Steven Koonin lecturing climate scientists: Delusional Thinking 101 at Lawrence Livermore Nat'l Lab. Seriously? Why?

It is simply untrue that Prof. Steven Koonin is confronting climate scientists with unpleasant facts they ignored or failed to understand.   Atmospheric Scientist, Ben Santer PhD

I haven't done much on the climate science denial front lately, since it's gotten too depressing, especially for those of us who pay attention to the increasing imbalance and the ongoing and unsustainable degradation of our Earth's biosphere.  

Besides, seems to me it's not a problem with climate sciences, or the scientists who do it, we have achieved a plenty good at understanding the mechanisms unfolding within our global heat and moisture distribution engine and biosphere.  (Just need to be willing to do your homework and honestly learn about it.)

The problem is with the delusional thinking people love to wrap themselves within.  

Which is why I've move on a bit and why I undertook: Donald Hoffman Playing Basketball In Zero-gravity, my book review and student resource building project.

Interestingly, lately I've been thinking about Ben Santer and how he's been doing these days - since his case, seemed to me, one of the first where climate science denialists showed their complete willingness to engage in no holds barred, malicious, ruthless misrepresentations, character assassinations, and dirty tricks.  Then I read the following and figured why not give it a little more web presence, it's worth reading and thinking about.  

This is why I'm sharing this important PSA that I read at SkepticalScience.com.  For more on Ben Santer: My Climate Story - Ben Santer, also:

IPCC: the dirty tricks climate scientists faced in three decades since first report

August 27, 2020 - TheConversation.com

The Relentless Attack on Climate Scientist Ben Santer

May 16, 2014 - BillMoyers.com

The consensus-building process of the IPCC

February 12, 2012 - SkepticalScience.com

Close Encounters of the Absurd Kind

February 24, 2010 - RealClimate.org

Dr. Ben Santer: 'Climate Denialism Has No Place at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory'

Posted on 25 May 2021 by Guest Author, Ben Santer

This is a repost of Dr. Santer's statement via the Union of Concerned Scientists blog and we thank UCS for this permission.   (As I thank Skeptical Science and Union of Concerned Scientists for making my reposting possible!  Cc)

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has invited Professor Steven Koonin to give a seminar on May 27, 2021. Professor Koonin’s seminar will cover material contained in a book he published on May 4. His book is entitled “Unsettled”. Its basic thesis is that climate science is not trustworthy.

Professor Koonin is not a climate scientist. I am. I have worked at LLNL since 1992. My primary job is to evaluate computer models of the climate system. I also seek to improve understanding of human and natural influences on climate.

In collaboration with scientific colleagues around the world, our research group at LLNL has identified human “fingerprints” in temperature changes at Earth’s surface, in the atmosphere, and in the oceans. We have also found human fingerprints in rainfall and moisture. LLNL’s fingerprint research is one small part of a large body of evidence that contributed to scientific findings of a “discernible human influence on global climate”.

I have interacted with Professor Koonin since late 2013. Back then, he argued that uncertainties in climate science were large and were not fully acknowledged by climatescientists. In his view, climate science was not sufficiently “mature” to be useful to policymakers. Similar claims are advanced in his new book.

It is simply untrue that Prof. Koonin is confronting climate scientists with unpleasant facts they ignored or failed to understand. 

Diary, May 14_dirty tricks at blogspot - re. Solms demystifying Chalmers “hard problem.”

I was rather shocked this evening by a message from “Blogger <no-reply@google.com>”

   “Your content has violated our Malware and Viruses policy. Please visit  

our Community Guidelines page linked in this email to learn more.” ???

Say what?  Nothing specific, I mean if someone’s installed malware into a blogspot post of mine, shouldn’t I be told were to find it?  You know, flag a potentially bigger problem?

But nothing like that.

Worse, no place to send an appeal or ask for details.

“Was flagged to us for review.”

Now I’m sitting here wondering who’s not liking what I’m writing and decided to start playing dirty tricks and a little back stabbing?

And since Blogspot seems to be hermetically sealed to its users, I’ve no other place to discuss this than right here.  I have reread Blogger’s guidelines, I have reread my article and the supporting references I added, I see nothing against Community Guidelines.  

My article was written in good faith, and is part of a larger project I’m willing to defend openly, to anyone honorable and honest enough to challenge me.

I am reposting the article since it is an integral part of my project.

If Blogger Moderators are asked to review this post again.  

I request that you inform me of specific perceived violations before pulling it this time.  If someone has hidden malware in there I have every right and need to know.  But, I’m pretty sure closer inspection will reveal no malware/virus, only a malicious trickster.  

