Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/1999/01/13/columbias_200_million_turtle_tank.php
Wednesday, January 13, 1999
Her name was Nancy. Though she bore an unduly large collection of buttons on her blouse, reading things like 'Tour guides are special people' and 'Save the Suagaro Cactus,' she seemed nice enough. Short and somewhere in her late 20's she had long bleached hair pulled back tautly in a bun, revealing a tanned face and freckles drizzled across her cheeks. She seemed to possess an unbridled enthusiasm for everything and anything . In short, she was type of chirpy blonde endemic to the American West. But then suddenly, in mid-gush, she turned very serious. 'Those people?' she said softly but firmly, 'Those people are not welcome here.'
Fortunately, Nancy is not an employee of the Denny's Restaurant Corporatiaon or even Texaco Global Oil, but of the current proprietors of one of the most costly scientific fiascoes of modern times, the Biosphere 2 Research Center outside Tucson, Arizona It seems some of those once associated with the Biosphere have been critical of it in the press, earning themselves the enmity of those still at the facility, Nancy the tour guide among them.
I remember first reading about the Biosphere in my seventh grade science class presided over by the imperious environmentalist, Mrs. Kaiser. Somewhere out in the Arizona desert, her approved text explained, some smart people are building a giant building which will hopefully allow us to someday live on the moon, since we have polluted and pillaged our own planet beyond the point of human habitation.
Curiously, though, Biosphere 2 as a prototype of future housing for moonmen was not mentioned either by Nancy or in the assorted slick brochures and interactive displays of the visitor's center. 'Well that was one of the first aims of Biosphere 2, but not really any more ' Nancy admitted somewhat sheepishly when asked. Research into the effects of the buildup of greenhouse gases was now the top priority of Bio2, she explained.
Now free to continue the tour in earnest, Nancy recounted the story of the Bio2 as follows: In the early 1980's, Nancy continued in earnest fashion, three men with some, but limited, scientific background envisioned building an enormous glass structure, a closed, self-sustaining system modeled on the earth. In addition to housing quarters for the scientists who would live and work in the facility, the original plans called for seven distinct biomes each constructed as a microcosm of their respective counterpart on Earth. The project would foster, the men hoped, understanding of what one brochure called the 'interlocking web of life.' Still in its nascent stages, the venture was dubbed Biosphere 2, after Biosphere 1, the only known planet capable of sustaining life, the earth.
Biosphere 2 was simply a grandiose idea, however, until it secured the financial backing and unqualified support of Texas oil baron Edward Bass. In 1987, ground was struck for the facility 30 miles north of Tucson in the southeast quadrant of Arizona. What Nancy called 'problems in construction' caused several lengthy delays but, over-budget and past schedule, the project was finally completed in August, 1991 at a cost of over $200 million. The first 8 'Biosphereans,' 4 men and 4 women, moved in for a stay of 2 years slightly more than a month later, to massive media and public attention.
The planned two year stay was nearly aborted due to various 'difficulties' again not specified by Nancy.
Despite these problems, a second team entered only three months after the first had left. Their tenure in Bio2 was even less successful, however, and the second team was pulled out only six months after they had gone in.
In 1996, Columbia University offered a deal to the holding company that had recently assumed control of Biosphere2. Columbia proposed to come in and lend the project its name and vast resources in exchange for access to Bio2's research facilities. The new owners agreed. Today, Columbia runs research programs out of Bio2 and uses it to host College students on assorted semester-long internships in biology and ecology.
Throughout the tour, a small boy of no more than 4 or 5 had been toddling about, looking for something. Outfitted in pressed trousers and flanked by a doting mother, he lacked the second skin of grime characteristic of all little boys. He wanted to know where the dinosaurs were.
'This is not Jurassic Park,' Nancy explained. She was right. Jurassic Park had plants and animals in it. The Biosphere doesn't have a whole lot of either that aren't clinging to life. The trees are scraggly and brown. The ocean is filthy and contains no fish, only a rogue green turtle. In these inflationary times, you don't seem to get much for $200 million: a glorified turtle tank with a few scrub pines, a fish-free ocean, and heaps of poor publicity.
Jeff Goldblum, the chaos wonk from Jurassic Park, endlessly sermonizes that the Park will collapse, as it eventually does, because its very design drastically overbids the power of the human mind. From initial impressions, Biosphere 2 appears to have flopped because it, too, was simply a dumb and colossally arrogant idea.. Yet the exact nature of the 'problems' and 'difficulties' only vaguely referenced by Nancy finger a different culprit: the depths of human stupidity.
The Biosphere failed not because of a grand philosophical flaw in its conception but because those who built it didn't know what the hell they were doing.
Among Biosphere's problems that should have been obvious from the beginning: A great deal of time and money was expended in building an elaborate system of sprinklers into Bio2's ceiling. The system's designers intended it to simulate the respective amounts of rainfall for the various biomes. Alas, the water from the sprinklers condensed on the ceiling and fell on the desert, causing it to bloom. The desert biome, intended to be the arid dustbowl of Biosphere 2, is now as verdant and green as the rain forest.
The ocean biome, though billed as 'the largest man-made ocean in the world' was still too small for the huge number of fish the Bio2's biologists placed in it.
The 'ocean' was simply unable to sustain the oxygen levels necessary for such an enormous quantity of fish. The filtering system nearly choked on wave after wave of piscine carcasses. Hence, there are no fish in the 'largest man-made ocean in the world.'
Not just the fish had a hard go of it, though. Ants are a vital component of nearly all organic environments and, thus, Bio2's scientists introduced 7 different varieties into the facility, each with a particular biological function in mind. Unfortunately, one of the species was a natural enemy of the other ants and rapidly destroyed its' rivals' colonies.
Yet a fishless ocean and a desert with the vegetation of the Amazon were simply minor snags compared to the two most significant problems Bio2 encountered. The 'Biosphereans' didn't have enough to breathe and they didn't have enough to eat. Rushed to get the project underway after the long series of delays in building the facility, the first contingent of scientists moved into Bio2 before the concrete of the foundation had settled. The cement promptly absorbed large amounts of oxygen, oxygen that was vital for both the scientists and the organic balance of the whole project.
In a public relations disaster for the Bio2, which had trumpeted itself as completely autonomous, outside air was ultimately forced to be pumped in. In another miscalculation, the crops the scientists planted did not grow fast enough, forcing them to radically revise how much food each person was allotted daily, from 2,800 calories to 1,700 calories.
On leaving Biosphere2, the first wave of Biosphereans had lost an average of 20% of their body weight since they had first entered. And most of them were already on the Ally McBeal side of buxom.
Bio2's designers, endowed with a lifeline to a an oilman's millions, seemed to have never planned what they were actually going to do with their benefactor's money. Flush with cash and initial media hype, they would come to resemble little more than bumbling ninth-graders who had just found some money in the street.
Instead of simply buying some low-grade pornography and a couple of Cherry Cokes like most high-school freshmen with extra bucks, they decided to build a giant bio lab project for humanity. And like most freshmen lab projects, Biosphere2 was handed in late and missing some important pieces.
The intentions behind Bio2 were certainly noble. Caught in the wake of the 1970's warnings of global environmental apocalypses and the hairy-chested humanism that would dominate the 1980's, Bio2's founders figured the latter could solve the former. This planet may be becoming a dank, pollutant-soaked hellhole but we can always just live on the moon. Yet somewhere in its path to glory, the Bio2's well-intentioned arrogance dissolved into farce, a situation with a whole new set of lessons entirely.