Utopia is In Your Mind--Enjoy It

Nick Bostrom continues to update his classic "Letter From Utopia."

Have you ever known a moment of bliss? On the rapids of inspiration, maybe, where your hands were guided by a greater force to trace the shapes of truth and beauty? Or perhaps you found such a moment in the ecstasy of love? Or in a glorious success achieved with good friends? Or in splendid conversation on a vine-overhung terrace one star-appointed night? Or perhaps there was a song or a melody that smuggled itself into your heart, setting it alight with kaleidoscopic emotion? Or during worship?

If you have experienced such a moment, experienced the best type of such a moment, then a certain idle but sincere thought may have presented itself to you: “Oh Heaven! I didn’t realize it could feel like this. This is on a different level, so very much more real and worthwhile. Why can’t it be like this always? Why must good times end? I was sleeping; now I am awake.”

Bostrom seeks to convey to present-day humanity what their existence might be like if it were substantially elevated.

What I have is not merely more of what is available to you now. It isn’t just the particular things, the paintings and toothpaste-tube designs, the record covers and books, the epochs, lives, leaves, rivers, and random encounters, the satellite images and the collider data – it is also the complex relationships between these particulars that make up my mind. There are ideas that can be formed only on top of such a wide experience base. There are depths that can be fathomed only with such ideas.

You could say I am happy, that I feel good. You could say that I feel surpassing bliss. But these are words invented to describe human experience. What I feel is as far beyond human feelings as my thoughts are beyond human thoughts. I wish I could show you what I have in mind. If only I could share one second of my conscious life with you!

Bostrom joins other writers from the distant past: More, Bacon, Bellamy, Plato, Huxley and many others who have made the attempt to paint their longings (and warnings) in words so that they must be understood. These several authors have sought to motivate their readers--to awaken them from complacency and inefficacy. To inspire them to grow beyond their present selves and tendencies.

I have always been drawn toward the dystopian side of the literature. It is the marvelous feeling of awakening from the Orwellian nightmare into a bracing reality that drives much of my selection in leisure reading. Looking up from Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 to glance across the thousands of books in my library, or pausing a moment from A Clockwork Orange to gently stroke the soft hair of my bedmate.

Likewise, in science fiction, I am drawn to the apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic. The challenge of preserving civilisation through the apocalypse--or of jump-starting civilisation in a post-apocalyptic era--is stimulating. Certainly I would prefer to move straight through the present into a next level future, without the apocalypse. But we should always count on something going wrong, at some point.

As for utopia, it really is up to us. Utopia, like happiness or heaven, is in our minds. We can cultivate it or neglect it.

In terms of future society, my utopia is not what they call the "singularity." My utopia is an open-ended future where at least 10% of humans (hopefully a much higher proportion) are empowered by brighter minds, longer lives, wiser perspectives, and a compassionate desire to take enlightened life into the cosmos. My utopia is a utopia-by-choice, so that I would never expect every human to choose it.

Many modern day persons are content with a climate-controlled place to watch cable/satellite HD television, play high-res video games, or enjoy alternate reality VR immersion. Preferably with an infinite supply and under the influence of their drug of choice. Others immerse themselves in missionary religious fervour, some even willing to kill the infidel to create their utopia. Still others are content to work, raise a small family, enjoy hobbies and limited interests, and thus serve out their time. Some cluster together with like-minded people to create the closest approximation to utopia their mind can hold. And another category of people see themselves as wolves, to prey on all the rest who they see as sheep.

Even in the era of my utopia--the next level--there will be examples of all of those groups and more, who choose not to participate in my particular utopia. Some will opt out because they have their own visions of utopia. Others simply can not be bothered.

An Oblong Solar System? Voyager2 Meets the Termination Shock Closer to Sun than Voyager 1

Voyager 2 met the edges of the heliopause 1 billion miles closer to the sun than did Voyager 1. That demonstrates an "oblongness" of the solar system caused by a compression effect from the interstellar "medium."

Because Voyager 2 crossed the heliosheath boundary, called the solar wind termination shock, about 10 billion miles away from Voyager 1 and almost a billion miles closer to the sun, it confirmed that our solar system is “squashed” or “dented”– that the bubble carved into interstellar space by the solar wind is not perfectly round. Where Voyager 2 made its crossing, the bubble is pushed in closer to the sun by the local interstellar magnetic field.

“Voyager 2 continues its journey of discovery, crossing the termination shock multiple times as it entered the outermost layer of the giant heliospheric bubble surrounding the Sun and joined Voyager 1 in the last leg of the race to interstellar space.” said Voyager Project Scientist Dr. Edward Stone of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif.

The solar wind is a thin gas of electrically charged particles (plasma) blown into space by the sun. The solar wind blows in all directions, carving a bubble into interstellar space that extends past the orbit of Pluto. This bubble is called the heliosphere, and Voyager 1 was the first spacecraft to explore its outer layer, when it crossed into the heliosheath in December 2004. As Voyager 1 made this historic passage, it encountered the shock wave that surrounds our solar system called the solar wind termination shock, where the solar wind is abruptly slowed by pressure from the gas and magnetic field in interstellar spac

Physorg
The ability to explore the very boundaries of the solar system is exciting for scientists at NASA's JPL. We are just beginning to understand some of the basic mechanisms of how the sun generates the solar wind, and the effect the solar wind has on the planets and the region of space surrounding the solar system.

Parts of the solar wind travel away from the sun at velocities above 1 million miles per hour. A solar sail that could tap into such swift winds could serve our early explorations of the solar system in the same way that canvas sails served the early exploration of earth's seas and oceans.

The sun throws enormous energies into local space, with Earth's atmosphere and magnetosphere interacting with a portion of that. At this time, very little is known of the sun's effect on Earth's weather and climate. But it makes sense to pay attention to the sun--to try to find out more about its part in our story.

Self-Important Professors With Silly Ideas Should Have to Pay a Carbon Tax For All the Hot Air They Create

Australian professor of Obstetrics Barry Walters has demanded that every human family with more than two children be required to pay a carbon tax, to offset the carbon footprint created by the extra babies.

"Every newborn baby in Australia represents a potent source of greenhouse gas emissions for an average of 80 years, not simply by breathing but by the profligate consumption of resources typical of our society," he wrote.

"Far from showering financial booty on new mothers and rewarding greenhouse-unfriendly behaviour, a 'baby levy' in the form of a carbon tax should apply, in line with the 'polluter pays' principle."

The professor's demands predictably flew like a lead balloon with Australia's more baby-friendly population.

Australian Family Association spokeswoman Angela Conway said it was ridiculous to blame babies for global warming.