Having someone at Blogger to respond to, would also be nice.

Thank you for your understanding,

Peter Miesler

Aka citizenschallenge

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Saturday evening, May 15th.

This morning I received the following:

This morning my original post was back up and I found this email.  Then this evening, I found it reverted to DRAFT status and I needed to repost it, so to honor the incident I've adjusted the title.

"David Chalmers "Hard-Problem" demystified by Mark Solms and colleagues."

 

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Dr. Mark Solms deftly demystifies Chalmers’ “Hard Problem” of Consciousness

Chance favors a prepared mind - and after nearly a year of dealing with “The Case Against Reality,” which, for me, was a collection of maddeningly dreamy philosophizing*; disconnected from physical reality; and dismissive of the known facts and Evolution, which is central to my understanding of reality.  *(on the other hand)

Learning is about providing us with tools and concepts we can work with as building blocks towards further developing our overall conceptions.  But Hoffman’s FBT theorem and ITP inspired “conscious agents,” was like a bad practical joke, offering little but frustration, luftgeschäft, irrelevance - no place to go with it once it's done.

As if on cue, YouTube prompted me with a suggestion that I might like this newly released talk:  "The Source of Consciousness - with Dr. Mark Solms" posted March 4th and they weren’t kidding.  Dr. Solms provides a way back to the solid ground of physical reality and serious science.

It’s Not A “Body-Mind Problem” - It’s An “Ego-God Problem.”

(updated January 1, 2022)

Among the lessons I’ve taken away from my Hoffman adventure is that as I’ve followed the philosophical roots of “dualism” back through Descartes (1600s) and on past Anselm (1000s), one thing has become clear. the entire philosophical edifice of this Mind-Body “Problem” was formed from within that Abrahamic God-fearing mindset that gave us the three major religions, with their self-serving patriarchal mentality, heaven and hell, along with branding dualism’s hard boundaries and need for a sense of certitude into our imagination and onto our expectations.

The Abrahamic worldview perceives people as isolated objects, not only from this planet, but each other, even from ourselves.  The creatures we live with and the landscapes we exist within are treated with contempt and wanton waste.

Regarding the “Mind-Body Problem.”  

Dr. Solms makes a wonderful analogy that highlights the error being made:

Question:  Was it lightning or thunder that killed the man?

It’s a meaningless question.

Lightning and thunder are simply different aspects of the same phenomena.

Our Mind and consciousness is the interior reflection of our living body (both its interior housekeeping and external interaction with the environment).  We simply cannot have one without the other.

We are embedded within an interconnected web of life and are the direct products of Earth’s Pageant of Evolution.

Why isn’t that reflected in modern philosophical discourse? 

Learning to appreciate the deep-time pageant of Evolution puts an entirely different richer light upon our interior existence.  An awareness that encompasses the whole of time and this planet that created us.

It also gives us a deep appreciation for the continuity of life.  Life is good, life is precious, but death is no enemy, painful though it may be.  Death is part of the cycle that brings forth new life.  Revel in the pageant you are blessed enough to be witnessing.  While you can. 

As for God?  

Who is “God,” but a creation of our unique complex human minds dealing with our day to days?   

Where did God come from?  

Diary, "INDIVISIBLE" webinar & networking. All hands on deck, they say. What do I have to offer?

A few days ago I attended a “Indivisible Colorado Action Network & Rural Colorado United” webinar about effectively organizing and messaging in rural communities!  It was a call to civic duty and a networking opportunity because networking is key to success.

In that spirit of reaching out, I want share what I have to offer to other activists.  

Being an Element in Earth’s Pageant of Evolution

edited November 5, 2021

Although I’m a family man, with my share of friends, along with being community-minded, there’s a part of me that rarely fully connects with people, leaving me with an impression of being on the outside looking in and trying to make sense of the self-destructive direction people are driving our future towards.

Over the decades I’ve spent a fair amount of time trying to understand what makes my fundamental outlook and instincts so foreign to the general mindset.  It’s only recently, with the hindsight of 65 (now 66) years, and coming off of this “Hoffman Playing Basketball in Zero-gravity Project” with all it’s side trips and then discovering the light at the end of the tunnel and Dr. Mark Solms enunciating the substance of Neuropsychology.  

A body of work which convincingly demystifies Chalmers’ “Hard Problem” (and all the distracting intellectual mischief that gave birth to).   Neuropsychology brings us face to face with the reality that our consciousness is basically the inside reflection of our body/brain interacting with its environment.  

Now there’s something worth chewing on, if your looking for intellectual challenge, or simply want to understand how things work.  

