One of the difficult truths about #ClimateChange is that our greenhouse gas emissions raise the amount of GHGs in the atmosphere. And the GHGs in the atmosphere raise the temperature on the planet.
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If we stopped emitting GHGs today, there would still be ~425ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere, plus other GHGs. Nature draws that down slowly; it will take decades to get down to 1990 levels. We can reforest and do carbon capture, but it will still take time. And all that time, Earth will still get warmer.
On top of that, even when we get to 1990s levels of GHGs, the heat that has been building up on Earth will still stay with us for a while -- probably decades more. The Earth's surface temperature system, a mix of water and air and land, is really complex. In particular, Earth's oceans will retain a lot of that heat gain. It will take a long time to release it again.
@evan It could take 5000 years:
"If we stop emitting GHGs the weather will stop getting worse" is no longer reasonable advice. It made some sense in the 1990s and early 2000s, when the previous generation refused to deal with climate change. Today, our *best* scenario is a century of storms, floods, bad crops, migration, and lost species, plus the consequent social upheaval and wars that will follow.
Maybe we should skip the intermediary levels and go directly to the war part ?
Not sure that it'd save lives (though it may), but at least it'd save time...
Unless something special happens, features of the planet that we've had for hundreds of millions of years, like glaciers and coral reefs, will disappear. That's the best case, right now.
