The Whale and the Supercomputer: On the Northern Front of Climate Change FROM THE PUBLISHER
A Traditional Eskimo Whaling Crew Races for shore near Barrow, Alaska, while their comrades drift out to sea: ice that should be solidly anchored at this time of year is giving way. Elsewhere, a team of scientists with frosty beards traverses the breadth of Alaska, measuring the thinning snow every ten kilometers in an effort to understand albedo, the heat-deflecting property that helps regulate the planet's temperature. Climate change isn't an abstraction in the Far North. It is a reality that has already altered daily life for Native people who still live largely off the land and sea. Likewise, its heavy Arctic footprint has lured scientists seeking to uncover its mysteries. In this gripping account, Charles Wohlforth follows both groups as they navigate a radically shifting landscape. Scientists drill into the environment's smallest details to derive abstract laws that may explain the whole. Natives know the whole through uncannily accurate traditional knowledge built over generations. The two cultures see the same changes -- the melting of ancient ice, the animals and insects in new places -- but they struggle to reconcile their different ways of comprehending what these changes mean. With grace, clarity, and a sense of adventure, Wohlforth illuminates both ways of seeing a world in flux and, in the process, helps us to envision a way forward as climate change envelops us all.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
"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 cultures-the Inupiaq Eskimos who live and hunt on the coast of the Arctic Ocean and Western scientists attempting to comprehend climate change-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 title-it's worth reading. (Apr.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Twenty-eight years of atmospheric carbon dioxide data show a steady increase of carbon dioxide in the Arctic. Similarly, winter temperature measurements indicate steadily warming winters. Meanwhile, Inupiaq Eskimo whalers living in arctic Alaska know that the ice has changed. One misjudgment, and whaling crews get stranded when ice floes break away from land. In this truly extraordinary book, journalist Wohlforth, an Alaskan resident, tackles the central question of our age: how do we know about our environment? In talking with the scientists who make models and create predictions of the future based on scientific data, Wohlforth allows us to observe their passion and their way of seeing the world through the lens of science. He also introduces us to native hunters and whalers, revealing how they know their world, i.e., how they gather their personal information, pass it on, and integrate it into an understanding of the environment and how it is changing. This is called indigenous knowledge, and scientists are just beginning to understand its value and to look for ways to incorporate it into their research efforts to fathom more fully the Arctic climate. This engrossing book is an important addition for public and academic libraries that collect books on global warming, the Arctic and Alaska, and the scientific process.-Betty Galbraith, Owen Science & Engineering Lib., Washington State Univ., Pullman Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
A journalist and native Alaskan comes to grips with the impact of climate change in an Arctic region where science predicted it would first show its hand. Wohlforth delves into the two disparate cultures most affected by the steady warming that he asserts "everybody in Alaska knows is a fact." While the I-upiaq Eskimos embark on increasingly perilous whale hunts, scientific researchers struggle against the elements in order to amass data that might unlock a view of the future. The author, a sometime outdoor trekker, is at his descriptive best when accompanying native hunters out onto sea ice in search of the migrating Bowhead whales that support their subsistence tradition. Wind, wave, and mysterious puddles of brine can conspire to cause sudden fractures, sending hunters scurrying frantically for shore (often tens of miles away) towing sledges, boats, and massive amounts of butchered whale meat with their snowmobiles. As warmed air generates fog-now more than ever an added threat-any wrong turn can lead to a watery death, or a lonely one on a shrinking floe far at sea where the likeliest companion is a hungry polar bear. Wohlforth's prime inquiry: What can these imperiled people, who have intimately studied climate for generations, share with formal science to help answer the big questions? First, you have to get scientists to listen, the author explains, and that can be a tough job if they would rather be out collecting core samples from snowbanks or sea ice in wintertime. One anecdotal gem involves an I-upiaq known for uncannily accurate weather predictions who is initially thought by scientists to use some form of meditation; they later find out that he unerringly takes to his tent tohear the morning forecast from KBAR radio. Despite tedious forays into the politics of research grants, newcomer Wohlforth offers a revealing look at climate change where it counts. Agent: Alicka Pistek/Nicholas Ellison
Home
