[applause] thanks all of you for coming out on this balmy evening for a conversation on the history of a very cold place. We are proud to present jon gertners new book the ice at the end of the world an epic journey into greenlandb buried past and our perilous future which tells the story of how people have encountered, muddied, settled and then unsettled by the great ice sheet thatcovers greenland , the World Largest island and of what changes to the ice sheet and tell us about the ongoing impact of Global Warming on sea levels and what it threatens the future of civilization. My name is, horse kimono, director of the Coleman Center. Take this moment to silence your cell phones. Before we begin tonight program we really must take a moment to reflect on some recent news. Last friday as many of you know, louis coleman, our founding benefactor and friend died. He was 100 years old. It was his and his wifes dorothys ingenious generosity that made this center possible. It was in fact dorothys idea at the place should include creative writers along with scholars and othernonfiction writers. He died in 2009. Every year in the fall since the beginning of the Coleman Center lewis and the 15 fellows and their dates up to his apartment for dinner and conversation. His ride and the work of the more than 300 fellows of the center and its first 20 years was infectious and is gets ensured that fellows will be working here on new books for many, many years to come. Louis coleman gave to the arts, education and research all over the city and the country, he gave to the library of performing arts, to the metropolitan museum, moma and the new York Botanical garden and his urging of others to give generously until it hurts was legendary. He wrote a book about getting. You cant take it with you, the art of making and giving money. He was swap, strive, with weighted and inspirational to the end. We continue to thank him and we will miss him. As many of you know, this series presents the work of the dorothy and lewis the Coleman Center for scholars and writers. Our program selects 15 fellows a year for a nine month term at the library with a stipend to cover their expenses. Fellows are some of the best and most promising academics, independents, scholars, poets, playwrights, artists and fiction writers at work today. They come here from around the country and the world use the unparalleled collections at this library to write the books of tomorrow. When the fellows published the booksthey write, we try to show them off at a program like this one. If youd like to know more about events in this series is it and why pl. Org conversation. Youll find books for sale like nights guest and they generously agreed to sign them after the program. Youll note tonights event is being recorded for later broadcast by cspan so its time to ask questions a little more than halfway through the hour we ask that you stand and please use a microphone that one of our staff will hand down the aisle. Leading the discussion tonight will be our esteemed past fellow victoria johnson who is a fellow from 2015 2016. Her own Coleman Center book which we were proud to help launch here last year was american eating, david bostic , botany and medicine in the garden of the early republic, published last year failed in the New York Times as both an ambitious and entertaining book. It was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times book awardand National Book award and pulitzer prize. She had a hell of a year. Victoria johnson holds degrees in philosophy from yale and sociology from columbia and she is an associate professor of urban policy and planning at hunter college. She seeks tonight with our friend jon gertner, a frequent contributor to national magazines, most often to the New York Times magazine where he writes on science, nature and technology. His bestselling first book the idea factory published in 2012 told the story of bell labs, the Research Wing of at t andits impact on american innovation. Of his new book us today writes in a review that came out five minutes ago that the ice at the end of the world offers a compelling narrative about human beings curiosity about the world wars them to forgetting places and will also find when they go, they bring hot chocolate because they are norwegians. Elizabeth colbert calls it a gripping and important book. We will open the floor to questions from all of you, in the meantime please welcome tori johnson and jon gertner. Thank you salvador. John, congratulations on a beautiful and important book. This book the ice at the end of the world manages to be haunting and poetic and offer the reader a sciencebased narrative that will be usually enlightening to many readers. I was reminded while i was reading your book of what the historian andrea wolf has noted about the explorer alexander humboldt. She said he insisted that to understand nature and to celebrate nature, one must be both poet and scientist. So your last book was about bell labs and was in suburban newjersey. And so then we went very far to one of the most punishing expanses of land and ice on earth. In the introduction to the, the ice at the end of the world you offer a tantalizing remark by the scientist and sold out who in the 1930s flew over greenland. You quote him as saying im looking at a landscape of vast simplicity is nowhere to be surpassed on earth and yet conceals 1000 secrets. You then after the introduction take us on a journey with explorers and scientists who are trying to unlock those secrets. Could you tell me what first got you interested in moving from suburban new jersey to greenland and when did you decide there might be a book in it . First off, thank you, that was very kind and im glad you like the book and thank you for coming as well. I sort of found myself asking myself as im on this plane to greenland, why . Its not easy to get to greenland either, youve got to go through denmark