It is sometimes said by critics of the hype that carbon dioxide does little of anything but might actually cause global cooling. Explaining how cooling might occur instead of heating shows how erroneous the thought pattern is for the propagandists.

One of the major errors of propagandists is the assumption that radiation leaves the surface of the earth and would escape into space, if not trapped in the atmosphere by so-called greenhouse gases. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

The first error in that assumption is that infrared radiation leaves the surface of the earth in large quantities. There is negligible infrared radiation leaving the surface of the earth. Night vision equipment shows this. It is designed to pick up that radiation, and it is easily swamped by miniscule light sources, such as a flashlight.

In an attempt to contrive a mechanism for global warming, the propagandists claim a large amount of infrared radiation leaves the surface of the earth. The NASA web site says 41% of the energy leaving the surface of the earth is infrared radiation, which is absurd, as I explain on the web page titled "The 41% Fraud." Some schemes show larger numbers. The inability to agree on such a basic and simple number shows that it is contrived.

The second error in the basic assumption of propagandists is that nothing would keep the infrared radiation from escaping into space but greenhouse gases. Actually, nitrogen and oxygen (which make up 99% of the atmosphere) would absorb the radiation in a longer distance, if greenhouse gases were not absorbing it in a short distance. My estimate is that they would absorb in about five kilometers—shorter for longer wavelengths and longer for shorter wavelengths.

Carbon dioxide absorbs all infrared radiation available to it in about 10 meters, and water vapor in less than one meter. These substances shorten the distance that some of the radiation would otherwise travel. But what relevance is shortening the distance? A shorter distance might be more apt to create global cooling than global warming, but neither effect would be significantly large.

Radiant energy does not escape into space from the surface of the earth; it escapes from the outer atmosphere, because there is almost no infrared radiation being given off by the surface of the earth, it is almost all given off by the atmosphere. This is because solids have very little surface area to emit from, while gases have an almost infinite surface area to emit from.

Since the radiation originates with the atmosphere, it's average center of emission is the center of the atmosphere. Now, shortening the distance prevents it from moving toward the surface of the earth and toward outer space equally. But the atmosphere toward outer space does not mix with the lower atmosphere, which makes it irrelevant to so-called global warming, which is concerned with near-surface temperatures.

So inhibiting movement of energy toward the surface of the earth has a cooling effect, while inhibiting movement toward space has little heating effect on near-surface temperatures. The net effect of shortening absorption distance by so-called greenhouse gases is more cooling than heating for near-surface temperatures.

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