At a size comparable to two and a half football fields, it remains the largest closed system ever created. The sealed nature of the structure allowed scientists to monitor the ever-changing chemistry of the air, water and soil contained within. Health of the human crew was monitored by a medical doctor inside and an outside medical team.

Biosphere 2 contained representative biomes: a 1,900 square meter rainforest, an 850 square meter ocean with a coral reef, a 450 square meter mangrove wetlands, a 1,300 square meter savannah grassland, a 1,400 square meter fog desert, a 2,500 square meter agricultural system, a human habitat, and a below-ground level technical infrastructure. Heating and cooling water circulated through independent piping systems and passive solar input through the glass space frame panels covering most of the facility, and electrical power was supplied into Biosphere 2 from an onsite natural gas energy center through airtight penetrations.

Biosphere 2 had two closure experiments, Missions 1 and 2. The first, with a crew of eight people, ran for two years 1991-93. Following a six month transition period during which researchers entered the facility through airlock doors and conducted research and system engineering improvements, a second closure with a crew of seven people was conducted March 1994-September 1994. In the course of that second mission, a dispute over management of the financial aspects of the project caused the on-site management to be locked out, and the mission itself to be ended prematurely.

In 1995, Columbia University took over management of the facility for research and as a campus until 2003. In 1996, they changed the virtually airtight, materially-closed structure designed for closed system research, to a “flow-through” system, and halted closed system research. They manipulated carbon dioxide levels for global warming research, and injected desired amounts of carbon dioxide, venting as needed.

By 2006, the property, which is in exurban Tucson, was slated to be redeveloped for a planned community. As of June 5, 2007, the property including surrounding land, totaling 1,650 acres (6.7 km²), had been sold to a residential home developer for US$50 million. A development including homes and a resort hotel was planned for a portion of the land. The Biosphere itself remains open for tours

On June 26, 2007, the University of Arizona announced it would take over research at the Biosphere 2. The announcement ended immediate fears that the famous glass vivarium would be demolished. University officials said private gifts and grants enabled them to cover research and operating costs for three years with the possibility of extending that funding for 10 years.

The Nature Conservancy has developed a new online tool called the ClimateWizard, which maps past and projected climate data. According to their calculations, several U.S. states are expected to see sharp temperature increases by the turn of the next century–not in most of our lifetimes, but certainly in our grandchildren’s.

North, south, east, west–no matter which direction you look in the United States, temperatures are expected to climb. In the worst-case scenario, temperatures across the country will climb by at least 5 degrees Fahrenheit, but many states will see far steeper climbs.

Projected Temperature Increases
Washington – 7?F
Georgia – 7.5?F
New Mexico – 8.6?F
Pennsylvania – 8.7?F
Utah – 9.4?F
Illinois – 9.6?F

To put these numbers in context, the average surface temperature has warmed about 1?F since the mid-1970s, according to reports from NASA and the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration. That means these states will see the current rate of temperature increase double or triple in the next century.

Land, waterways, wildlife and humans will be irreversibly changed by a global temperature increase of 3.6 degrees, the Nature Conservancy reports. Global data is not yet available on ClimateWizard.

The increases of temperature will change ecosystems across many parts of the country, and it will lead to an increase in heat-related human deaths. The agriculture and recreation/tourism sectors will suffer catastrophic losses in revenues. The cost of fighting wildfires and rebuilding destroyed homes will skyrocket. Agriculture, recreation/tourism and wildfire losses and costs are estimated to top $1 billion in New Mexico alone.

So where do these projections leave us?

The bad news is global temperatures continue to rise, and governments around the world don’t seem to be making any headway on climate change. The good news is these projected temperature increases are based on a worst-case scenario that includes an increase in greenhouse gas emissions. If we can somehow manage to get greenhouse gas emissions in check, then we may be able to reduce the threat significantly.

The scientists spent a year assessing geo-engineering technologies, deliberate planet-scale interventions in the climate system that attempt to counteract global warming. Their report, the most comprehensive to date, concluded that immediate investment is required to discover whether the potential risks outweigh the benefits.

