Not Spaghetti

Ray Pierrehumbert's recent brief but excellent exposition of radiative transfer theory in Physics Today and scienceofdoom's continuing effort to clearly explain atmospheric radiation and the "Greenhouse" effect inspired me to do a little playing around of my own with the underlying theory and equations, to get a better feel for some of the expected behavior, and perhaps illuminate another aspect of the problem to a public audience.

I recently corresponded with a colleague who has acquired a degree of "skepticism" regarding global warming. His comments to me specifically cited Freeman Dyson and Will Happer, distinguished physicists who are also well-known global-warming skeptics, and he contrasted their credentials with those of John Holdren (Obama's new science advisor) and Al Gore. The following is a lightly edited version of my response, which I'm posting here mainly as a place for some useful links on the subject.