"I think self-important professors with silly ideas should have to pay carbon tax for all the hot air they create," she said. "There's masses of evidence to say that child-rich families have much lower resource consumption per head than other styles of households.

Source via Icecap

As anyone with a brain who is paying attention should understand by now, CO2 is not an existential risk. If he truly wanted to learn about true existential risks, Walters should visit the Lifeboat Foundation, Michael Anissimov, or any number of websites and bloggers linked here and there, who actually deal with real-life existential, global risks.

Global warming is the perfect crisis for idiots. Since it is not a serious problem, it doesn't matter that those working so hard and expensively on "solutions" haven't a clue as to what they are doing. The fact that they expose themselves so easily as anti-natalists, anti-humans, anti-babies etc., and promote the "post-human" vision of the planet Earth, suggests that they are not very intelligent.

They failed to learn the lessons of the Club of Rome, Stephen Schneider, Paul Ehrlich, and the many other doomseekers of the 1970s and 80s who now look like total fools for their doomish predictions.

As Bruce Hall points out in Hall of Record, there are no requirements for evidence or proof in the "global warming" crusade. Just making a prediction is considered "new evidence." What morons.

Academic Lobotomies Performed Daily

North American academia has fallen on intellectually hard times. A blatant lack of ideological diversity on campus--intentional or not--is leaving students unable to deal with the real world as it exists outside the pixie dust atmosphere on campus. What has happened to turn universities into indoctrination camps--and what can be done to make a more universal university?

At a Harvard symposium in October, former Harvard president and Clinton Treasury secretary Larry Summers argued that among liberal arts and social science professors at elite graduate universities, Republicans are "the third group," far behind Democrats and even Ralph Nader supporters. Summers mused that in Washington he was "the right half of the left," while at Harvard he found himself "on the right half of the right."

I know how he feels. I spent four years in the 1990s working at the centrist Brookings Institution and for the Clinton administration and felt right at home ideologically. Yet during much of my two decades in academia, I've been on the "far right" as one who thinks that welfare reform helped the poor, that the United States was right to fight and win the Cold War, and that environmental regulations should be balanced against property rights.

...I think my political views hurt my career some years back when I was interviewing for a job at a prestigious research university. Everything seemed to be going well until I mentioned, in a casual conversation with department members over dinner, that I planned to vote Republican in the upcoming presidential election. Conversation came to a halt, and someone quickly changed the subject. The next day, I thought my final interview went fairly well. But the department ended up hiring someone who had published far less, but apparently "fit" better than I did. At least that's what I was told when I called a month later to learn the outcome of the job search, having never received any further communication from the school. (A friend at the same university later told me he didn't believe that particular department would ever hire a Republican.)

...Daniel Klein of George Mason University and Charlotta Stern of Stockholm University looked at all the reliable published studies of professors' political and ideological attachments. They found that conservatives and libertarians are outnumbered by liberals and Marxists by roughly two to one in economics, more than five to one in political science, and by 20 to one or more in anthropology and sociology....All this is bad for society because academics' ideological blinders make it more difficult to solve domestic problems and to understand foreign challenges. Moreover, a leftist ideological monoculture is bad for universities, rendering them intellectually dull places imbued with careerism rather than the energy of contending ideas, a point made by academic critics across the ideological spectrum from Russell Jacoby on the left to Josiah Bunting III on the right.

WaPo

We find discriminatory hiring far more commonly practised by leftists on-campus than in the private sector. Hiring on the basis of ideology w/gender, ideology w/sexual orientation, ideology w/race. The common bias here is ideology. The daily practise of academic lobotomies (presentation of a single point of view) on campuses across North America is the result.

It is easy to blame this disatrous state of academia on political correctness run amok, or multiculturalism gone mad. In truth, falling into academic brain death for many university departments was incremental, evolutionary, and quite easy. Ideological nepotism breeds more of itself until the bias becomes instinctive and inbred.

More on how to dig out of this ideological stagnancy in a later post.

via Instapundit

The Secret Struggle for Siberia--The Frozen Treasure

Russia has become a major player in the international energy market. Vladimir Putin's power play--a governmental takeover of the Russian fossil fuels industry--appears to have paid off. A recent gold strike in Eastern Siberia merely adds to the huge underground wealth present in Siberia. Siberia is a huge mineral treasure trove for whoever can harvest its riches. But will that be Russia?

According to Russian calculations, Siberia holds just under 80 percent of Russia's oil resources, about 85 percent of its natural gas, 80 percent of its coal, similar amounts of precious metals and diamonds, and a little over 40 percent of the nation's timber resources. As a result of this rich base, and its exploitation, Siberia is in many respects what geographer David Hooson would call Russia's "effective national territory," or its economic heartland—the region that produces a surplus relative to the size of its population and that essentially supports the rest of the country.

Source

On the surface, Russia's economy appears to be booming. In fact, Putin was able to turn that popular belief into a recent election victory (with a little help from his friends, naturlich). But there are ominous cracks in the facade of a resurgent neo-Imperial Russia.

The Far East constitutes 30 percent of Russia’s total territory, but has less than 5 percent of its population. It has substantial natural resources which could stimulate economic activity and employment, but investors are becoming increasingly reluctant to commit themselves since there is almost no one left to employ there.....we are brought to the conclusion that Russia could eventually have a trade deficit, even with all the natural resources she has in play, and at the rate we are going this point may not be too far away. What we need to bear in mind is that while global oil prices may drop back slightly ..., they are unlikely to continue to rise at the same pace as they have been ...and so since Russian oil capacity is, at best, more-or-less constant ..., Russia cannot continue to rely so heavily on oil exports for continuing growth ...

Source

China has historical claim to a large part of Eastern Siberia. China's voracious appetite for resources to sustain its exuberant growth rate will soon bring it into conflict with its neighbor to the north.

“With a history of conflict along a 2,600 mile border, with ethnic minorities sprawling across it, with a mineral-rich and sparsely populated Siberia facing China’s teeming millions” (Waltz, 2000b: 37-38). Historically, China has never been quite content with Russian expansion towards it boarders and already now massive Chinese immigration into Russia is taking place. Already in the 1990s, Russian Defence Minister Grachev therefore noted that, “the Chinese are in the process of making a peaceful conquest of the Russia Far East” (quoted from Huntington, 1996: 243).

Source

The long Sino-Russian border has had an uneasy history, especially over the past 100-150 years. Now most Russians want out of Siberia, while millions of Chinese and Central Asians want in. With the huge prize of energy resources at stake, chinese workers have steadily been taking over, by default, much of the workforce in Eastern Siberia--both legally and illegally. It is unlikely that the Chinese government has taken any options for increasing its take of the booty off the table. China needs those resources. Russia does not have the human resources to develop them. An interesting dilemma, worth watching.