Back to my struggle to make sense out of myself.  So, a year ago I was able to enunciate what made me so different.  Basically, I possessed a visceral awareness of, and appreciation for, being an element in Earth’s Pageant of Evolution.  

What was it that opened that potential up for me?

How was it that the Abrahamic Mindset always felt foreign to me, if not plain wrong, (even if it wins all the battles).

I think I also finally nailed that one.  It goes back to my early childhood, even before starting kindergarten at John J. Audubon Elementary school in Chicago.  I’d been playing in the pool of warming sunlight streaming through the window onto our living room carpet, lighting up dust motes like fireflies.  I remember focusing on watching the dust motes floating around and then rushing after my mom, when she’d pass by.  I was already fascinated by the night sky full of sparkles and these motes seemed like little universes to me.  

Who knows, except I really was fascinated by the scene.

Then I hear myself asking mom: “What is god?"

I like to think she took a few beats before answering:  “A speck of dust that wanted to be more”.

I must have been primed because it really blew my mind in a way that literally permeated by entire being.  After the initial shock wore off, it didn’t provide any sort of insight, it was simply the suggestion, the question, the challenge.  God as a speck that simply wanted to be more.  It was beautiful and awesome to this little boy and I carried that conception with me for the rest of my life.

It’s take over 60 years for me to fully appreciate it’s impact and now to understand the why of, what happened that set me on my singular path.

I believe what happened was that, that notion of a little speck of dust wanting to be more, wound up filling and satisfying that little niche' of my brain, the "god" niche' where our human longing for the ultimate answers originates.  

So when the Abrahamic self-serving image of an egotistical God was presented to me, there was no place for it to take hold in my brain or heart, so I was free of its shackles and free to find my own way through what life served up for me.

This sense of self and spiritual solidity emerged out of a lifetime of curiosity and learning about myself (though that's another story) Earth, deep-time, her amazing evolutionary story and the development of life and creatures and ourselves.  Appreciating why we can’t understand an organism, without also understanding it’s environment - all of that offers insights we can apply to our day to days.  (How does endlessly pondering outside sources of consciousness inform one’s actual living life?)

Especially realizing how the components of my own physical body had their origins eons ago.  The visceral awareness that for the most part mammals have the same skeleton and parts I do, except that are in different proportions - that's amazingly deep for a meat eater.  Even before that, if you consider how Earth herself had to go through intense processing before promising molecular tricks and biological solutions to life’s challenges would have the material resources at hand to allow them to be put to the test and prosper.

It’s a long, amazingly complex story that keeps evolving as more evidence gets collected and processed into shared scientific knowledge.  Folds within folds of cumulative harmonic complexity flowing down the cascade of time.  Considering I’ve been paying attention to it since my grade school days, it’s inevitable that I’ve achieved some insights along the way.

In the end, the thought of being an intelligent self-aware element of creation, one who is capable of savoring the pageant of Earth’s amazing Evolution is more than comforting.  It provides me with a spiritual foundation and solidity in the face of challenges, inevitable failings and my coming death, that possess a depth of peace and security no Holy Book, or fast-talking pick-pocket preachers can get close to offering.  It's good news worth passing around to the few who are honestly curious.   ✌️

     

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Regarding Deep-time

Appreciating the Physical Reality ~ Human Mindscape divide

edited November 5, 2021

I believe, consciousness, “mind,” can’t be understood by studying modern people in these modern times.  It requires an evolutionary perspective of the natural, biological forces at work in concert with geologic processes that produced creatures that eventually evolved into us.  It me it seems rather self-evident that our current masterpiece body/mind is the result of hundreds of millions of "experiments", untold iterations unfolding over an unimaginable expanse of seasons and generations.  

So how can we ponder the human brain and mind without appreciating how it evolved out of the mammalian body plan and life style.

A couple years ago I realized that for all the talk about body-mind, consciousness, perception, reality, or no reality, there’s a most fundamental divide, that I believe, needs to be explicitly enunciated and thought about.  A prerequisite before anything else can really start to make sense. 

Physical Reality is the physical world of atoms, molecules, universal laws of physics and Earth’s laws of nature.  It is Earth’s dance between geology and biology and time and Earth's evolving creatures, (and one in particular that learned to contemplate the universe and its short life), along with everything else around us.

Human Mindscape is all that goes on inside of our minds.  The landscape of your thoughts and desires and impulses and those various voices and personalities who inhabit our thoughts.  The ineffable ideas that our hands can turn into physical creations, that changed our planet.  

What is “Earth Centrism”?

edited November 5, 2021

The Earth Centrist’s perspective acknowledges that Earth; her material constituents and physical processes, unfolding one day at a time, are our fundamental touchstone with reality.  We acknowledge Earth and glory in understanding her pageant of Evolution and appreciating how that pageant is reflected within our own bodies. 

