[jjaken]

The important part to understand is timescales. In a day, the Earth does absorb some energy. Of course it does, plants collect it, solar panels collect, the ocean and land collect it. The amount Earth collects is a tiny fraction of what it releases. That collection isn’t permanent though and is slowly released. Within a day, the Earth absorbs some energy, but over a long enough timescale, all of that energy is released again.

The Earth is taking on energy every day from the sun. If we didn’t release it all back, the earth would be warming much much faster. It only remains relatively cool because it releases almost as much as it receives.

Another important note is that long term energy is not only stored as heat on earth. It’s stored as potential energy in the atoms of cells in plants and animals. Think of how cold a gallon of gasoline is, yet how much energy it stores.

For an example think of hot asphalt from a summer day. It gets real hot all day and slowly cools down at night. Sometimes it can be pretty warm to stand on the road even if it’s a cool night.

Within the human timescale, the Earth is retaining some (tiny fraction) of heat. That tiny fraction of heat is a very small window of heat that life can tolerate. It’s not too much and not too little. If the earth were to retain just a tiny bit more, suddenly life can’t tolerate it. On the scale of the universe, the difference between those realities is minuscule, even though it’s enormous to us.