How does cutting emissions result in lower temperatures while there is still high amount of CO2 in the atmosphere?

Question

In [this page](https://www.princeton.edu/news/2013/11/24/even-if-emissions-stop-carbon-dioxide-could-warm-earth-centuries) it says “scientific consensus is temperature would remain constant or decline if emissions were suddenly cut to zero”. There are scenarios in page 74 of this [IPCC report](https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/SYR_AR5_FINAL_full.pdf). We can see that in some scenarios CO2 levels are high but temperature remains same or declines. Also, we know that when we cut the emissions CO2 levels in the atmosphere will remain high for centuries. How do these projections work?

I thought earth was getting warmer because of the high levels of CO2 in our atmosphere. In the scenario that we cut emissions, there will still be high levels of CO2 in our atmosphere but many scientists says temperature won’t go up. What am I missing?

Edit: I believe I haven’t made my point clear. Of course CO2 levels [will start to decrease](https://ei.lehigh.edu/learners/cc/readings/ifemmision.pdf) when we cut emissions. However, in the last century, temperature on earth’s atmosphere were increasing due to the greenhouse gases(ghg) in our atmosphere. And when we stop emitting these gases, we will still be having too much ghg in our atmosphere. They will **slowly** be captured by plants and ocean. However, the claim is that even with this high levels, [temperature will stop increasing](https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo813). What is the difference between having high ghg percentage on atmosphere while also emitting, and having high amount of ghg while not emitting?

In: Earth Science

Answer 1

All planets have their natural heating and cooling phases, affected/caused by solar radiation, internal processes, etc. On Earth, increased CO2 means plants grow faster and bigger, and cover more land. Reduced CO2 means plants grow slower and smaller. There is more surface area covered by forest today than any point in recorded history which is the planets natural way of balancing things.

You just need to be careful, these science deniers will keep spewing their “manmade” climate change crap, just as they have for the past 2 centuries or longer. CO2 is just their excuse for this planet. every 10-20 years they change from global warming to global cooling and back and forth. They saw the educated population knew they were full of crap so now they just use climate change as their excuse to steal more money while changing nothing.