BluebirdAR : Character Kit – Kyle Vandercamp a new cross-platform narrative by ABC Innovation Created by Sam Doust and Amy Nelson

Character Name: Kyle Vandercamp

Sex: Male

Age: 28

Nationality: Australian, lives in the US whilst studying, Australian citizen

Profile: Kyle is a recent graduate in Atmospheric Sciences, having just completed his Masters thesis entitled, “Containment of Anthropogenic Sulphate Plumes in the Upper Mesosphere.”

Kyle is an intense and serious young man, very gifted and lateral in his approach to work. Although he enjoys his free time, especially travelling, Kyle is essentially work oriented, and not any old work, but the big questions are what draw him into intense bouts of effort on his own. During first impressions with strangers, he comes off as geeky but cool, with an innate intensity, bright eyes, obvious cleverness.

Kyle is very fluent with computer technology and learns languages, applications and approaches as he needs to. For instance, he develops an emulator that allows his models to be viewed in a spatial 3d environment, where the time lapse of the model can be paused and the actual space that the model is dealing with can be explored. He is viewed by his professor as highly gifted.

Early in his academic studies, Kyle becomes fascinated in the albedo effect of clouds, dust and other forms of matter in the various levels of the atmosphere. During his bachelor studies, he learns about the impact of the Mount Pinatubo eruption on physics relating to global warming and begins to become almost obsessively interested in the way particulate aerosols operate in the stratosphere and the mesosphere.

As he is leaving University, after completing his Masters, two things happen. Firstly, he leaves whilst on the threshold of developing a new theoretical approach to Geoengineering and SRM (solar radiation management). Secondly, Harrison Wyld enters his life.

Kyle and Bluebird: When they meet, Harrison explains to Kyle in great depth about his desire to fund research into atmospheric sulphate dispersal specifically to create cooling of the middle and lower atmosphere. They discuss the emerging interest in geo- engineering research, typified by the increase in interest at both academic and institutional levels of Science. But more than that, Harrison imparts his conviction that within the first half of this century, solutions need to be in a

ABC INNOVATION – INTERACTIVE ONLINE DRAMA COPYRIGHT ABC, 2010 Page 1 deployment state of readiness, as viable, efficient solutions for emergency mitigation techniques in catastrophic scenarios.

Kyle is impressed with Harrison’s ideas and particularly his beliefs, which challenge his own. Ideologically, Kyle supports pure research into atmospheric geo-engineering, but has only concerns and reservations toward actually implementing such solutions. Nevertheless, offered the potential of a self-guided, long-term research contract in his area of emerging expertise, Kyle accepts Harrison’s offer to help specify, build and work in a multi-million dollar custom laboratory on a project called Bluebird.

It will also allow Kyle to explore his new ideas, albeit surreptitiously.

Kyle signs a contract of employment, which stipulates what appears to him to be an excessive degree of confidentiality. Giving notice on his lease and notifying friends and family, he moves to the West Coast of the US. There he will spend the next year helping build up a lab and body of work under the auspices of Project Bluebird. Harrison tells Kyle little of Bluebird’s organisational structure, describing instead an out-of-sight extremely well-funded garage project that will interface with other aspects of his business portfolio as appropriate.

The Set Up: Kyle is the lead research scientist at Bluebird Labs, tasked with supplying Harrison and Kruger with models that explore the dispersal of anthropogenic sulphate plumes in the atmosphere under different conditions. Kyle works in an undisclosed location, and not really knowing anyone on the West coast keeps pretty much to himself. However, he has a rich digital life. As Kyle continues to work at the lab, his suspicions grow stronger and stronger that Bluebird might become a physical endeavour, rather than a research project, and these concerns eventually lead him to become a whistleblower.

Hobbies/interests: Kyle’s great love outside work is photography. His favourite thing is to be travelling with a camera. He posts a certain amount of his photography to hid blog, Climatron, and also to Flickr, but keeps a lot to himself. Kyle’s an intensely private person, and not particularly social. This is exaggerated when he takes the job at Bluebird, as he does not actively seek out new friends and social opportunities. He does however spend a lot of time working and tinkering in one way or another on computers and might be seen as a geek and an obsessive from an outsider. But really, Kyle is just serious about things that interest him and he gives his time to them.

