On this Video Saturday I want to share with you two things I came across that both seem somewhat relevant. Well, maybe at first glance the video about Biosphere 2 doesn’t seem that important, but it’s probably easier (and shorter) to watch than the second set of videos.

Biosphere 2 was basically a closed off ecological system built for research purposes. Biosphere 1, in case you’re wondering, is our own biosphere of the Earth. So they sent in eight people to live in Biosphere 2 for two years, which I find to be a very interesting experiment. I’d say one of the most important things learned from it was that (and why) their oxygen kept disappearing, which sound like valuable information in case another biosphere should be built one day, say, on another planet. However, before (or after) watching the video, you might want to read about the criticism of the project.

So here’s a video of the slightly annoying Jane Poynter talking at TED about her time in Biosphere 2:

The second and more interesting video (if you have the time to really listen) is modestly called The Most IMPORTANT Video You’ll Ever See on YouTube, and it’s a lecture given by Dr. Albert A. Bartlett on Arithmetic, Population, and Energy. It’s long, but enlightening and I personally didn’t think it was boring at all. One of the important statements he makes there is this:

The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.

Dr. Albert Bartlett

Dr. Albert Bartlett on Arithmetic, Population, and Energy [Part 1 of 8]
[Part 2 of 8]
[Part 3 of 8]
[Part 4 of 8]
[Part 5 of 8]
[Part 6 of 8]
[Part 7 of 8]
[Part 8 of 8]

That’s it for today. Enjoy.

Hey, remember Biosphere 2?

It was a huge deal back in 1991 when eight volunteers, four men and four women, were sealed inside a complex in the Arizona desert…

The idea was to create a self-contained world, completely sealed off from the elements, with a number of habitats for plants and animals.

The Biospherians would grow their own food, generate their own oxygen, and replicate the conditions that made life possible on “Biosphere 1″ – aka Earth. Some even thought it was a model for human habitation of Mars and other planets.

But as my homie MC Schmole recently related, the experiment quickly devolved into chaotic infighting and a desperate struggle for survival.

It’s an epic tale of hubris, blind passion and sweet, sweet schadenfreude.

As the New York Times reported at the outset, spirits were high as the eight volunteer researchers were sealed in to start the experiment:

The hummingbirds, galago monkeys, earthworms and 3,800 other species of animals and plants were already sealed inside, hunting, flowering, feeding, reproducing.

This morning, four men and four women joined them in a giant airtight greenhouse and pulled the door shut behind them, thus inaugurating a flamboyant $150 million experiment in ecological correctness that is controversial in some scientific circles.

For the next two years, if this self-contained miniature world succeeds in living and breathing on its own, the eight researchers will be as cut off from the Arizona desert that surrounds them as if they were in a spaceship.

Only sunlight, externally generated electricity and electronic communications will be allowed to enter the 3.15-acre glass-and-steel enclosure known as Biosphere 2, the second installment of Biosphere 1, the researchers’ name for the earth.

“You’re going to have to drag me out in two years,” cried Jane Poynter, a 29-year-old ecologist, just before she entered, capturing the optimism and enthusiasm of the participants in this venture, which some scientists have dismissed as a “scientific crapshoot.”

[...]

In this spirit, the first item on the researchers’ schedule today, their last day in Biosphere 1, was a 4 A.M. makeup session before appearing on all the networks’ morning talk shows, for which they were dressed in their dark blue Star Trek-style uniforms.

Still wearing their pancake makeup four hours later, they were accompanied to the door of their new home by two American Indians in full feather, who had earlier joined a Tibetan Buddhist monk in a sunrise prayer for their success.

In emotional speeches about their project before the researchers passed through the double doors, they and their patrons invoked evolution, American know-how, Noah, Galileo, da Vinci and the Wright brothers.

“We are going into another space,” said one of the researchers, Mark Nelson, 44. “We are going into another time.”

Mr. Nelson runs a London-based ecological study center that is financed by Edward P. Bass of the multibillion-dollar Texas oil family, who is also the major sponsor of the Arizona project.

Mr. Nelson recalled the words of a Hopi Indian sage who had taught him: “Obey the rhythm of life.”

After this earthy crunchy nonsense concluded, they were finally ready to start the experiment.

And O, how the shit hit the fan.

There’s an awesome web page hosted by the University of Edinburgh that tells of all that went awry…

Simply put, the Biosphere turned into a disaster because the structure itself had significant technical flaws…

…because the idea that eight volunteer researchers could get along in a confined space making decisions according to consensus was completely unrealistic, one might say idiotic…

…because the researchers were not scientists, except for one medical doctor, and did a completely amateurish job at preserving habitats, recording data and performing experiments…

..and because the habitats were completely overwhelmed by a pestilence of ants and other malefactors.

When it was all over, the formerly-enthusiastic Jane Poynter was desperate to get out of there and back to the comforts of good old Biosphere 1.

Let’s take a look at these one by one, because the failure of Biosphere 2 really is fascinating.

TECHNICAL WOES

The short version: oxygen levels plunged immediately and continued to drop until they were no longer high enough to sustain life.

As Jane Poynter wrote in her tell-all, “The Human Experiment,” the Biospherians quickly realized to their horror that they were all going to suffocate in there.

I heard a soft knock on my door.

