Earth's Black Box. Fair Use, Low Resolution Image to Identify the Subject

Tasmania Building a “Black Box” Recorder for Climate Change

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

The box, a steel and granite monolith, will be filled with hard drives to record everything we say right up until our civilisation falls, so future civilisations can learn from our mistakes.

Earth is getting a black box to record our climate change actions, and it’s already started listening

ABC Science / By environment reporter Nick Kilvert

On a granite-strewn plain, surrounded by gnarled mountains, sits a giant steel box.

Incongruous in the landscape, much like Kubrick’s black monolith of 2001: A Space Odyssey fame, its alien presence suggests it was put there with intent.

And if those that discover it can decipher the messages it contains, they could get a glimpse of what caused the fall of the civilisation that was there before.

This is Earth’s Black Box.

‘First and foremost, it’s a tool’

When an aeroplane crashes, it’s left to investigators to sift through the wreckage to recover the black box.

It’s hoped the recorded contents can be used to help others avoid the same fate.

And so it is with Earth’s Black Box: a 10-metre-by-4-metre-by-3-metre steel monolith that’s about to be built on a remote outcrop on Tasmania’s west coast.

If that sounds unhinged, it’s worth remembering that we’re currently on track for as much as 2.7C of warming this century.

Ask any climate scientist what happens when warming breaches 2C, and they’ll almost invariably tell you it’s not worth thinking about.

Those who have discovered the black box — now the colour of rust, its solar panels long since dead — have got no frame of reference for what they find inside or how to decipher it.

So now what?

Gaining access to the box’s interior through its three-inch-thick steel casing will already require some ingenuity.

The developers presume whoever is capable of that will also be able to interpret basic symbols.

“Like the Rosetta Stone, we would look to use multiple formats of encoding,” they said.

Read more: https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2021-12-06/climate-change-earth-black-box-recorder/100621778

Tasmania, despite its remote location, is an interesting place. Tasmania has an abundance of fine wine and food, an extraordinarily delicious native honey, tribes of radical environmentalists who rarely leave their campsites deep in the woods, and a really potent variety of hallucinogenic mushrooms which only grow in Tasmania.

And now Tasmania is going to have a black box to record the fall of our civilisation from climate change.

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Alasdair Fairbairn
December 5, 2021 2:09 pm

No Comment 🤯😱

Scissor
Reply to  Alasdair Fairbairn
December 5, 2021 3:44 pm

I find science fiction to be more believable.

Bryan A
Reply to  Scissor
December 5, 2021 5:42 pm

Something tells me that the “Black Box” will only “Record” exactly toy what THEY want it to record. Any “Inconvenient” information will be PreDacted so they don’t beclown themselves…Oops, Too Late

Sara
Reply to  Scissor
December 6, 2021 5:51 am

Ditto.

MarkW
Reply to  Scissor
December 6, 2021 10:25 am

I don’t remember who said it:

Of course truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.

ResourceGuy
Reply to  Alasdair Fairbairn
December 6, 2021 1:36 pm

Is it hardened against intense radiation and radioactive dust?

Coeur de Lion
December 5, 2021 2:11 pm

If I touch it, will it emit a sharp PLONG and make me wise?

Scissor
Reply to  Eric Worrall
December 5, 2021 4:12 pm

If I ever make it to Tasmania, should I wish to avoid these hallucinogenic mushrooms, where do they grow and how many would I want to avoid eating?

Carlo, Monte
Reply to  Eric Worrall
December 5, 2021 6:15 pm

Lots of global warming here today (Colo.), front came through and the temperature has dropped from 63F at noon down to 26 so far at 7pm. Forecast low is 19F.

Scissor
Reply to  Carlo, Monte
December 5, 2021 7:50 pm

I kept waiting for the wind to die down for a nice bike ride this afternoon and when I finally went outside it was freezing cold. The forecast calls for 16F by morning.

Dudley Horscroft
Reply to  Carlo, Monte
December 5, 2021 8:07 pm

We had even more global warming in Tweed on Saturday. While I was on pre-poll duty at a local school the advertising banner on the opposite school recorded temperatures rising to 42 Celsius. It was very comfortable sitting in the shade, feeling like 28 Celsius. Came to conclusion that the thermometer on the opposite school was laying flat on concrete in the direct sun! Still we all enjoyed ourselves.

Carlo, Monte
Reply to  Dudley Horscroft
December 5, 2021 8:36 pm

Gotta go for those BIG numbers!

that guy
Reply to  Carlo, Monte
December 6, 2021 9:09 am

We’ve got “global warming” here in Hawaii as well, tons of rain, colder than normal temps, and blizzards on top of the Big Island.

Sara
Reply to  Eric Worrall
December 6, 2021 5:54 am

I hear Tasmania is a great place to pick up 4-leggers called Tasmanian Devils as Household Guard Critters. Not sure if they like pepperoni pizza, however.

Brent Qually
Reply to  Scissor
December 5, 2021 6:41 pm

Too good!

Reply to  Scissor
December 5, 2021 7:06 pm

Asking for a friend?

J.R.
December 5, 2021 2:18 pm

Wait a minute. They’re expecting the current civilization to collapse, but a future civilization to find the box and open it. Apparently, then, civilization will revive. So what’s all the fuss about?

