bon dioxide emissions and their associated warming could linger for millennia, according to some climate scientists. Mason Inman looks at why the fallout from burning fossil fuels could last far longer than expected.

tists — if they mention the lifetime of CO₂ at all, typically say it lasts "a century or more"¹ or "more than a hundred year

Distant future: our continued use of fossil fuels could leave a CO₂legacy that lasts millennia, says climatologist David Archer

After our fossil fuel blow-out, how long will the CO₂ hangover last? And what about the global fever that comes along with it? These sound like simple questions, but the answers are complex — and not well understood or appreciated outside a small group of climate scientists. Popular books on climate change — even those written by scien