Comment by thfuran

>You can fit more into a larger terrarium, but that doesn't require a larger terrarium to contain more. Regardless of what is contained within the terrarium, it's heat production is limited by what it receives from the environment.

Go make a pile of mulch and monitor the temperature at the center. You will find that after a while it is hotter than ambient by a large margin because it is generating heat. The more mulch you permit to decay, the more heat will be generated.

>Greater atmospheric depth affects heat transfer by changing the density of the atmosphere

Greater atmospheric depth affects heat transfer by increasing the chances that an outbound photon of black body radiation hits a molecule that will absorb it and later re-emit the energy as black body radiation in a random direction, only sometimes still in a direction that will escape. It’s true that increasing atmospheric density will increase the chances of an outbound photon being absorbed, but so will increasing the distance the photon has to travel through atmosphere of any given density. The deeper the bubble of air, the more re-absorption.