and you fly on Air Greenland if youve never been to greenland but i ended up making six trips and i often wondered how i got there but my first book looked at innovation and it was very focused on what we do to solve problems. What we do to create i think new products that change the world and when i was done with that i had really been focused on Climate Change as i had also been writing for the New York Times magazine and writing about Climate Change for a few years and i wanted to do more on that. I wasnt quite sure how to go about doing that. And at the same time i also bought id written this book on innovation, i really want to write about discovery itches this thing that happens before innovation happens. When we find new knowledge and were not trying to make a new product, were trying to maybe just find new knowledge anddo something with the knowledge. And i think that takes us right about 2012 when my first book came out and just about that time, the Greenland Ice sheet started to melt quite dramatically. There were a couple summer days where the whole ice sheet, the surface of the ice sheet completely melted and this was a time where Climate Change race worked really in the news as much and if you were following certain news organizations or news feeds you could follow that news and it struck me that maybe this was a way to sort of write about Climate Change but i already knew that there was a kind of deeper story of discovery there, not only how we knew that this massive ice sheet was nothing how we had investigated it as well. And i really just began to read and think about how to structure it and it began from there. So you said you took six trips to greenland. This is a place that for many of us is a tip of land we see on the inflight map on the way toeurope. Could you tell us, im sure there are people in the room who been to greenland but can you tell us what its like they are, what were your First Impressions if you remember them and what did you do there . Yeah, well sometimes i flew commercial and sometimes i had the opportunity to fly on some nasa flights and military flights. Part of the problem with getting to greenland is you cant go directly from jfk or newark. You kind of like over greenland and you fly back to greenland which is, theres a theory that you can do it all in one day but you have to run through the copenhagen airport at breakneck speed and maybe miss the connecting flight that goes from new york to copenhagen and copenhagen to greenland but the first time i landed there i remember taking a deep breath and the air there is so crystal, this is a country where its only 56,000 people. Theres no real industry, theres no trees. In many ways its a combination and i dont say this jointly but a kind of third world first world combination. A place where denmark is brought in a certain amount of sophistication but where the inuit traditions also exist and where there is basically pockets of villages that really feel like something from another century. Without plumbing, without any kind of modern conveniences and the overwhelming feeling is that once you get out of the village of this past, beautiful emptiness of rocks and lakes that go on almost forever in a way that as somebody told me there, theres no many lakes in greenland that they dont even have names. There are just too many to name and when youre flying over them or driving past them, there are no roads connecting the towns. Sometimes youre taking these small airplanes from town to town in a place that feels i think, which is kind of rare today, eels untouched. How do you go about how did you go about conducting research in greenland . One thing i found disappointing when, i started following my editors to is that theres only a short Summer Season so its not like you can pick up and go to greenland during the winter. Its dark all the time in the winter and they really keep it, they keep the science part of the work between may and august. So really if you want to embed yourself with a scientific expedition or a group doing work there you have to work ahead of time and i did a variety of things. I worked a lot getting involved with different actor projects. There were some flights over greenland where they did something called Remote Sensing where theyre trying to measure the ice sheet so maybe we will talk about that in a little bit but youre flying over the ice sheet all day long. Youre not on the ground, youre measuring it from above. I spent time with glaciologist who were measuring glaciers and others met measuring algae that goes on and measuring water streams so i think usually its just working a year ahead of time trying to involve with a variety of scientific projects and i cant even explain how many scientists are there during Summer Season. In the book i call it a lost alamos of the modern era except everybodys studying ice rather than Nuclear Energy or Atomic Energy and really just not only glaciologist split oceanographers and those digging into ruins of ancient cultures so its a really exciting place to be for science but again, you have to work in advance. You chose open the book with one of those flights, i think it was in 2015 and you, it was a brilliant way to open the book because you take us along with you and you reflect on this task, this vast expanse beneath you and you begin to reflect on the history and its a way of introducing the readers to the scope of what were about to embark on while serving as a kind of personal guide. And i felt very much being taken by the hand and led into an unfamiliarterrain. Could you read from the beginning of the book . Can i borrow someones book . I left my book in there. I should know this book by heart. But thank you, ill givethis right back. If i could set this up, it was, what was known as a nasa ice bridge flight and i ended up with this theme for about a week and what you would do is show up in the town and the nasa team was