Climatron: Personal Blog of Kyle Vandercamp

Dr Frank Baxter and Richard Carlson in The Unchained Goddess

Monte’s done the world a huge service in resurrecting Frank Capra’s wonderful, surprisingly indepth documentary feature on the nature of climate and atmospheric sciences as they were understood in the 1950s. In many of the fundamental laws, climate science has been rock solid for decades, certainly before this film was made. Capra sought the experience and contribution of America’s leading climatologists in the scripting of the film, and explanations, such as Coriolis, I think are outstanding.

Sure, the style is quaint, and ridiculous sometimes, but the retro (now ironic) humour is sort of sweet, and even amusing. I get this stupid smile on my face.

Don’t be fooled – the science is solid in this piece, you should find an hour and watch it through – you’ll learn a lot.

I was reading Goldfish’s comment about the second-level passwords for HW – it triggered something and I’ve been back through my emails. Goldfish, you said you thought it might be related to human fossils.

Harrison has an impressive knowledge of archaeology, he would drop fact-laden anecdotes all the time. It comes out a bit in Monte’s interview too. Made me think about when Australopithecus sediba was announced back in early April. I emailed Harrison a link. He replied to me with a forwarded message in reply.

DATE: 04/09/10
FROM: Harrison Wyld
TO: Kyle Vandercamp

MESSAGE:

Hi Kyle. Thanks for this! Very exciting – as a boy I would have loved to be Matthew.

H

———————————

DATE: 04/09/10
FROM: Harrison Wyld
TO: Randolph Grant

FW MESSAGE:

Randy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/09/science/09fossil.html. This is wonderful news. I still get so excited when these discoveries occur. Especially like this, when it’s by such a charming young lad. Lovely picture.

I see it’s added to the list already. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hominina_fossils.

Look forward to a visit from you in September.
In haste, Harrison.

Maybe nothing, maybe something…

I was taken by surprise last night. It hadn’t even occurred to me that someone at Bluebird would publically respond to the events of this past week. Silly me.

It would be naive to assume they made this site since last Tuesday, right?

Go Bluebird website

So assuming instead that this has been in the pipeline and was part of a media suite, including the ‘know hope’ video, well I would wager our actions have brought the website deadline right up to yesterday. Pretty slick too. But if I’m right, it goes a little way to supporting my assertion that Bluebird had moved out of Research and Development.

Spend some time in the Why Geoengineering section and you may think twice about what’s going on. Don’t get me wrong, I still think it would be insane to go along with them. But this is very clever propaganda – there’s misinformation, disinformation, convenient truths, it’s all there merged into… a (dangerously) compelling argument.

What do you think?

Dashboard Collective

Ok. We’re exhausted, but more importantly we’re ready to start sharing! Go to http://www.dashboardcollective.net/ and have a look around. Best place to start is in the “What we know so far” section.

The DC’s a new ball game for me, and what Lun3terr3 has built is amazing, but it’s the Bbird files and what they mean – these are the critical things.

We’re in this together. I for one am looking forward to it (and some sleep).

K

Harrison Wyld and Paul Kruger

It’s a Saturday night in Sydney. Have been working near constantly with Lun3terr3 to make the files publically accessible in an organised way, which is so close now. Meantime, this blog might be become more of a diary. Definitely a reflection on the events of the past ten months.

I’ve been back in the country five days and whilst unpacking and reconnecting, found this. I took the picture last year on a long lens. James mentioned Harrison and Paul in a comment recently, so here they are as I remember them: intense and serious. CEO and COO of Bluebird.

So on Wednesday I was contacted by someone called Lun3terr3 (pron. Lune-terr). She said she was interested in helping me decode the intranet files. What she didn’t say was what a weird genius she seems to be. Very contradictory. She’s asked me to post this clip… Well I’m happy to do that.

