Continuing inquiry into the ‘demographics’ of how people split into polarized opposition of views, is leading me to the notion (not yet a conclusion) that Russian scientists and perhaps the Russian people in general have a different ‘polarization of views’ profile than in ‘the West’.

What has led me to further explore this possibility is the remarkable difference in the proportion of scientists favouring ‘local forcing of climate change’ (CO2-forcing) versus those who favour ‘celestial forcing of climate change’, in ‘the West’ and in ‘Russia’ respectively.    A rough estimate based on what is reported in the media and also through email exchanges with scientists is that, in the West, there is perhaps an 80% – 20% split in favour of ‘local [CO2} forcing of climate change’ while in Russia, the proportion seems to be inverted, with an 80% – 20% split in favour of ‘celestial [solar cycles, orbital deviation cycles] forcing of climate change’.

It seems fair to say that such differences in scientific views between Russia and the West haven’t been seen since the days of the cold war where, for example, many Americans believed that the 1959 Russian (Luna 3) pictures of the ‘dark side’ of the moon were faked.

So, what is the origin of this dramatic difference in scientific view?

One theory is that the recent collapse of the Soviet Union has been, in effect, an ‘ego-dissolution’ and ‘psychic rebirth’ (still underway).  In the case of an individual who undergoes this ‘breakdown’ process, the person is often liberated from his  old ego-driven achievement-oriented tensions and can begin to relax and attune to his ‘life’s journey’ rather than being ‘ego-driven’ to achieve missions, visions, strategies, goals and objectives; i.e. to accept a natural ‘celestial forcing’ of his ‘life change’ rather than persisting in his role of ‘local-forcer’ of his ‘life change’.   Meanwhile, the West, having been the nominal ‘winner’ would continue to be ‘stuck’ in  the ego-driven ‘local forcing’ mode rather than accepting ‘celestial forcing’, as his behavioural grounding.

As a further exploratory initiative in this regard, I am uploading the following ‘commentary’ into the Russian internet environment, to elicit feedback and to see if anything more can be learned on this topic.  Of course, comments from anywhere would be welcomed here on this website,  as to whether there is merit in this notion that the different views in Russia on ‘climate change’ derive from the ‘psychic rebirth’ of the Russians, or whether some other explanation is more feasible.

The following commentary has been uploaded on the ‘Russian-Info-Centre’ website http://www.russia-ic.com/news/show/1878/?sort=1#connents and I am currently working on uploading it to other Russian websites.

* * *

Global Warming Debate as Learning Opportunity.

There are many arguments over whether peoples’ behaviours are ‘internally-forced’ or ‘spatially-forced’.  Now we argue whether planetary behaviours are ‘internally-forced’ or ‘spatially-forced’.

The ‘global warming debates’, which are about whether the earth’s behaviour is ‘internally forced’ (CO2-forced) or ‘celestially-forced’ (Solar cycles, orbital cycles), mirror how we think of ourselves.

Local forcing is otherwise known as the ‘causal model’, bluntly critiqued by Nietzsche; “

“That which gives the extraordinary firmness to our belief in causality is not the great habit of seeing one occurrence following another but our inability to interpret events otherwise than as events caused by intentions. It is belief in the living and thinking as the only effective force–in will, in intention–it is belief that every event is a deed, that every deed presupposes a doer, it is belief in the “subject.” Is this belief in the concept of subject and predicate not a great stupidity?”  … “Cause and effect–a dangerous concept so long as one thinks of something that causes and something upon which an effect is produced” —Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘The Will to Power’.

The causal model is sufficient for some and not for others.  Example: A man in Canada accidently failed to fully extinguish a cigarette he dropped on the forest floor.  It started a fire that burned down his whole town and the mill that was the primary source of employment.  The government spent 31 million dollars to put the fire out.  Was he causally responsible for the fire?  Was it locally forced? Or was the fire ‘celestially forced’?  The now homeless residents of the town were divided on this.  Some thought he should go to jail for the rest of his life.  Other’s saw it as a ‘natural disaster’.   What would you think if every day for a thousand days you flicked your cigarette in a bucket of water as you went to work, and one day someone put some gasoline in the bucket and your apartment building burned to the ground?  Would you see yourself as ‘causally responsible’?  Is the result ‘locally-forced’ or ‘spatially-forced’?  In the case of Mike Barre, the man in question, was he the causal source of this result or was the result ‘celestially sourced’.

This is how the issues split in climate change.  Nietzsche would say that it was celestially forced, and he would say more than that.  He would say that it is the ego that has us think in terms of ‘local forcing’ (cause and effect).

Poincaré would say the same.  As he says in Science and Hypothesis, the causal assumption rests on the simplifying notion that ‘the present depends only on the immediate past’, not on the remote past.  But ice sheets and permafrost build up stores of potential energy over time and they energy-charge space in the manner that energy is loaded into a spring, positively by compressing the spring and negatively by extending the spring.  By-and-by the potential energy is released and converted to kinetic energy, as in an earthquake or an avalanche or more slowly and steadily as with the slumping of mountains and the melting of ice.  When glaciers and permafrost melt, they release ‘negative energy’ that consumes kinetic energy and keeps the temperature lower than it would otherwise have been; i.e. it acts like the release of an extended spring.  The temperature we measure today depends on more than the ‘immediate past’, it depends on the remote past as well.

There are many such buildups and releases in nature with differing latencies and release rates.  Together with more immediate effects, they contribute to climate change.  CO2 forcing does NOT take this into account.  Marina Leibman, Chief Scientist at the Cryosphere Institute (Russia) has more to say about this.  She says;

“There is no global warming caused by human activity, first because greenhouse gases do not affect climate. They do not affect climate. That is a physical theory, it is an invented horror – it does not exist.” … “While politicians and public … compare “today” with “yesterday”, geologists (science community which I belong to) always think in terms of geological time, events lasting thousands and millions of years. Such a viewpoint takes a lot of imagination in addition to knowledge. Not that effective as something Global and Hazardous, we call it in Russian “Strashilka” (a scarecrow).”