Hat tip Publius Pundit

Russia (and the West) Goes Anti Natalist: Better Never to Have Been?

Anti natalism is the view that it is better not to be born. The argument is made by David Benatar in Better Never to Have Been:"The central idea of this book is that coming into existence is always a serious harm". The breeding pairs of several western countries are putting Benatar's ideas into practise.

The most recent predictions indicate a decline in the Russian population of twenty million people in the next decade due to an excessively low birthrate of 1.2 children per family (well below replacement level) and a rise in the death rate because of widespread alcoholism and the spread of disease.

According to one Professor Antonov, “Two thirds of Russian territory is settled now as sparsely as it was in the Neolithic Age: less than one person per square kilometer. In other words, east of the Urals, a demographic wasteland is superimposed on the geographic wasteland.”

What this startling point reveals is a dramatic decline in the desire for reproduction among the younger generation. The prevalence of one-child families, the decline in the number of recorded marriages, the increase in cohabitation, and the rise in divorce are all symptoms of this condition.

Source

But not just in Russia. Imagine a world with no brothers, no sisters, no uncles, no aunts, no cousins, no nieces, no nephews . . . western societies grow progressively "anti-natalist." Birthrates decline, more women choose sterilisation before ever giving birth. This is Russia, Italy, Spain. This is the western world, the world instigating its own "die off."

As more and more people find themselves living under urban conditions in which children no longer provide economic benefit to their parents, but rather are costly impediments to material success, people who are well adapted to this new environment will tend not to reproduce themselves. And many others who are not so successful will imitate them....Japanese fertility rates have been below replacement levels since the mid-1950s, and the last time Europeans produced enough children to reproduce themselves was the mid-1970s. Yet modern institutions have yet to adapt to this new reality....Not only is the spread of urbanization and industrialization itself a major cause of falling fertility, it is also a major cause of so-called diseases of affluence, such as overeating, lack of exercise, and substance abuse, which leave a higher and higher percentage of the population stricken by chronic medical conditions. Those who reject modernity would thus seem to have an evolutionary advantage, whether they are clean-living Mormons or Muslims, or members of emerging sects and national movements that emphasize high birthrates and anti-materialism.

Source

Anti-Natalism is particularly strong among the young--those who ordinarily would produce the next generation of scientists, engineers, builders, caretakers. University educated youngsters are the most likely to have absorbed the ubiquitous defeatist message of the anti-natalists on campus.

Some lives are so bad that it would be wrong to start them. There is an obligation not to start these lives. But no lives are so good that it right to start them. There is no obligation to start these lives....So all our lives are such that it would have been better had they never been started.

Source

College students are listening to that message--they have no choice if they are to pass their professors' exams and achieve good grades in the professors' classes. But what is to become of the modern west--the welfare state--if students continue to put these ideas into practise?

The social institutions most likely to experience strain from the twin trends of ageing and depopulation are the pension and health systems that comprise the crown jewels of the postwar welfare state. These are by far the largest source of public expenditure in the industrial countries. And they are the programs most likely to be affected by the coming explosion in old-age dependency.

Source

The problem will not continue indefinitely. For Russia, rich with oil and gas, the end will come from the south and east. Resource hungry but population rich China will happily take the resources of a de-populated Siberia off Russia's hands. Putin and the other post-KGB oligarchs lack the ability to prevent it.

For Europe, the end will also come from the south and east. Pro natalist muslim immigrants to Europe will gladly utilise the mechanism of democracy to overturn secular liberalism. The current multiculturalist leftism that leads Europe lacks the ability to resist the dismantling of enlightenment safeguards against the type of tyranny that the new immigrants bring with them.

Japan will find that robots cannot truly replace people. They will also find that if the Japanese people are replaced by non-Japanese, their country will no longer be Japan. Claro que, si.

The future belongs to the people of the future. If the people of the present choose to adopt an anti-natalist stance, their time is as good as gone. But they should not assume that everyone will share their enthusiasm for non-existence. A die-off in western countries simply makes room for an uptick in birthrates for those who inherit the wealth of the absentee builders.

Should Men Get Married? Should Women?

I finally broke down and read Dr. Helen's massively popular posting "Should Men Get Married?" Dr. Helen's article was interesting, but her readers' comments were priceless.

Now Dr. Helen follows up with the posting "Should Women Get Married? Again, Dr. Helen's column is worth reading, but the readers' comments are required reading.

A topic so basic as the decision of whether to marry, raise children, how to live your life . . . obviously draws a great deal of interest in the blogosphere. The most fascinating thing about all the wildly varied points of view is how they reflect upon the pressing demographic issue of our time--the population implosion of western societies.

Western societies--and eastern nations that have adopted western traditions and attitudes--are leading the march into a better future for all humans. If these nations and societies deplete their own populations--for the fascinating reasons given in the comments at the above Dr. Helen columns--the earth will be left to those who can procreate well, but do very little else.

National birthrates and mean population IQs are inversely related, as the map suggests. Even communist China's birthrates are falling as China's population becomes more urban.A world with a population average IQ of 90--like our world--can progress scientifically, technologically, economically, as long as the populations at the upper end of the bell curve are large enough, and operate with enough freedoms.

When the population average IQ drops closer to 80, the number of "smart fraction" persons drops dangerously low. Only the nations that still have significant numbers of smart fraction individuals can hope to maintain any rate of scientific or technological progress.

If immigration and differential birthrates between subpopulations within a heterogeneous society combine to lower the average population IQ, the relative ranking of that nation within the industrialised first world, will drop.

Skin-Cell Stem-Cells Cure Sickle Cell Mice

An American team of scientists have cured mice of their sickle cell anemia using stem cells from skin cells--instead of cloned embryonic stem cells. This takes this no-clone stem cell approach yet one step closer to use on humans with genetic diseases and other conditions amenable to stem cell treatments.

A Japanese team made headlines worldwide a few days ago when it announced a way to turn adult skin cells, taken from a woman's face, into embryonic stem cells, the body's building blocks used during growth and repair, which offer a way to treat patients suffering a vast range of conditions with personalised replacement cells and tissue.

Now "direct reprogramming," which offers an alternative to the use of human eggs and cloning, has been used for the first time to cure a disease, marking the first "proof of principle" that this method has great promise in treating hereditary blood disorders, though the potential to rebuild a diseased or damaged body is much greater even than this.