Bb_int

I sat with her in a dark monitor-strewn room for 14 hours. We speak completely different languages in computer terms, but lo and behold, we made real progress, which we’re verging on ready to share. For now though, in her own cryptic way, introducing Lun3terr3. More soon! K

Juanita Monte's interview with Harrison Wyld

One of the emails I sent as I was heading to Aus was to Juanita Monte, an independent documentary film maker living in Sydney.

A friend sent me the address to her online doco. on philanthrocapitalism when they spotted Harrison Wyld’s name in the trailer for ep2… I was already completely distracted by my suspicions at work, but Juanita’s work finally pushed me to do something… it’s the way of things – that last push is what it takes.

So you could easily say I knew I was going to torpedo Now I Can Change the World. Not so much an unexpected consequence, more a kill switch.

I’m so sorry Juanita! When you look at it, there were other ways, but not other outcomes. Bluebird is completely context-changing. I hope in some way we can make something out of all of this.

It’s good to be back in Aus. The irony, the reality, is refreshing. But the terms of returning here are, as you may have guessed, somewhat strained.

Whistleblowing was a huge decision. If you’ve spent any time on Climatron, you’ll know a bit about my concerns. I’m overly cautious by nature, and that tips into skepticism on occasion. How, then, did I end up working for a billionaire, researching geoengineering – good point…

Part of the reason is simply because I was asked. Fresh out of graduate studies, only really half way through a theory I think could have massive potential, and along comes an email, followed by a meeting with a real, live billionaire, promising relatively unlimited servers and a state-of-the-art lab. Well, yes, Faust comes to mind for me too, now.

That’s not to say my former boss was the devil! Harrison’s an impressive man, when you see what he’s already achieved, what he’s capable of achieving.

Such opportunities come rarely, if at all, and maybe now I understand that some things can be too good to be true.

Now the truth needs uncovering. I didn’t come back to Aus to be wistful, we need to get to the heart of the matter. I left convinced that Bluebird was about to launch, may have already launched – do you think you could tell? Let’s find out.

The end of my first proper job

Well this is the post I’ll never forget. The one in which I tear away from the world I was just getting used to and follow my instinct, which lets face it doesn’t always work out.

This is me leaving!

I’ll keep it as brief as possible – watch the video below. It’s me blowing the whistle on something that’s got to be stopped. Please take the time to get across it.

I know I know, big assertions. But the stakes couldn’t be higher.
Like I say, stay tuned and in the meantime:
http://www.stopbluebird.com/
To access the files I mention, copy and paste ftp://otakudaddy.net/ into a browser. Your browser’s proxies may redirect you, if that happens, set them to auto-detect and try again. Then when you see the dialog box, enter on request:
username: kv_bb@otakudaddy.net
password: TrVr6284
Here is an index of links to the subject matter. Like I say, it’s far from science fiction:
http://delicious.com/kylevanc

Thanks for your time… more soon. K.

Still from Ron Fricke's film Baraka

Yes, Vorsorgeprinzip. Never heard of it right? It’s the originating German for Precautionary Principle, which you may well have heard of.

The Precautionary Principle spans science, economics, politics, all things really. But like anything, it only works if you use it. And that’s not as stupid as it sounds.

Primum non nocere, “First, do no harm” is a precept of medical ethics, also eloquently known as Nonmaleficence. It’s pretty obvious what it means and the Precautionary Principal is an articulation of that same meaning. Humans have gradually developed a cautious streak since way back, back on the plains and savannas and the cold starry nights of our ancestors.

What I think modern humans struggle with is enacting that meaning on a conceptual level – we’re cautious in and attentive of our own lives but beyond our immediate environments, nearly unconscious of causality. Perhaps that’s why precaution is so apparent in the physician’s world, where it’s all about the immediate.

And my point is, any practical application of big science should be filtered this way too… Without precaution, some aspects of science are so powerful that irreversibilities are possible. This will make more sense soon.

Having a blog can be like having one long OpEd column. So if I sound a bit preachy, I don’t mean to, but I’ll say this – the world is incredibly complicated, we should move through it with a precautionary principle, now more than ever…

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