The Greenhouse Effect and Energy Laws

This chapter gives a brief overview of the greenhouse effect (GHE) and how it contributes to global warming. This chapter is important because it briefly discusses the science of global warming and puts it in a thermodynamics context. Earth’s atmosphere traps longwave infrared radiation, which causes both the troposphere and the surface to warm. Increased warming causes increased water vapor, which causes a feedback affect and amplifies the warming effect of other GHG such as carbon dioxide, which causes more water vapor to enter the atmosphere. The overall entropy in the Earth’s biosphere increases every time energy is transformed. Entropy increase in the biosphere causes climate instability in the form of global warming. Entropy increase is linked to increased rate of fossil fuel combustion and concomitant CO2 emissions.