Columbia University Ends Its Association With Biosphere 2

New York Times ^ | September 9, 2003 | KAREN W. ARENSON

[anymouse]

Columbia University said yesterday that it would cut all ties with Biosphere 2, casting into doubt the future of the $200 million ecology experiment that Edward P. Bass, the Texas billionaire and oil heir, built in the Arizona desert.

Martin C. Bowen, vice president of Decisions Investments Corporation, the company that owns Biosphere 2, said in a statement that it was exploring the center's future and that in the coming months it would try to determine "the most viable options for its use and operation."

The company and the university said they had settled a lawsuit that Decisions Investments brought in March against Columbia and Biosphere 2 Center Inc., the entity that ran the research center. Mr. Bass is president of Decisions Investments.

"With the settlement of this lawsuit, our relationship with Columbia is behind us," Mr. Bowen said.

The company and Columbia declined to provide further details, and each said no officials were available to comment.

It is difficult to say what kind of scientific promise the giant structure, an eight-story steel and glass terrarium, might hold. From the day in 1991 that eight men and women and 4,000 plant and animal species were sealed with great fanfare into it as part of an experiment to simulate the earth's ecology, Biosphere 2 generated fascination and skepticism. Biosphere 1 is the earth.

Critics called Biosphere 2 a "scientific crapshoot." When the human guinea pigs left the structure after two years, crops had failed, noxious gases had built up, the water had turned acidic and the site was overrun by "crazy ants" and morning glories.

But Columbia officials decided that with some modifications it might hold some promise, and its decision in 1995 to take on Biosphere 2's management seemed to confer academic legitimacy to the project.

As recently as 1999, the collaboration seemed to be going well, as Columbia announced that it would invest $20 million over five years and manage it until 2010. And in 2001, the university said it would start a science and public policy graduate program at the center.

But Biosphere 2's chief champion, Columbia's executive vice provost, Michael Crow, left for Arizona State University, and a new president, Lee C. Bollinger, took the helm of the university. After two panels reviewing the site offered negative evaluations, Columbia expressed questions about further investment.

In March, Decisions Investments sued Columbia, saying its decision to end education programs there and its failure to hire faculty and build a new laboratory had diminished the property's value and were a breach of contract.

Yesterday, Decisions Investments and Columbia said that classes and tours would continue until Dec. 22 and that research would wind down. Fifty-six undergraduates are studying there this semester, including about 20 from Columbia and Barnard College; about 1,400 students have studied there in all.

Robert Kasdin, senior executive vice president of Columbia, said in a statement that useful research and education had been conducted at Biosphere but that the university wanted to use its resources elsewhere.

In May, the Department of Energy rejected a Columbia proposal that it turn Biosphere 2 into a federal facility for research on climate change. A review committee for the Energy Department also recommended that any requests for money for the biodome be judged through a competitive process that weighed the possibilities against those elsewhere.

Joel E. Cohen, a professor of populations at Rockefeller and Columbia Universities who was part of a group that examined Biosphere for Columbia in 1996, said yesterday that Biosphere "was not designed as a scientific facility" and that while there had been modifications it was still not clear that it had been "modified in a way that makes it better to spend money there than in other ways."

"Operating that facility is extremely expensive and it's a very long way from Columbia University," he added. "If it were a local university that wanted to use it for education, there might be some promise there."

[anymouse]

Bad news for bad science.

[anymouse]

Space ping

[monkey]

and the site was overrun by "crazy ants"

I guess Biosphere II doesn't have a basement.

[Jalapeno]

I remember this...there was a big to do in the news as they locked them up, all swearing they would not leave. Someone fell and broke an arm in the first 48 hours and had to be evacuated....I will see if I can find that story.

[BlazingArizona]

The Biosphere builders made one big design error: using wndow glass instead of quartz. Window glass won't pass the light frequencies needed for plant growth, even in the Arizona sun. For this reason, plants in the Biosphere were always starved for sunlight and failed to produce enough oxygen to sustain the animal population (including the crew).

[WL-law]

This Biosphere project began as the "brainchild" of a small religious cult, whose scientific delusions and fantasies became realizable when one of the rich-boys from the Bass family became enamoured and joined the cult.

There were efforts later to transmogrify the project into a 'legitimate' scientific effort, but good science was never part of the basic architecture (literally and figuratively) of the project

[discostu]

And the big mistake of the science usage was that they planned the long run first. It should have been a bunch of 6 month seal-ins followed by the two year run when they got the kinks worked out. By starting long they went for glory and put them selves in a position for lousy science.

