This is not the picture presented by The Oracle's columnist Alex Hardman in two recent articles on the subject. Mr. Hardman finds it hard to believe that visible light from the sun readily passes through our atmosphere but that when it is re-emitted, part of it is absorbed by traces of carbon dioxide. If that were true, he says, the removal of some wavelengths would produce color and we could see it.
Microwave radiation can produce heat too.
It is still longer wavelength and quite invisible. Not all wavelengths are absorbed by water vapor and over the billions of years a delicate balance has developed in which just the right amount of heat has been returned to space. Now carbon dioxide is on the increase. More than half the petroleum that ever existed in the continental United States has been refined and burned since the first production in the early 1900s. The carbon dioxide produced absorbs IR light at a wavelength not absorbed by water vapor.