Nev,
You're misunderstanding—or misrepresenting—what CDE means in the energy balance.
Yes, energy is transferred in the lower troposphere via collisional de-excitation (CDE)—nobody disputes that. But that is not the same as energy being lost to space.What I’m saying is simple:
In the dense lower troposphere, CO₂ molecules overwhelmingly lose energy via collisions, not radiation.
That energy stays within the system—it warms surrounding molecules and contributes to convection, not radiative loss.
Only at higher, less dense altitudes does radiative de-excitation (RDE) dominate and allow energy to be emitted to space.
So no, I’m not denying energy transfer. I’m saying you’re confusing local thermalization with energy escape, which are fundamentally different.
You can’t claim radiative balance governs the surface when convection and collisional processes dominate the energy flow down here.It’s not “new physics”—it’s basic thermodynamics and kinetic theory.
