What factors contribute to increases in planetary temperature?

Physics tells us there are only a few fundamental factors that drive global temperatures. It is helpful to define what I will call the “energy-balancing temperature." This is the average global temperature that the planet’s surface would need to have in order for the rate at which energy leaves the planet by escaping into space to exactly balance the rate at which energy arrives into the planet’s atmosphere, oceans, and land.
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Claes Johnson and the Schwarzschild Equation

Claes Johnson offered an analysis which claimed that the Schwarzchild equation used to do radiative transfer calculations is wrong. However, Johnson made up his own incorrect version of the Schwarzchild equation and made other errors, which render his conclusions nonsensical.
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Comparing spectrums: Sunlight and Earth’s surface emissions

There seems to be a belief that diagrams comparing the spectrum of the Sun and the spectrum of thermal emissions from Earth's surface conceal how much longwave radiation is present in sunlight. That's not the case, but there is sometimes something a little "off" with such diagrams. In this post, I'll sort out these issues and present some rigorously correct diagrams.
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Only a small fraction of CO2 in the air is of human origin?

"Both IPCC and NASA agree that anthropogenic CO2 is between 3 and 4% of total CO2." The person who wrote the statement above likely believed that this information counters the idea that anthropogenic CO2emissions are responsible for the the rise in atmospheric CO2 levels from 280 ppm to 420 ppm. Yet, it doesn't counter that idea at all.
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Statistically Falsifying a Model

Many alleged "tests" of mainstream climate theories don't follow any scientifically legitimate procedure. So, their "falsifications" are themselves false. Here, I sketch how a proper statistical test of a scientific model functions.
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Flow constriction: How the Greenhouse effect warms a planet

Many explanations of the atmospheric Greenhouse effect leave people unclear about how it raises the global temperature. I’d like to look at a simple fundamental principle which sheds light on how warming happens. How do you raise the level of something? If we're talking about water in a reservoir, you might think the answer is pretty simple: to raise the water level, you need to add more water—right? ...
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