Rich Davis
Reply to  J.R.
December 5, 2021 3:09 pm

Oh no, it’s for extraterrestrial visitors in the far distant future. Now of course the disk drives probably will be unreadable within twenty years, but never mind! This is a political art exhibit, not really intended to be practical. You sip wine and eat cheese while gazing at it and clucking about how the deniers are destroying the planet.

Bananabender56
Reply to  Rich Davis
December 5, 2021 4:03 pm

Those extraterrestrials have already arrived and are living in Tasmania

Reply to  Rich Davis
December 5, 2021 4:16 pm

“Oh no, it’s for extraterrestrial visitors in the far distant future.”
They are probably already here.

menace
Reply to  Rich Davis
December 5, 2021 11:18 pm

oops someone set the hard drives up for encryption

Clyde Spencer
Reply to  menace
December 6, 2021 11:18 am

And if those that discover it can decipher the messages it contains, …

A very big “IF”!

Reply to  Clyde Spencer
December 6, 2021 1:24 pm

G’Day Clyde,

“… can decipher the messages …”

As long as they have the latest updates for Windows 53 they should be in great shape.

Clyde Spencer
Reply to  Tombstone Gabby
December 6, 2021 9:03 pm

I have three old computers and a couple of laptops. I also have media and old files dating back to about 1991 that none of them will read. Not to mention the older Atari and Amiga files from when I was doing a lot of BASIC programming.

Reply to  Clyde Spencer
December 6, 2021 9:35 pm

Thanks for the memories Clyde. The good old days. Atari 800XL in the late ’80’s. My boss lady at the time had a TRS 80. We both liked watching defrag’ing. By ’91, a 286 ‘clone’ and discover the differences between various BASIC’s. Sure do miss share ware.

Was at a friend’s house in ’95, “You can play on it”. DOS. Noticed a Directory without a name. (Alt 255) I’d found where their son (a university student) hid ‘stuff’ from his parents. He didn’t think a 50+ year old would know things like that.

Right now, a laptop – W 8.1. The next – a desktop with Ubuntu or similar – the heck with Microsoft.

noaaprogrammer
Reply to  Tombstone Gabby
December 6, 2021 10:08 pm

I have a bunch of paper tape, punched cards, and magnetic reels from the 1960s when I started programming using FORTRAN II. I wonder if future aliens would prefer starting their deciphering with these earlier computer storage media?

Reply to  noaaprogrammer
December 7, 2021 3:11 pm

Let’s see, I seem to remember “Do Not Fold, Spindle or Mutilate”.

And yet cards just might be a better way of communicating to an alien. A series of repeated symbols in columns, with holes punched in various locations – even a clipped corner for alignment. A lot easier to start with than a tape or disk with an unknown method of recording.

In ’62 I missed out on a job with Drug Houses of Australia (pharmaceutical wholesalers) in Brisbane. Their operator/programmer needed an assistant. The chap explained later, “You’re young and single.” They had 50 young girls plucking cards. They transferred a married man from their Sydney office.

(I was a sales rep for a printing company at the time, and DHA was a very good customer. I was in there every month or so. We did talk about electronics – my dad was a radio amateur, VK4ZT. The computer was – yep – vacuum tubes.)

Tom Abbott
Reply to  Rich Davis
December 6, 2021 4:30 am

“This is a political art exhibit, not really intended to be practical.”

Yes, it’s all about trying to send a message to the rest of us.

Roger
Reply to  Tom Abbott
December 6, 2021 11:57 am

No mention of the government art grant money

Coach Springer
Reply to  Rich Davis
December 6, 2021 5:14 am

Maybe it’s Artificial Intelligence Mechas. (See Global Warming movie of same name.)

MarkW
Reply to  J.R.
December 5, 2021 6:42 pm

I’m still trying to figure out how temperatures that are still cooler than what the earth enjoyed during the Medieval Warm Period, is supposed to bring civilization to an end.

Barry James
Reply to  MarkW
December 5, 2021 9:51 pm

The great prophets, Hansen, Gore and Mann said it would. So there!!

Tom Abbott
Reply to  Barry James
December 6, 2021 4:32 am

That must be the climate “scientists” the author was referring to who would freak out if the temperatures rose by 2C.

Clyde Spencer
Reply to  Barry James
December 6, 2021 11:20 am

The Holy Trifecta.

Reply to  MarkW
December 6, 2021 12:21 am

I posted this link on another thread here but it is also relevant to this one.

“King David was very keen on his pears, apparently. He gave the land in the valley to monks, who would grow him pears, apples and plums,

“He also wanted figs, which did grow here but we know the weather was different then.”

https://www.scotsman.com/whats-on/arts-and-entertainment/how-clyde-valley-was-once-fruit-basket-scotland-613747

Bumbum
Reply to  MarkW
December 6, 2021 5:19 am

Well. You said it yourself – global cooling.

