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‘Why do carbon dioxide molecules behave like diodes? In other words, why don’t they block infrared wavelength energy as it travels towards the earth?”

The “greenhouse gases” do NOT act as diodes. They do filter IR coming in. But as you probably learned in your astronomy class, the wavelength of the radiation is a function of the temperature of the radiating body. The Earth’s surface is much cooler than that of the sun! It radiates more in the IR band, and not at all in visible or UV wavelengths.

Now, the global-warming enthusiasts do not mention several things. First, a greenhouse does not really heat up by the so-called ”greenhouse effect.” This has been understood for the better part of a century, so “greenhouse gases” is a misnomer. It is also the case that a car with closed windows, parked in the sun, does not heat up by this “greenhouse effect”, but merely because the heated air in the car does not have a chance to mix with the air outside. It is suppression of convention that does the trick. Rudolph Geiger actually proved this and described it in Das Klima der bodennahen Luftschicht, a classic book, but unfortunately not translated into English until after WWII.

Another interesting thing is that the so-called “greenhouse gases” act like filters (though in a very complicated way). But like any filter effect, adding more filter only effects the light not already filtered. Think of a filter than filters out say 50% of the light. If you add another such filter, it filters out half of the remaining light, leaving 25% coming through, and so on. Thus adding more filters never leads to a “runaway”, but really a saturation of the process.

It probably is much the same with filtering gases in the atmosphere. If this is ignored, then it could cause great overestimates of the effect of IR-filtering gases.

The most important IR-flitering (“greenhouse”) gas is just water vapor, far more powerful as a filter than CO2. It’s behavior is very complex. which may explain why the models are so often in error.