[hashberry]

https://climate.nasa.gov/ has lots of data.

"Even if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases today, global warming would continue to happen for at least several more decades, if not centuries. That’s because it takes a while for the planet (for example, the oceans) to respond, and because carbon dioxide – the predominant heat-trapping gas – lingers in the atmosphere for hundreds of years."[0]

[0] https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/16/is-it-too-late-to-prevent-cl...

[challenger22]

Interesting, thanks. The mechanisms that cause such a delayed temperature response are still opaque though, figure I gotta read more in-depth technical stuff to really understand.

[mcv]

The delayed response is because the temperature rise isn't merely caused by the carbon we've emitted this year, but by all the carbon that has been accumulating in the atmosphere over the past 100 years. Carbon isn't instantly removed from the atmosphere when we stop burning it, so it's going to stay around for a long time. Plants absorb it, but we've been burning more carbon than plants can absorb for a long time.

And for all the time that there's more CO2 in the atmosphere, the atmosphere will continue to trap more heat from the sun, and temperatures will continue to rise.

[AstralStorm]

And that's just CO2. Plants cannot readily absorb methane for example, where you have to rely only on physical processes or our own ingenuity.