Reply to  J.R.
December 5, 2021 6:51 pm

comment image

John
Reply to  J.R.
December 5, 2021 9:04 pm

https://ourfiniteworld.com

Worth a read don’t see any people able to open a 3″ thick box without oxy acetalyene torches and the use of hydrocarbons
As hard discs have a defined life this will be worthless in any more than 50 years

once again Tasmanians are proving the comment about them been inbred

another ian
Reply to  John
December 5, 2021 10:59 pm

A shaped charge? Might not agree with the hard discs though

And what powers the start-up and run sequence for those hard discs etc?

gary
Reply to  another ian
December 6, 2021 12:15 am

Unicorn farts…

another ian
Reply to  gary
December 6, 2021 12:23 am

But do they have a half life?

jono1066
Reply to  another ian
December 6, 2021 5:11 am

just knock it over and get in from underneath ?
simples

Reply to  John
December 6, 2021 3:47 am

You mean they didn’t think to put a door on it?

How do these people survive?

Rory Forbes
December 5, 2021 2:20 pm

Is clinical stupidity a thing now? Do these people expect to be taken seriously?

Abolition Man
Reply to  Rory Forbes
December 5, 2021 4:43 pm

Rory,
Look into mass formation; the psychological phenomena responsible for mass hypnosis and psychoses like the old witch trials or the totalitarian regimes of the 20th Century!
It seems to clearly explain much of the insanity occurring in our “modern” societies, like the cults of Climastrology or ForeverCovid!

Rory Forbes
Reply to  Abolition Man
December 5, 2021 5:53 pm

Bloody scary prospect … and it seems to be growing worse. Hmm … if I didn’t know better I might guess we’re being tested. Around here we’ve got biblical level floods. What’s next … boils, frogs? What gets me are the number of people who don’t see the theater in all this.

Abolition Man
Reply to  Rory Forbes
December 5, 2021 5:59 pm

Rory,
Yeah, I know! It’s sad, but the partial lobotomy and humorectomy seem to mandatory surgeries for most Progressives now! Reversibility is dubious!

Rory Forbes
Reply to  Abolition Man
December 5, 2021 9:29 pm

Reversibility is dubious!

Yeah … that’s what it looks like alright.

MarkW
Reply to  Rory Forbes
December 5, 2021 6:44 pm

They take each other seriously. They don’t care what the little people think of them.

Kat
Reply to  MarkW
December 5, 2021 8:38 pm

They all sit about pulling themselves. They meet the criteria to be scheduled.

Rory Forbes
Reply to  MarkW
December 5, 2021 9:37 pm

Trouble is, Mark, we didn’t take them seriously soon enough until they got into everything. I must poke around under my bed every night with a sharp stick.*

  • now I’ve got to decide on my pronouns before year’s end …
Reply to  Rory Forbes
December 6, 2021 5:24 am

Here are my preferred interrogative pronouns: whence / what / whither. This is how I sign all of my work emails now.

At first, I was going to program a random word generator, but my boss pointed out that the words are supposed to be pronouns. I settled on these because they express the universal existential angst of people. They are also the informal title of Paul Gauguin’s self-titled last artwork before he attempted suicide.

Rory Forbes
Reply to  Pflashgordon
December 6, 2021 9:50 am

Good to see people getting into the true spirit of this absurdity.

MarkW
Reply to  Rory Forbes
December 6, 2021 10:29 am

I’m going to have mine randomly assigned on a daily basis. Just to keep things interesting.

Rory Forbes
Reply to  MarkW
December 6, 2021 11:05 am

You’ve got a random pronoun generator? How admirably wokish.

LdB
Reply to  Rory Forbes
December 7, 2021 4:28 am

It sounded like such a good idea when the students were on a bender at the local pub .

Zig Zag Wanderer
December 5, 2021 2:21 pm

And if those that discover it can decipher the messages it contains, they could get a glimpse of what caused the fall of the civilisation that was there before.

Hopefully they’ll be able to read between the lines and determine the ecoloon socialist insanity that caused civilization’s downfall and avoid the same mistakes

Scissor
Reply to  Zig Zag Wanderer
December 5, 2021 3:57 pm

Yeah, this all involves a lot of assumptions and cognitive dissonance.

Anyway, the megalithic civilizations took many secrets with them. I’d like to know how not only did ancient peoples of Egypt make precisely shaped granite boxes weighing tens of tons but also how did they moved them up and down through narrow tunnels.

Reply to  Scissor
December 5, 2021 4:19 pm

They put the boxes in there while the pyramids were being built so no need to move them through tunnels.

Jon Frodsham
Reply to  Joseph Zorzin
December 5, 2021 5:06 pm

he is talking about : The labyrinth of tunnels is called the Sarapeum of Saqqara in Egypt. Look it up, what he says is correct, no one knows how they were made, seems a distant civilisation made them, the Egyptians only found them and claimed them as their own. They probably date well before the Younger Dryas. A civilisation wiped out by a comet strike. And no I’m not a conspiracy theorist, just a realist who has done the research over the last 30 years.

Scissor
Reply to  Jon Frodsham
December 5, 2021 8:16 pm

Yeah, that’s what I was referring to, though I didn’t know the detail that you mention.

I’ve not been to Egypt but I’ve seen and marveled at many of the granite artifacts on display at the British Museum. The ancients had a level of stone-working skill that is not even easy to achieve today.

Clyde Spencer
Reply to  Scissor
December 6, 2021 11:31 am

Maybe that is why it is called the “Stone Age.”

