CO and HO

CO2 and H2O Experiments later in the nineteenth century confirmed carbon dioxide and water (H2O) as the gases mainly responsible for warming. Water has several absorption peaks between 940 and 6,300 nm. Carbon dioxide has a moderate peak just below 5,000 nm and a strong one at 15,000 nm.11 Therefore they more readily absorb radiation from the Earth’s surface than they do the much hotter radiation from the surface of the Sun. Otherwise, the Earth’s mean surface temperature might have been, these last 10,000 years, say, some 30 kelvin degrees lower than it ever has.