A potpourri of Data

From Quora:
Total mass of the total atmosphere = 5 million giga tonnes   =   5 million billion tonnes = 5 tera tonnes
At 410 ppm total mass of Carbon Dioxide = 3206 giga tonnes        
Carbon is 1/4 of Carbon Dioxide (as is sometimes reported)
1ppm is equivalent to 7.82 giga tonnes of Carbon Dioxide
kilo = thousands
mega = millions
giga = billions 

tera = trillions

centi

milli

micro

nano

So 420 megatons = .42 giga tones = .42 / 7.82 gt/ ppm = .05 ppm C02 added because of Australian fires so far.

This is an image of the Sun. It is obviously not a simple ball of fire in the sky that shows up each day to warm our Earth and make us happy. In fact, it is an angry, monstrous ball of pure violent heat energy that is in constant turmoil. It's not small at all - 1.3 million times the volume of Earth (330000 times its mass) although it is only 25% the density of our planet - consisting mainly of a boiling plasma that is made up mainly of hydrogen and helium.

The Earth is 1.08 quadrillion cubic kilometers (259 trillion cubic miles) in volume (yet is still only 1/330000 the volume of the Sun). The molten rock just beneath our thin skin ranges in temperature from 1400C near the surface to 6000 C near the core. The planet has 1.29 billion cubic km (310 million cubic miles) of ocean. Our atmosphere is .00008% of total planet mass and of that carbon dioxide is only .04% - of which human added carbon dioxide is only 4% of that small amount.

I drew the following numbers from the reference below. I converted them because I didn't like the way they reported their numbers. For example, instead of giving us ice volumes in a simple term such as cubic kilometers they reported it as SLE (sea level equivalents) - huh! Then ice loss is given as gigatonnes / year without mentioning that 1 gigatonne is equivalent to a cubic kilometer. They compare "oranges to apples" in a manner that makes the data look more fearsome and in which it is impossible to compare or to draw perspective. I've converted their numbers to simple cubic kilometers and you can see just how much we are "losing" worldwide in simple, understandable language. *

                                         AREA SLE (m) =           CU. KM.         LOSS GT. = LOSS CU. KM.              YRS. TO MELT

GREENLANd                  7.36      3,000,000         250     250       12,000 yrs.

ANTARCTIC                   57.80    24,000 000     200     200      120,000 yrs.

GLACIERS / CAPS               .43     200,000         230      230              869 yrs.

* numbers were calculated and rounded off for simplicity. True table given in reference below. Good luck.

New AnswerIf carbon dioxide only absorbs and emits infrared at 2.3, 4.5 and 15 micron wavelengths, why does a C02 laser emit in the 10 micron range?
Richard Seymour, former Retired Engineer
Written 1m ago

Adding to the other two answers (at this moment), a "CO2 laser" is really a mixture of gasses: mostly Helium, plus 10 to 20% N2 and 10 to 20% CO2. The transitions that produce the final laser light are between states of the CO2 molecule, not full transitions from excited to ground.

Quoting Wikipedia: (Carbon dioxide laser - Wikipedia)

As noted, the final drop to ground state is by collision with the dominant gas helium.

A less specific reference is How Do CO2 Lasers Work?

... electron impact excites the {v1(1)} vibrational mode quantum state of the nitrogen. Because nitrogen is a homonuclear molecule, it cannot lose this energy by photon emission, and its excited vibrational modes are therefore metastable and relatively long-lived. N2{v1(1)} and CO2{v3(1)} being nearly perfectly resonant (total molecular energy differential is within 3 cm-1 when accounting for N2 anharmonicity, centrifugal distortion and vibro-rotational interaction, which is more than made up for by the Maxwell speed distribution of translational-mode energy), N2 collisionally de-excites by transferring its vibrational mode energy to the CO2 molecule, causing the carbon dioxide to excite to its {v3(1)} (asymmetric stretch) vibrational mode quantum state. The CO2 then radiatively emits at either 10.6 μm[i] by dropping to the {v1(1)} (symmetric-stretch) vibrational mode, or 9.6 μm [i] by dropping to the {v20(2)} (bending) vibrational mode. The carbon dioxide molecules then transition to their {v20(0)} vibrational mode ground state from {v1(1)} or {v20(2)} by collision with cold helium atoms, thus maintaining population inversion.

New AnswerWhen we say a black body is 250 K do we consider this to be "pure" temperature or is it a "net" temperature caused by mixing photons of various energies together?
Kimber Stout, M.D. American College of Cardiology & Physics, UAMS College of Medicine (1970)
Written just now

First, it is not photon energy that is being measured by temperature. Photons can provide energy to the black body when absorbed, and a black body will emit photons over a wide spectrum of energies. The peak area of the spectral emissions will vary with the black body'd temperature...

The temperature of the black body is the weighted sum of the kinetic energies the various atoms/molecules. The absorption/emission of photons can affect those kinetic energies.

New AnswerIf carbon dioxide only absorbs and emits infrared at 2.3, 4.5 and 15 micron wavelengths, why does a C02 laser emit in the 10 micron range?
Peter Hand, I read a lot
Written just now

CO2 does not emit at 2.3, 4.5 and 15 microns. It only absorbs. Photons at those wavelengths don't excite the atom, they change its shape. They convert their energy into kinetic energy, which is later emitted as general black body radiation at no particular wavelength.

New AnswerIf carbon dioxide only absorbs and emits infrared at 2.3, 4.5 and 15 micron wavelengths, why does a C02 laser emit in the 10 micron range?
Milan Minic, 1st love: Astronomy. 2nd love: Electronics. 1st job: Physics
Written 1m ago

Because its molecule is not brought to the lasing level by absorption of light, but by a resonant energy exchange with the nitrogen molecule, which is present in the gaseous laser mixture. And the nitrogen molecules are excited by the electron impact, i.e. by passing current through the gas. Optical emission and absorption lines have nothing to do with it.

New AnswerWhat are the materials on Earth that are generating infrared radiation at 15 UM wavelength?
Anthony Atkielski
Written just now

Cold things, as that's the peak thermal emission wavelength for objects at temperatures of around -80 °C (a cold day at the South Pole). For people, who are much warmer, it's closer to 9.5 µm.