Another Simple Greenhouse

Thumbing through Kittel and Kroemer's Thermal Physics - an admirably elementary introduction to statistical mechanics - I came across a particularly elementary treatment of the greenhouse effect. The simplicity is based on their rather drastic idealization - the atmosphere is reduced to a surface completely transparent to visible but perfectly absorbing (and immediately re-emitting) in the infrared. This version of the greenhouse produces a significant overestimation of the greenhouse effect but is completely quantitative and clearly shows the main principle. Page 115-116.

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