the light that’s reflecting off the Earth and then going back up that’s the problem, it’s the light that gets absorbed by the Earth (making the Earth warm) and then released back out that’s the problem. When the warm ground released energy back out as a form of light, it’s a different ‘color’ of light than originally hit the Earth and made it warm in the first place. The greenhouse effect is a barrier based on the ‘color’ of the light so it lets in the Sunlight no problem, but it becomes to a barrier to the Earthlight.
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