Does the functioning of a greenhouse explain the so-called greenhouse effect?
Were the analogy to be valid, it should. But it doesn’t, not even in principle. The reason is that most plants do not release CO2 in response to solar radiation, filtered or not. Plants are not, therefore, the analogue of man-made fossil-fuel burning. It is only during nighttime (or in the dark) that most plants respire, reverting the daytime process by reducing (fixing) oxygen and releasing CO2, heat and water vapour. But this occurs not in the presence of sunlight or because of the atmospheric interaction with it (as is the case for the claimed ‘greenhouse effect’), but in its absence. It is true that some plants (called C3 plants) will photorespire, that is, in the presence of photons associated with sunlight, they will not fix CO2, but instead consume oxygen and release CO2. However, even these plants only do so when the concentration of CO2 is less than 50 ppmv, thus invalidating even an analogy between the so-called ‘greenhouse effect’ and a greenhouse of C3 plants. Moreover, a g
