‘Black box’ in Australia to record actions on climate, people to be under watch

Nearly a month after world leaders met in Glasgow for the COP26 Summit to steer the world back toward the Paris climate goals amid growing threats of extreme events, Australian scientists and artists are attempting to hold the world responsible for their actions by creating a black box of the planet.

The “indestructible” storage device, similar to a black box on board an aeroplane, will chronicle humanity’s response to the climate change catastrophe. The Earth’s Black Box, called the planet’s flight recorder, will be erected in 2022 on the isolated West coast of Tasmania, in a region regarded geographically and politically stable.

“The goal is to present an unbiased account of the events that led to the planet’s doom, hold future generations accountable, and spur immediate action,” scientists said in a statement.

Scientists from the UN-led Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have issued a dire warning, predicting that Earth will reach the key 1.5 degree Celsius warming threshold in the next two decades. According to the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), ‘Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis,’ human impact is causing irreversible climate change in every part of the planet. According to the analysis, more heat waves, longer warm seasons, and shorter cold seasons will result from 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming.

The steel behemoth, which measures 10 metres by 4 metres by 3 metres, is being erected to outlast humanity.

It will be filled with a mass of storage discs and have internet connectivity, according to a report by Australia’s ABC News, all powered by solar panels on the structure’s roof. Batteries will provide power storage in the event of a power outage. The black box will download scientific data, and an algorithm will search the internet for climate-change-related information.

Jim Curtis, executive creative director at Clemenger BBDO, which came up with the idea for the black box, not only would the box provide a wealth of data on climate change to the world, but the information recorded would also help hold leaders accountable and leave lessons for future generations. “If the worst happens and we as a civilization crash as a result of climate change,” he added, “this unbreakable box will be there and will record every aspect of that.”

According to sources, the black box will record backwards and forwards in time to show how we arrived to where we are now, using any historical climate change data available on the internet. Despite the fact that the housing building itself will not be completed until mid-next year, the hard drives have already began recording, beginning with the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow in November.

Scientists intend to make the data acquired by the black box available to everyone so that they may make informed decisions. “There are other things we’re experimenting with,” the developers told ABC News, “such as relaying summary stats at longer intervals into space and having [a] “heartbeat” that communicates to on-site visitors that the box is on and actively recording.”