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A greenhouse is small and is of concern only to its owner. The atmosphere is dealing with an enhanced (or accelerated) greenhouse effect causing global warming which is of serious concern to the whole world.

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10y ago
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14y ago

The popular view is that the atmosphere has some sort of layer of carbon dioxide "up there" that reflects heat back down to Earth rather than letting it escape to space. That would be like the glass on a greenhouse trapping warm air in while letting the sunlight through to increase the heat. In a greenhouse the sunlight warms the benches and floor, he warm objects heat the air, the air is trapped by the double layer of insulating glass.

It does not happen that way in the Earth's atmosphere.

Sunlight comes in and warms the Earth's surface. It warms the gases in the air too, at least some of them with a bond size that gets excited by sunlight. These special gases are greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, water vapour and a few others). They are mixed evenly through all of the atmosphere (not in layer). When the gases are warm they share their heat with all their gas molecule neighbours and heat the atmosphere generally.

The effect is more like wet sand in a microwave. Microwaves do not heat the sand. They do heat water. When you microwave wet sand, the water heats up - might even turn it to steam. The hot water warms the sand.

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