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Sitka (Alaska)
Sentinel, April 30, 2004
Writer Connects
Whalers, Warmer
Weather
By ANDREW MILLER
Sentinel Staff
Writer
Anchorage-based
writer Charles
Wohlforth didn’t use a lot of complex scientific jargon in his new book
on
global climate change, and he didn’t have to.
By focusing
largely on a group
of Inupiat whalers in Barrow, Wohlforth makes the point in “The Whale
and the
Supercomputer” that climate change is a real problem that is going to
affect
everyone in the near future.
“When you’re a
writer and you
try to tell a story it’s always people that are the most interesting
thing,”
said Wohlforth in a telephone interview with the Sentinel this week.
He will be in
Sitka
Monday evening for a reading from his book, and to show slides
illustrating his
findings. The program will begin at 7
p.m.
in the Pioneer Home Chapel. It is free and open to the public.
“What I found to
my surprise was
that the whalers in Barrow had a very deep understanding of what was
going on
and also were starting to learn to deal with it,” Wohlforth told the
Sentinel.
“This was a human story that I could tell that had a lot impact beyond
what you
get from sort of a broad scientific telling of the issue.”
For millenia,
whaling has been
at the center of the human culture in the vicinity of present-day
Barrow. But
as the polar ice cap surrounding
North America’s
northernmost community melts earlier each spring and freezes later each
fall,
whaling and life in general are changing in Barrow.
In his book
Wohlforth writes
about his own experience on the ice with struggling whalers, and he
shares the
stories of elders who remember when there was ice along the shore as
late as
June and July, and the thaw did not occur in April or May as it does
now.
A freelance
writer and author of
Alaska travel
guides, Wohlforth
said he became interested in climate change after noticing winters in
his
hometown of Anchorage were
getting
warmer than they were when he was a kid in the 1970s.
Wohlforth said
he knew Alaska
was at the forefront of climate change research in the world, and
initially he
planned to write about this research and its findings. But very soon,
he said,
his interest broadened and he started writing about people.
“As I started
researching what
was going on scientifically I noticed some of the most interesting
science was
studying the Natives and studying what the Natives know, and going sort
of
inside that holistic view of the environment,” he said.
“Climate change
has been treated
in the past as a political and scientific issue, but really it’s a
human issue
and I think it’s a cultural issue too.”
Wohlforth first
began his
research for the book in Barrow in the summer of 2001and made return
trips for
the spring and fall whaling seasons in 2002.
In Barrow,
Wohlforth not only
spent time with the whalers but with the scores of scientific
researchers
studying the arctic environment. The researchers also play heavily into
his
book, with their supercomputers and modern tools contrasting
traditional and,
at times, equally effective Native science.
Wohlforth said
scientists flock
to Barrow because polar regions, with their sensitive ice caps, are the
first
places to be affected by global climate change. But recently, he said,
the
effects of climate change have become more noticeable in the south as
well,
where ecosystems are observed moving north at a rate of one kilometer
per year.
“This is
probably the biggest
issue facing mankind in the next couple of centuries. We’re going to
need to
find completely new sources of energy that don’t affect the
environment, and
before something of that magnitude can take place there’ll have to be
world
social movement,” he said.
“Nobody is going
to be able to
force anybody to do this. People are going to have to decide to do this
on
their own. That’s a lesson that can be taught by the Eskimos, that’s
what’s
already going on in the
North Slope.”
Wohlforth said
he hopes his book
helps people recognize the impact of climate change in their own lives,
and
helps them prepare to make changes to deal with it, but he said he did
not
intend the book to offer predictions or solutions.
“I simply don’t
believe we have
the ability to predict what is going to happen. ... I think there are
some
basic predictions you can make like rising sea levels and warming
temperatures,
but even with that it could be that the effect of what we’re doing will
cause a
change in ocean currents and we’ll have cooling temperatures,” he said.
“I think what we
do know is that
things are going to change and we’re not going to like a lot of that
change
because we really rely on stability.”
“The Whale and
the
Supercomputer,” published by the North Point Press division of Farrar,
Strauss
and Giroux, was released in mid-April. Wohlforth is making his visit to
Sitka
as part of a book tour of Alaska
and the Lower 48. His stay in Sitka
is sponsored by the Sitka Conservation Society.
At the Monday
evening
presentation Wohlforth will read selections from his book and show
pictures of
his whaling trips, arctic landscapes and of research projects in the
far north.
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