Scissor
Reply to  Joseph Zorzin
December 5, 2021 5:29 pm

That’s true for pyramids, but some are found in tunnels that were carved out of bedrock.

Reply to  Scissor
December 5, 2021 6:00 pm

How about the recently built Coral Castle.

Scissor
Reply to  AndyHce
December 5, 2021 8:17 pm

Yes, another interesting mystery.

Zig Zag Wanderer
December 5, 2021 2:24 pm

And now Tasmania is going to have a black box to record the fall of our civilisation from climate change

Policies. From Climate Change ™ policies.

Tom Abbott
Reply to  Zig Zag Wanderer
December 6, 2021 4:41 am

Exactly. This will teach the aliens that they need to reign in bureaucracy lest they be destroyed by it.

Clyde Spencer
Reply to  Zig Zag Wanderer
December 6, 2021 11:39 am

Until civilization falls, the story won’t be complete. Once the event takes place, how are the archivists going to move their hard drives to the remote locality without the infrastructure to move heavy loads. It might make a good movie, similar to Mad Max, with the trials and tribulations of the ‘priests’ trying to get to the monolith with their hard drives, carrying the Last Acetylene Torch to seal the monolith, before they drink poison hemlock (or overdose on Tasmanian Magic Mushrooms).

DrVague
December 5, 2021 2:34 pm

Please don’t take this ridiculous article as an indication we are all eco-loons down here, many of us are skeptical and ardent followers of WUWT. This is an embarassment to our beautiful state.

DrVague
Reply to  Eric Worrall
December 5, 2021 2:57 pm

Wasn’t a crack at you Eric, I meant the ABC article. Don’t know what the hell the ABC are playing at these days.

Reply to  DrVague
December 5, 2021 4:20 pm

Meant to be humorous?

DrVague
Reply to  Joseph Zorzin
December 5, 2021 4:51 pm

I wish that was the case, if it was then I missed it.

John
Reply to  DrVague
December 5, 2021 9:08 pm

they are a leftist communistic cult that is full of FOS reporters

Abolition Man
Reply to  DrVague
December 5, 2021 4:49 pm

DrVague,
My condolences!
I think that I have a pretty good understanding of how you feel, since up until about ten years ago I was a proud, fifth-generation Calizuelan! Now I am reluctant to return to the Land of Fruits and Nuts, because of the proliferation of fruits and nuts!!

Thomas Gasloli
Reply to  DrVague
December 5, 2021 4:55 pm

Everyone doesn’t need to be an eco-loon. There just needs to be a enough to give the elections to eco-loon politicians. Like the US, in Australia the loons seem to be winning.

Dudley Horscroft
Reply to  Thomas Gasloli
December 5, 2021 8:17 pm

Not all though. Just had first results from the voting for Tweed Shire on Saturday. Liberal Group won more votes than the ALP and Greens combined!

Remember, in Australia the Liberals are (mostly) either conservative or radical as per Milton Friedmann/Fredrich Hayek progressives not the socialists that have usurped the name in the USA. Admittedly we do have a few nutters as well!

John
Reply to  Thomas Gasloli
December 5, 2021 9:11 pm

thats because the politically correct systems allow econuts to control the outcome with one or two members holding the swing vote
Get rid of proportional representation – if you are only voted in because your econut party got 2% of the vote you should not be there

Ron Long
Reply to  DrVague
December 5, 2021 5:10 pm

Yea, what about the Tasmanian Devil?

DrVague
Reply to  Ron Long
December 5, 2021 6:08 pm

Don’t see many around now sadly, used to have them come up to our back deck looking for lunch. Endangered species like us skeptics.

aussiecol
Reply to  DrVague
December 5, 2021 5:29 pm

Yes, I have to admit, I am a Tasmanian, and ardent skeptic unlike the alarmist ABC, which spouts out all sorts of man made climate change rubbish like this.
The west coast is a wild place with a very high rainfall and abundant cool temperate rainforests. Unlike the east coast where I live which is usually dry and as Eric said, award winning vineyards abound.

Jeff Alberts
Reply to  DrVague
December 5, 2021 6:36 pm

Sorry, but you sound… vague.

DrVague
Reply to  Jeff Alberts
December 5, 2021 8:02 pm

Have to be vague lest my employer sees how I really feel, sad but true

J.R.
December 5, 2021 2:37 pm

Ask any climate scientist what happens when warming breaches 2C, and they’ll almost invariably tell you it’s not worth thinking about.”

He’ll tell you a bunch of made-up alarmist baloney that’s based on nothing.

Rud Istvan
Reply to  J.R.
December 5, 2021 2:55 pm

‘Not worth thinking about’. True—With observational ECS about 1.7C, cannot happen.
And sea level rise isn’t accelerating. And Arctic summer ice hasn’t disappeared. And the modeled tropical troposphere hot spot does not exist. And children still know snow… All stuff we were told to think about.

Reply to  Rud Istvan
December 5, 2021 3:19 pm

Plus, it’s been much warmer than that many times before, for thousands of years in a row, and the planet survived just fine. The ice survived as well, as it’s still here to tells us.

Philip
Reply to  J.R.
December 5, 2021 5:42 pm

If no one tells them that the climate has warmed 2C, they won’t know or care. It’s been both warmer and cooler before now and will be at some point in the future.

