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

Charles Wohlforth (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 21, 2004

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.

Editorial Reviews

From 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 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.

From Booklist

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

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: North Point Press (April 21, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0865476594
• ISBN-13: 978-0865476592
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,682,491 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What do you know?, May 6, 2005

By 

OCreader - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Whale and the Supercomputer: On the Northern Front of Climate Change (Paperback)

We know why this book was honored with the 2005 Los Angeles Times Book Award for science/technical writing. Wohlforth cheerfully tackles the deep fog of climate science (even some of the career scientists he interviews seem hopelessly befuddled by the complexity of it). But he approaches it both as a journalist who makes his living by storytelling, and as a father used to gently encouraging his four bright, curious children to understand their world. He can distill a century of mind-numbing bench science into a metaphor that his 10-year old can understand and that readers of all ages will appreciate.

To get the story he drops into whaling expeditions and arctic research explorations with equal aplomb by chipping in and becoming one of the team. (The comparison is not unlike the cinematographers who capture on film the drama of a Mt. Everest ascent: the only way to get the picture is to strap on the gear and make the climb themselves, right alongside the adventurers they're filming.)

Getting and telling the story is what Wohlforth knows how to do. In his book, he captivates us by telling us what his "characters" know how to do. From the fox who knows how to skitter across a thin sheet of newly-forming ice without falling through, to the native who knows how to take compass readings by studying the shadows on snow drifts, to our generation's academic elites who know how to wrap their minds around the infinitely complex equations that underlie the mysteries of climate change. In the end, it's really not so mysterious: the signs of climate change are obvious and all around us.

Read this book and prepare to be moved and enlightened, just as you will be charmed by the people whose lives, livelihoods, and ways of knowing are as diverse as the environment itself.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Global warming given a personal perspective, July 10, 2005

By 

Lee Herman "macbikegeek" (Las Cruces, NM USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Whale and the Supercomputer: On the Northern Front of Climate Change (Hardcover)

This book tells many stories centered on the theme of climate change as seen in Northern Alaska. The Iñupiat people have lived around what is today Barrow, Alaska for over a thousand years. As with many indigenous peoples, they have a keen awareness of their natural surroundings. For the Iñupiat, knowledge of weather, ice and whale behavior is a matter of life and death, both moment to moment in a climate so harsh the cold can kill quickly and in the larger life of their villages, where successful whale hunts are needed to feed the people.

Barrow has also been the site of scientific Arctic climate studies since the 1800s. A parallel culture of scientists has developed in the several research stations in the area. For many years, the Iñupiat and scientific communities have coexisted in varying states of tension. Both recognize strengths in the other but their ways of approaching life and understanding the world are very different and often not possible to reconcile. While the scientists have frequently consulted with and tried to learn from the Iñupiat, the scientists have typically found this a frustrating exercise and the Iñupiat have had enough bad experiences with researchers on short projects not really understanding the people or the place that they do not easily trust outsiders.

Charles Wohlforth has lived in Alaska and did a remarkable job of coaxing stories out of the Iñupiat. They are storytellers - telling stories has long been deeply ingrained in their culture and way of life. We hear some of their stories as well as those of the scientists. Perhaps most remarkably, we meet a scientist who returned to Alaska to adopt the Iñupiat way of life as a whaling captain instead of pursuing his scientific career and Iñupiat who have made their way as scientists even as they live next to the people they grew up with.

But most important, while we see the effects of global warming and climate change as seen by the scientists doing research and the Iñupiat whalers trying to cope with the impact of bad ice and warmer weather on all aspects of whaling, the author reminds us that these local effects are just a snapshot in one place of changes that will affect us all. Reading this book compels an appreciation for the depth and breadth of knowledge of an indigenous people surviving the changes in the modern world while preserving their native ways and traditions.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A MUST read !, May 30, 2004

By 

B. Moose Peterson (Mammoth Lakes, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Whale and the Supercomputer: On the Northern Front of Climate Change (Hardcover)

In my twenty+ years of working with enviromental issues and the hundreds and hundreds of books I've read on those topics, none have been as good a read as The Whale and the Supercomputer!

There is a clear need, no matter the science, of relating the science to the real world. This book does of great job of doing that on a topic that is so important to our world today and for our kids of tomorrow.

Be entertained as you learn, understand a world so few are fortunate enough to explore. Read this book!