When Columbia took it over they changed the goals of it quite a bit. Some good science was finally done in there, though not great science (mostly obsessed with global warming and CO2 levels, by and large what they proved is that we don't know much).

It's still a really neat place and I highly recommend it from a tourist perspective (for one thing it's higher in the mountains than Tucson so you get a refreshing break from the heat). Sadly it now looks like life as a tourist trap is the best the place can hope for.

[martin_fierro]

Heinous, dude.

[discostu]

Oddly enough I was just thinking the place might have a future as a movie studio. It's got a lot of terrains with some pretty good sightlines (how they divide the terrains you can't usually see one from another) all in one location, and the weather is pretty much under control. And with Old Tucson melting down there should be some movie equipment available cheap.

[Libertarianize the GOP]

ping

[jrushing]

And the big mistake of the science usage was that they planned the long run first.

Agreed. This could work if they experimented, learned & applied the knowledge to reach success! They thought they could just walk into a "terrarium" & problems solved! Typical Libs.

[discostu]

I'm not sure if it's a liberal problem so much as the problem with science done for short term profit (notice "short term", science for profit is AOK in my book). Because they were trying to make money on it quick they frontloaded the experiments for (hopefully) quick success which in theory would lead to money quickly (from where I haven't figured out, BioSphere2 could be the first dot-com). Unfortunately when that didn't pan out they were screwed.

One interesting thing is that on the tour they mention that BioSphere2 is too complex for any computer model they've tried, they've never managed to acurately predict what would happen over any significant time period. I always keep that in mind when the global warming people start touting their computer models.

[TomSmedley]

ping

[blam]

Columbia University's Biosphere 2 Center

[BlazingArizona]

This Biosphere project began as the "brainchild" of a small religious cult, whose scientific delusions and fantasies became realizable when one of the rich-boys from the Bass family became enamoured and joined the cult.

There was never anything "religious" about the Biosphere. It originated as an idea by Stewart Brand, of "Whole Earth Catalog," and was built by the Bass oil family. Brand originally conceived it as an environmental test area, though the Greens abandoned it when they turned when they discovered that that Brand favored space programs and intended to experimentally determine whether a sealed environment could sustain a human crew on a space colony.

[Billthedrill]

They began cheating long before the two-year point, by letting in fresh air (the plants weren't generating as much oxygen as they'd predicted). The original crew weren't really scientists at all - there were actors and actresses in the mix if memory serves. Not that that's any crime, particularly, as long as good scientific help was available to them from outside the glass, but that wasn't exactly the point of the experiment.

Unfortunately the original treatment was a bit long on drama and cultural angst and a little short on real ecology. There was no particular need, for example, to have any single crew inhabit the thing for an extended period of time, nor was there any real need to pretend (as they did) that the thing was perfect. It wasn't really science at all so much as an engineering project.

Personally I'm sorry to see it didn't work out with the university. Something like this would have been a really cool toy to play with...I mean scientifically, of course...

[TomSmedley]

An excellent article on BS II published in the Chalcedon Report bore the title "Star Trek Meets the Three Stooges." The people who conceived this project assumed that nature is normative, rather than fallen. Since this world includes deserts, BS II had to have barren regions. As a result, at one point they had to furtively import 20 tons of O2! By the time the bionauts emerged, they'd splintered into several factions that refused to talk to each other.

[chaco canyon]

I am amused about the blustery BS. As being integrally involved with the project, I knew firsthand of many of its failings and of its sucesses. Its initial mission was a proof of concept, and not meant for sceientific rigors. It wsa on a five year plan to get up to being a research quality instrument when its plan was disrupted. I am neither an advocote or critic of the project. Some important fundamental knowledge was discovered, some large mistakes were made. Nothing that I see in this thread resembles accuracy or truth. Like so many topics of our time, opinion doesnt require knowledge.

[Old Professer]

According to Richard Feynman, window glass blocks 99% of UV light which is why he dared look at the fireball at Los Alamos through a pickup truck windshield.

Just a few months before Biosphere was abandoned, the financiers sprang for $5 million in air condition units to try and solve the "bad air" problem; the only place I saw that tidbit was in a trade magazine for HVAC technicians and designers.

[Old Professer]

That probably should have read, "air conditioning units."