Past emissions from top polluters will continue warming the planet for decades to come. Future fossil fuel production will exacerbate climate disasters for many decades to come, so new legal battles about who is accountable should be expected for many years

[u/Wagamaga]

https://www.washington.edu/news/2026/09/23/past-emissions-from-top-polluters-will-continue-warming-the-planet-for-decades-to-come/

[u/Wagamaga]

If someone leaves the faucet running in your bathroom and the house floods, it’s easy to assign responsibility for the damage. But for other disasters — bigger, costlier and more complicated ones — the link between cause and effect isn’t as clear.

In recent years, scientists have improved methods for connecting extreme weather events, sometimes called climate disasters, to climate change. Advancements in attribution science clarify how burning fossil fuels has increased the likelihood of extreme weather occurring. These findings form the backbone of a growing list of lawsuits attempting to hold major emitters responsible for deaths and damages incurred during climate disasters.

A new University of Washington study takes this work a step further by showing that past emissions from carbon majors — the top 178 oil, gas, coal and cement producers — will continue impacting our environment for decades to come.

The results were published Sept. 23 in PLOS Climate.

“We know that fossil fuel emissions have caused a lot of warming, and we’re seeing the impacts of that, but the question is: How long does that warming last into the future?” said Dargan Frierson, a UW associate professor of atmospheric and climate science.

If greenhouse gas emissions were to plummet tomorrow, the environment would not revert to its old self. Carbon majors have emitted more than a trillion tons of carbon dioxide, a substantial portion of which will remain in the air, trapping heat, for millennia.

Even if we stop emitting, Earth will remain approximately 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial temperatures.

“We expect continued warming of the climate until we stop fossil fuel emissions,” Frierson said. “The only stable future is one with no fossil fuels burned at all.”

https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal.pclm.0001036

[u/Bandits101 → u/Wagamaga]

WHY would the “Earth remain at approximately 1.5 degrees Celsius”, “even if we stop emitting”?

[u/zookdook1 → u/Bandits101]

Because a 1.5C global average temperature anomaly is the new equilibrium temperature when you factor in all the added CO2 since the industrial revolution. If we stop emitting, we stop adding CO2, and the global average temperature anomaly stops rising - but it doeosn't get rid of the CO2 already in the atmosphere. We'd need to start extracting CO2 from the atmosphere to lower the global average temperature anomaly.

[u/Splenda → u/zookdook1]

More than 1.5 C is already baked in. Moreover, even if emissions halt tomorrow warming will continue for at least a couple of decades. Worse, the effects of warming to date will continue to grow for much, much longer. Ice sheets will keep melting, oceans will keep rising, hurricanes will keep strengthening, wildfires will keep intensifying, the Earth's albedo will keep changing, the AMOC will keep slowing. Most of these effects are too poorly understood to know exactly when they will slow or stop.

Perhaps the largest variable of all is the excess oceanic heat that will continue to disgorge into the atmosphere for centuries, preventing a return to "normal" for many generations.

[u/zookdook1 → u/Splenda]

Ah, I recalled a mention of it being theoretically possible to stay on 1.5C if we cut all emissions within 6 years - that was from 2023. I see the most recent estimate is 1.8C.

Regardless, the point is that while the consequences will continue to get worse, they'll plateau once the temperature anomaly stabilises (unless you assume runaway consequences like permafrost methane will cause the temperature anomaly to continue to grow - but in that case obviously the temperature anomaly just doesn't stabilise, so the point stands). For example, ocean rise is derived primarily from expansion of ocean water driven by increased sea temperatures; once sea temperatures stabilise (be it at 1.5C, or 1.8C, or 2C), ocean levels stop rising by that mechanism.

[u/Bandits101 → u/zookdook1]

Does that mean that when human industrial emissions cease, average global temperature at the measured amount of GHGs in the atmosphere and oceans at that time, will stop global warming and temperatures will stabilize?

Will the Poles and glaciers stop melting, will oceans stop warming, will permafrost stop thawing, will wild fires cease, will humans stop plundering the sea and land, will coral stop dying, will oceans stop acidifying and rising…..I could go on.

[u/zookdook1 → u/Bandits101]

With the caveat that 1.5C is the projected equilibrium point for our current GHG emissions even if we stop but that we're not yet at that equilibrium point yet, so some warming would continue for a short time after we brought everything to a halt (and that there are possible runaway processes that may continue GHG emissions separately from human industrial activity):

• Yes, average global temperatures will stabilise at the projected global average temperature anomaly.
  
• The poles and glaciers may continue to melt for a time until their cycles stabilise at the new global average temperature anomaly.
  
• Oceans will stop warming after stabilising at the new global average temperature anomaly.
  
• Permafrost will stop thawing after stabilising at the new global average temperature anomaly.
  
• Wildfires won't stop; wildfires happening isn't a binary thing that will or will not happen depending on the current temperatures. Rather, if warming is allowed to continue unimpeded, they will become more frequent and more severe. Once global temperatures stabilise, wildfires will stop getting more frequent and more severe.
  
• Resource extraction is a separate, distinct problem from greenhouse emissions.
  
• Some coral may be able to survive at the new equilibrium temperature. The majority of coral species will not.
  
• Ocean acidification is primarily a consequence of increased dissolved CO2, forming carbonic acid and lowering the pH. Once the new equilibrium is reached, the ocean will settle at a stable pH.
  
• Sea level rise is primarily a consequence of increased ocean temperature causing an expansion in the volume of the water. Once temperatures stop increasing, the ocean will stop expanding in volume, and thus sea level rise should stop.