there. It was a team of technologists and they had outfitted a special plane that was a c130 military plane. The inside was pretty much emptied out of seeds that they had put all sorts of special equipment within the inside of it. And this plane wassort of a stateoftheart vehicle to measure the ice bar. And you would wake up in the morning and then you would follow a certain route on any particular day and the plane would measure the ice on the ball in a variety of different ways by radar, my laser. And photography too. So im going to pick up with that first day i think, if i could. It was my first flight for, with an nasa team on the c130 anda kind of it fills in a little bit if i could of what we were doing. On the morning after our c130arrived , we took off on thatfirst ice bridge flight. Our route from the west coast was plotted across the island. Through the southeast toward greenland and eastern coast where dark piece up like huge animal teeth from a historic crust of snowcovered ice. It would be a long ride, greenland is the Worlds Largest island, i times the size of california and three timesthe size of texas. Just over 80 percent of the land is covered by the centralized sheet. So its home to a population of about 86,000 people. Most of whom are descendents of native in ux, this is the least densely populated nation on earth. Only antarctica on the opposite end of the globe and not a country is more barren. And only antarctica has more ice. After we took off, we stumbled through a layer of quick clouds for a half an hour but the sky soon cleared and the white world below the crispresolution. The strategy for these missions is not to fly high but to fly low. They study all day at 1500 feet is ideal. There was agreement on the c130 ice sheet at least from ourheight tended to look like handmade paper , the kind sometimes used for spine stationary with visiblefibers and textured imperfections. But the technicians on the flight but very little time gazing out at the scenery with theclearing whether they began scrutinizing their computer screens , watching sine waves and radar images and the data streaming in about the icebelow. At that point i made my way through the main cabin for the front of the plane. From there i could up a short letter to the flight deck and watch rhubarb cockpit windows as the pilots skimmed over greenlands frozen interior. For three hours, we passed about this pale world until we last approached the east coast and begantrailing the snaking course of big glaciers. Wide rivers of ice flow from the edges of the ice sheet down through mountain valleys to the oceans dark edge where they collapse and explode into the ice stream chaos. Without exception, what lay below was a site of uncommon beauty and uncommon strangeness. Taking in the immense expensive greenland from low altitude was like surveying the landscape of some kind of frozen excel planet. There was a hard blackness of the coastal mountains, soft likeness of the ice sheet. The only color intruding on the scenery was a light blue of the sky and a deeper blue from crevasses and ice that radiated a luminous glow. Down below there were no people, no houses, for hours on end it was only ice and rock, ice and rock and in my notebook i wrote someone would think we left no traces here at all. Many of the places below had names though and during the course of the day and those that followed i could piece together from my aerial view history of an island where men and women have spent centuries charting a vast emptiness that had turned out to be anything but empty. Along the coast, greenlands peninsulas to send glaciers were the names of explorers who passed this way on expeditions in the 19 and early 20th centuries. Many of these people were fairly obscure, all of them were now dead. Now below there were also reminders of a more recent age of science as our plane at the center of the island we ward over coordinates mark historical sites from the 1930s and 1950s. Scientific outposts in the middle of the ice sheet were largely surveyed in our understanding of the earth. These cancer invisible, lost 15 between decades of accumulating ice and snow near to where they stood i can discern a place still functional, a research station located in the dead center of the icesheet , cited at an altitude of10,000 feet. A cluster of buildings comprise of a camp, down below i saw a few tractors often white and all signs of civilization away and our plane was again resuming the nothingness ofthe ice sheet. I had to remind myself it wasnt actually nothingness. I recall the story from the early 1930s about a german glaciologist named can sort out who took one of the first flights over greenland centralized, white desert as it was sometimes called and as a passenger in a small airplane. Sort i had already spent a brutal winter in the center of the ice sheet. He also traversed many times by dogsled. But the view from above that day was different and what he had so far encountered. Transfixed him, he would later write i said to myself im looking at a landscape whose vast simplicity is nowhere to be surpassed on earth and which yet conceals 1000secrets. I see we both have thesame favorite line in the book. So beautiful and haunting. And thats one of the i think only two spots in the book where you introduce yourself as a narrator. Right, yeah. Im sorry, thats my insight. How did you make that decision because i love actually of opening the book and after that you end up, you take us on a largely chronological, not entirely but largely chronological trip to greenlands history with the explorers and scientists. How did you decide not to put yourself in . I struggled a lot to sort of, this inside baseball stuff writers and i had settled on writing a chronological history. But i also wanted to have some kind of way to bring that history and i cant, what keeps writers up at night is how much of afirst person who i put in or