Emissions, concentrations and disappearing CO2

The view seems common among economists that a large part of CO2 emissions is very rapidly absorbed. Regressions using data for emissions and atmospheric concentrations of CO2 give erroneous conclusions if land use sources and ‘missing sinks’ are excluded or underestimated, and if oceanic uptake is modelled as a simple exponential. The costs of CO2 emissions may then be serously underestimated, especially at low discount rates.