Kyle plays video games and is enamoured with new interactive technologies. He also publishes a fairly non-personal diary of thoughts, concerns and ideas in his blog, Climatron.

ABC INNOVATION – INTERACTIVE ONLINE DRAMA COPYRIGHT ABC, 2010 Page 2 REFERENCE LINKS

Geoengineering (GE)

Definition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoengineering

GE – we just might have to do it… http://www.scienceprogress.org/2007/11/quick-study/

Editorial pieces on GE in relation to the recent UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen http://motherjones.com/environment/2009/12/copenhagen-geoengineerings-big-break http://fixtheclimate.com/fileadmin/templates/page/scripts/downloadpdf.php?file=/upl oads/tx_templavoila/EngineeringThe_Climate.pdf

Carbon must be sucked from air, says IPCC chief, Rajendra Pachauri http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6938298.ece

Royal Society Research Paper (Sept 09) – Geoengineering: Science, Governance and Uncertainty http://royalsociety.org/geoengineeringclimate/ http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/09/royal-society-report-on-geoengineering.php

Weighing the pros and cons of stratospheric geoengineering http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/10/weighing-the-pros-and-cons-of- stratospheric-geoengineering.ars

How Geoengineering Works - 5 Big Plans to Stop Global Warming http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/earth/4290084.html?nav=rss20

Ken Caldeira – Ken is one of Kyle’s major heroes, but also the way Ken appears to hedge bets both ways is similar to Kyle: the subject is very complex and to an outsider it can often look like someone’s being a hypocrite, whereas really, they are contemplating a many-sided problem.

Can a Million Tons of Sulfur Dioxide Combat Climate Change? -- a great profile piece on Ken Caldeira from Wired Magazine (by Chris Mooney) http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/magazine/16- 07/ff_geoengineering?currentPage=all

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Geoengineering The Planet: The Possibilities and Pitfalls – Yale Environment 360 interview with Ken Caldeira http://www.e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2201

How to cool the globe -- NYT Op-Ed piece by Ken Caldeira http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/24/opinion/24caldiera.html?_r=4&ref=opinion&oref =slogin

Climate Engineering Is Doable, as Long as We Never Stop http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/news/2007/07/geoengineering

Wikipedia profile http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Caldeira

Ken Caldeira Lab in the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution of Science (Stanford) http://dge.stanford.edu/labs/caldeiralab/

Mark Lynas Mark would be a major influence on Kyle, his sense of a bleak future and the intelligent, impassioned realism he brings to the debate. Please have a good read of the stuff on his blog. http://www.marklynas.org/

David Keith Kyle would be wary of David Keith, something about him unnerves Kyle.

TED - David Keith's usual climate change idea http://www.ted.com/talks/david_keith_s_surprising_ideas_on_climate_change.html\

Chris Mooney

Quick Study: Given Our Worsening Climate Situation, Geoengineering Research Makes Sense. Unfortunately. http://www.scienceprogress.org/2007/11/quick-study/

Copenhagen: Geoengineering's Big Break? http://motherjones.com/environment/2009/12/copenhagen-geoengineerings-big-break

ABC INNOVATION – INTERACTIVE ONLINE DRAMA COPYRIGHT ABC, 2010 Page 4 and - a real world billionaire’s GE proposal Kyle would be revolted by Myhrvold!

Nathan Myhrvold (billionaire and former CTO of Microsoft) has set up a company called Intellectual Ventures. One of IV’s current projects proposes to pump sulphur dioxide particles into the stratosphere via an 18-mile (29 km) hose stretching from the ground to the sky, suspended by helium balloons. At a cost of around $20m, IV thinks “The Stratoshield” could reflect some sunlight away from the Earth's surface. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5e5mxVfDBbY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCyOGLWM0mA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Myhrvold

The “Stratoshield” Project http://intellectualventureslab.com/?p=296

IV’s answers to common “geoengineering” questions http://intellectualventureslab.com/?p=338

Climate Change – It’s Worse Than We Thought

The year climate science caught up with what top scientists have been saying privately for years - Climate Progress http://climateprogress.org/2010/01/04/the-year-in-climate-science-scientists/

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