Taber MacCallum walked in and plonked himself down on the sofa. Taber, a veritable bear of a young man only a few months earlier, was now as thin as a rail. Thick brown hair spilled over a prominent brow, under which shone penetrating green eyes. He was attractive, but it was his mind that fascinated me, allured me. The son of an American astrophysicist, he was exceptionally intelligent, thoughtful, and kind.

Taber was my best friend and my lover. I could read him like an open book, and this evening he seemed unusually tense.

“Hi, what’s up?” I inquired.

There was a long silence. Finally he broke the quiet. “I’m getting some strange readings in the lab.”

“What, the nitrogen generator giving you problems again?” I asked.

“No, it looks like we may be losing oxygen.”

[...]

He ran the samples over and over, and the data were unyielding. Only 17.4 percent of our atmosphere was oxygen. This was a significant drop, a horrifying drop, the more so since it was inexplicable.

It meant that our life support system was truly failing. We were about a quarter of the way through our two-year mission and we could have lost about 15 percent of our oxygen. A little more and we’d be in the same situation as mountaineers above fourteen thousand feet—they begin to fall apart mentally and physically if they do not adapt or breathe bottled oxygen.

At the current rate, our atmosphere would be only 10 percent oxygen before the end of the two-year mission: no one could live on so little.

[...]

And what of the precious “self-organizing” notion we all shared whereby the Biosphere—its overall air, water, life, and chemistry—would seek its own equilibrium and, importantly, an equilibrium that would be habitable by humans. Well, it was self-organizing, all right—organizing us right out of the picture.

We sat stunned into silence. The news was far worse than we had imagined.

I felt a rush as the blood drained from my head down to my feet, and my toes and fingers tingled with adrenaline. My brain was spinning and I heard a voice screaming at me in my head:

“We’re screwed! We’re screwed!”

The original idea was that the vast plant life in Biosphere 2 would consume all the carbon dioxide produced by the crew and their animals, and replenish the atmosphere with oxygen.

But as a webpage hosted by Kenyon College notes, they overlooked two crucial elements that depleted both oxygen and carbon dioxide:

Starting when the crew members were first sealed in, Biosphere II experienced a constant and puzzling decline in the percentage of oxygen in the atmosphere. It was initially hoped that the system was merely stabilizing itself, but as time passed it became increasingly clear the something was amiss. Not quite 18 months into the experiment, when oxygen levels dropped to the point where the crew could barely function, the outside managers decided to pump oxygen into the system so they could complete the full two years as planned.

Obviously, Biosphere II was not self-sustaining if outside oxygen had to be added in order for the crew to survive. The reasons behind this flaw in the project were not fully understood until some time later. As it turned out, the problem had more to do with carbon dioxide than with oxygen. Biosphere II’s soil, especially in the rain forest and savanna areas, is unusually rich in organic material. Microbes were metabolizing this material at an abnormally high rate, in the process of which they used up a lot of oxygen and produced a lot of carbon dioxide. The plants in Biosphere II should have been able to use this excess carbon dioxide to replace the oxygen through photosynthesis, except that another chemical reaction was also taking place.

A vast majority of Biosphere II was built out of concrete, which contains calcium hydroxide. Instead of being consumed by the plants to produce more oxygen, the excess carbon dioxide was reacting with calcium hydroxide in the concrete walls to form calcium carbonate and water.

Ca(OH)2 + CO2 –> CaCO3 + H2O

This hypothesis was confirmed when scientists tested the walls and found that they contained about ten times the amount of calcium carbonate on the inner surfaces as they did on the outer surfaces.

So the geniuses of Biosphere 2 built a structure that ate carbon dioxide before the plants could convert it into oxygen.

Then they had to cheat and add oxygen from Biosphere 1.

Next stop, Mars!

The technical flaws in the Biosphere’s design soon created personal dramas that overwhelmed the project…

CREW DYNAMICS

Jane Poynter did an interview with NPR’s Scott Simon in which she explained how a rift in the crew set the Biospherians against each other.

It was “Team Science” against “Team Survival.”

SIMON: I have to get you to talk about some of the interpersonal relationships. And I’m even going to introduce the word frictions.

Ms. POYNTER: Well, that’s very PC of you. I think it was jolly well more than friction. You know, it was most unfortunate because six months into the mission we broke into two factions. And the most heartbreaking thing for me about that was that two people on the other side of the divide were my best friends when I went into Biosphere II. And it turns out that these factions are very common in small groups in isolation. There’s now a whole branch of psychology called isolated confined environment psychology, of all things. You know, they study people, like in the Antarctic, or when they go into space, and it turns out that this bifurcation of small groups is just something that happens.

SIMON: Why were there two different factions? Did you have substantial disagreements about what was going on there or interpersonal, or was it all a little hard to understand now?

Ms. POYNTER: No, in fact, what I thought then is really what I think now, which is that we broke over a rather traditional kind of break. It was sort of management versus science, if you will.

And when things started going wrong, like we did have a problem with oxygen levels and we weren’t growing enough food, you know, some of felt, you know, let’s bring in some food so that we can actually do more science.

And the other side was saying, no, you’re not going to bring in food, basically saying, you know, this is a survival mission. And so – no, I just really felt, as did the other folks on my side of the divide, that we were behaving incredibly unprofessionally in some ways.