We find justification in the physical fact that humans were created out of Earth's processes. 

Science shows us that we belong to the mammalian branch of one of Earth’s amazing animal kingdoms.  Yet, it’s undeniable that something quite unique happened around six million years ago when certain apes took a wild improbable evolutionary turn.

By and by, besides the marvel of our two hands, we developed two feet and legs that could stand tall or run for hours and a growing brain that learned rapidly and remembered. 

During this period our brain physically morphed in some significant ways that enabled it to host a profound leap in cognitive information processing, storage and retrieval ability. 

On the outside hominids learned to make tools, hunt, fish, and select plants, plus they mastered fire for cooking and better living.

On the inside our brains were growing and benefiting from the new super nourishment while human curiosity and adventures started filling and stretching our Mindscapes with experiences and knowledge beyond anything the "natural" physical Earth ever knew.

By Mindscape, I mean the product of all that our body/brain perceives and processes, which of course, evolutionarily speaking, was dependent on our brain’s hardware keeping pace with and driving the ever increasing volume of information and thoughts.

While the human mind and spirit seem ineffable mysteries, they are also of tremendous consequence and real-world physical power.  They drove our growing ability to study and manipulate our world; to communicate and record our experiences; and to formulate explanations for a world full of mysteries, threats and wonders.

People learned to think and gossip and paint pictures upon the canvas of cave walls, and even better, upon the canvas of each other’s imaginations.  We’ve been adding to our mind’s awareness and complexity ever since.

Students’ Resource: A representative cross-section of Dr. Mark Solms' scientific publications.

We're now into section five of a larger project that’s intended to be a ‘Student’s Resource for Defending Physical Reality.’  In this third chapter of my introduction to Dr. Mark Solms, Ph.D., ( #1, #2 ), I provide a bibliography of his insightful publications (books & scientific papers) which explain the basis for bringing the study of our human consciousness, and the so-called Mind-Body Problem, into the realm of sober, physical reality respecting, evolution appreciating, science.  (Incidentally, thereby putting the lie to the claim that meta-physical outside agents are needed to explain and understand human consciousness.)

This list is not complete by any stretch, but it is an impressive introductory sampling, and it’s intended to serve as a reference that’s guaranteed to inform, perhaps inspire, the serious student, along with serious enthusiasts of science.  People interested in better understanding how Earth’s evolution made us who we are. 

 …  (Continued at the end of this bibliography)

Dr. Mark Solms, PhD.

Professor of Neuropsychology

CURRICULUM VITAE Mark Leonard Solms

Born district of Lüderitz, Namibia, July 17, 1961

The International Neuropsychoanalysis Society

Co-chairs, Mark Solms with Cristina Alberini

Google Scholar list of Dr. Solms' scientific papers

Solms-Delta Wine Estate

Franschhoek Valley, South Africa

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Dr Mark Solms, Ph.D. (WITS)

University of Cape Town, Department of Psychology

Background and research interests

• Brain mechanisms of dreaming, emotion, motivation.
• Psychological mechanisms of confabulation and anosognosia syndromes.

Teaching responsibilities - Neuropsychology – Research and Clinical.

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Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute  |  Mark Solms PhD

Psychoanalyst and neuropsychologist.

Affiliations:

Dr. Solms holds the position of Chair of Neuropsychology at the University of Cape Town and Groote Schuur Hospital (Departments of Psychology and Neurology) and is the President of the South African Psychoanalytical Association. He is also Research Chair of the International Psychoanalytical Association.

Dr. Solms founded the International Neuropsychoanalysis Society in 2000 and was a Founding Editor (with Ed Nersessian) of the journal Neuropsychoanalysis. He is Director of the Arnold Pfeffer Center for Neuropsychoanalysis at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, a Trustee of the Neuropsychoanalysis Fund in London, and Director of the Neuropsychoanalysis Trust in Cape Town.

Dr. Solms’ Introductory Lectures in Psychoanalysis can be viewed here.

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Regarding Mark Solms South African Farm and dealing with a history social injustice

Jill Choder-Goldman interviews Mark Solms, August 2019.

“I started to realise that the first thing is not to impulsively, concretely enact something, but rather just sitting with it and letting it be the ugly thing that it is, until you start to see what the nature of the thing is,” says Mark Solms.

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What is Neuropsychoanalysis?

Turnbull Lab, Prifysgol Bangor University, Wales, U.K.

The term 'neuropsychoanalysis' was first used in the late 1990s by Mark Solms, as the title of the journal Neuropsychoanalysis.