I’m writing to brief you on an intriguing ABC project that will be launched at the end of April and will run through May until early June.
You may be contacted by media or members who are curious about the project. And there may be opportunities for your organisation to use the project to engage a young and technologically savvy audience with the science and ethics of climate and geoengineering that underpins the project.
Blowing sulphur particles or reflective materials into the atmosphere, releasing iron into the ocean, burying carbon deep in rock-how practical, effective, dangerous or realistic is geoengineering? Will it save or destroy the world? Should we try? Who decides?
That’s exactly what the ABC is about to explore in a new form of interactive storytelling using online, social media and an alternate reality story-and we thought you would like to know about it. While the whole experience, entitled Bluebird, is fictional, it is founded on real science. And the science issues will be explored by Robyn Williams on the Science Show.
Bluebird AR (alternate reality) is about Kyle Vandercamp, a brilliant, young, Australian researcher employed on a top-secret, privately-financed project to study geoengineering solutions to climate change. He becomes deeply concerned about the project’s true objectives and finally decides to blow the whistle.
The story may be fiction, but the background is not. The science foundations of the project were developed with the help of Stanford climate scientist, Ken Caldiera and Californian futurologist Jamais Cascio. And, according to Bluebird AR’s creators, during the year it has taken to write and produce the materials, several of its scenarios have come true.
The project should generate intense interest among thinking young Australians-and worldwide. And it will provide plenty of opportunities for discussion and interaction in all sorts of forms.
Not only is Bluebird AR an interesting experiment in how to tell a story involving science, but it may well involve people in your organisation being approached to provide background, answer questions, comment or make suggestions. If you want to take the opportunity, you can steer the process. Your organisation can become involved, providing people and information to add to the debate, and at the same time promoting itself and the field in which it is working.
So, if there are people in your organisation who could contribute, or who would like to be briefed as the project develops we would be pleased to hear from them.
Further details will be revealed over the next two weeks.
For more information, please contact
* Niall Byrne at Science in Public on 0417 131 977 or niall@scienceinpublic.com.au
* Carolyn MacDonald, Head Marketing, ABC Innovation on 03 9626 1982 or Macdonald.Carolyn@abc.net.au
And to explore the world of Bluebird AR please visit http://abc.net.au/bluebird.
Kind regards,
Niall
________
Niall Byrne
Science in Public 26 Railway Street South, Altona Vic 3018
ph +61 (3) 9398 1416 or 0417 131 977 niall@scienceinpublic.com.au
Full contact details at www.scienceinpublic.com.au
_______________________________________________ ASC-list mailing list list@asc.asn.au http://www.asc.asn.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=97&Itemid=115