"What Planck did was work out that if one makes a premise of a resonant
vibration that has distinct steps" -Orac
carry that a little further and you can have distinct lines
that can be translated into distinct frequencies / vibrations
as in hyperfine lines of electron orbits.
we should recognize that as the electron drops to a lower
orbit it would not follow a precisely calculated change
in energy level ... it simply changes its energy level
as the atom cools and releases thermal energy ( vibrations ).
so instead of the electron dropping to a energy level
that corresponds with known observations over a period
of time , the electron is dropping to that known energy level
but not all at one time.
the electron is going through many energy level changes
in order to reach that known energy level in that period of time.
and each time the electron drops slightly there is a
corresponding energy release of thermal energy ( vibrations)
that are each lower than the previous energy release.
and the energy level changes are due to the cooling of
the atom.
and this is how the full spectrum is emitted from the sun
and enters the earths atmosphere.
and this is why co2 absorbs inbound radiation from the sun.
causing the earth to cool.
by blocking the thermal heat from the sun.
the more co2 there is in the atmosphere the cooler
the earth will become.
sam wont like this ... oh well.
neither will the tens of thousands of people who depend
on the climate change due to co2 = warming + scam money
funding opportunities that supply them with a income.
oh well.
thats where I was going with this.
...
methinks thou doth protest so much, Paul, that your agenda is obvious!
Your efforts to deny or overlook the validity of the sciences in general,
and to also contrive your own "just so" stories of science, must have a purpose; 
because your stories seem to always support your agenda—wherever you are "going with this." ===
Paul, it is nice you can see, in whatever way, that an “atom is releasing its energy” in a process we observe
as thermal energy, or “we call thermal energy,” in the form of electromagnetic radiation we call photons.
Perhaps it is just easier for you to think of one atom, cooling progressively, but I think that logic doesn’t work.
If an atom emitted that “highest energy” photon to begin with, it would then become a cooler, low energy atom.
Where would the energy to emit the next “almost highest energy,” or “next-highest energy,” photon come from?
The picture should work better, if you see how, for
any large group of atoms (at some average temperature),
at any given time the group will consist of some atoms that are hotter than average and others that are cooler than average.
Those hotter and cooler atoms radiate at frequencies that create the head and tail of the curve/spectrum,
while most of the atoms (the peak intensity for the curve) will be radiating at (or nearer to) the frequency
for that average temperature.
===
But it's good you seem to better understand thermal radiation now, and whatever story you need to tell yourself
(
however inaccurate it may be), at least we can agree on the nature of the spectrum it generates.
Though Paul, even if we accept your ideas about "hyperfine lines" your logic still doesn't follow.
How does your explanation, about atoms radiating heat, suddenly relate to the topic of CO2?
And what does your point about how "co2 absorbs inbound radiation from the sun" have to do with anything
that I might not like about greenhouse warming?
The greenhouse effect is driven by the "upgoing" long-wave heat,
but
not by the "downgoing" short-wave heat.
What is your point? 
We've been over this before, several times, but maybe this new picture will help
you see why the incoming heat, in sunlight, isn't relevant as you had suggested above.
~
===
And thank you Orac, for your most interesting and informative post:
For a layman that is close enough and you have got it that the process is atomic/molecule level.
It has to be because in classical physics when you measure temperature (heat) with a thermometer etc it is translated as the kinetic energy of movement speed of the molecules/atoms in the gas/solid/liquid not the speed of the electrons around the orbitals (energy levels of the electrons) in the atom/molecule.
In classical physics the explaination involved with thermal radiation is that if you take a gas of atoms/molecules and confine it to a region of space (solids and liquids do that automatically) containing some radiation field with some characteristic temperature, the atoms and the radiation will eventually come to some equilibrium in which the kinetic energy distribution of the atoms and the frequency spectrum of the radiation will have the same characteristic temperature.
In that explaination lies the fact the radiation and the kinetic energy are both forms of energy and are actively connected.
The problem for classical physics is there exist no formula and no explaination for the connection and hence no reason for the shape of the spectrum. If you assume they are connected your mathematics will fail as that shape is very strange it has some very strange properties.
What Planck did was work out that if one makes a premise of a resonant vibration that has distinct steps (quantization) the mathematics gives you that shape of emission. So his logic was there must be a resonant connection between the molecule/atom kinetic energy and the thermal spectrum (AKA light) and that set the stage to then try and measure and quantify that connection, what it is and how it works.
Planck had removed a foundation stone of classical physics and it largely went unnoticed for another twenty-five years until classical physics would ultimately collapse as it would be connected to other inconsistencies that were found.
...
certainly worthy of repeating.~
