Does the Greenhouse Effect Contradict the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics?
Occasionally I hear people claim that the greenhouse effect isn't real because it would contradict the 2nd law of thermodynamics. The idea behind this is that the atmosphere is cooler than the Earth's surface, and the 2nd law of thermodynamics says that heat always goes from hot to cold. Therefore, the Earth's atmosphere can't heat the Earth's surface. Therefore, the greenhouse effect can't exist in a universe in which the 2nd law of thermodynamics is operable. There was a "paper" published in Energy & Environment back in 2017 that made this claim[1], which concludes: The various stated definitions of the greenhouse effect have been subjected to the rigorous scrutiny and application of the fundamental laws of physics and thermodynamics. They were found to be unreal, and unless some new definition can be put forward that satisfies and complies with those laws, it can only be concluded that the concept of a ‘greenhouse gas’ or a ‘greenhouse effect’ h...