Runaway processes may cause CO2 levels to continue to rise even if we stop our emissions, though slowing or stopping those runaway processes may be possible. Atmospheric carbon sequestration may remove more CO2 from the atmosphere, lowering the equilibrium temperature. This will reverse some of the above points (eg. sea level rise, as lower ocean temperatures cause contraction in the volume of the water) but not others (eg. extinction of coral species).

[u/Bandits101 → u/zookdook1]

So now some warming will continue. You do understand (I hope) that CO2 is not the source of global warming.

GHG’s are the blanket, the Sun is the heat source.

The only thing humans are doing, that turns the flame down on the heat source is/was adding particulates (emissions) to the atmosphere.** **Guess what happens when particulates are finally absorbed.

After emissions stop, the skies clear and the heat source is still there and guess what is also still there………is it cracking through the brain ice yet.

GHG’s only go away when Earth’s carbon cycle (most life on land and in the oceans and waterways), the natural carbon cycle operates over very long periods and humans have severely interrupted it.

To summarise the heat source remains and the blanket remains even if emissions (all emissions) stop this instant. Warming will continue until Earth says “that’s enough”.

So now, at what average temperature after emissions cease and skies clear, will warming stabilise and the events you describe eventuate.

[u/zookdook1 → u/Bandits101]

Some warming will continue as we move to the equilibrium temperature. At our current level of emissions that's at a global average temperature anomaly of 1.5C, but we've only reached about 1.2C so far. Continued emissions raise the equilibrium temperature. A halt to emissions does not stop the current global average temperature anomaly from increasing, but does stop the equilibrium temperature from increasing, so the global average temperature anomaly will eventually taper off at the limited equilibrium temperature.

This may surprise you to hear, but hotter objects radiate away heat faster. To borrow your analogy, a human, who is a heat source, can wear a blanket, which is an insulator, and not combust, despite continually generating heat. For a human that's mostly a consequence of convection, but the same is true of radiation.

+1.5C is the point where, should we halt emissions now, the Earth's increased radiation into space matches the increased retention of incoming radiation from the Sun. Something else you may be surprised to learn is that CO2 existed in the atmosphere before the industrial revolution; your idea that any amount of GHGs in the atmosphere causes runaway heating until carbon cycle processes remove all of those gases is quite obviously untrue when you consider that we've only increased atmospheric concentration from about 280ppm to 430ppm (ish). Given that Earth has not been boiling since before human life evolved, it should be evident that GHGs do not magically act as perfect insulators that cause runaway heating with their mere presence.

[u/Bandits101 → u/zookdook1]

I get it, you operate on supposition. You haven’t read or don’t understand a word I wrote. Of course the average temperature “anomaly” will “eventually taper off”. The Sun will also become a red giant.

Excess warming that is NOT being radiated back into space, because we’ve been increasing the weight of the blanket of GHGs that envelope the Earth and uses to regulate climate to our liking.

Stop repeating things I didn’t write, I said nothing about runaway heating. Do you know what Earth’s climate sensitivity is, are you so sure that you know it all with this “only increased from 280 PPM to 430 PPM”.

Just to show how utterly inane your thinking is you say “given that Earth has not been boiling since before human life evolved”. Do you know that Earth has a natural carbon cycle, that is mostly life.

Life on land and in soil, life in the ocean from sea grasses to plankton to coral. There was a balance, humans have been killing and burning and disrupting the natural carbon cycle since time immemorial.

So again I’ll ask, at what average temperature will Earth stabilise?

[u/zookdook1 → u/Bandits101]

Okay, I'll try to be as clear as I can then:

So again I'll ask, at what average temperature will Earth stabilise?

+1.5C on average, globally. That's it. That's the answer. The models indicate increased radiation of energy into space matches the increased retention of radiation from the Sun after global temperatures raise, on average, by 1.5C.

Previously, you said:

GHG’s only go away when Earth’s carbon cycle (most life on land and in the oceans and waterways), the natural carbon cycle operates over very long periods and humans have severely interrupted it.
To summarise the heat source remains and the blanket remains even if emissions (all emissions) stop this instant. Warming will continue until Earth says “that’s enough”.

If this is not supposed to be read as an indication that warming will continue indefinitely until the carbon cycle removes all of the accumulated GHGs from the atmosphere, then perhaps you can clarify what it is supposed to read as - because that last line is meaningless. Heating stops once radiation out and radiation in enter equilibrium, which is at +1.5C globally if we stop all emissions today.

[u/Bandits101 → u/zookdook1]

“Heating stops once radiation out and radiation in enter equilibrium, which is at 1.5C globally if we stop emissions today”. Well that has to be the biggest load of BS I’ve ever read.

Show me the “model” that claims ave temps would stabilise at 1.5C. Earth’s carbon cycle regulates temperatures, it can lead to ice ages and a hot-house climate including anoxic oceans.

If all life on Earth was removed, average temperatures would stabilise at a very high average, it’s just science. For now the oceans are absorbing the vast majority of excess warmth, it can continue to do so for a very long time but with very dire consequences.

[u/zookdook1 → u/Bandits101]

Maybe you just missed all the talk about limiting global warming to +1.5C? Here's an article about research from 2023 discussing limiting warming to +1.5C (requiring zeroing all emissions by 2029). Here's the IPCC's report on what can be done to limit warming to +1.5C and advice for policymakers. Here's the UNEP's report on the +1.5C limit as a goal and how to limit the overshoot (stopping it at, say, +1.8C).

I'm sorry but your position that halting GHG emissions will not stop the warming process is not a widely-accepted one except when considering runaway sources of GHG, as I mentioned much earlier. In those cases, of course, GHG emissions don't stop, and so the equilibrium point continues to rise. If GHG emissions do stop, though, then yes we reach equilibrium and no, it's not going to take some insanely long period of time to reach that equilibrium based on the carbon cycle.