Atmospheric CO2 at Mauna Loa

The correlation between atmospheric CO2 at Mauna Loa and deaths from falling out of bed is 0.999—the highest on this entire website and the most damning evidence yet that carbon dioxide is somehow destabilizing America's mattresses. This is, of course, absurd, but the number is real, and it is so close to perfect that it borders on performance art. Seventeen years of data show these two metrics moving in lockstep with the mathematical precision of a coincidence that has achieved perfection and does not care who knows it.

Atmospheric CO2 has risen from about 380 ppm to over 420 ppm between 2005 and 2021, on the relentless upward curve that defines the Anthropocene. Deaths from falling out of bed have risen from about 400 to over 600 per year, driven entirely by the aging US population (the over-65 demographic grew by roughly 50 percent). Both metrics are perfectly monotonic—CO2 rises every single year, and bed-fall deaths rise every single year as the population ages—which is why the correlation is so absurdly high. Two perfectly smooth upward curves will always produce a correlation near 1.0, regardless of mechanism. This is the ultimate cautionary tale: the highest correlation on the site, and the most meaningless.

A correlation of 0.999 between CO2 and bed-fall deaths is the single best argument against mistaking correlation for causation that this website has ever produced. The atmosphere warms, the population ages, and two perfectly smooth curves produce a perfect number that means absolutely nothing. If this does not cure you of reading causation into scatter plots, nothing will. The CO2 rises. The elderly fall. The chart is perfect, and perfectly empty.