The other faction, who were all about surviving in the biosphere, even as scientific pursuits went to crap,  included Abigail Alling, aka “Gaia” and Mark van Thillo, aka “Laser.”

Alling later dissed the Poynter posse in some catty interview comments:

I loved living inside BIO2 and was, in fact, reluctant to come out! Others inside during the two years really toyed with the idea of coming out and expressed unhappiness from time to time. I think this comes down to that some people are adventurers and some are not. I am.

SCIENTIFIC SHORTCOMINGS

The Kenyon College wrapup comes down hard on the lack of scientific cred among the crew, and compares it unfavorably with the space program:

I suggest that things went wrong because of a lack of proper planning. Forget about Biosphere 2 for a minute, and think instead about the international (though mainly American) space programme. How are astronauts selected, and what are their roles? It is no coincidence that astronauts are middle-aged people, with families and a nice home to go back to. They also are extremely fit, highly trained to do the technical jobs, and (ugh!) have impeccable psychological profiles. The last thing you want on a spacecraft is a “loose cannon” – someone who is unpredictable. What’s more, each crew member has specific roles to play, but all the decisions are taken in Mission Control, not by debate among the astronauts themselves. There is an immense team of experts monitoring and directing every aspect of the mission, and the astronauts are, by and large, functionaries rather than decision-makers.

Contrast this with Biosphere 2. The biospherians were self-selected enthusiasts, committed to environmental ideals. There’s nothing wrong with that. But the problems were many:

• These people were not selected and highly trained for specific roles;
  
• They were allowed to make their own decisions by consensus (which is OK when things are going well, but not so good when the stresses become overbearing)
• There was no external scientific oversight – no-one to advise or turn to when things did not work.

The biospherians did not even keep proper records, so that at the end of one of the biggest environmental experiments of all time there was nothing to show for the time and money!

(To be fair, at least one NASA astronaut has proven to be a complete nut job…cough cough, Lisa Nowak…)

Biospherians party!

After the first two-year experiment was over, billionaire founder Ed Bass commissioned a Smithsonian Institution study of its results. Their findings were scathing:

Among the criticisms mentioned in this report were:

• The “lack of a well-developed, written scientific plan”
• An “ad hoc mix of scientific initiatives of varying quality”
• An “overconcern with proprietary information which has impeded the flow of scientific information and interaction”, and
• “Possible embellishments of data”.

This report recommended that a Scientific Director be appointed to oversee the development of the Biosphere 2 programme, and that the Biosphere 2 managers begin publishing and discussing their work more openly.

In fact, there was only one trained scientist among the original 8-member crew – Professor Walford, who was a trained physician and served as the crew’s doctor. It is astonishing to think that such a major project should be undertaken by a crew of people who, despite their undoubted enthusiasm, were not trained scientists and who, apparently, did not keep proper scientific records.

Later, when Bass tried to retake control of the project from the enviro-junkies who were running it into the ground, “Gaia” and “Laser” rebelled!

They decided to break into the biosphere in an attempt to release the second crew of Biospherians from the wicked grip of a competent management team, but soon discovered that none of them wanted to leave.

This rash reaction, more than anything else I’ve read, seems to demonstrate that people who call themselves “Gaia” and “Laser” should never be placed in charge of a multi-million-dollar scientific experiment. Ever.

BIOLOGICAL PROBLEMS

The Biospherians had envisioned a fully-functioning ecosystem under their bio-dome, with plants, animals and humans all coexisting in happy harmony.

That isn’t exactly how it played out.

The biosphere inhabitants soon found that they could not generate enough food to sustain themselves. They had brought in various seeds (peanuts, maize, vegetables, etc. – even coffee) which would be sown to produce crops (and which would generate more seeds for subsequent seasons). These annual crops were grown in rotation in 18 separate plots in the agroforestry zone. They included rice, wheat, maize, sorghum, sweet potato, potatoes, beans, soybeans, rape, mustard, safflower, tomatoes, cabbage, carrots, eggplant (aubergine), peppers and leafy vegetables.

But the biospherians were not experienced agronomists, and they had many problems with insect pests and plant diseases because they had to rely on natural (biological) control practices rather than chemical pest control measures, and the biological control methods did not always work well.

As their food crisis deepened, the biospherians decided to eat some of the stores of seeds they had brought in, which were intended to be used to produce more food. At quite an early stage they found that bananas were one of the easiest and most nutritious food sources that they could use (in the rainforest zone) so they allowed the bananas to proliferate naturally (from rhizomes), and bananas now dominate that zone.

The initial intention was that chickens would be used as a continuing source of eggs, but the biospherians could not afford to use the limited amounts of food to feed the chickens, so these were slaughtered and eaten. The pigs also were in competition with the food demands of the humans. So, the pigs were slaughtered and eaten.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, the team accidentally sealed “crazy ants” inside the Biosphere, and they reproduced rapidly, overwhelming the ecosystem.

In summation – these people had no clue what they were doing, and they utterly blew it.

When the end of the two-year experiment finally came around, Jane Poynter didn’t have to be dragged out. She was ready to kick down the door.

Eight o’ clock in the morning on September 26, 1993. I stood in my prickly blue jumpsuit with the other seven inmates of the Bubble, as some of us liked to call it. We waited for the radio announcement that it was time to walk through the double-doored airlock, that the mission was finally over. I would like to say that I was pondering heady thoughts about the future of mankind, but all I could think of was how much I wished that dear Jane Goodall would shut up.

