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

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.… (more)