Dave Fair
December 5, 2021 2:40 pm

Ask any climate scientist what happens when warming breaches 2C, and they’ll almost invariably tell you it’s not worth thinking about.” Warming of 2 C above the Little Ice Age temperatures will further enhance the benefits of a slight warming, minor increase in rainfall and increased greening of atmospheric CO2 enrichment. That’s what they should say if they are climate scientists. Since the government only funds CliSciFi practitioners, they will say something else.

Alexy Scherbakoff
December 5, 2021 2:40 pm

In some far distant future someone will get a government grant to study the data.

Dave Fair
Reply to  Alexy Scherbakoff
December 5, 2021 2:43 pm

No, people will have learned by then not to trust government corruption of science.

Reply to  Dave Fair
December 5, 2021 6:05 pm

fat chance! Most people believe whomever speaks the loudest.

Harkle Pharkle
Reply to  AndyHce
December 5, 2021 10:34 pm

The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the greatest liars; the men they detest the most are those who try to tell them the truth.

— H. L. Menken

Richard Page
Reply to  Alexy Scherbakoff
December 5, 2021 2:52 pm

In some far distant future someone will get a government grant to haul it away and destroy the whole embarrassing monolith without a trace left.

J.R.
Reply to  Alexy Scherbakoff
December 5, 2021 3:07 pm

If civilization falls to the level of Mad Max, the box will likely be broken open and the contents destroyed. All that work for nothing!

Jeff Alberts
Reply to  Alexy Scherbakoff
December 5, 2021 6:41 pm

They’ll determine that for no apparent reason, this civilization stopped using cheap, abundant energy, and even ignored an even more abundant energy source (nuclear), in favor of expensive, inefficient, intermittent, and fragile forms.

They will conclude: Stupid is as Stupid does.

Harkle Pharkle
Reply to  Jeff Alberts
December 5, 2021 10:36 pm

Giant fiberglass pinwheels dotting the landscape like the giant statues of Eater Island

Jay Willis
Reply to  Jeff Alberts
December 6, 2021 2:05 am

Hold on. They’ll note the 3 inch thick steel and conclude that these ancient people had a robust coal industry for smelting of steel. By the time they have advanced enough to find the steel they’ll probably melt it down and float the contents of the original box off the top of the molten product.

MICHAEL D ZORN
December 5, 2021 2:44 pm

“… to record everything we say…” That’s a little hard to grasp …..unless they know things we don’t….


Richard Page
Reply to  MICHAEL D ZORN
December 5, 2021 2:59 pm

Oh, no.
It won’t be “…to record everything we say…” it will be “…to record everything we want history to remember us for. We will be remembered as heroes, visionaries and valiant crusaders…”
These people don’t want to solve a problem or build a better future, they just want to have approval and for the world to acknowledge that they were right all along. It’s truly pathetic the lengths they’ll go to.

Reply to  Richard Page
December 5, 2021 4:22 pm

it should record all the comments on this blog site to exhibit the highest form of wit in the 21st century

Rich Davis
Reply to  MICHAEL D ZORN
December 5, 2021 2:59 pm

Well they might have to conserve space, so they will probably just record whatever St Grrrrrrrreta puts on YouTube.

Scissor
Reply to  Rich Davis
December 5, 2021 4:01 pm

Death Metal by Greta would make a good intro.

Abolition Man
Reply to  Scissor
December 5, 2021 4:20 pm

Thank you, Scissor!
That has to be in the pantheon of Death Metal! I wonder if the hallucigenic mushrooms are a good side dish with her meaty arguments!

Scissor
Reply to  Abolition Man
December 5, 2021 5:27 pm

I wonder.

John
Reply to  Abolition Man
December 6, 2021 10:28 pm

what arguments

I hate
I hate
I hate

Reply to  Scissor
December 5, 2021 4:36 pm

AAAAAAAAha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Made my day!!
The frantic solo at 1:06 really gets the how dare you for causing the climate emergency catastrophe message across…..

December 5, 2021 2:49 pm

One can cite German philosopher Georg Hegel: ““The only thing that we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.” Humanity will make the same mistakes over and over again, black box or not …
Maybe on Tasmania one could think of the Rolling Stones: “Sympathy for the Devil”

Rory Forbes
Reply to  Eric Vieira
December 5, 2021 3:07 pm

I’ve been hearing all my life how we “learn from our mistake”, as though it was some great wisdom. If you walk out in front of a bus and get crushed, what have you learned? We learn from success, not mistakes. Of course mistakes are inevitable whenever learning takes place, but it isn’t the mistakes that are important.

Reply to  Rory Forbes
December 5, 2021 4:04 pm

“If you walk out in front of a bus and get crushed, what have you learned?”

Nothing … but then you are the teacher …

Most (but not all) the observers will work out it’s easier to get on a stationary bus through the hole in the side, than than to make a new hole in the front with your head.

Always easier to learn from other peoples mistakes !

Rory Forbes
Reply to  saveenergy
December 5, 2021 4:20 pm

Always easier to learn from other peoples mistakes !

Upon seeing someone fail, the correct way isn’t always obvious. I guess I’m not all that bright. I’d much rather watch their successes and learn from that.