I have the deepest respect for my fellow countrywoman who has dedicated her life to the study and conservation of chimpanzees, taught us that apes use tools and laugh, too, and caused us to redefine what it is that makes us human. But as Jane gave the keynote speech leading to our re-entry into the world, into what we called Biosphere 1, the minutes ticked by with agonizing slowness.

“Come on, people,” I muttered to myself. “I signed up for two years—not two years and one minute, or two minutes. Only two years.”

Eight ten. “Jane, let us apes out of the cage!”

Biosphere 2 is now under the control of the University of Arizona, where it is used as a tool to discuss global warming.

As the book “Catastrophes in Nature and Society” points out, the Biosphere experiment didn’t accomplish what it set out to do, but at least it proved SOMETHING:

The Biosphere 2 experiment has been recognized to generally be a failure in the sense that it has never achieved the expected self-running sustainable system to offer a favorable or at least suitable human habitat…Nevertheless, the Biosphere 2 experiment was especially important for having proved something different than what was originally meant.

Namely, it demonstrated all the fault of hoping for self-organization of natural processes and neglecting the intellectual efforts, as is typical of the “Green” thinking.

The moral of the story is this: being a super de-duper Earth lover is not enough. If you want to build a self sustaining biosphere, you need to have the scientific chops to match.

Otherwise, you’ll end up gasping for breath and referring to yourself as “Laser.”

The ongoing negotiations for a process on tackling global warming
as a result of emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs).
A process that is affecting extremely the planet’s ecosystems.

The Copenhagen Conference will number 15 of the UNFCCC meetings -the Contracting Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, UNFCCC, signed in Rio de Janeiro during the Earth Summit in June 1992. And it is the result of the plenary sessions, as agreed at the 14th UNFCCC meeting in Bali in December 2007. The Conference will be held in Copenhagen, Denmark and will last two weeks from 7 December to 18 December 2009.

The first round of negotiations this year took place in Bonn, 29 March-8 April. The second meeting took place in Bonn, 1-12 June. Three further sessions will be held prior to Copenhagen: 10-14 August in Bonn (informal meeting); 28 September-9 October in Bangkok and 2-6 November in Barcelona.

As a major contribution to policy decision making at the conferences mentioned above -as well as those to come- the task done by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has great importance. The IPCC is based in Geneva and it has been created by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Program. It should be noted that in 2007 the IPCC received the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore, former U.S. Vice President.

One thing is clear: the Climate Change Conference is a major event, which will lead to the Protocol of Copenhagen (the first time it was officially named as such in May 2009) to combat global warming . The meeting will be attended by representatives of 170 countries, along with members of NGOs, the media and several other participants; it will be joined by some 8,000 people.

As background to the Copenhagen Conference, and despite their large deviations on forecasts of world food in the 1970s, when severe famines predicted failed to happen however -thanks to Norman Borlaug’s “Green Revolution”- it comes to my mind a comment from demographer Paul Ehrlich, the father of “The Population Bomb“ (1968): Genetically, we have barely evolved since the days of Aristotle. We do not have the fate of the fruit fly, which in a matter of weeks is able to “evolve” and develop resistance to DDT. Ten generations of homo sapiens take 200 years to die out. Cultural change is much faster and unpredictable.

Hope is the last to be lost, but I have serious doubts … The truth is this: we have been dreadful planet administrators to date. We have altered ecosystems and the atmosphere to the point of endangering the conditions that make Earth habitable. We came to create a smaller version of the planet in the desert of Arizona, Biosphere 2, and we saw what happened: the experiment ended in a complete fiasco. Meanwhile, we have overpopulated the Earth and have overexploited natural resources. Now we are altering the climate, and though we have scientific evidence and assume that we are intelligent, we have done virtually nothing to change our behavior.

But we will see that, once again, hope is not lost and the hope is Copenhagen. Because the Danish capital should be the scene where an agreement must be reached to clarify, among others, the level of ambition in the global fight against climate change. To do this, all countries should agree global reduction targets on a long-term basis. The European Union has already put its proposal and considers that global emissions of greenhouse gases must be reduced by 50 percent in 2050 compared to the levels in 1990. Achieving these goals will require substantial effort on the part of developed countries, but these may not reduce alone emissions enough. If industrialized countries are to maintain leadership in the fight against climate change, emerging countries will also develop projects according to their capacities and circumstances, as well -especially the large economies as China and India.

It’s worth noting the importance of innovative financing instruments that are being analyzed, and that must be structured according to existing mechanisms, such as the newly created Climate Investment Fund at the World Bank. Also initiatives to access to new technologies need to be implemented , according to the code of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) whose statutes were approved by 25 countries -of a total of 125 high level representatives.

The initial approach of the Copenhagen Conference is done today, the second and final issue of this paper refers to the probable issues of success.