Mice with the faulty gene responsible for human sickle-cell anaemia were treated successfully, so they made normal red blood cells instead of those of a sickle shape that clog blood vessels, causing severe pain, anaemia and, over time, a wide range of organ damage, even death.

More at Source

Much research needs to be done to ensure safety and efficacy of this technique for treating human diseases and/or trauma, but the early steps appear to lead in the right direction.

Understanding the Solar Wind

Thanks to the new Japanese satellite Hinode, solar scientists can finally begin understanding some of the basic mechanisms of the sun's structure and activity--and the powerful solar wind that buffets the inner planets of the solar system.

The mechanisms that cause the solar wind had baffled scientists for decades, but were revealed in observations by a Japanese satellite called Hinode orbiting Earth, the scientists said in research published in the journal Science.

"The magnificent thing about the success of Hinode is its unprecedented view of the dynamics of the sun," Jonathan Cirtain, a solar physicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala., who helped in the research, said in a telephone interview.

The research was conducted by Japanese, European and U.S. scientists.

The solar wind is a stream of electrically charged gas -- mostly hydrogen -- blown outward from the sun in all directions at a speed of about 1.6 million km/h.

It buffets planetary atmospheres. On Earth, it can disrupt satellites, power grids and communications, under certain circumstances. Earth's magnetic field protects against the solar wind, creating a bubble around which the wind must flow.

... Hinode (pronounced hin-OH-day and named for the Japanese word for "sunrise") showed that two mechanisms appear to power the solar wind, Dr. Cirtain said.

The first involves the way the sun's magnetic field undergoes rapid changes in its shape, the researchers said. As the magnetic field changes shape, it generates these Alfven waves along its length that accelerate the charged gas and blow it into space, they said.

Another mechanism powering the solar wind involves the sun's chromosphere, the region sandwiched between the solar surface and its corona. Images from Hinode's Solar Optical Telescope found that the chromosphere is filled with Alfven waves, which when they leak into the corona are strong enough to trigger the solar wind.

Source

The solar wind:

• Shapes the Earth's magnetosphere
• Powers the aurora borealis and aurora astralis, northern and southern lights
• Unfurls the tail of comets broadly out in space away from the sun
• Appears to be involved in Earth's climate variability
• May be instrumental in exploration of the outer solar system (via solar sails)
• Creates the heliopause, the limits of the solar system
• Eventually escapes (in part) into interstellar space

Leftists and Islamists--Allies in an Epic Battle Against Western Civilisation

An unlikely champion of western civilisation, Hirsi Ali is nevertheless "walking point" for the rest of us. Leftists and Islamists both hate Hirsi Ali--both have her in their sights--and at least the Islamists would like to see her dead. We understand why Islamists wish to destroy the west--they are shamed by the west's success and Islam's failure. Understanding the left's antagonism toward western freedoms of thought and economy may be harder for some to understand, but it is critical to understand this alliance of hatred and intolerance toward Hirsi Ali and the enlightenment traditions she has embraced.

In television debates she criticized Islamist family patriarchs, genital mutilation of young women and forced marriages...By criticizing Islam for promoting these injustices in the name of Allah, Hirsi Ali launched a war on two fronts.

Her attacks drew criticism from Islamic fundamentalists as well as leftist Western intellectuals, who accused Hirsi Ali of discriminating against, offending and stirring up resentment among Muslims across the board.

...She's discovered, she now says, that even those who claim to be fighting outdated dogmas are quick to impose their restrictions on thought....there was no doubt the Dutch had turned a blind eye to the horrors some of their Muslim neighbors were inflicting on their wives and daughters. "Teachers, the authorities, politicians and even the media looked the other way when girls didn't return to school after the summer vacation, because they had been married off in Morocco in the meantime." All the talk about respect for the identity of immigrants and their culture, Hirsi Ali says, is "nothing but thoughtlessness, laziness and fear of openly addressing human rights violations."

...As an adolescent she had already suffered every humiliation imaginable. Her mother beat her, and her grandmother condemned her to the painful ritual of female circumcision. The more she was oppressed, though, the stronger her will became to escape her environment. When her father planned to send her to Canada for an arranged marriage, she fled. She worked as a cleaning woman in the Netherlands, learned Dutch quickly and was soon attending political lectures.

...She wants to fight for Muslims to free themselves from the psychological stranglehold of a religion that treats all of its doctrines as absolute, says Hirsi Ali -- and its followers as slaves.

Source

Muslims as slaves? Well, of course. Any religion or ideology that wraps its followers to tightly within itself becomes indistinguishable from mental shackles. That is where too many islamists and leftists find themselves in the modern world. Shackled by dysfunctional ideology.

That is why leftist feminists overlook the honour killings, the genital mutilations, the arranged marriages, the third-rate existence of women within Islam. That is why leftist activists ignore the ubiquitous muslim abuse and murder of homosexuals, the lack of human rights and intellectual freedoms that westerners take for granted.

Leftists find Islamists useful in their own fight against a western civilisation that has largely rejected the failed economics of state socialism and communism. While leftists are currently ascendant in the academy, media, and popular culture of most western countries--and hold onto their ascendancy with an iron intolerance that would make Pol Pot proud--the real power somehow continues to slip through their fingers.

While the left holds dictators such as Kim and Chavez in a pathetic embrace, at least embracing socialists and communists makes a type of sense, comfort in the company of losers. Why should leftists also embrace dictators such as the Iranian leadership? Particularly when the monkey-mullahs and apish Ahmedinejad execute homosexuals (while denying their existence), feminists, even leftist activists. Such a betrayal by the left of those it pretends (in the west) to protect and champion, is disgusting.

Nevertheless, that is where the left finds itself--without any principles or mores. It is what it says and does--at the moment. Tomorrow may be different.

Although Hirsi Ali has left the Netherlands, Geert Wilders continues to confront the abomination that is European Islam. Leftists and Islamists might like to see Wilders dead as well--like Pim Fortuyn and Theo Van Gogh.

The Freedom Party leader describes Islam as a dangerous, intolerant and fascistic religion. He says the Qu’ran should be forbidden and Muslim immigration banned....Geert Wilders...says he should be able to speak his mind in parliament, especially since his ideas have the support of half a million voters.

Source

Wilders, and other free thinking European politicians, would like to see European culture and civilisation survive the current onslaught of a human wave of religious violence, intolerance, and backwardness. If Islam can be reformed, all well and good. But most evidence points to the contrary.

Time to wake up.

