Greenhouse gases will heat up planet ‘for ever’

New study shows the effects of CO2 pollution will be felt for hundreds of thousands of years

Global warming is for ever, some of the world’s top climate scientists have concluded. Their research shows that carbon dioxide emitted from today’s homes, cars and factories will continue to heat up the planet for hundreds of thousands of years.

Their findings


The new research will add to the pressure on ministers at home and abroad to take radical steps. And it will add urgency to attempts to find ways of removing excess carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere, as well as trying to prevent further emissions.

It comes as a shock because most governments, and even many scientists, have assumed that carbon dioxide emissions would work their way out of the atmosphere in about a century, enabling it to clean itself fairly rapidly once the world switched to clean sources of energy.

But one of the main researchers