Are we eating away at our own life support systems?

Clues of Climate Change

Humans are “eating away at our own life support systems” at a rate unseen in the past 10,000 years by degrading land and freshwater systems, emitting greenhouse gases, and releasing vast amounts of agricultural chemicals into the environment, new research has found.

Two major new studies by an international team of researchers have pinpointed the key factors that ensure a livable planet for humans, with stark results.

Of nine worldwide processes that underpin life on Earth, four have exceeded “safe” levels — human-driven climate change, loss of biosphere integrity, land system change, and the high level of phosphorus and nitrogen flowing into the oceans due to fertilizer use.

Researchers spent five years identifying these core components of a planet suitable for human life, using the long-term average state of each measure to provide a baseline for the analysis.

They found that the changes of the last 60 years are unprecedented in the previous 10,000 years, a period in which the world has had a relatively stable climate and human civilization has advanced significantly.

Carbon dioxide levels, at 395.5 parts per million, are at historic highs, while loss of biosphere integrity is resulting in species becoming extinct at a rate more than 100 times faster than the previous norm.

Since 1950, urban populations have increased sevenfold, primary energy use has soared by a factor of five, while the amount of fertilizer used is now eight times higher. The amount of nitrogen entering the oceans has quadrupled.

All of these changes are shifting Earth into a “new state” that is becoming less hospitable to human life, researchers said.

“These indicators have shot up since 1950 and there are no signs they are slowing down,” said professor Will Steffen of the Australian National University and the Stockholm Resilience Center. Steffen is the lead author on both of the studies.

“When economic systems went into overdrive, there was a massive increase in resource use and pollution. It used to be confined to local and regional areas but we’re now seeing this occurring on a global scale. These changes are down to human activity, not natural variability.”

Steffen said direct human influence upon the land was contributing to a loss in pollination and a disruption in the provision of nutrients and fresh water.

“We are clearing land, we are degrading land, we introduce feral animals and take the top predators out, we change the marine ecosystem by overfishing — it’s a death by a thousand cuts,” he said. “That direct impact upon the land is the most important factor right now, even more than climate change.”

There are large variations in conditions around the world, according to the research. For example, land clearing is now concentrated in tropical areas, such as Indonesia and the Amazon, with the practice reversed in parts of Europe. But the overall picture is one of deterioration at a rapid rate.

“It’s fairly safe to say that we haven’t seen conditions in the past similar to ones we see today and there is strong evidence that there [are] tipping points we don’t want to cross,” Steffen said.

“If the Earth is going to move to a warmer state, 5-6 degrees C warmer, with no ice caps, it will do so and that won’t be good for large mammals like us. People say the world is robust and that’s true, there will be life on Earth, but the Earth won’t be robust for us.

“Some people say we can adapt due to technology, but that’s a belief system, it’s not based on fact. There is no convincing evidence that a large mammal, with a core body temperature of 37 degrees C, will be able to evolve that quickly. Insects can, but humans can’t and that’s a problem.”

Steffen said the research showed the economic system was “fundamentally flawed” as it ignored critically important life support systems.

“It’s clear the economic system is driving us towards an unsustainable future and people of my daughter’s generation will find it increasingly hard to survive,” he said. “History has shown that civilizations have risen, stuck to their core values and then collapsed because they didn’t change. That’s where we are today.”

The two studies, published in Science and Anthropocene Review, featured the work of scientists from countries including the U.S., Sweden, Germany, and India. The findings will be presented in seven seminars at the World Economic Forum in Davos, which takes place between Jan. 21 and 25.

Source

The Real Biodome

Real Biodome

Biosphere 2 is up for sale, all 12,700 square meters and 6,500 windows of it.

What? You never heard of Biosphere 2? Then consider yourself lucky. It was yet another embarrassing episode in the history of space activism, perpetuating an image of space activists as goofballs.

Biosphere 2 is a large facility located 25 kilometers north of Tucson, Arizona. It was billed as an enclosed environment—Earth is considered “Biosphere 1”—where the interactions of plants, animals and humans could be studied in detail. In September 1991 a group of “biospherians”—eight men and women wearing blue jumpsuits—locked themselves inside the glass-enclosed facility. Their plan was to stay inside for a period of two years without relying on outside assistance. The project sent ripples of excitement through the space activist community, where the biospherians and their research were hailed as pathfinders for a future Mars mission or lunar colony. At space activist conferences like the 1992 Case for Mars the biospherians made tele-video appearances and talked about all the exciting things they were doing inside their giant glass terrarium—things like raising rabbits and planting wheat. Their images were usually projected upon a large screen in a conference room and they took questions from the audience members, many of whom praised them for their courage and dedication to the cause of space colonization. It was good that they had outsiders to talk to, because according to a colleague of mine who regularly communicated via e-mail with the biospherians, several members of the group were no longer on speaking terms.

