Biosphere redux (revised)

The latest news is that Fairfield Corporation has decided (or been encouraged) to abandon its plans for developing the 1,800-acre property on which Biosphere sits. And the University of Arizona is considering stepping in and preserving the facility.

What no one has mentioned is that, since its original mission folded, Biosphere has contributed critical research to the global-warming controversy — namely, they have shown the correspondence between over-production of carbon dioxide and the dangerous systemic alteration of the ocean's ecosystem. According to John Addams (who currently heads their educational programming), one of their more damning findings were that, once heighted carbon dioxide levels were absorbed into a mock replica of an ocean environment at Biosphere II, coral reefs cease to replicate. These findings are now mirrored -- in another ocean shell-forming species, the pteropod -- in a disturbing article just released in the New Yorker, called the The Darkening Sea by Elizabeth Kolbert.

Apparently Biosphere — in spite of its plagued history — has nevertheless been on the forefront of making important contributions to the field of science (in ways that relate to the safeguarding of our planet). It therefore needs to be considered in a wholly new light.