Earth is getting a ‘black box’ to hold humans accountable for climate change

What is the News?

A steel structure is known as “Earth’s Black Box” will soon record rising temperature trends as well as other information related to climate change from a remote Australian island.

What is the Earth Black Box?

Earth Black Box is a steel structure that will record every step humans take towards the civilization to crash. It will basically provide an unbiased account of the events that lead to the demise of the planet, hold accountability for future generations and inspire urgent action.

This project was created as a collaboration between researchers from the University of Tasmania, artists from the Glue Society collective and members of marketing communications company Clemenger BBDO among others.

Location: The box will be constructed in Tasmania, an Australian island state off the south coast. This location was chosen for its geopolitical and geological stability.

This Box is expected to be completed in early 2022.

How will the Earth Black Box work?

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. Batteries will provide backup power storage.

The box will record our actions (or inaction) by searching the internet for keywords relating to climate change from newspapers, social media and peer-reviewed journals. 

It will also collect daily metrics including average oceanic and land temperatures, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and biodiversity loss.

Hence, the idea behind this box is that 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.

Source: This post is based on the article “Earth is getting a ‘black box’ to hold humans accountable for climate change” published in Indian Express on 11th December 2021.