Hobart’s Mona may have given Tasmania the coolest art gallery in the country and now the Apple Isle is set to be home to the world’s first climate ‘black box’.
Called Earth’s Black Box, the 10-metre-by-four-metre-by-three-metre steel monolith is set to be built on a remote outcrop on Tasmania’s west coast, said to be between Strahan and Queenstown.
The box will be filled with a mass of storage drives and have internet connectivity, all powered by solar panels on the structure’s roof. The brains behind it report there will be enough capacity to store data for the next 30 to 50 years.
Once operational, the black box will be downloading data and an algorithm will be gleaning climate-change-related material from the internet. People will also be able to access the data via a digital platform, and the plan is that people will also be able to connect wirelessly with it, if they’re to visit the site.
The idea’s similar to Norway’s Svalbard Global Seed Vault that houses the world’s seeds should global warming – or something equally evil – wipe out the planet’s grain supply.
Tasmania beat out the likes of Malta, Norway and Qatar for the project given its “geopolitical and geological stability”.
More excitingly, the brains behind the idea are some of top adland creatives.
Clems Melbourne, The Glue Society and the University of Tasmania have all combined to get the idea off the ground.
Clems’ ECD Jim Curtis commented: “Obviously it’s really a powerful concept when you say to someone, ‘Earth’s got a black box’. Because they’re like, ‘Why does it need a black box?’ But first and foremost, it’s a tool,” Curtis said.
“The idea is if the Earth does crash as a result of climate change, this indestructible recording device will be there for whoever’s left to learn from that.
“It’s also there to hold leaders to account – to make sure their action or inaction is recorded,” Curtis said.
The box will reportedly be made from 7.5-centimetre-thick steel, cantilevered off granite, according to Jonathan Kneebone, co-founder of artistic collective the Glue Society.
“It’s built to outlive us all,” Kneebone said. “If the worst does happen, just because the power grids go down, this thing will still be there.”
The actual construction of the housing structure will only begin mid 2022, however, the hard drives have already begun recording, beginning with the recent climate conference in Glasgow in November.
