Reducing emissions, even to zero, isn’t enough any more. We have to remove the excess carbon dioxide that’s already in the atmosphere if we don’t want the planet to continue heating for centuries to come.
The removal is what people claim some technology will magically appear to solve.
What you are talking about is climate tipping points, that is amount of warming which causes one or more of earth systems which previously prevented further warming to fail.
Now we have evidence which seems to suggest we have reached our first such tipping point[1], low latitude coral reef die-off. So even if we stop emitting CO2 into the atmosphere tomorrow, these corals are still going to die (most likely) and they are not coming back for at least a few centuries, meaning the CO2 which they store will be released into the atmosphere causing even further warming.
This is only the first of a more then a dozen tipping points, and since we have passed this one we are also likely to pass a couple more (Greenland Icesheet and North Atlantic conveyor), however that is not certain. And it is possible that if we take drastic action (which we 10000% should) we can (possibly) prevent other tipping points and even possibly use existing technology (like planting trees, reclaiming swamps, etc) to offset the carbon released by the dying corals.
So in short, while technically true, reducing emission to zero isn’t enough any more. We are not at a point (yet; possibly) where we can’t stop the warming with existing technology. But we must absolutely absolutely absolutely, and dear I say, absolute-effing-lutely reduce our emissions to zero, not net zero, but absolute zero, and we mast do it as fast as we can, no matter how much it costs.
1: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/10/251029002920.h...
No, I’m not talking about tipping points.
I’m talking about the fact that we’ve already released a ton of carbon and we can’t get it back out of the air. The carbon itself isn’t the global warming. The heat it traps is. Even if we stop emissions right this second, the carbon already in the air will continue trapping heat as long as it’s there. Natural cycles will take centuries to remove it.
I am not sure that is how carbon induced greenhouse effect works. The warming has pretty immediate effects and is pretty correlated with the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. The only warming beyond that (as I understand it) is from positive feedback loops via these tipping points. All else being equal (and without tipping points) if we stopped emitting carbon today, the rise in temperature would also stop relatively quickly. And if we did find a way (by some miracle) to remove carbon from the atmosphere it would start to cool again relatively quickly.