not in your thinking about this all the time and i carry that question around with mefor years. And the solution , many of my other thoughts work, they work. Was put myself in the introduction and put myselfin the epilogue. And those are your and now moments in time where im kind of introducing the book but then the actual chapters of the book go back to the 1880s which we will talk about in a minute and i put myself completely out of that part and i think it seems very hard to kind of the reason those explorers were so rich, i couldnt imagine i either need to be a part of it or wanted to be a part of it and i thought they would come to life much, much better if i were out of the picture so you can see my hand in there a little bit. Sometimes it will be like to go to this place today you can see x y and z but generally speaking i wanted to step out and it was liberating, actually. Its nice not to be in the story sometimes to pull the strings. As a biographer i couldnt help but read this book as a biography of an island. And i thought that was an intriguing literary challenge to try to connect readers to at least 150 years of history and in some ways much more than that. And create that connection that would engross the reader and at the same time you have the challenge structurally of introducing a huge cast of characters and weaving their stories together which you do beautifully. And i wonder if you could introduce us to some of those characters and also reflect on how you decided who made the cut . Who was rich enough a character . Id be happy to and i read victorias amazing book and im sure you struggled with the same thing because hers is a wonderful cast of characters in new york city of the late 1700s, early 1800s. As we know, you have to leave him people on the cutting room floor and thats hard. Can you tell a story and include everyone and idont think you can. So the first thing i struggled with was this question of where does the story begin . I think that i tried a couple of things. Greenland actually was settled in the 1400s, im sorry, itwas in the 900. By eric the red who was cast out of iceland. Eric the red was a murderer but he was also a very good marketer because he got people to actually follow him to greenland which he called greenland, iguess purportedly that it was nicer than iceland. But the greenland norse as they became known within greenland from the year 1000 to about 1420 and at first i did think of getting with them but what really became clear to me was this was a story of how human time and geologic time kind of intersect so for me, the great question was when did human beings actually start to go on to the ice and start investigating. And for that reason i began with johansson and i brought some slides. I have some, the first part of the book is about exploration and in many ways it charts this early time, free technology. There was no air travel. He couldnt get onto the ice sheet or fly to the ice sheet. You can take a tractor, there were no automobiles, no trucks. What you could do was stand on a mountain or hill and look inside but nobody knew what was in the middle of the Greenland Ice sheet so you can, i have a, you can see greenland there. The ice sheet is 1500 miles long or tall or, in height and 700 miles across and the wifes place and in the center as i said in the passage its about 10,000 feet altitude but these people who startedthinking that they want across the ice sheet, they were basically insane. And the first one was johansson was a norwegian and got this idea in the early 1880s. He looks like hes just killed a bear. Once he on a pair he did eat a bears heart, idont know if you remember that part. He was an incredibly cultured and intellectual man. And agentleman in some ways and he crossed the ice sheet , pulling sleds for other similar norwegians and lab planners. And the ice sheet is like a big dome so you kind of climate and then slide down the other side. Nansen rotc so they climbed pulling sleds and then a ski down the other side. And after his crossing he wrote this amazing book actually which i recommend if youre interested in the arctic. And he was a very fine writer and illustrator as well and he won the nobel prize. In the 1920s. First humanitarian helping expatriates in world war i. I was fortunate that nansen had this archenemy who was robert peary and writers love that kind of thing. This is peary later in his life. Pearys great dream was across Greenland Ice cap first and when he found out that the anson had done his wife had said the look on his face was like he had just heard that somebody died. This is, as you , pearys Great Innovation i guess you could say is that he believes that actually do this right you had. Anyway methods and you a new address so eat rather than pulling the sled were skiing on ice, the outfit dog teams. The war as you can see yours which works much better. His most famous for trying to reach the north pole. Which is available whether he ever did. He said he did. But in the early part of his career what he did was because the Greenland Ice sheet twice and he also kind of acculturated or at least brought some modern tools into the area of Northeast Greenland where the inuit live. Rifles as well as some goods and what happened was when he moved on to other pursuits, this fellow kind of moved in and set up something called the Police Station which was where peary had set up shop and this was that northwest corner of greenland. Rasmussen was part of the danish and part greenland. He was a handsome man. It wasmagnetic. He would crawl apart from crossing the ice sheet brought greenland to the rest of the world. Theres rasmussen all over greenland. He was at number who went about electing tales of any inuit. But he also brought scientists and brought commerce to the Northern Areas of greenland. He went your favorite character, this guy peter fortune. These guys were partners in this station, that