Because the latest fad amongst the voodoo shamanry known as econ Ph.Ds, especially those who have a blog in uber-liberal daily publications courtesy of a nominal gift from the status quo for valiant efforts in preserving the status quo, is to always and without fail assume that correlation is and always implies causation, we make, with the help of John Lohman, the following argument: since global leverage (via Debt-to-GDP) has a greater correlation to the “Temperature Anomaly” aka Global Warming, at 0.79, than CO2 concentration, at 0.69, it is obvious that global warming is purely a function of ever increasing leverage, and not, as is widely accepted by various ecological consultancies, carbon dioxide concentration. And now you see how easy it is to make idiotic, and totally spurious statements (which however serve as fodder for even more idiotic peer-reviewed white papers and journal submissions this keeping lots of people employed while contributing absolutely nothing to society), which given enough time, will become religion to a new breed of shamans once the old ones are forcibly kicked out of their comfortable corner offices.
Reminds me of the old gag graphs that showed the declining number of pirates in the 19th century correlating with rising global temperatures, ha.
CO2 certainly has a warming effect, and there’s most certainly anthropogenic causes to part of the rising CO2 levels. However, this whole “CO2 linked to debt” buisness has a grain of truth to it. All the state intervention in the market has almost always been pushing further and further towards consumptive practices. Not only trying to boost consumption demand in general, which leads to increasing use and destruction of resources (rather than productive, constructive use), but in far more direct ways. Things like turning farmland and non-lumber forest into suburban sprawl, which is an almost entirely state-created phenomenon. Or the overproduction of corn, which is very taxing on the soil rather than proper crop rotation. Or factory farming in general, which is promoted by the USDA and current regulation/tax structures. And think of how decentralized our electricity production would be if we didn’t have the giant state-regulated power monopolies. Wind, solar, and geothermal would likely be more developed than they are now. Instead, we subsidized building power lines over vast distances, bringing electricty from coal fired power plants.
That’s totally unacceptable. I have much greater esteem for Voodoo Houngans and shamans from the depths of Siberia than I have for these quacks.