Worldchanging: Plentiful Freshwater from Hybrid Bio-synthetic Membranes

The need for plentiful freshwater is one of this planets greatest environmental needs. While the ocean covers more of Earth's surface than the continents, ocean water is undrinkable and unusable for crop irrigation. Until now, it has been prohibitively expensive to desalinate salt water for human use. Until now:

The experimental membranes, currently in the form of vesicles, show significantly higher water transport than existing reverse-osmosis membranes used in water purification and desalination. The researchers describe their membranes in a paper accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The paper is to be published in PNAS Online Early Edition this week. ... To make their protein-polymer membranes, the researchers begin with a polymer that self-assembles into hollow spheres called vesicles. While the polymer is assembling, the researchers add Aquaporin Z – a protein found in Escherichia coli bacteria.

...“By varying the amount of Aquaporin Z, we can vary the membrane’s permeability,” Kumar said, “which could be very useful for drug-delivery applications.”

With their high permeability and high selectivity, the biomimetic membranes also are ideal for water treatment by desalination, which is becoming increasingly important for water purification in semiarid coastal regions.

When tested, the productivity of the Aquaporin Z-incorporated polymer membranes was more than 10 times greater than other salt-rejecting polymeric membranes.

Physorg

E. Coli bacteria can be modified to mass-produce large numbers of the aquaporin protein efficiently and economically, in the same way that E. Coli is used to mass produce various pharmaceuticals. A hybrid biological-synthetic membrane of this type is a crude example of the "grobyC" concept--inserting biological materials into mechanical or synthetic substrates and devices.
These bio-synthetic membranes can also be used to purify other types of tainted water besides saltwater and brine water. Studying the use of this type of membrane in waste treatment/water purification should be a top priority of persons who consider themselves environmentalists.

Carnival of Space 32 is Up plus 11th Climate Carnie

Via Brian Wang at Advanced Nano: The 32nd edition of Carnival of Space is Up at Robot Guy

It's the Energy Stupid! sounds like my cup of tea--suitably succinct and assertive.

Can it be true? Is the Solar Sail soon to RISE AGAIN? I hope so, as it is one of the best uses of solar power yet conceived.

Last but note least, Advanced Nanotechnology presents some of Brian Wang's favourite astropropulsion approaches. If Brian likes it, it's probably very good.

The 11th issue of the Carnival of Climate Change came up when I did not have good net access, so I missed it. But there is a lot happening on the "climate change" front, so here is a summary:

The founder of The Weather Channel says Global Warming is a big scam.

Some climate scientists are wondering how long the hysteria over CAGW can be maintained in the face of contradictory evidence.

In Megafreeze, Bruce Hall looks at what happened when the "global temperature" dropped 1-2 degrees C from current levels. Not a pretty picture.

A large but "beneath the radar" private project is casting huge doubt on the entire temperature data set used by the IPCC and prominent GCM promoters of CAGW.

Famed climate analyst Ross McKitrick is telling on the IPCC for using contaminated data.

Lubos Motl wonders why temperatures seem to be cooling rather than warming.

The Icecap casts doubt on IPCC science from several directions at once.

Brian Wang at Advanced Nano says the US Congress may be preparing to pass massive anti-greenhouse gas legislation as soon as President Bush is out of office. If so, that would establish the US Congress as the most regressive of governmental institutions.

Update: John Ray provides an omnibus of solar-climate articles and abstracts. Just read past the short "chicken joke" to the series of fascinating articles on solar forcing.

New Energy and Fuel blog finally gets to the bottom of global warming, and finds: It's the SUN, Stupid!

More at the carnivals and websites linked above. You were given your brain for a reason. Do not let it rot from lack of use.
;-)

Using the Ocean for Global Cooling: Sea Spray, OTEC, and Gaia's Poppa

The ocean is intimately involved in the Earth's climate balance. Between the ENSO, the North Atlantic Oscillation, the thermohaline circulation, ocean evaporation and cloud formation, thermal convection, absorption and release of greenhouse gases, and other lesser known mechanisms, the oceans closely collaborate with the sun in controlling the climate of Earth.

Many influential (but typically unscientific) persons are concerned to the point of hysteria about the possibility of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW). To placate some of their concerns, several proposals for geoengineering projects have been put forward to mitigate "global warming." Giant space mirrors, flooding the atmosphere with particulate to block the sun, seed the ocean with iron to promote algae growth etc etc.

Two large scale projects involving the ocean might actually prove of benefit to particular regions of the planet:

• Injecting "sea spray" into the low atmosphere to create clouds.
• OTEC energy generation that utilises ocean temperature differentials to generate substantial renewable energy, and provide freshwater irrigation for crops and other beneficial side effects.

Both of those proposals have considerable merit, and will probably be implemented on a larger scale within the next 10-15 years. John Latham's sea spray idea, as implemented by Stephen Salter, has significant potential to bring needed rain to very dry coastal areas of the world, where arable farm land is scarce. OTEC's long list of benefits is likewise impossible to ignore.

Now, James Lovelock--father of "Gaia", professor of Green College, Oxford--is proposing placing 10,000 10-metre diameter pipes in the Gulf of Mexico to pump cool water to the surface from 100 to 200 metres in depth. He suggests that this will "fertilise algae in the surface waters and encourage them to bloom, absorbing carbon dioxide greenhouse gas while also releasing a chemical called dimethyl sulphide that is know to seed sunlight reflecting clouds." (via Fatknowledge)

Lovelock no doubt means well, and his idea is certainly consistent with the CAGW hypothesis that is so prominent in the media and less informed political circles. But it is not likely to accomplish anything of worth--particularly in comparison to the other approaches listed above.

In another, less enlightened age, people like Lovelock would probably be spending their time walking along a seashore, mumbling to themselves, doing no harm. In our more enlightened age, Lovelock is still doing no particular harm, which is a good thing. Even if tens of hundreds of millions of dollars are wasted investigating his proposal, at least he is not selling crack to school children, or strapping suicide bombs onto the torsos of religiously intense youths.

It is clear that on the merits, generating rainfall over arid deserts, and providing plentiful renewable energy while creating freshwater for drinking and irrigation, are both more important than growing large numbers of algae--whatever the putative benefits of removing CO2 from the atmosphere that are claimed.

Lovelock is an academic who, like so many academics, is cast loose from any meaningful ties with real-world needs. Coddled, tenured, assured of his "specialness", he has no incentive to generate any relevant solutions or ideas. So he does not. Pity.

North America Prepares for Winter--Early

Several parts of North America are dealing with record snowfall and cold temperatures, early in the season--before winter has even begun.

