"Per the ipcc model, if we could wave a magic wand and have zero emissions tomorrow, CO2 levels would fall faster than they have been increasing." Traditionall

"Per the ipcc model, if we could wave a magic wand and have zero emissions tomorrow, CO2 levels would fall faster than they have been increasing." Traditionally, the idea is that the ocean would absorb the 'excess' CO2 put there by fossil fuel combustion over the industrial era. However, this is quite a slow process and it's entirely possible to reach a new steady state of relatively high atmospheric CO2 (and high global temperature, i.e. ice-free poles) and stay there for several million years - it's happened in the past. Furthermore, we have the permafrost melt ongoing across the Arctic, and shallow marine sediments are also releasing methane and CO2. This will continue for decades in the immediate zero-emission scenario, that turning point has come and gone. Maybe if a full transition off fossil fuels had begun in 1980, when the science was clear, we'd be stabilizing at current conditions (*it takes ~100 years for the climate system to finish responding to current forcing, assuming no additional forcing, mainly due to oceanic warming lag effects). We're in for warming for the next 50 years, no matter what, and the world is clearly not getting off fossil fuels any time soon, all the major fossil fuel actors have plans for status quo production for the next 30 years (rather than say 3% reduction per year, which would mean no fossil fuel production in 30 years). It's going to happen slowly on human time scales, i.e. the scale is decadal for noticeable differences in the year-to-year average, but it's also inexorable. "It's in the post" is the British saying that applies. Like trying to throw the rudder over on the Titanic after the iceberg is detected, it's all too little too late.