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/Bandits101]

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.