Despite all the praise and enthusiasm in space activist circles, there had long been warning signs that Biosphere 2 was not a serious operation. The management group operating Biosphere 2 refused to submit their work to independent scientific review, instead creating a sham “review” process that the scientific community laughed at. Instead of publishing papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals, the group copyrighted everything they produced and released it themselves, which largely ensured that it would be ignored by environmental, atmospheric, and space scientists. The project’s participation in scientific circles was essentially nonexistent.

There were also darker secrets as well: Biosphere 2 was funded in the late 1980s by a billionaire, Ed Bass, who had apparently been influenced by a doomsday cult to spend $200 million on the facility. This was back before “Heaven’s Gate” (castration, comets, mass suicide) gave doomsday cults a bad name.

The lack of scientific respect and the cultish origins didn’t deter the space activist community, however, which since at least the mid-1980s has been overly willing to attach itself to any effort that was both non-NASA and ideologically correct (meaning dedicated to space colonization). What made so many space activists admire the Biosphere project so much was that for once someone seemed to be actually “doing something.” In fact, this was often the defense within the activist communities whenever someone questioned Biosphere 2’s dubious foundation. Whether what they were actually doing made any sense did not matter, for being a space activist has long been more about religion—faith—than logic.

Fortunately, Biosphere 2 did not disappoint those who viewed it more as entertainment than any serious effort to advance space exploration. Soon after the airlocks were closed and the crew locked inside, one of the biospherians was injured and the airlock was opened and he stepped outside to get medical treatment. There were some grumblings both in the media and the space activist community that a crew on its way to Mars could not pull into the local hospital for emergency care, but the incident was soon forgotten. Forgotten, that is, until it was revealed that instead of simply opening an airlock, the biospherians had actually kept the doors open for awhile to replenish their air supply.

 

Not too long afterwards there were reports that the air quality inside Biosphere 2 was deteriorating rapidly: oxygen levels were falling and carbon dioxide levels rising. Various people struggled to find an explanation for this development and in the course of the search the biospherians let slip that they had even had to turn on their CO₂ scrubbers to purify the air. “What CO₂ scrubbers?” outsiders asked, at which point the group running Biosphere 2 revealed that they had put carbon dioxide scrubbers like those used on submarines inside the facility—and conveniently forgotten to tell anybody about them.

Eventually excessive carbon dioxide in the air was traced to the concrete used to construct the facility. It was undergoing a chemical reaction and increasing the carbon dioxide. The lack of oxygen was traced to excessive organic material in the soil used in the greenhouses. But in the meantime, massive amounts of fresh air had been pumped into the Biosphere to prevent the eight jumpsuited crewpersons from dying. The crew made it to their two-year mark and emerged into Biosphere 1 looking a lot thinner, and happy to be on the outside again.

The massive hole in the project’s credibility did not deter those committed to the cause, however, and soon a second group of biospherians locked themselves inside for another two-year journey. However, by this time Bass, the project’s benefactor, had reached his tolerance level with the group managing the project and decided to evict them and take over the facility. Two members of the first biosphere team then showed up on the property, allegedly to warn the members of the second team, and according to Bass’ account, tried to sabotage the facility. US Marshals were called and soon a gaggle of lawyers succeeded where bad air had failed before and the second biosphere crew was evicted, like so much biomass.

Billionaire Bass eventually contracted with Columbia University to run Biosphere 2 as a research and tourist facility, which they did until September 2003. Nobody was locked inside for long periods anymore. The space activist community quickly forgot about Biosphere 2, and many activists undoubtedly hoped that many other people would also forget about their association with the whole embarrassing project as well.

 

 

Biosphere 2 was ultimately more lame than weird. So lame, in fact, that the 1996 movie Bio-Dome starred Pauly Shore and Stephen Baldwin. (Although, to steal a line from the late, great Mystery Science Theater 3000, it is probably wrong to say that a movie “stars” Pauly Shore and more accurate to say that most of the time the camera is pointed at Pauly Shore). To be fair, the movie also featured British pop star Kylie Minogue.

The space activist community seems to have learned a few lessons from its association with the Biosphere project. Later in the 1990s, when Robert Zubrin’s Mars Society decided to establish its Mars analogue station at Devon Island in Canada’s far northern territories, the project included a substantial amount of space geek silliness and propaganda, including people walking around in fake spacesuits. But the group also established a real scientific agenda and wisely linked up with NASA’s existing Haughton Mars Project, studying the Haughton meteor impact crater and its surrounding area. Today they study the local geology and biology, and also try to extrapolate what it can teach us about conducting similar research on Mars.

Meanwhile, Biosphere 2 is up for sale, although it is unclear how much Bass’s Decisions Investment Corp. is asking for the 140-acre campus. The company’s spokesperson says that they would love to see the place used as a research facility, but are perfectly willing to settle for other offers.

It is doubtful that the Mars Society could buy it, but I hear that Pauly Shore is interested.

A Video Tour

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