Greenhouse effect from CO2 is largely at its limit

Mr. Todd’s letter, “Peer Reviewed Data Shows Climate Change,” was as expansive in its reach as his previous letter.

I’ll focus my response on his claim that the natural greenhouse effect can be supercharged. I believe the greenhouse effect from CO2 is largely at its limit and won’t significantly increase. If one considers the absorption bands of the greenhouse gasses, one will see the frequencies absorbed by CO2 are largely saturated. Please refer to “Absorption Coefficient of Carbon Dioxide Across Atmospheric Troposphere Layer.” At saturation, no further greenhouse effect will occur.

WijngaardenandHapperpublishedwork in 2020 of exceptional clarity in their paper, “Dependence of Earth’s Thermal Radiation on Five Most Abundant Greenhouse Gases.” They crafted a model of the atmosphere and verified their model against satellite observations over the Sahara Desert, the Mediterranean and Antarctica. Their model matched the satellite measurements.

Then they asked questions with the model like “What happens if CO2 doubles from its current concentration?” The model predicted a slight increase in the greenhouse effect, but much less than the IPCC AR6 value from 2021. They shared their results and invited discussion from other scientists.

This year the team furthered their work in their paper, “2n-Stream Radiative Transfer.” This paper addresses some of their greenhouse gas paper model limits. The quality of the work by these two scientists gives me comfort that we don’t have to worry about CO2 emissions. However, I must say that reading their papers gives me a headache!

JAMES GREENE

Whitney Woods Circle