@Bill4
Please notice that I said "apparent relationship." I'm not convinced that the relationship is causal or significant.
The role of carbon dioxide, water, and methane in the Earth's radiation balance has been known for over a century. It's really basic physics, as in lab experiments I did in high school. As in, satellite measurements of the spectral content of the Earth's radiation of heat into space correlated to surface and upper-atmosphere measurements of gas concentrations.
Now, it's conceivable that the observed increases in the Earth's temperature over the last few decades and the increases in known greenhouse gases are only coincidentally related despite the physics. Perhaps, indeed, there is a totally unknown reason why the gases aren't causing the warming and a totally different mechanism which is.
If so, though, I haven't heard it proposed.
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