was early 1900s where they set up in this remote area a way that the natives could trade fox pelts and they would in turn give them guns and knives and things to avert wintertime hunger. Peter isone of the great characters i think in all of literature. He wasnt looking guy. His wife was like a scandinavianside. He lived in greenland for years. He came back to denmark to become a writer. He was jewish, he led the nokia regime and for you went to sweetman and shaved off your area i saw here, except lots. In copenhagen, somebody. And afterwards, peter new york and decide who had been all over greenland and the life lived in apartment and men, had a Country House in. And if you ever seen that will show the six 4000 question , peter won the 64,000 question. He had questions about wheeling and harpoons and oceans andhe knew everything. But his life was really quite amazing. There was a training where the explorers kind of bled into the kind of questions of science and science precedence over geographical exploration. And really turning point was this fellow Alfred Wagner german scientist who had crossed icet severaltimes in the early 1900s. But in 1930, radnor came up with this very grand plan for a greenland Research Expedition stations in different parts of greenland on ice sheet including one in the center of the ice sheet called mid ice station. And he, his idea was that he and a few scientists would man this station in the center of the ice sheet during the winter. It didntwork out too well. As you can see, the hut never arrived that they were going to live in and these guys dug into the ice and lived in a cave in the ice for the winter. The one on the left is georgie and it gets worse than that. When lugo arrived he, his lips were frozen and they started out in the cave and they got gangrene and they didnt have any medical tools and i will tell you what happens next, youll have to read the book but it kind of has a happy ending but it was a pretty drizzly year in the ice and at some point the temperatures above would go to minus 85 degrees so they found down below by going down below the ice, they have to throw it witha small amount of kerosene. This man surprisingly is french. And he is named paul near victor and the age of machines began with him. His idea that he didnt have to be a kind of superhero or superhuman strength and endurance to work on the ice sheet. You could bring lanes, tractors, you could have air drops to people in the middle of the ice and really he began this age of modern polar expedition and even today this idea of getting to the ice caps and bringing teams and keeping them safe and reducing the risk for people doing work in extreme conditions goes back to Paulette Neil victors work in the 1940s and 1950s and i just have one more. A lot of the second half of the book is about science and its about using the ice sheet in an age of Climate Change. This is a piece of artwork by a woman named peggy wilde and she photographed ice cores, there several chapters in my book about the practice of what scientists would do is they would drill into the ice because ice is a recording device of ancient climates and ancient atmospheres and drilling ice cores can reveal with the right kinds of tools and scientific instruments what the temperatures were like thousands, tens of thousands of years ago as well as the atmosphere was like provided an incredible tool. You can see some layers of the ice there which would appoint a different years and you can see some layers of ash which were okay no. You can see the remnants and some ice cores of vesuvius and lockey and all sorts of other markers that help scientists figure out what they are. Its a kind of fascinating and incredibly valuable tool. Im sorry, i went on to long. So you can see this cast of characters is incredibly rich and charismatic and maybe a little crazy and i wondered as i was reading, there are many ambitious people in new york city butwe dont all run towards danger. And that. Any talk about some of the hardships that these men endured and the animals endured . And what you understood came to understand, drove them . I think in an age where the questions were geographical, where they were trying to either do things that nobody had done before with the answer or with peary it became this question of ego. In the modern day we sort of think of i think explorers and scientists as different people. And that era, it was more public in. Johansson was at a phd in oceanography and he didnt really work in neuroscience. And he was doing things to prove they could be done like crossing the ice but he was also one of investigating this ice sheet this was this remnant of sort of an ancient age though it was a commendation of things. For, i think the challenges, physical challenges just went with the sort of idea that if you were going to do science in a remote area of the world, that was just part of what you endured. With peary, the emphasis was not at all on science, it was on endurance, vanity and if you were bringing your dog with you, one of the great challenges across the ice sheet was you had have enough for yourself and you had have about food for the dogs and he ran out of, you take the dogs. And sometimes you fedthe dogs to each other. The were absolutely awful and by the end they were all starving and miserable and some of them, not people i showed you about some of them didnt die from starvation. That was always a risk in the back of their mind that this was a place where you couldnt call for help and written down i had a quote from peary, a man with putting in his application to be a companion of pearys on one of his wages and peary told him the 1890s, that will be hovering near us always. Some of us more than likely will never return to civilization. Buys you not to go. If there is any fear in your heart. Peary very inviting job interview. He went anyway. Which is amazing. So the Indigenous People