Simple as this:

Biosphere 1 is Earth.  Biosphere 2 is this Man & Woman made Eco System below.  Four Men and Four Woman lived in it for 2 years back in 1991. In some people’s minds, Biosphere 2 was a fabulously expensive failure, a $200 million earth-in-a-bottle that choked on carbon dioxide and was overrun by ants. Of course not everybody feels that way today. Check out the link for more info:  http://www.b2science.org/

]]> http://greeningwashington.wordpress.com/2009/04/15/perils-of-the-pinyon-pine/ Wed, 15 Apr 2009 21:32:57 +0000 greeningwashington http://greeningwashington.wordpress.com/2009/04/15/perils-of-the-pinyon-pine/

(c) Radeka Photography. "Pinyon Pine and Sandstone, 2004. El Malpais National Monument, New Mexico"

Yesterday, I listened to a story on NPR about research that links rising temperatures and massive tree die-offs.  

More specifically, the researchers at the University of Arizona posed this question: Do warmer temperatures make trees more susceptible to drought?

My response is an intuitive, yes! I was correct. However, the science behind the answer is what really matters.

When asked about the basic nature of the hypothesis, biologist David Breshears, one of the Arizona scientists, admitted that there is still much scientists do not know about trees.

“Like, what does it take to kill a tree, and do warmer temperatures matter in terms of killing trees?” Breshears says.

Breshears and his colleagues’ questions also grew out of the differences between drought related tree die-offs during the 1950s and 2002, which affected New Mexico pinyon pines. Why did more trees die in 2002 even though the drought was less severe than the droughts of the 1950s? One significant factor that had changed was the temperature of the region.

In order to study the effect of warmer temperatures on the drought tolerance of trees, the University of Arizona scientists uprooted 20 mature pinyon pine trees from their native location in Ojitos Frios, N.M., and transported them approximately 600 miles to Biosphere 2 in the Arizona desert outside Tucson, AZ.

Biosphere 2 is essentially a giant greenhouse with simulations of different climate zones inside.

The researchers then put the trees into two areas: one where conditions resembled those in the trees’ native habitat, and the other with a temperature of about 8 degrees Fahrenheit warmer.

Finally, they stopped watering half of the trees in both of those spaces.

“What we saw was that trees in the warmer area died 30 percent faster on average than trees in the ambient area,” says Adams.

“If what we see for this pinyon pine species also applies to other widespread tree species,” says Breshears, “then there’s potential that we could have a lot of die-off in a lot of places.”

“It was important to do this sort of work to demonstrate that this does occur in biological systems,” he says.

In a controlled environment, it is easy to test singular independent variables. Did the scientists factor intervening variables into their equation? Without actually reading the full report, I am assuming that they did. If they did not, then the possibility of experimental error remains.

The researchers’ findings have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Once again, the results seem obvious, but that is what good scientists do — they test their hypotheses and support them with cold, hard facts instead of relying on their feelings.

Until next time.

NASA Mars Project: A Massive Black Hole Swallowing Other People’s Money

It makes NO sense whatever blowing away the taxpayers dollars looking for ice on Mars as life becomes extinct down here on Earth!

How much does NASA spend looking for the ‘holy grail’ in the solar system and beyond?

Scientists using the NASA Swift satellite have found evidence of a black hole swallowing a neutron star. The black hole may have first stretched the dense neutron star into a crescent and broken off crumbs in the process. The black hole could have then swallowed the star largely in one gulp, feeding on the crumbs in the minutes and hours that followed. Such a black hole would grow more massive, like a python that downs a wild boar. Credit: NASA/Dana Berry, Skyworks Digital

Related Links:

• Our world is a few extreme events away from total catastrophe
• Ice on Mars

• NASA
• Biosphere 2
• Floods
• Drought (Index Page)
• Dead Zones
  

• Earth’s Collapsing Life Support Systems
• State of the world
• A Shrinking World
• Index of Human Impact on Nature (HIoN)
• First Wave of World’s Collapsing Cities

~0~

Does it really make any sense looking for ice on Mars as life becomes extinct down here on Earth?

Wouldn’t it be more sensible if NASA’s budget for discovering life on Mars
was reallocated to securing life on Earth?

Original Entry:
Our world is a few extreme events away from total catastrophe

Related Links:

• NASA
• Biosphere 2
• Floods
• Drought (Index Page)
• Dead Zones
  

• Earth’s Collapsing Life Support Systems
• State of the world
• A Shrinking World
• Index of Human Impact on Nature (HIoN)
• First Wave of World’s Collapsing Cities

.

(3).   Dunia Kecil Biosphere 2

Siang itu, masih di hari Sabtu, 5 Agustus 2000, saya memasuki kota Tucson. Hanya melewatinya, dan terus menuju ke luar kota melalui State Road (SR) 77, Jalan Oracle. Ternyata saya masih mengenali jalan ini, sejak pertama kali pernah melewatinya pada tahun 1996 dan yang kedua tahun 1998. Itu karena di jalan ini ada Tucson Mall, tempat yang saya anggap paling strategis dan praktis untuk sekedar jalan-jalan sore dan belanja oleh-oleh atau titipan kawan-kawan dari Indonesia. Setelah melaju sejauh sekitar 48 km ke arah timur laut, saya tiba di kompleks Biosphere 2 Center. Ini memang obyek yang sudah lama saya angankan karena ada sesuatu yang menarik di sana. 

