The other day I was talking to someone about economics and I stated that economic growth, including job creation depended on capital accumulation. And that therefore society shouldn’t penalise creditors via inflationary policies. The person I was talking to quickly answered that all the rich people they knew had borrowed heavily at various stages of their careers. They used this observation to then state that debt was a good thing, period. Therefore, in their minds, penalising creditors to serve debtors was a good thing.
This person was evading the reality that you need capital in order to have the ability to borrow in the first place!
Creditors are required first, before debtors can even exist. The more people capable of accumulating savings and having the ability to lend, the better because this would allow for the possibility of more borrowing afterall.
So while, the main fault for this person was a drop of context, the conversation led me to the interesting observation that, in a certain sense, credit is more fundamental than debt. Because without the ability to provide credit, debt is impossible.
In the science of economics, we can identify capital accumlation as being an essential for economic growth.
All sciences involve heirachies of knoweldge. Digging deeper down to find the fundamentals of reality, the essentials.
Climate science is no different and essentials must be identified. As the reader probably knows, AGW sceptics, often point to the fact that historically temp rises preceed CO2. ie: increasing temp drives increasing CO2 conc and therefore CO2 is not the fundamental. It’s true that a feedback mechanism may occur, but temp is still the fundamental. ie: Temp rises, then CO2 rises, which may then drive temp further, which then drives CO2 etc.
A good example of a feedback mechanism would be credit and debt in economics. As debt levels rise, more incentive to provide credit results.
But what happens if you do not identify the fundamental?
Answer: all sorts of craziness.
The following article is IMO a great example (albeit a spoof) of what can happen if you reverse cause and effect. Thanks to Michael Sutcliffe for posting this link at the ALS. Did you know, our climate woes are due to the sudden halt in Aztec human sacrifice?
https://www.quadrant.org.au/magazine/issue/2009/6/the-aztec-solution
Did climate drive the sacrifices? Or did the sacrifices drive climate? Which was the fundamental?
Tim's blog 
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