Jeff Alberts
Reply to  Rory Forbes
December 5, 2021 6:45 pm

But surely they had failures they learned from. They weren’t instantly successful.

Rory Forbes
Reply to  Jeff Alberts
December 5, 2021 9:52 pm

That’s true. I’ve been very fortunate, I suppose. There’s a lot to be said for being in the right place at the right time.

Scissor
Reply to  Rory Forbes
December 5, 2021 4:07 pm

Nevertheless, pain is often effective in preventing one from repeating the same mistake.

In my experience, it’s more effective concerning cacti than alcoholic beverages.

Rory Forbes
Reply to  Scissor
December 5, 2021 4:21 pm

Ouch …

Reply to  Scissor
December 6, 2021 12:44 am

When younger and confronted with failure of an enterprise my children usually said “well that was a waste of time”. To which I’d say “Not if you learnt not to try it again, in which case it was a valuable use of time”

Reply to  Rory Forbes
December 5, 2021 4:26 pm

This guy learned that he needed a drink after being hit by a bus. Luckily, he didn’t have far to go. That’s a bar he walks into..

Rory Forbes
Reply to  Right-Handed Shark
December 5, 2021 5:45 pm

But we’re not always so lucky there’s a bar available when we need it.

Bryan A
Reply to  Right-Handed Shark
December 5, 2021 5:54 pm

The first guy on the scene after the incident must be a barrister

Jeff Alberts
Reply to  Rory Forbes
December 5, 2021 6:44 pm

If you walk out in front of a bus and get crushed, what have you learned?”

You took an extreme form of mistake. I learn from my mistakes all the time. So far, I haven’t been stupid enough to die from one.

Rory Forbes
Reply to  Jeff Alberts
December 5, 2021 9:47 pm

So far, I haven’t been stupid enough to die from one.

Well … that’s where the skill comes in. Perhaps I’m looking at this wrong. I suppose if you survive, it’s a kind of success and you learn not to shave it so closely next time.

Clyde Spencer
Reply to  Rory Forbes
December 6, 2021 11:49 am

Skill — or luck! I’d say that most of the close calls I’ve survived in my life have been due to the intervention of Sherlock Holmes smarter brother — Shear Luck.

Rory Forbes
Reply to  Clyde Spencer
December 6, 2021 12:15 pm

Chuckle … 🙂

Gregory Woods
Reply to  Eric Vieira
December 5, 2021 3:43 pm

My point of view is that history is nothing but one darn thing after another…..

Tom Abbott
Reply to  Gregory Woods
December 6, 2021 4:54 am

It’s always something.

J.R.
December 5, 2021 2:54 pm

Who is funding this? The article says it’s “completely non-commercial” and that it’s being worked on by researchers at the University of Tasmania, “among others.” Who is going to build it? Who owns the land? This will require endless funding to maintain it. Are the taxpayers footing the bill? Can they put a stop to it?

tomo
Reply to  J.R.
December 5, 2021 3:19 pm

A billionaire ?

-there’s a few candidates – it’d be shame if they didn’tget just credit for their philanthropy.

I suspect though that you’re on the right track with some goon with his/her hands in the public purse who’s spaffing it on this nutery.

Jeff Alberts
Reply to  tomo
December 5, 2021 6:47 pm

I hope they put in an Australian to English translation guide.

Tom Abbott
Reply to  J.R.
December 6, 2021 4:56 am

“Are the taxpayers footing the bill?”

I would bet money on it. Especially if it is originating at the University of Tasmania.

This is what climate change hysteria leads to.

Chrisgeo
December 5, 2021 2:55 pm

It’s full of Jawas.

sandcrawler.PNG
Abolition Man
Reply to  Chrisgeo
December 5, 2021 4:22 pm

“These are not the data you are looking for!”

cirby
December 5, 2021 2:55 pm

They’re using hard drives for long term storage.

Which means that their data storage will be dead and mostly unusable within ten to twenty years. That’s if the computer running the thing is still working. SSDs will extend that time, but will lose their data if the power goes off for too long.

The batteries will probably be useless in a shorter time without someone maintaining and replacing them.

The solar cells will be dead in two or three decades without similar maintenance.

There’s no such thing as “geologically stable” when you perch an extremely heavy steel box on top of a hill, even if that hill is mostly a granite outcrop.

Then, of course, they talk about expanding the storage… but if they make it so they can get into the box to add storage, then it’s not that well sealed, is it?

Raven
Reply to  cirby
December 5, 2021 3:11 pm

They could have arranged for cloud storage.
That’d be environmentally friendly . . .

Zig Zag Wanderer
Reply to  Raven
December 5, 2021 4:20 pm

They could have arranged for cloud storage.

Climate models don’t do clouds

Jon Frodsham
Reply to  Zig Zag Wanderer
December 5, 2021 5:13 pm

Ha ha ha ha, well said.

Tom Abbott
Reply to  Zig Zag Wanderer
December 6, 2021 5:03 am

Yes, that was funny. Zig Zag, I know a few late-night “comedians” who need your talents.