Sekitar awal tahun 90-an saya pernah membaca tulisan di sebuah majalah di Indonesia (saya lupa apa nama majalahnya). Dalam tulisan itu diceriterakan tentang adanya sebuah dunia tiruan yang digunakan sebagai media eksperimen kehidupan, di mana ada delapan orang (4 pria dan 4 wanita) masuk ke dalam dunia kecil tiruan itu yang terisolasi terhadap dunia luar. Mereka tinggal dan menjalankan kegiatan hidup seperti biasa selama dua tahun di dalam “kurungan” rumah kaca. Segala macam sistem kehidupan di dalam dunia tiruan itu direkayasa sedemikian rupa sehingga sama dengan dunia nyata di luarnya.

Belakangan baru saya ketahui peristiwa itu terjadi pada tanggal 26 September 1991 hingga 26 September 1993. Selang enam bulan kemudian, tim kedua yang terdiri dari 7 orang (5 pria dan 2 wanita) masuk “kurungan kaca” dan berada di dalamnya selama enam setengah bulan. Para anggota tim yang disebut biospherian itu berasal dari negara Inggris, Jerman, Meksiko, Belgia, Australia, Nepal dan Amerika sendiri. Misi dari kedua tim itu dinilai sukses menyelesaikan berbagai eksperimen tentang sistem kehidupan di dunia nyata melalui media dunia kecil tiruan.

Ketika di tahun 1996, saat pertama kali saya melewati jalan Oracle ini dan melihat tulisan Biosphere 2, saya langsung ingat pada artikel yang pernah saya baca di sebuah majalah enam tahun sebelumnya, yang waktu itu saya tidak terlalu memperhatikan di daerah mana proyek Biosphere ini berada. Maklum, waktu itu masih susah untuk membayangkan nama-nama tempat atau negara bagian yang ada di Amerika. Sayangnya pada tahun 1996 itu dan juga tahun 1998 saya tidak punya cukup kesempatan untuk mengunjunginya. Baru kali inilah saya benar-benar menyempatkan untuk menyaksikannya sendiri.

***

Di dalam dunia tiruan yang terbuat dari struktur kaca, baja dan beton itu dibangun ada lima bioma : hutan musim hujan, samudra, savana, gurun dan rawa-rawa. Habitat manusia, hewan yang umumnya jenis serangga dan monyet, serta berbagai macam tumbuh-tumbuhan, kesemuanya dirancang dan dibangun menyerupai keadaan sebenarnya.

Semua sistem di dalam Biosphere 2 ini bergantung kepada tenaga listrik. Ada sebuah generator gas alam besar di Pusat Energi yang menghasilkan listrik untuk menggerakkan semua sistem dunia tiruan itu. Pusat Energi juga menghasilkan air panas dan dingin yang akan dibutuhkan untuk pemanasan dan pendinginan Biosphere 2 sesuai dengan kebutuhan. Ada dua buah kubah di luar “kurungan kaca” ini yang berfungsi sebagai paru-paru dunia kecil, dimana tekanan, temperatur dan volume udara dikontrol dan dihubungkan dengan Biosphere 2 melalui saluran bawah tanah.

Proses daur ulang air dan sampah, semuanya dilakukan sebagaimana yang dilakukan orang di dunia nyata. Proses sirkulasi untuk mensuplai udara bersih, proses  kondensasi untuk mensuplai air minum, pengaturan cuaca, dsb. dikontrol dan disesuaikan dengan kebutuhan dari kelima bioma serta habitatnya. Tetapi di dalam Biosphere 2 ini hanya ada daerah beriklim tropis dan subtropis, serta tentunya tidak ada tiupan angin kencang.

Dunia kecil ini dibuat tidak lain adalah untuk mempelajari bagaimana bumi berkerja dan bagaimana manusia berinteraksi dengan sistem bumi. Melalui dunia kecil tiruan ini diharapkan akan dapat dipelajari mengenai kehidupan yang berada di dalam lingkungan yang dikendalikan oleh manusia sendiri. Pada gilirannya hal ini tentu akan memberikan pemahaman yang lebih baik terhadap Biosphere 1, ya bumi tempat kita nunut hidup ini.

Sebenarnya ada juga proyek sejenis Biosphere 2 ini di tempat lain, yaitu Bios 3 di daerah terpencil Siberia, Rusia, dan Biosphere “J” yang saat ini sedang dalam tahap konstruksi di Jepang utara.

Biosphere 2 adalah laboratorium kehidupan terbesar di dunia yang dibangun sejak tahun 1987 dengan biaya sekitar US$200. Menutupi areal seluas 1.27 ha dan bervolume 204.000 m3. Sejak 1 Januari 1996, setelah Columbia University bergabung dengan Biosphere 2 membentuk Biosphere 2 Center, Inc., sarana ini menjadi salah satu kampusnya yang bergengsi dan mulai dibuka untuk dapat dikunjungi masyarakat umum.

Fasilitas pendidikan, penelitian dan pengembangan pun mulai lebih komplit, termasuk asrama mahasiswa. Juga sudah tersedia hotel, restoran dan gedung konferensi. Sungguh menjadi tempat menimba ilmu yang sangat menantang. Hanya saja, di musim panas daerah ini memang menjadi bersuhu udara sangat panas sebagaimana daerah-daerah lain di Arizona, sementara belum banyak tanaman pelindung di sekitarnya.

