Considering that only two chess players currently have ratings above 2800 (one of which is Carlsen himself), the task of scoring 2900 looks unrealistic. Even when he announced this goal of his, some grandmasters said that it was impossible. Since then, it seems that Carlsen did not play better, but vice versa. I think that this task will be submitted to the next generation of players, including Firuja, Gukesh, Eregaysi, etc. simply due to inflation (albeit slow) rating.
2900 may be a rating that man will never reach.
If he plays a bad tournament, he has to win 2 tournaments somewhere to compensate for the lost points. I think Kasparov had a rating of 2854 at his best ever. Carlsen once hit 2900. Maybe this whole Niemann thing has started to piss him off after all. That is something that is in the back of your mind and people everywhere naturally want to ask questions about it. It makes a difference that Niemann was not invited. Ding Liren is also a player above the 2800 rating, but at the moment he has not been able to show anything spectacular. Carlsen will have to show why he is the world champion and will have to win a few games in a row. However, this tournament is heavily occupied, so there are no easy victories here.
It doesn't work that way. The FIDE rating is based on the ELO principle and there you have to not just win tournaments, but gain a certain percentage of points. That is (purely conditional percentages, I don't remember the exact numbers) player 2800 should win 70% of games against player 2600 and against player 2500 he should win 80% of games. So if he wants to climb 2900, Carlsen has to show a crazy win percentage against the rest of the tops.
can you talk a bit more about inflation rating? first time I hear about it
I didn't know the top rating would simply go up over time and doesn't make a lot of sense for me to think it's due to people artificially raising it, but due to GMs getting better and better over time, maybe?
Yes, on the one hand, you are right that the players are getting better and thus both the average rating and the top rating are growing. I won't be able to tell you much about inflation as it's a complicated issue (and many people even think it's the other way around in chess - rating deflation) - you can see the main points here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system#Ratings_inflation_and_deflationBut it's clear to me that new players who enter the system bring more points into the system than retired players take away, so the total (and average) number of points becomes more = inflation.