Thought experiment: heat exchange

This was something I thought up last and had forgotten it until now.  Something I just read prompted this memory, so I thought I'd better write about it before I forget it again.

Okay.  Given a container that would be transparent and allow sunlight to go through it and strike the surface, what would happen under a variety of conditions, such as:

• a vacuum
• normal atmosphere at normal pressure
• pure carbon dioxide atmosphere at normal pressure
• pure carbon dioxide at high pressure ( Venus type pressure )

What I believe would happen:

In a vacuum, you would expect the sunlight to heat the surface, and then the heat would be exchanged into the container, but not in the space in between the ceiling and walls.  In other words, there's no air inside, so the totality of the heat is exchanged with the container floor, walls and ceiling.  The structure is heated, but there's no air to heat, so the middle area has no means to exchange heat.

As the container heats up, it starts heating from the surface on up.  That's the point.  There's no heat exchange because in a vacuum, there is no matter there.

In a normal atmosphere, the air heats up as well, as heat is exchanged to it.  In this scenario, the heat is exchanged all around inside the container.  Perhaps it is hotter on the surface than in the atmosphere, but cooler than the starting point in a vacuum.  The heat is more effectively exchanged than with a vacuum.

The point here is that the walls and ceiling heat up faster than they would have in a vacuum.  ( my theory at least )

In a pure carbon dioxide atmosphere, you'd expect different behavior, but what would that be?  Shouldn't the atmosphere get hotter than with a normal atmosphere?  Wouldn't that heat up the walls and ceiling faster?

In a high pressure atmosphere ( like Venus), you'd expect even more dramatic differences, wouldn't you?  I'd say it would exchange the heat better.  It would behave a bit more like a solid material or a liquid in conducting heat.


The point of all this is to judge what differences there really are in the various scenarios.  The results may surprise people.  The big claim of the global warmists is that carbon dioxide makes a big difference.  I am inclined to believe that it makes little difference until pressure goes way up.