A record 31.6 centimetres (12 inches) of snow fell on Montreal Monday, more than double the previous Dec. 3 record of 14 centimetres, and it will take a week to clean up....Portland, Maine tied a record for the date set in 1890 Monday when 8.5 inches fell. Elsewhere, Marshfield in Washington County had 18 inches of snow...Grand Forks airport had 8.1 inches of snow yesterday, setting a record for the date. And Fargo set a record with 5.9 inches. The previous mark in both cities was set back in 1926. Grand Forks and Fargo also had record snowfall last Saturday.

Icecap

This early winter harshness comes courtesy of a strong La Nina phase of the ENSO Pacific oscillation that determines much of the climate for North America and Asia. A similar Atlantic oscillation determines much of the climate for Europe. The failure to take these natural oscillations into account (along with other important forcings) necessarily diminishes the credibility of GCMs (general circulation models to scientists, global climate models to journalists).

This may turn into a very cold winter indeed.

Chimeric Mice Help in Drug Development

Chimeric mice developed with human liver cells growing inside mouse livers will prove to be valuable toxicity screens for pharmacologic development, improve understanding of infectious disease, and promote regenerative medicine.

The work, which will be published in this week's online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science also holds promise for a better understanding of infectious diseases that affect the liver. "It is basically impossible to grow human hepatocytes in the lab, which was a big hurdle for the study of viruses such as hepatitis A and hepatitis B," says senior author Inder Verma, Ph.D., a professor in the Laboratory of Genetics.

But most importantly, Bissig says, the mice will be an invaluable tool to advance regenerative medicine. "Many inherited disorders affecting liver metabolism could be cured if only five percent of all hepatocytes would express the missing enzyme," he says.

Salk Institute

Hat tip Medgadget

Ultralight Pilots Needed: Quicker, More Economic Disaster Relief

The seeds of Mr. Lishman's invention were sown in 1998, when he watched news coverage of the relief efforts that followed Hurricane Mitch, a sluggish storm that stalled over Central America, killing nearly 11,000 people and leaving more than 8,000 missing. Mr. Lishman noted that it took weeks to get supplies to some areas that were accessible only by air. GlobeandMail

Disaster rescue and relief is expensive work. Remote areas often lack landing strips for large supply craft, and helicopters are incredibly expensive to own, operate, and maintain.

Mr. Lishman is on to a new project - a tiny, skeletal aircraft he hopes will revolutionize the business of disaster relief. Mr. Lishman wants to pack more than a dozen of the little planes into a container that can be flown to areas such as Sudan's Darfur region, where they could be deployed like mechanized hornets, buzzing to hard-hit sites with loads of food and medical supplies.

...Mr. Lishman quickly saw that the helicopter had some key drawbacks when it came to disaster relief. Getting them to the scene was a problem; helicopters are too slow to fly over very long distances, and are too large and complex to break down and pack inside an airplane. They are also extremely costly. The least expensive helicopter on the market (the two-seat Robinson R22) goes for more than $225,000. Most helicopters cost far more.

Helicopters also demand constant, expensive maintenance and a highly skilled pilot. In Canada, a Robinson R22 rents for about $400 an hour, including the pilot, while a larger helicopter, such as the popular Bell JetRanger, costs about $1,000 an hour.

...The rescue trike's key feature is its simplicity: It can be built for little more than the price of a mid-size car, maintained by a shade-tree mechanic, and packed into a box for easy transport. Mr. Lishman said at least 15 of the machines can be loaded into a transport plane, packed inside a steel container.

The transport plane would serve as a delivery system for the Air First Aid team. After landing at the nearest available airstrip, the rescue trikes would be unloaded and assembled. If necessary, the container they arrived in could serve as a shelter for the pilots. The fleet of the ultralights would be loaded with supplies and then head for the disaster scene, guided by an inexpensive GPS unit.

Source

I like the idea. It makes sense on many levels, and In fact, I wouldn't mind flying one of these "trikes" in a relief situation. The biggest drawback is the weather limitations that ultralight aircraft must necessarily respect.

Although these rescue trikes are not supposed to be thought of as "toys," I am putting this post in the "Adventure Toys" category just for the fun of it.

Return of the Grobyc

Just three months ago, we introduced the "grobyc". Scientists are enlarging the grobyc idea, using moth brains to control robots.

Charles Higgins, an associate professor at the University of Arizona, has built a robot that is guided by the brain and eyes of a moth. Higgins told Computerworld that he basically straps a hawk moth to the robot and then puts electrodes in neurons that deal with sight in the moth's brain. Then the robot responds to what the moth is seeing -- when something approaches the moth, the robot moves out of the way....While the moth is physically attached to the robot at this point, Higgins said he expects that one day only the brain itself will be needed.

ComputerworldWhen we think of a "brain machine interface," or BMI, we generally think about cyborgs--where a biological organism utilises a machine to augment the organisms function. A BMI is implanted into the human brain, which can then control a prosthetic arm, an exoskeleton, or a remote machine.This concept has been demonstrated with monkeys. As BMIs grow smaller, safer, and more reliable, this approach will be used for persons with paralysis due to trauma, CVA, or other cause.

A cyborg does not feel as creepy as a grobyc. Imagine an army of killer robots controlled by crocodile brains. You may ask, "why should I?" Consider: weapons designers of the largest militaries in the world are probably way ahead of you, conceptually. Do you have any desire to consider counter-strategies? Why should an actual human army invade a country when it can send in an army of killer grobycs to do the job for it?

The idea is fraught with ethical concerns--once you begin to scope the future of the concept. Just as biotechnology, nanotechnology, machine intelligence, robotics, energy technologies etc. are all fraught with ethical concerns. Ethicists are apt to be overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the challenges they face. Unless . . . . unless they devise a way to clone themselves . . .

Is the Sun Really Masker of the Earth's Deskiny?

It's not easy bein' me
Masker of me own deskiny
And I hates responsibiliky
It's not easy bein' me

Popeye
The Sun gives us life-sustaining warmth and light. The sun also bombards our space with x-rays, gamma rays, high energy electrons, and atomic nuclei, which if not for Earth's atmosphere and magnetic field would kill us all. But wait--the sun's solar wind and magnetic field also shields the earth from dangerous radiation coming from outside the solar system. The Sun is clearly up to both good and bad. What else is the sun doing, that we should know about?

Recently, astrophysicists have become aware of the sun's interaction with the "global atmospheric electric current," and have started looking at the weather and climate implications.

Tinsley 2007 ... [demonstrates] the change in the ionospheric coupling from the solar wind that induces changes of the global electrical circuit ...