“Unless the world community can do better at cutting emissions, we fear we will need additional techniques such as geo-engineering to avoid very dangerous climate change in the future,” said John Shepherd of the University of Southampton, who chaired the RS report.

“However, we are not advocates of geo-engineering – our opinions range from cautious consent to very serious scepticism about these ideas. It is not an alternative to emissions reductions and cannot provide an easy quick-fix to the problem.”

Its report, published today, concluded that some approaches – such as capturing CO2 from the atmosphere using artificial trees or shooting tiny particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect away sunlight – looked promising. But all geo-engineering techniques had major uncertainties regarding their own environmental impacts.

The Royal Society considered two main categories of the technology. One involves reflecting a small amount, around 2%, of the solar radiation that reaches the Earth, thus preventing the planet from warming up. The other category involves removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

“CO2 removal methods are preferable because removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere addresses the problem at its root and is returning the earth’s climate system closer to its natural state,” said Shepherd.

But he said crucial experimental data in the area was lacking. “We need to initiate research so we can understand the intended and unintended consequences of these methods so that, if we ever do need to deploy them, we can do so in a sensible and effective way.”

The report calls for about £10m per year to be spent in the UK as part of a global £100m fund. “That’s about 10 times what is being spent now and about 10 times less than what we spend on climate change research,” said Shepherd. “And it’s only 1% of what we spend on new energy technology.”

Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution in California, said this early-stage research must be carried out as soon as possible. “The worst situation is to not test the options and then face a climate emergency and then be faced with deploying an untested option, a parachute that you’ve never tested out as the plane’s crashing.”

Among the most promising technologies identified by the Royal Society are techniques to suck CO2 directly out of the atmosphere. The front-runner in this arena is a design by Klaus Lackner of Columbia University in New York. His artificial trees are not yet cost-effective to produce but Shepherd said it was probably just a matter of time.

Shooting sulphate aerosols into the stratosphere would also work well, said the Royal Society, as previous volcanic eruptions have showed in the past. When Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines erupted in 1991, for example, global temperatures dropped by 0.5C the following year. The costs would be relatively low but the scientists identified questions over potential adverse effects, in particular the destruction of the ozone layer.

Doug Parr, chief scientist at Greenpeace UK, said: “Geo-engineering is creeping onto the agenda because governments seem incapable of standing up to the vested interests of the fossil fuel lobby, who will use the idea to undermine the emissions reductions we can do safely.

“Intervening in our planet’s systems carries huge risks, with winners and losers, and if we can’t deliver political action on clean energy and efficiency then consensus on geo-engineering is a fantasy.”

The Royal Society also pointed out that technical and scientific issues may not be the dominant ones when it came to the actual deployment of geo-engineering technology. Social, legal, ethical and political issues would be of equal significance and implementing global-scale projects would require a pre-existing international agreement.

“When it comes to techniques that need to be field-tested, and where that will occur in places beyond national jurisdiction, such as sulphate aerosols, then inevitably we’re looking at some kind of international governance framework,” said Catherine Redgwell, a professor of international law at University College London and a member of the Royal Society working group on geoengineering.

At a meeting to launch the report at the Royal Society today, the government’s chief scientific adviser John Beddington said the government should be thinking about a modest investment in geoengineering research.

“It is appropriate that the UK continues to support international research in this area including the possibility of considering the types of global governance systems that would be needed for geo-engineering,” he said.

Arctic temperatures in the 1990s reached their warmest level of any decade in at least 2,000 years, new research indicates. The study, which incorporates geologic records and computer simulations, provides new evidence that the Arctic would be cooling if not for greenhouse gas emissions that are overpowering natural climate patterns.

The international study, led by Northern Arizona University and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), will be published in the September 4 edition of Science. It was primarily funded by the National Science Foundation, NCAR’s sponsor.