Ada yang menarik ketika berjalan-jalan mengelilingi berbagai sarana yang ada di kompleks Biosphere 2 Center, salah satunya adalah Laboratorium Peraga (Demonstration Laboratories) yaitu tempat diperagakannya berbagai ekosistem seperti hutan musim hujan, gurun dan ekosistem lainnya. Saat berjalan-jalan di dalam ekosistem yang menirukan kehidupan di daerah tropis, serasa saya sedang berada di tengah hutan di Indonesia lengkap dengan bunyi serangga sesungguhnya, tanaman liar yang tumbuh silang-menyilang, pepohonan besar dan udara yang lembab. Pohon pepaya kampung yang sedang berbuah, pisang, pohon aren dan lamtoro gung juga ada di sini.

Saya terpaksa hanya bisa menelan air liur sewaktu menjumpai tanaman daun kemangi yang kalau saya remas memunculkan bau yang khas menggugah selera makan. Ini memang jenis lalapan kesukaan saya. Dalam hati saya berandai-andai : “Kalau saja saya membawa bekal sambal terasi, wuah ……!”.- (Bersambung)

Yusuf Iskandar

When I left you last time, I mentioned that I’d made an arrangement with a travelling Frenchman named Alain who’s staying at my hostel in Tucson, Arizona. He’d rented a car for a few days and kindly invited me to join him in sightseeing around the Southern Arizona area.

Alain is 51. He seems to have a job in the entertainment industry as some sort of cast-iron set-designer, and makes decent enough money to go travelling for several months each year. Given his age and inability to understand much English, we made for an interesting duo. (At a bar the bouncer asked him if I was 21—assuming I was his son. Alain didn’t understand the question regardless.)

We were kind of like a Chris Tucker / Jackie Chan teaming—you’d assume our partnership was destined for failure, yet somehow we raked in the Box Office takings.

Over the past three days Alain and I have travelled to a handful of fascinating places—the Historic Old West township of Tombstone, the multimillion dollar kooky science project Biosphere 2 and the very picturesque Sabino Canyon. But it’s the former two that I’d like to examine in depth; as both Tombstone and Biosphere 2 have something in common—humankind’s inability to be satisfied with what is.

Sabino Canyon, Arizona: lovelly, but not discussed in this blog.

1. Recreating the past: Tombstone, Arizona.

I wasn’t a particularly imaginative child. I always built my Lego by the instructions, and I went through a prolonged period of desperately wanting to mirror the appearance of established heroes of ‘80s/’90s film—you know, Batman, the Ninja Turtles et al.

One Christmas, when I was about eight years old, this manifested itself in a rather ugly episode.

A few weeks prior to Christmas Day, my elder sister (and only sibling) had already completed her Christmas shopping (such was her enthusiasm at the time) and her presents lay under the tree. She told me that the present awaiting me was something special; I was going to be in raptures over it. Being the inquisitive (i.e. annoying) younger brother, I probably bugged her about what it was. Repeatedly.

After several days and significant pressure, she eventually revealed the present’s contents: it was a Superman costume she’d picked up at our school gala.

This did put me in raptures. So much, that my constant eagerness to open said gift resulted in an anomaly in my family’s Christmas history—I was allowed to open a present early. But this is where things turned ugly. I enthusiastically tore the wrapping open, only to find a small blue netball bib with a Superman ‘S’ screen printed on it.

I was devastated. I yelled accusatory statements at my sister based around the present not meeting my lofty expectations (and the fact that my credibility/safety was in danger, were I to ever wear it outside).

I also cried. A lot.

It wasn’t my finest moment.

Now this poignant story is kind of metaphorical—it reflects the desire of modern man (or man’s inner child, at least) to authentically replicate mythological iconography.

As does a small town called Tombstone, Arizona.

In the kitchen with the Tombstone blues. Tombstone, Arizona.

If you’re a Western buff, then you may already know about Tombstone—a former hotbed for cowboys, Indians, miners and gunslingers in Frontier times. The 1881 gunfight at the O.K. Coral, where Doc Holiday and Wyatt Earp killed three members of the Clanton Cowboy Gang, is fairly iconic in Western lore.

My generation would possibly be familiar with the Val Kilmer / Kurt Russel vehicle Tombstone. Or the lesser-liked Kevin Costner attempt Wyatt Earp. (Not me though, my televisual exposure to the Frontier began and ended with one season of Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman, although interestingly, one episode did educate me on the phenomenon of menstruation.)

Anyway, Tombstone is the tourist-trapper that you’d imagine it to be. It is part preserved specimen, part museum, part gift shop, and part theme park (apparently actors can spontaneously recreate gunfights on the street). Its status as a National Historical District is currently threatened by many artificial altercations masquerading as authenticity.

But for some reason I never felt like I was being duped in Tombstone. This is partly because it pushes the history before the gimmick, but also because it’s a lot of fun. There’s something about certain pop culture iconography that’s so enjoyable—and the Western’s themes of rebellion, anti-heroism, history and nostalgia seem to resonate.

Personally, I’m just as interested in the people who choose to live and work in a place like Tombstone (out in the sticks and only accessible by car). I spent considerable time observing local interaction, concluding that either Tombstone-types must live the cowboy act in its entirety—or—it’s simply no act at all.

