The Whale and the Supercomputer: On the Northern Front of Climate Change - Hardcover

Wohlforth, Charles

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0865476594 ISBN 13: 9780865476592

Publisher: North Point Press, 2004

Synopsis

Scientists and natives wrestle with our changing climate in the land where it has hit first--and hardest

A traditional Eskimo whale-hunting party races to shore near Barrow, Alaska--their comrades trapped on a floe drifting out to sea--as ice that should be solid this time of year gives way. Elsewhere, a team of scientists transverses the tundra, sleeping in tents, surviving on frozen chocolate, and measuring the snow every ten kilometers in a quest to understand the effects of albedo, the snow's reflective ability to cool the earth beneath it.

Climate change isn't an abstraction in the far North. It is a reality that has already dramatically altered daily life, especially that of the native peoples who still live largely off the land and sea. Because nature shows her footprints so plainly here, the region is also a lure for scientists intent on comprehending the complexities of climate change. In this gripping account, Charles Wohlforth follows the two groups as they navigate a radically shifting landscape. The scientists attempt to decipher its smallest elements and to derive from them a set of abstract laws and models. The natives draw on uncannily accurate traditional knowledge, borne of long experience living close to the land. Even as they see the same things-a Native elder watches weather coming through too fast to predict; a climatologist notes an increased frequency of cyclonic systems-the two cultures struggle to reconcile their vastly different ways of comprehending the environment.

With grace, clarity, and a sense of adventure, Wohlforth--a lifelong Alaskan--illuminates both ways of seeing a world in flux, and in the process, helps us to navigate a way forward as climate change reaches us all.

About this title

About the Author

Charles Wohlforth, formerly a reporter for the Anchorage Daily News, is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Outsideand The New Republic. He is a life-long Alaskan.

Reviews

"I love the winter. It's when I fly through the birch forest like a hawk." So begins Alaska-based journalist Wohlforth's beautifully written study of global warming's impact on Arctic weather patterns. He does a magnificent job of writing about two disparate culturesâ€"the Inupiaq Eskimos who live and hunt on the coast of the Arctic Ocean and Western scientists attempting to comprehend climate changeâ€"and demonstrating just how much they have in common. His goal is "to try to understand different ways of seeing the natural world," and he successfully moves between both groups as they acknowledge that significant change has already begun: "Average winter temperatures in Interior Alaska had risen 7 degrees F since the 1950s.... Alaska glaciers were shrinking, permanently frozen ground was melting, spring was earlier, and Arctic sea ice was thinner and less extensive than ever before measured. Winter was going to hell." The changes mean a lifestyle shift for the Inupiat, who depend for their livelihood on traditional methods of whaling that are being severely affected by the climate changes. Moving with ease from whaling boats to seminar rooms, Wohlforth brings excitement to the quest for information about global warming. Part adventure story, part science writing accessible to the general reader, this thoroughly engaging volume provides rich insight into ways of dealing with climate change. The issues Wohlforth raise go well beyond the Inupiaq Eskimos, he notes, and are certain to affect all of us in the coming years. Disregard the book's unfortunate titleâ€"it's worth reading.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Wohlforth traveled to Alaska in 2002 to track people who conduct climate research. In this surprisingly intimate presentation, in which he gives the life stories of most of the people he interviews, he accompanies one group of scientists on a Nome-to-Barrow transect to measure winter snowpack, and he talks to climate modelers, glaciologists, entomologists, and biologists at their various research stations on the Arctic coast or in the interior. Often itinerants from the lower 48, the scientists have a data-oriented outlook that contrasts with that of the Inupiat, the indigenous people of Alaska's North Slope. The contrast is nuanced and not succinctly definable, however. Although the Inupiat leaders were wary of him as an outsider, Wohlforth accompanied them on their tradition-keeping hunts for bowhead whales, a legal exception to the worldwide prohibition on whale hunting. En route, he transmits their experiences of climate warming either through observation of seascape or ancestral memory, which effectively convey the Inupiat's impression of the changes around them. Wohlforth's detailed, perceptive work will immediately engage readers interested in environmentalism. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: North Point Press
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0865476594
• ISBN 13: 9780865476592
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 336