Reports of a variety of short-term meteorological responses to changes in the global electric circuit associated with a set of disparate inputs are analyzed. The meteorological responses consist of changes in cloud cover, atmospheric temperature, pressure, or dynamics. All of these are found to be responding to changes in a key linking agent, that of the downward current density, Jz, that flows from the ionosphere through the troposphere to the surface (ocean and land). As it flows through layer clouds, Jz generates space charge in conductivity gradients at the upper and lower boundaries, and this electrical charge is capable of affecting the microphysical interactions between droplets and both ice-forming nuclei and condensation nuclei.

...Thus, we propose that mechanisms responding to Jz are a candidate for explanations of sun–weather–climate correlations on multidecadal to millenial timescales, as well as on the day-to-day timescales analyzed here.

Outside the Cube

Scientists from the US, Europe, and other parts of the world are beginning to pay much more attention to the Earth-Sun interaction--and what it may involve.

Convection cells, made of plasma, an ionised and highly variable gas, are found at altitudes of hundreds kilometres over the polar caps. Their behaviour pattern is intimately linked to the response of the Earth’s magnetic environment to solar activity.

Although Earth is largely protected from the hazards of interplanetary space by the magnetosphere and atmosphere, they don't form an isolated bubble.

...One way to monitor this interaction is to study the convection cells. In the region, called the high-latitude ionosphere where they are located, the behaviour of the plasma cells strongly depends on the response of the magnetosphere to the orientation of the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF, an extension of the solar magnetic field, carried by the solar wind). This means that the behaviour of polar cap convection cells is a good tracer of the Sun-Earth connection.

ESA

Keep in mind that several mechanisms for sun-earth climate interaction are being proposed. These are somewhat different from Svensmark's solar wind/cosmic ray hypothesis on cloud formation. The astrophysicist community within NASA is said to be seriously divided over the question of the extent of solar variability influencing Earth's climatic trends. This could get interesting.

The following links provide some elementary scientific background about the interaction of solar radiation with Earth's global atmospheric electrical current.

http://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0506/0506077.pdf

http://www.utdallas.edu/physics/pdf/Tin_rev.pdf

http://www.sgo.fi/SPECIAL/Contributions/Makarova.pdf

Climate Change Makes Nuclear War Inevitable, Threatens End of Cosmos

After meeting with the President in the Oval Office, Nobel winner and climate expert Al Gore held a press conference to announce that climate change can cause wars, and in fact, nuclear war is inevitable, due to climate change. Natural disasters have quadrupled in two decades, Mr. Gore announced, and the US Dollar could plunge 90%! Crime is growing so bad that it is becoming necessary to track schoolchildren with radio chips sewn into their uniforms, mankind is shortening the life of the universe, and the government has tried to cover up that many Americans still believe in conspiracies, Gore complained.

The world renowned environmentalist explained that all of these phenomena are related, and caused by global warming. Mr. Gore emphasized his deep regret at bringing such bad news, and wanted to reassure the public that all of this could have been prevented had the US Supreme Court seen fit to go along with the Florida State Supreme Court's interceding in the 2000 US national elections. Unfortunately, Mr. Gore added, it is now too late, and America must "take its medicine," along with the rest of the universe.

Asked if he felt he deserved another Nobel Prize for his efforts to save the universe, Mr Gore answered that he was honoured simply to serve, and that he would just take the money.

Editor's note: I have added an "Apocalypse" heading to the sidebar, and this post features several links from the apocalyptic website "Armageddon Online," in honour of the addition. For those of you wondering what is happening with the "Society for Creative Apocalyptology", or SCA, be patient. Plans are shaping up nicely. Stay tuned.

Probing the Cell With Many Fingers

Eric Drexler talks about nanobots that roam the human body, looking for problems in cells--then jumping into the cell to repair any damage or dysfunction. Developing these "cell repair machines" will take some time. In the meantime, we need to learn different ways to probe the inner and outer workings of cells.

For example, we may want to develop a tiny nano-voltmeter to monitor the internal electric field of cells:

"The basic idea behind this field of research is to follow cellular processes---both normal and abnormal---by monitoring physical properties inside the cell. There's a long history of research on the chemistry happening inside the cell, but now we're getting interested in measuring the physical properties, because physical and chemical processes are related," said Kopelman, who is the Richard Smalley Distinguished University Professor of Chemistry, Physics and Applied Physics.

With a diameter of about 30 nanometers, the spherical device is 1,000-fold smaller than existing voltmeters, Kopelman said. It is a photonic instrument, meaning that it uses light to do its work, rather than the electrons that electronic devices employ.

Kopelman's former postdoctoral fellow Katherine Tyner, now at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, used the nano-voltmeter to measure electric fields deep inside a cell---a feat that until now was impossible. Scientists have measured electric fields in the membranes that surround cells, but not in the interior, Kopelman said.

With the new approach, the researchers don't simply insert a single voltmeter; they're able to deploy thousands of voltmeters at once, spread throughout the cell. Each unit is a single nano-particle that contains voltage-sensitive dyes. When stimulated with blue light, the dyes emit red and green light, and the ratio of red to green corresponds to the strength of the electric field in the area of interest.

Eurekalert

Clever, no? Or perhaps researchers could use X-rays to take snapshots of the cell in action:

A research team led by Jue Chen, an associate professor of biological sciences, obtained a snapshot of the tiny protein gate complex that opens and closes pathways through the protective cellular membrane. The gates, operated by small protein machines that push them open and closed, bring nutrients into the cell and flush out waste.

The Purdue-led team was the first to achieve an image of the middle step of the process, capturing the molecular interactions as material passes through the membrane.

...The research team used X-ray crystallography to obtain a picture of a special protein, called an ABC transporter protein, as it moved material through the cellular membrane. The work was published in last week's issue of Nature.

Purdue

But there are many more approaches (many fingers) used to probe cells:

• Cryo-electron Tomography
  
• Optical Biosensors
• Nano-Interfaces in Microfluidics
• MEMS Devices
• NMR
• Impedance Spectroscopy
• By Computer
• Oncoprobe
• Scanning Electrode
• Patterned Substratum

Etc.

IQ and Race: Why the Excitement?

Ever since the Nobel prize winner James D. Watson asserted six weeks ago that Africans have innately lower intelligence, fervid debates about race, genes and I.Q. have sprung up on the Web, in publications and in conference rooms. NYTimes

James Watson stumbled into the PC quagmire several weeks ago, and paid a significant public penalty for his lack of caution. William Saletan, respected senior writer at Slate, inexplicably followed Watson into the PC swamp with a 3-part series on IQ and race in the somewhat leftist online magazine. Saletan has been soundly spanked by critics and forced to mutter his "mea culpas" although, unlike Watson, he was not forced to resign his position.