Tombstone residents are the kind of characters I thought only existed in Bruce Springsteen imagery—the charming small town simpletons who carry themselves in such a friendly and cordial manner you can easily forgive them for re-electing George W. Bush. I’m also confident that the snappy cowboy garb is a permanent fixture. Some of the guys were dressed so immaculately tidy to the point of being metrosexual, yet their facial grooming resembled Motörhead’s Lemmy.

Darkness on the edge of town. Tombstone, Arizona.

But the fact remains that times have changed. The new West is no longer the Old West. The same political, social and geographical variables that spurned the Frontier have long since eroded.

With that in mind, it’s pretty hard to take somewhere like Tombstone seriously—I mean, even if my sister had managed to find some Christopher Reeve replica tights, I’d still be no Superman.

2. Replicating life on Earth: Biosphere 2 (Oracle, Arizona).

So this brings me to Biosphere 2, a unique research facility in Oracle Arizona, with a rather, uh, interesting history.

Again, you may have heard of it before—if not from scientific circles or general knowledge, then maybe via the critically-panned Bio-Dome film, or ‘Old Black Dawning’ off Frank Black’s first solo album.

But probably not, so here’s the story: Biosphere 2 started as a survival experiment by a Texas billionaire in the early 1990s. He wanted to prove that humans could survive in a completely isolated self-sustaining environment. He bankrolled the construction of a 3.15-acre building that would be one of the biggest feats ever undertaken in modern engineering—the first airtight structure completely sealed off from planet Earth, which in effect would be its own biosphere.

Hence the name “Biosphere 2”—the Earth being Biosphere 1.

A biosphere is made up of the atmosphere (air), hydrosphere (water) and lithosphere (dirt); the three geochemical properties necessary for living organisms. A team of scientists managed to replicate this environment within Biosphere 2’s five biomes—a rainforest, desert, savannah, marsh and 850 square metre ocean with coral reef. In total, they were home to more than 3,000 species of living organisms.

But here’s the kicker. The experiments wouldn’t just monitor the biomes. The two original studies centred around eight human “bionaughts” living inside Biosphere 2 for two-year and six-month stints respectively. Basically, the bionaughts would need to survive off the oxygen produced within Biosphere 2, but also subsist by recycling everything and farming their own food.

Biosphere 2: in the middle of nowhere and a little creepy. Oracle, Arizona.

• Better understand Earth’s biosphere in a controlled environment.
• Investigate new ways of recycling.
• Potentially gain the ability to build similar closed habitats in currently uninhabitable space.
• Sell the venture for a healthy profit, if the above goals are successful.

And ultimately most detractors were proved right—the whole thing became embroiled in controversy and lawsuits. Microbes originally added to the soil (to encourage growth) unexpectedly began absorbing too much oxygen, turning the soil’s carbon into carbon dioxide. The bionaughts kind of needed that oxygen.

They also ran out of food and began to starve.

There have been charges that oxygen, food and insecticides were smuggled in through airlocks, and that most of the vertebrate species and pollinating insects died. The Pigs supposedly got stressed and ate the baby chickens. All in all, a pretty bad scene.

Tensions between bionaughts became a case study of confined environment psychology.

The second experiment had armed federal marshals serving a restraining order, while later, two members of the original crew deliberately broke the seal in order to vandalise the project.

It sounds like a reality television programme. Or maybe a science fiction film with Jeff Goldblum and Kevin Bacon.

By 1996 Columbia University took over Biosphere 2 in an attempt to turn it into a serious research facility focussing on the sustainability of our own planet and pending climate change. This year the original owner reacquired the site and leases it to University of Arizona for similar research at the hefty fee of $100 per year(!), with plans to turn the surrounding area into subdevelopment for homes and resorts. Heh.

Biosphere 2’s ocean biome: the fish seemed to survive? Oracle, Arizona.

The whole thing was fascinating from start to finish. It’s no major tourist attraction, but Alain and I enjoyed a pretty elaborate tour of the facility, from inside the biome environments and glass tank under the ocean, to the human habitats and underground machinery.

***

While Biosphere 2 might have originally blurred the lines between scientific experiment, business venture, and art instillation, it was grounded in the vision of creating new possibilities for humankind. And it actually has a lot in common with Tombstone.

One’s hung up on the past, the other’s hung up on the future; Tombstone attempts to duplicate a bygone period of history specific to the conditions of the time, while Biosphere 2 attempts to duplicate the complex ecological systems of our planet for the future gain of civilisation. One’s an attempt at cultural geographical process, the other natural.

So far, realism has been pretty unattainable for both.

***

Alright then. Tomorrow I’m done with Tucson, and I’m a little sad about this. I’ve had so much fun here, and the hostel feels like home. The few people here are permanent residents and mostly Americans from the Southwest. They’re down-to-earth types, each with distinctive personalities and we tend to engage in humerous and entertaining conversation (they’re pretty schooled up on New Zealand, too). We’re usually lined up at a bar table, and it feels like an episode of Cheers when someone comes home and greets the crew.

Lamely, my exit tomorrow means that I’m going to miss the Phoenix Suns’ free public scrimmage by mere hours (they’re in town for their annual N.B.A. preseason training camp at the University of Arizona.)

Hopefully I’ll get another chance to see basketball’s most exciting offense (and only N.B.A. Kiwi) in Toronto, but in the mean time, The Live Music Capital of the World awaits in Austin, Texas.

Less desert sightseeing, more partying. (Yeah boi.)

Posted by Jonathan