Unfortunately, they are alarmists, so they might not get your jokes. But I got it! 🙂

Harkle Pharkle
Reply to  Raven
December 5, 2021 10:43 pm

they can’t use the cloud, the clouds raise the albedo, block / reflect solar radiation, cool things, prevent the whole problem. They won’t need their rusty keepsake box then.

Tom Abbott
Reply to  Harkle Pharkle
December 6, 2021 5:09 am

There it is in a nutshell.

We love negative feedback. It keeps us in the ballgame.

yirgach
Reply to  cirby
December 5, 2021 3:35 pm

Of course there is the Bathtub curve, which is leaking:
comment image

Tom Abbott
Reply to  cirby
December 6, 2021 5:00 am

They ought to inscribe all this on copper sheets. Those will last a lot longer than a harddrive.

December 5, 2021 2:56 pm

It would have been more interesting to know how, where and from whom.

I liked this double entendre:

“Ask any climate scientist what happens when warming breaches 2C, and they’ll almost invariably tell you it’s not worth thinking about.”

Indeed!

Forrest Gardener
Reply to  Gary Pearse
December 5, 2021 4:20 pm

Indeed, indeed. And focus will gently and imperceptibly shift to the next tipping point because the world is really going to cop it then. Manbearpig will be really angry. You better believe us because this time we’re super cereal.

Neville
December 5, 2021 2:57 pm

But then again we have Dr Rosling’s 120,000 HUMAN data points over the last 200 years to compare with these religious fanatic’s WISHFUL thinking.
GOSH 200 years of actual DATA compared to their religious APOCALYPTIC cult. What could possibly go wrong?

December 5, 2021 2:57 pm

“If that sounds unhinged, it’s worth remembering that we’re currently on track for as much as 2.7C of warming this century.” That comment is even more unhinged.
“Kubrick’s black monolith of 2001”? Don’t think so. That was supposed to be the work of a superior intelligence. This thing is more like the pods in “Idiocracy”. Sooner or later some superior intelligence will recycle it, or a least react to it as a piece of “challenging” avant garde art like that thing by Serrano.

Forrest Gardener
Reply to  Martin Clark
December 5, 2021 4:21 pm

A cargo cult version of the black monolith. Perhaps containing a coherent explanation of the end of the film.

tomo
December 5, 2021 2:58 pm

Jonathan Kneebone, co-founder of artistic collective the Glue Society

ahhh… I was wondering who dreamed this up …

The superglue crowd – will the box be covered with skeletons stuck to it?

Rud Istvan
December 5, 2021 3:00 pm

The warmunists beclown themselves yet again. Every time I think their ridiculae cannot be topped, it is.

Abolition Man
Reply to  Rud Istvan
December 5, 2021 4:25 pm

Rud,
Remember that Einstein believed human stupidity to be infinite; this black box may be just the next step on the devolution of humanity back to the lowly amoeba!

ChrisB
December 5, 2021 3:07 pm

One thing is for sure- they will not be powering this with a fusion plant to last for eternity.

We will be all dead within 30 years due to hot air.

gbaikie
December 5, 2021 3:14 pm

“If that sounds unhinged, it’s worth remembering that we’re currently on track for as much as 2.7C of warming this century.”

5 C warming, doesn’t get us out of our ice age.
It might change our perception that we no longer in the coldest time in the 34 million year long Ice Age.
Though this change in our perception could be mistaken.
To know we are as warm as warmest time just within the Holocene, the Sahara Desert must have large rivers and lakes.
” around 10,500 years ago, a sudden burst of monsoon rains over the vast desert transformed the region into habitable land.
This opened the door for humans to move into the area, as evidenced by the researcher’s 500 new radiocarbon dates of human and animal remains from more than 150 excavation sites.
“The climate change at [10,500 years ago] which turned most of the [3.8 million square mile] large Sahara into a savannah-type environment happened within a few hundred years only, certainly within less than 500 years,” said study team member Stefan Kroepelin of the University of Cologne in Germany.”
Sahara Desert Was Once Lush and Populated | Live Science

That earth has about 1/3 of total land area as deserts, indicates how cold Earth is.
The ocean having average temperature of about 3.5 C, and global surface temperature
of about 15 C, also tells you how cold Earth is.
And 15 C is a cold air temperature.
{even for ice monkeys}

Reply to  gbaikie
December 5, 2021 3:30 pm

Yes, the 3.5C average of the oceans is problematic for those trying to claim that there’s hidden heat in the oceans. In fact, only the top 100 or so meters participates in the planets thermal mass and is why the planet responds to change much more quickly than they need to support the idea of warming not yet manifested from current emissions. Otherwise, we would hardly notice any difference between the seasons.