Saletan's series of pieces was quite forgettable, and if not for the entry of Cato Unbound into the online debate, I would probably not have commented further on the current sucking vortex of online "IQ and Race" discussions. I expected a publication of the Cato Institute to take an even-handed approach to the IQ debate, but perhaps I was too generous.

Why would Cato Unbound choose to take a "triple-team" approach toward this issue, particularly? By loading the debate panel with three "anti-g" panelists (Flynn, Turkheimer, and Ceci) vs. only one "pro-g" panelist (Gottfredson), Cato Unbound would seem to be taking sides--a big no-no in "objective" journalism. But can anyone or any organisation truly afford to play this issue objectively, given the political minefield it has become?

Unfortunately, PC society is not ready to face a preponderance of scientific data uncensored, or in Cato's terms, "unbound." Given all that, how did Linda Gottfredson perform under pressure? The answer is clear and simple: she was magnificent.

IQ tests measure only phenotypic (developed) differences in general intelligence (g), not what causes them. Ability differences among groups can be real without necessarily being genetic, either in whole or part. When scientists speak of race or sex differences, this is short-hand for average differences between the groups—just as when we refer to men being taller than women or Americans being fatter today than decades back. There is no implication that the observed differences are caused by genetic rather than non-genetic differences between the groups....

[ed: IQ syllogism]

* An underlying ability (called g) is needed for all forms of cognitive performance
* g is manifest in any broad cognitive battery such as IQ
* g is related to many types of biological markers and is highly heritable
* Large individual and group differences exist in g
* Variation in g predicts differential life outcomes
* Therefore, variation in life outcomes is at least partly rooted in biological differences in g

...In fact, the syllogism has already been empirically verified. Level of education, occupation, and income are themselves moderately heritable (60-70%, 50% and 40-50%, respectively), and these heritabilities overlap that for g by at least half (yielding 40%, 25%, and 20% of the phenotypic variation in the three life outcomes being jointly heritable with g: e.g., Rowe, Vesterdal, & Rodgers, 1998).

...Proponents of the taboo on discussing race and IQ assume that the taboo is all for the common good, but whose good, exactly, is served? It is most certainly not individuals of below-average intelligence, who face a tremendous uphill battle in modern, literate societies where life becomes increasingly complex by the day. General intelligence (g) is simply a general proficiency to learn and reason. Put another way, it is the ability to deal with complexity or avoid cognitive error. Virtually everything in life requires some learning or reasoning and thus confers an advantage on brighter individuals. Life is complex, and complexity operates like a headwind that impedes progress more strongly for individuals lower on the IQ continuum. Everyone makes cognitive mistakes, but lower intelligence increases the risk of error.

Cato UnboundRead Gottfredson's entire article, and follow the links to the several pieces by Flynn, Turkheimer, and Ceci for comparison. The PC consensus on this topic is that there is no demonstrable difference between ethnic populations in mean IQs, and even if there were a difference it would be meaningless. But--if such a difference existed, and if it were a meaningful difference, then it would be IMMORAL to even discuss it.

It is a quagmire, just as any issue on which PC multi-cult has staked a strong claim has become a quagmire. It is a thankless task for a scientist to leap into the fray with good data, good design, and good analysis. It is thankless because if the scientist's results contradict the PC multi-cult, the scientist becomes vulnerable to peer pressure, loss of grant sources, cancellation of speaking engagements, public vilification, and they can forget about tenure unless they already have it rock solid.IQ correlates well with life success, general health, lifespan, crime rates, and much more. These are well documented correlations. But does IQ actually cause any of those outcomes? How can you know the answer to that, if it is morally reprehensible to even ask the question?

By giving itself over to PC multi-cult censorship, society diminishes itself--parochialises itself--into a caricature of the open-minded society it claims to be. So I ask again, why the excitement, why the demonisation of those who merely raise the question?

A society that is afraid to look into itself--afraid of what it might learn and what might become publicly known--is a sick society. If there are problems that can be at least partially resolved by a deeper knowledge of underlying reality, denying the reality only allows the problem to fester and worsen. This is what appears to be happening on the issue of race and IQ.

As I have stated many times, Executive Function (EF) is as important as IQ in determining life success. But EF is largely a function of the pre-frontal lobes, and itself may be more than 50% heritable. We will not know unless we research it. We have to stop being afraid.

Exploring the Arctic In Style--ES Aurora Borealis

“Aurora Borealis is so important for research because, in contrast to previous research icebreakers, it will carry a new deep sea drilling system and will be able to work in the central Arctic Ocean throughout unfavourable seasons under the most extreme weather conditions” Source

This "European Ship" carries 55 megawatts of diesel-electric power, has a strong hull that crushes ice (instead of being crushed), and can stay on station for extended drilling in the middle of strong ice floes.

Aurora Borealis will be the first ever international ship, the brainchild of the European Science Federation, the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Maritime Research in Germany and the Germany Federal Ministry of Research and Education....The ice over the polar seas masks millions of years of the planet’s history: drilling is difficult in freezing conditions. Aurora Borealis will be the world’s first icebreaker that is also a drilling ship. This sets unusual challenges for marine engineers: a vessel poised on top of 5000 metres of drilling rig cannot afford to move very much in any direction. But ice drifts, and currents and winds can alter in moments. So the ship will be designed not just to break the ice as it moves forward and astern, but also to port and starboard.

....Drill cores from the sea floor could answer questions about the geological history of the Arctic ocean, and other instruments will measure the transport of contaminants through the air, water and ice. The vessel could be home to 120 people, more than half of them scientists who need to go to sea to study the ice, the ocean beneath and the history of the deep sea floor.

It will be equipped with two “moon pools” in the bottom of the hull to give direct access to the open water beneath the ice, so that drillers can work in freezing conditions and biologists can launch underwater vehicles to study the mysterious processes that trigger an explosion of life in the polar seas every spring. The design and preparation of Aurora Borealis will continue until 2011. Builders could start assembling the hull in 2012, it could be cruising the oceans from 2014

ESF.org
It seems to me that if the ship's designers and owners had wanted a truly functional polar seas exploration vessel, they would have powered the ship with a nuclear reactor. Nuclear vessels not only have more available power, they have extended operating range and cruise times.

Given the likelihood of huge undiscovered oil and gas deposits beneath the Arctic Ocean ice, such icebreaking exploration drilling rig ships make perfect sense. Russia's insistence on being a part of the Aurora's mission may feel ominous to some who remember the USSR's proprietary attitude toward Europe, but no one has a monopoly on the design of such ships. There is nothing stopping the US, Canada, Norway, or any other interested Arctic community from building their own arctic exploration vessel. And they might do it right--with nuclear power.