The scientists reconstructed summer temperatures across the Arctic over the last 2,000 years by decade, extending a view of climate far beyond the 400 years of Arctic-wide records previously available at that level of detail. They found that thousands of years of gradual Arctic cooling, related to natural changes in Earth’s orbit, would continue today if not for emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

“This result is particularly important because the Arctic, perhaps more than any other region on Earth, is facing dramatic impacts from climate change,” says NCAR scientist David Schneider, one of the co-authors. “This study provides us with a long-term record that reveals how greenhouse gases from human activities are overwhelming the Arctic’s natural climate system.”

Darrell Kaufman of Northern Arizona University, the lead author and head of the synthesis project, says the results indicate that recent warming is more anomalous than previously documented.

“Scientists have known for a while that the current period of warming was preceded by a long-term cooling trend,” says Kaufman. “But our reconstruction quantifies the cooling with greater certainty than before.”

Greenhouse gases overtake a natural cycle

The new study is the first to quantify a pervasive cooling across the Arctic on a decade-by-decade basis that is related to an approximately 21,000-year cyclical wobble in Earth’s tilt relative to the Sun. Over the last 7,000 years, the timing of Earth’s closest pass by the Sun has shifted from September to January. This has gradually reduced the intensity of sunlight reaching the Arctic in summertime, when Earth is farther from the Sun.

The United States Climate Action Partnership changed the national debate over warming. Executives from member companies such as DuPont, Ford Motor Co. and PG&E Corp. lobbied Congress to do something about greenhouse gases.

They joined forces with environmental groups that also were part of the partnership, groups such as the Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council. Together, they helped lay the groundwork for the climate bill that the U.S. Senate will debate this fall.

But now this groundbreaking partnership may have been undercut by some of its own members.

Some of the oil companies that joined the partnership are taking part in an oil industry campaign against the climate change bill in Congress. The campaign features public rallies against the bill in places such as Houston and Greensboro, N.C., coordinated by the industry’s main lobbying group, the American Petroleum Institute.

The rallies are designed to look like grassroots affairs. But an e-mail from the institute to oil company executives outlining the campaign and asking them to participate was leaked to Greenpeace, which released it to the public.

ConocoPhillips, a member of the climate change partnership, posted a note on its Web site encouraging people to go. BP, another partnership member, told employees about the rallies but did not encourage them to attend, according to a company spokesman.

As a result, observers wonder whether the partnership could lose some of its effectiveness, just as the debate over global warming legislation moves to a critical stage.

“It’s not my intention or desire to see USCAP fracture, because what they represent is important,” said Greenpeace Research Director Kert Davies, who received the leaked oil industry e-mail. “It looks like selfishness has returned, that each corporation is going to pursue its own selfish interest. And that means we will get nowhere.”

Greenpeace does not belong to the Climate Action Partnership.

“Obviously, we’ve got a number of questions about the API rallies,” said Brian Hertzog, director of corporate relations for PG&E Corp. The San Francisco company, the parent corporation of Pacific Gas and Electric Co., was one of the partnership’s founding members.

Still in agreement

He doubted, however, that the partnership would split or shrink as a result of the rallies. The members all support a blueprint for action that the group released in January, which calls for a carbon cap-and-trade system to reduce America’s greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050.

“Everyone’s still committed to the principles in the blueprint, and I think that’s a powerful thing for people in the Senate,” Hertzog said.

Illustrating just how difficult the negotiations over climate change legislation can be, the partnership in June praised the U.S. House of Representatives for passing its version of the bill, but took pains not to endorse specific provisions in it.

BP has concerns

BP spokesman Ronnie Chappell said his company had issues with the House bill, not with climate-change regulation in general. He said BP informed some of its employees about the rallies but told them that attending would be “a personal decision.”

“We’re not the only people with concerns about the current bill,” Chappell said. “It does not yet conform, in our opinion, to the blueprint put forward by USCAP, and we will be working in the Senate to get a bill that does.”

Davies said BP is trying to have it both ways. “They need to be talking straight with people,” he said. “They can’t be lobbying one day with USCAP … and the next day have an energy rally with people bashing the bill.”