I came across a fascinating tale today. I am not sure whether it is a hoax, an programming experiment by an Australian television station, or a ominous foray into a private project to meddle with the Earth’s atmosphere. During my scan of today’s tidbits coming from cyberspace, I found one that begins with a story of a clandestine geo-engineering project, sponsored by an Australian billionaire, Harrison Wyld. Wyld does actually seem to exist, but little else about the story has the same ring of reality. But it may be and that’s the frightening part.
I found two parts of a 2009 interview with Wyld on an Australian website, Currents, that posts lots of outrageous stuff, for example this headlined story, “Man Dies After ‘Friends’ Insert Eel in His Rectum” Here they are.
Part 1
Part 2
It is not quite reassuring that Wyld believes (see Part 2) that in billionaires is the preservation of the earth. Henry David Thoreau would hardly agree. If I heard him right, he sees the Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and the other 1000 plus in this economic stratosphere as “living gods.”
The main story involves an Australian television show called [BlueBird](http://www.abc.net.au/innovation/bluebird/what_is_bbar.htm) which is delving into virtual reality. Not having seen it, I can’t give all the gory details, but it is advertised with the acronym, [NICCTW](http://www.nowicanchangetheworld.com.au/default.htm); now I can change the world. The scary part is that Wyld is alleged to be actually planning to do just that. For this, you have to look at another video, made just last week by the same interviewer that did the two of Wyld, above.
The claim is that Wyld is funding research on technology to change the reflectivity of the earth’s atmosphere such that more sunlight is sent back to space, resulting in lower temperatures at the earth’s surface. The method is claimed to be the injection of sulfate particles via some sort of rocket or device to disperse them into the stratosphere. This is not science fiction stuff. Cloud seeding is a variant of this using fine particles of silver iodide to seed raindrops in clouds. Back in 1957, I worked with a physicist, Bernord Vonnegut, who proposed to inject very fine carbon particles into the atmosphere to absorb more of the energy and change the thermal behavior of clouds. Vonnegut ran the first trials of cloud seeding with mixed results. The was some evidence that the experiment created some tornadoes.
The science fiction aspect is that of a living god taking on the salvation of the Earth, because, as he says in the interview, government and the bureaucrats are not up to the job. I hope the story is just part of the ballyhoo about this TV program. It’s hard to believe any of the materials I read, especially when they come from a website that looks a lot like the Onion and another one associated with the Australian Broadcasting Company that says that what’s coming is all part of a virtual reality. Wyld is certainly real and rich enough to do something like this. This all feels a lot like the 1976 movie, “The Man Who Fell to Earth.” starring David Bowie. As synchronicity would have it, I watched this at home just last week.
I hope some of you will follow this and comment. I need help in uncovering the real story. If this is true, then is Wyld a god, a terrestrial terrorist, an ultimate narcissistic personality, or a creature from outer space?
I understand that this whole thing (interviews and all) is fake. Wyld is an actor. This latest “TV show” of the ABC occurs online and everything you find about Wyld, Kruger, Bluebird and all the rest is part of the drama.
The idea seems to be to generate interest in and talk about geoengineering, and the environment. Maybe the makers of the online drama are worried geoengineering will slip in and be unquestioningly accepted without proper testing. My fear is that people who will not realise it is a fiction rather than a hoax, will see all the bits that dont make sense or that are obviously fake and use it to fuel the arguments that environmentalists are crazy attention seekers.
Everything I have been able to find online about Harrison Wyld comes back to this bluebird series or whatever it is. I had never heard of him before this started (I am australian) and he seems very fake and actor like in the interviews. I am sure he is part of the fiction, him and his odd accent!
Thanks, I had pretty quickly decided that this is a hoax, although a pretty clever one. If this program was designed to raise attention to geo-engineering, it doesn’t do a very good job. Your concerns are well taken. We know, at least in the US, that it takes an inordinate amount of talk to get people to understand what global warming and climate change are all about, and even then a huge proportion of the population fails to keeps the information from penetrating their senses.
We should be learning from the big oil blowout in the Gulf that we can never know enough, even with lots of modeling, to prevent unforeseen results. The bigger the project, the larger may be the unintended consequences. The promise of deep sea oil drilling and geo-engineering that we can continue our profligate ways without having to face up to the finiteness of the Planet’s resources and its capacity to absorb all the damages we inflict on it puts our heads deep in the sand. President Jimmy Carter, thirty years ago, tried to warn the American people that our consumptive culture was leading to the dangerous state we are currently living in. He got badly manhandled for his courageous stance. Current leaders are faced with the same political risk today.
I see the choices for all of us as only two. One, the world’s powerful from government, business and religion, come together and proclaim the need for cultural, economic, and political transformation, or, two, the necessary new beliefs, values, and green technology, replace the current cultural structure by small, subversive moves. Social movements facilitate the small change path. I have put my eggs in the second basket because I have little hope that the powerful will join together in the absence of a global catastrophe in our time. The threat of such a catastrophe in the coming generations’ time is not enough to propel action today.