What does ego have to do with it?

As Poincaré observes, some people confuse models for reality.  The causal model is the simplest model, in the manner that a polynomial of first order is simpler than a polynomial of second order.  In ‘first order thinking’, a ‘result’ is solely from ‘local forcing’ (local internal process or local causal agency).  In this ‘first order thinking’, the man who caused the forest fire is to blame.  No need to go any further.  In second order understanding, the result is ‘celestially-sourced’, it could start by itself, by lightning, by a chain saw, or by a dropped cigarette. The celestial conditioning of the habitat is the primary source; i.e. the result (or disaster) is a understood as a ‘natural disaster’.

People were dying for a peer-to-peer communication system.  Al Gore helped to locally force an internet funding bill through Congress.  He claims he ‘invented’ (caused) the internet.  This is ‘first order thinking’.  It comes from the ego.  The ego has us confuse idealisation (local-forcing) for reality.  Poincaré calls this ‘Cantorian realism’, we confuse our own oversimplified models for reality.  The second order understanders who he calls ‘pragmatist idealists’ acknowledge that our models are ‘idealisations’ and that, ultimately, everything is cosmically-forced.  This is second order understanding, and it acknowledges the natural primacy of the habitat-dynamic over our inhabitant-dynamics (why our space-orienting ‘sailboating’ way must prevail over our linearly-destination-directed ‘powerboating’ way.)..

Different cultures and different communities ‘divide’ into different proportions of ‘first order thinkers’ and ‘second order understanders’. (Of course, any person can go with either in any situation, but as with a temperament, one develops a habit of favouring one of the two most of the time.).   Managers who claim ‘local-forcing’ (cause-and-effect) responsibility for massive growth in their condom manufacturing business tend not mention the correlation between the arrival of AIDS and the upswing in revenues and profits (spatial-forcing).

Aboriginal peoples are second order understanders that don’t confuse first order thinking with reality.  The Nenets of the European and Siberian Arctic understand that ‘celestial-forcing is in a natural precedence’.  They don’t put reindeer in a pen and claim that they are ‘locally forcing’ the production of reindeer as if ‘they are doing it’.  They don’t confuse first order thinking with reality (which is why I have called my website the ‘Aboriginal Physics Newsletter’ ).  The Inuits of the Canadian Arctic have been resettled and encouraged to confuse first order thinking with reality, like many government officials do.  Governments are like powerboaters, first order thinkers who believe that their power and direction is all onboard, that they are local-forcers of results (destination-oriented future-forcers that abandon their natural journey-harmonizing [adaptation] gifts.  The Aboriginals are like sailboaters, second order understanders who recognize that their form (the form of their sails), their power and their steerage are all spatially sourced.  Missions, visions, strategies, goals and objectives, the destination-oriented local-forcing currencies of the powerboater,  are fine, you can take them along with you on life’s sailboating journey without getting into trouble so long as you don’t confuse them for reality.  As Lao Tsu taught, “Live the female (the sailboater way) and know the male (the powerboating way)”. But to live the male (the powerboating way) is to confuse first order thinking for reality and to reduce ‘genuine reality’ to ‘troublesome noise’.

Western science, with its notional CO2 local-forcing of climate-change model, is confusing first order thinking for reality.  This is a mistake that derives from too much ego.  If you confuse first order thinking for reality, then you will believe that local-forcing is all there is (cause-and-effect is all there is).  Then, when you gather data in order to explain reality, you will be trying to fit it to first order thinking (to ‘cause and effect’) rather than to ‘reality’.

I have been gathering the impression that there is less confusing of first order thinking for reality, in Russia than in ‘the West’.  This would explain why the scientists in the Russian Academy of Sciences dismiss the notion of CO2-forced global warming as ‘ridiculous’ (see recent comments of Dr. Oleg Sorokhtin (Merited Scientist of Russia and fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences).

I am curious as to why I can’t see reference in the western press (I live in Canada) to the report on climate prepared for President Putin;

“ВОЗМОЖНОСТИ ПРЕДОТВРАЩЕНИЯ ИЗМЕНЕНИЯ КЛИМАТА И ЕГО НЕГАТИВНЫХ ПОСЛЕДСТВИЙ” — “POSSIBILITIES OF AVERTING THE CLIMATE CHANGE AND ITS NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES”

Has it been translated into English?  I can’t find it.  If someone knows, I would appreciate hearing about it.

My impression is that when Europeans came to North America, the land was spring-loaded and ready to deliver its potentials in an avalanche of natural products and their derivative services (everything is a derivative of the land/space), and it did indeed deliver.  First order thinking says that the present depends only on the immediate past.  When the film footage is reversed in time, the European immigrant is there ‘holding the smoking gun’.  His ego claims that it was ‘he’ who caused the amazing productive result; i.e. that the result was ‘locally forced’.  This is why the modern ‘West’ is confusing first order thinking with reality’.  It is ego.  It has permeated Western science and popular ‘scientific thinking’ as well.  Like Nietzsche said;

“Is this belief in the concept of subject and predicate not a great stupidity?”  … “Cause and effect–a dangerous concept so long as one thinks of something that causes and something upon which an effect is produced”

What is the ratio of those in Russia who confuse first order thinking for reality to those who do not?  Is it less than in the West?  Can we do a poll? The currently unfolding global warming debate should shed light on this.

* * *