If anything, the ocean is a source of cold, i.e. a sink of heat with the capacity to sink enough surface heat to send the surface temperature plummeting into the low single digits C. It’s a good thing water at a sufficient thickness is an insulator that forms the thermocline insulating the deep ocean cold from warm surface waters. Even at the equator, the deep oceans is less than 4C.

gbaikie
Reply to  co2isnotevil
December 5, 2021 4:50 pm

Well about 40% of world is tropics/tropical ocean. Tropics have large slabs of warmer surface waters. The tropical ocean heats the entire world. The tropical ocean is roughly constant regardless of any “global climate change”.
Or there no kind runaway effect of the tropical ocean- it has known mechanisms of governing its temperature. Or Tropical Ocean gets the most sunlight [more than 1/2 of all sunlight reaching Earth’s surface AND has the most amount of greenhouse gases {water vapor being the strongest greenhouse effect and roughly Tropical Ocean is about 4% and rest world average less than 1% or sometimes rounded to 0%, Or in terms ppm 40,000 ppm of water vapor and rest of world somewhere around 3000 ppm}],
But point is that 60% of the remaining ocean doesn’t have constant large slabs of warm water. And because of this the average temperature of entire ocean being 3.5 matters.
Or doesn’t matter in regard to the tropical ocean.
Or would be basically no effect upon the tropical ocean, if ocean was 10 C warmer or 1 C colder {or about 13.5 or 2.5 C average temperature of the entire ocean]- but an enormous effect upon 60% of the entire world. 10 C ocean is not an icehouse global climate {or can’t be in an Ice Age}. And it’s thought Earth oceans have been warmer than 15 C- but much longer than 35 million years ago. Though that long ago, one could say Earth was geologically, a different Earth – due to the plate tectonic activity.

Reply to  gbaikie
December 7, 2021 4:10 pm

Ocean temperatures top out at about 300K, or else Hurricanes form and shed any excess heat, but they do not heat the planet, the Sun heats the planet. It’s an important semantic difference, just like GHG’s don’t heat the planet, they simply moderate cooling.

The solar energy stored in the oceans moderates temperature swings. You could even say they cool the planet as tropical ocean surface temperatures are cooler than they would be if it was land, although the opposite can be true for polar oceans.

gbaikie
Reply to  co2isnotevil
December 8, 2021 12:41 am

Not hurricanes:
“Tropical Convective Clouds Deep convective cloud systems in the tropics provide the primary mechanism whereby solar heating of the ocean is moved upward into the free troposphere where it can be transported poleward and eventually emitted to space.”
Tropical Convective Clouds (washington.edu)

Reply to  co2isnotevil
December 5, 2021 5:21 pm

Do Flanders and Swann, in their song on the First and Second Law of Thermodynamics, not make a mockery of climate alarmism?

Raven
December 5, 2021 3:14 pm

Nah . . ain’t never gonna happen.

Mad Max is going to cut that steel up, weld it to the front of a truck, drive across the continent to live happily ever after with Tina Turner.

Abolition Man
Reply to  Raven
December 5, 2021 4:33 pm

Raven,
While Mad Max might indeed find the Black Box useful for producing more weapons, I doubt that he wants to make Tina Mrs. Rockatansky; especially now that she is 82!
If he wanted to live happily ever after, he would be wise to choose someone like Lalela Mswame of South Africa; the newly crowned Miss Universe!

steve
December 5, 2021 3:16 pm

I’m absolutely positive the world has gone mad….. why is half the planet so damned stupid????

ChrisB
Reply to  steve
December 5, 2021 3:30 pm

99%, FIFY

Forrest Gardener
Reply to  steve
December 5, 2021 4:24 pm

Just think of the average person and remember that roughly 50% are more stupid than average. And they tend to breed faster too because they can’t figure out what is causing the babies to appear.

Clyde Spencer
Reply to  Forrest Gardener
December 6, 2021 12:05 pm

When you consider the affects of alcohol abuse, recreational drugs, and traumatic brains injuries from combat and vehicular accidents, more than half of the adult population have IQs less than 100.

Tom Abbott
Reply to  steve
December 6, 2021 6:24 am

“why is half the planet so damned stupid????”

The Media they listen to is telling them stupid things, and the gullible of the world buy it.

If the Media told them the truth, the people who listen to them might not be so stupid.

Many people are easily influenced. It’s more of a social thing than an intellectual thing.

Barry James
December 5, 2021 3:30 pm

This is obviously an academic’s hare brained scheme. No engineer would even entertain it, not even for fun. There is no consideration for the fact that such an idea can’t possibly work using even present day technology let alone 20th century hard drives. Clark and Kubrick would be laughing out loud if they still could at this pathetic plagiarism of their moon based monolith. It is just one more Greenie thought bubble from the home of Green idiocy. They’ll say anything to keep people’s attention on their “impending” climate apocalypse.

Reply to  Barry James
December 5, 2021 6:19 pm

They really should have chosen stone tablets.

Clyde Spencer
Reply to  AndyHce
December 6, 2021 12:13 pm

Yes, as gravestones aptly demonstrate, properly chosen rock can withstand the elements for hundreds of years, and as demonstrated by the pyramids, protected from the elements, rocks can survive for thousands of years with negligible degradation.

With modern slabbing and polishing machines, and laser etching, stone tablets can be produced quickly and relatively cheaply. These nitwits have demonstrated that they know little about technology or nature. Perhaps that is why they believe in AGW.

Tom Abbott
Reply to  Barry James
December 6, 2021 6:29 am

“Clark and Kubrick would be laughing out loud if they still could at this pathetic plagiarism of their moon based monolith.”

I see where the Chinese lunar rover has spotted a cubed-shaped object on the horizon. The rover is planning on getting closer, for a better view.

Maybe something beat Tasmania to it.

https://www.space.com/china-yutu-2-moon-rover-cube-shaped-object-photos

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