How can greenhouse gas radiation absorption be described to laymen?

[repoman]

This may be the most important aspect of understanding how the large increase of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases will increase the earth's temperature for the foreseeable future.

Also, up front I am also talking about how certain gases have particular non overlapping wavelengths of radiation emitted by the earth (blackbody radiation). So methane has wavelengths different from CO2, water and Nitrous Oxide.

Finally, getting people to understand what it means for a wavelength bandwidth to become saturated. Meaning that if the CO2 increased 10 times (just example) the amount of radiation blocked will not be 10 times more, but would already have just about reached the maximum possible.

Now this is a pretty good website about this, but I still feel it is too jargony:
https://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-co2-enhanced-greenhouse-effect.htm

 

[ryan]

This may be the most important aspect of understanding how the large increase of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases will increase the earth's temperature for the foreseeable future.

Also, up front I am also talking about how certain gases have particular non overlapping wavelengths of radiation emitted by the earth (blackbody radiation). So methane has wavelengths different from CO2, water and Nitrous Oxide.

Finally, getting people to understand what it means for a wavelength bandwidth to become saturated. Meaning that if the CO2 increased 10 times (just example) the amount of radiation blocked will not be 10 times more, but would already have just about reached the maximum possible.

Now this is a pretty good website about this, but I still feel it is too jargony:
https://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-co2-enhanced-greenhouse-effect.htm

First of all, never ever ever ever read anything that is not from a proper source, please! Don't trust their sources, just go to a propper source. It must be notes from an accredited university, preferably a top 500 university of the world or a government website from U.S., Canada, Australia, U.K., Western Europe, etc. Or even NASA's website has explanations on many natural phenomena. Don't even trust Wikipedia as it gets very wacky with specific information.

Here is a really nice summary of the greenhouse effect, http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/monitoring-references/faq/greenhouse-gases.php .

Let me give you an analogy that makes sense, at east to me, on how a molecule can pick up one wavelength over another. Imagine you are in the middle of an ocean. You splash with your hand and see the ripples go outward. Then you splash both hands and you will see the ripples interfering with each other. Now imagine a really large wave that isn't going to crest but will definitely raise you up and down by 20 ft or so. Now imagine while you are being raised by the wave you splash with your hand again. Your waves and the giant ocean waves will certainly not appear to interfere with each other.

Anyways, that is my analogy, not to be taken literally.