The increase in Mauna Loa-measured global CO₂ concentration over the last 50 years (1970 – 2020) has been about 89 ppm. The 50 year cumulative increase due to all CO₂ sources and sinks, natural and human, is on average less than 0.0089% of the atmosphere. You and a few billion other humans exhale breath that is about 4% CO₂. Where does it go?

Bert Bolin, PhD, Swedish meteorologist and the first chairman of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN IPCC), from 1988 to 1997, stated in Bolin & Eriksson, 1959: “First we see that if the partial pressure of CO₂ varies and the hydrogen ion concentration [i.e.. pH] were kept constant, the relative changes would be the same in the sea as in the atmosphere. As the total amount of CO₂ in the sea is about 50 times that in the air, practically all excess CO₂ delivered to the atmosphere would be taken up by the sea when equilibrium has been established.” 

The hydrogen ion concentration they refer to is pH, which is highly buffered in both directions by the mineral ions and molecular ions dissolved in ocean surface, including dissolved CO₂, but they minimize buffering in ocean by assuming disproportionate importance to the vertical ocean water column, and vertical migration times and circulation within that vertical column.  There are multiple large errors in Bolin & Eriksson, 1959, and some but not all assumptions they followed from Callendar, Seuss and Revelle, but the above paragraph they got mostly right, except the hypothesis is impossible since relative change in CO₂ in the sea temporarily changes local pH in sea surface. For example, on page 131 the authors conclude by assumption with little if any evidence: “It is obvious that an addition of CO₂ to the atmosphere will only slightly change the CO₂ content of the sea but appreciably effect the CO₂ of the atmosphere.” That is a huge and incorrect assumption in defiance of Henry’s Law, Fick’s Law and Graham’s Law, but it remains in the orthodoxy of climate alarmists and their models. For that assumption, people of Earth are paying billions of dollars per year growing to $9 trillion per year, if you believe McKinsey & Co., Foreign Policy Magazine, the UN, the Great Resetters, etc., not to mention other unnecessary sacrifices.

If you are interested in how we got ourselves into this fake global warming /climate change crisis, then you may find Bolin & Eriksson, 1959 to be interesting history. In a previous post, I pointed out the great error wherein they ignored the chemical enhancement in the huge surface area of the ocean.

Bolin, B., & Eriksson, E. (1959). Changes in the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere and sea due to fossil fuel combustion. In The Atmosphere and the Sea in Motion (pp. 130–141). Woods Hole, MA, USA: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. (pdf linked here)