Nothing to Fear but the Biosphere Itself

US - First the tropical birds - emerald-throated hummingbirds and blue finches - began dying. Then all seven species of frogs disappeared. Tropical forests declined. The coral reef started to dissolve. Greenhouse gases rose out of control. The most ambitious environmental modeling experiment ever attempted was in trouble.

The place was Biosphere 2, intended to be a self-sustaining, glass- enclosed, three-acre microcosmic model of Earth, constructed by Texas billionaire Edward Bass for somewhere around $200 million in the Arizona desert north of Tucson.

Bass fired the project's top managers for financial mismanagement, and in 1996 agreed to pay Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory $50 million over five years to run the structure.

Meanwhile the species extinctions, failing environments and skewed mix of atmospheric gases that doomed the original goals of Biosphere 2 appear to be showing up on "Biosphere 1" - the Earth itself. Ironically, that great experiment in the Arizona desert might turn out to have been a successful model, after all. - Earth magazine, April 1998.