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| The Whale and the Supercomputer: On the Northern Front of Climate Change | 
| Author: Charles Wohlforth
Publisher: North Point Press
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 927168
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.1
ISBN: 0865476594
Dewey Decimal Number: 305.89712
EAN: 9780865476592
ASIN: 0865476594
Publication Date: April 21, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Standard used condition.
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Product Description
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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
A Most Balanced View September 10, 2008
Charles Wohlforth's The Whale and the Supercomputer is a brilliant conversation between the indigenous Inupiat of Barrow, Alaska, and the Anglo world of science. It deals not only in ideas, observations and theory, but in the lives of the women and men who give rise to these ideas, observations and theories. The result is a deeply human book.
Wohlforth gives all sides of the conversation a hearing, showing the strengths and blindness of each. Many of us who claim to be environmentalists live too far away from the land to really know it, but our critique is also helpful to those who live too close.
Some of the most interesting stories in this book are the ones he does not tell. It seems that many people do science as a way of getting back to the land. It also seems that some of those who do the science are worried about what their experiments are showing and so they do them again and in different ways, just in case there might be a different outcome. The result is that Wohlforth thoroughly engages his reader.
The conversation between the Native Way and White Capitalism that is going on in Alaska today may be the most important conversation Americans will ever have. I am grateful to Charles Wohlforth for letting us listen in.
I am reading parts of this book aloud to my children December 13, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
who are 11 and 13. They wanted me to read the whole chapter about the snow-sampling expedition. They are thrilled and disturbed by the whale hunts and the vivid descriptions of the ice, and they are more interested in the science than I expected -- but as another reviewer noted, the author is a parent, too, and while the science isn't oversimplified, it is set out in plain language.
My kids want to go to Alaska as soon as possible, "before it's all melted and gone forever" as my daughter says. And my son wanted to know -- "Mom, if I can figure out cold fusion, will you be proud of me?"
All the accolades by other reviewers here are well deserved. This is a wonderful read; the science is woven into the story so seamlessly that you don't realize just how much you're learning. But I think the most important message of this story is that the earth has an intrinsic value and beauty that we do not have the right to destroy.
So, get this book. Read it. Donate a copy to your local library. Maybe our children really can save the planet. This book could be the inspiration.
The Whale and the Supercomputer: On the Northern Front of Climate Change May 1, 2006
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I flew a Jet Ranger helicopter for ERA Helicopters in the spring of 1969, shortly after oil was definitely discovered at Prudhoe Bay. I was the farthest west contract at that time, living with and working for a seismic crew. As a result I had to learn a lot about surviving in the white-out, memorizing the shapes of all the tundra ponds, various willows and other Arctic shrubs, snowy owls and ptarmigan, and so forth. Reading this book brought me back to all those adventuresome skills and a time just before we were all so skeptical of our society and its outcome. Working in extreme outdoor jobs then was a lot like the life described in this book. Certain abilities to pick up on local lore of the Natives, as well as the most advanced technical thinking was expected of you, and comforting. I have enjoyed seeing anything about the Arctic's North Slope of Alaska ever since, and hope we can move forward into our complicated future without confiscating that amazing habitat up there. And good luck to the Arctic Ocean's inhabitants and their ecology; they are going to need it for what we have done to the atmosphere. This writer is a fine journalist for conveying what we have learned so far.
Global warming given a personal perspective July 11, 2005
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
This book tells many stories centered on the theme of climate change as seen in Northern Alaska. The Inupiat 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 Inupiat, 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 Inupiat 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 Inupiat, the scientists have typically found this a frustrating exercise and the Inupiat 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 Inupiat. 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 Inupiat way of life as a whaling captain instead of pursuing his scientific career and Inupiat 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 Inupiat 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.
What do you know? May 6, 2005
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
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.
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Wildlife, nature and the Environment
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