of greenland play important roles in your book and in the success of these expeditions. Could you talk about the goals for us . Sure, when i talk about how the greenland norse arrived in the late 1900s, the inuit came over probably from canada about 100 years later. Theres not a lot of evidence of how they overlap with the greenland norse. What we know is that the greenland norse held out and that anyways is not. Found a way to not live in greenland in spite of the ice but because of the ice and all of their times of, the way they structuredtheir life, their hunting , was just astounding how they came to understand a way that you got to live and its really a place where you can practice agriculture, it was all hunting and economy and what you did was you hunted for seals. You hunted for an animal in greenland called musk ox. Sometimes you gathered eggs and birds or you hunted for polar bear, which was a great delicacyif you could kill a polar bear and that. And you work for and that was , that was the way that you endured. I think its interesting today, i talked to a few hunters who remain. But at the same time its taken a toll on their traditions in their ways of life. These harbors the use be iced in that allowed them to hunt for seals and dogsled on the waters are all now melted. As one person in the book who said, the weight of the sun is getting heavier. I was struck by how different, different explorers have different relations to the inuit. Could you talk about how married and inuit woman, she went with him to copenhagen and chatted very strong reaction. He married a young woman and brought her home to copenhagen, and she didnt really like it. She felt that life had no value and you had come when everything was available at the store, or was given to you. She became very depressed actually. In greenland nothing was ever easy. Sometimes you didnt know where your next meal was coming from. Of course theyre sort of a tragic ending to that. They both got sick during the influence of outbreak of 1918 right after the war and she passed on. He ended up remarrying. But right, that notion that greenland as hard as it was with something that culturally to the indigenous, the inuit, there was nothing, no place more beautiful in no way of life that could equal that. I wonder if that reaction that she had to the feeling that life had no meaning, even have to struggle every moment is something the explorers got addicted to or interested in, attached to, that feeling of struggle and triumph. Im sure they did. I mean, sometimes, especially if you read robert. In a a comfortable room and yoe wondering why anybody could possibly some subject themselves to such misery year after year after year after year, its incomprehensible, except one, the goal or the ego driven goal of achieving something that seems to have no value to me but did to him, but also that thrill of being so far from right, so far from the world and a place of life and death where things had great meeting. I want to ship now to the second half of the book and the Scientific Investigation. You emphasize its not a clean break between the explorers and the scientists, but in the post world war ii era the u. S. Government became very interested in greenland. Can you tell us whether interest was and how that supported or sordid sorted Scientific Investigation in the region . Yeah, i mean, one reason i wrote about these explorers was because in the way its hard to understand why the United States into that building a base in greenland, and lest you explain what people had sort of charted this land before. What ended up happening was u. S. Army and air force actually took a cue drum rasmussen and years later built a very large base so the old station had set up eventually became sort of this kind of incredibly Large Air Force base, really a sort of moment in the cold war where the greatest threat was from russia which was just across the arctic circle. And at the same time the military was there, some scientistic advantage of that as well to do research on the ice sheet. That you have that era of modern glaciology began. Can you talk but some of the discoveries made in the air . Sure. Really when i i talked about living under the ice that those guys are doing at the midice station, they really begin this practice of digging into the ice sheet and starting to understand, and it carried a record of ancient times, ancient temperatures. What happened years later when the u. S. Army was there was different scientists, again, sort of wanted to do a kind of more methodical and more scientifically rigorous way of drilling into the ice sheet to create things like the ice cores. They use tule Thule Air Force base as a staging ground for that. Theres one character in my book, a swiss scientist named henry and he cant use military money to really kind of all the scientific curiosity. He could kind of in the cold war the budgets were immense and they could literally bring a team of scientists to the middle of the ice sheet, create a camp, pay for everything and contact a science expelled to try to figure out how to get an ice core of the ice and notionally going back to the 1950s and 1960s. One of the beautiful things about the structure of this book is were constantly turning back over the shoulder to look at past explorers, past scientific discoveries about the ice. You talk about the fact that its not Laboratory Work. Its not the usual Laboratory Work where your colleagues are living in standing around you. You refer to the fact your colleagues are sometimes deceased in the way. Yeah, theres a part in the book what talk about how some of these questions in the arctic are so hard but also so new that might be, yet, that in some ways the data in research from 50 or 100 years, some temperature readings for instant for insta, especially in an age of Climate Change, a lot of these explorers i showed you they were not necessarily great scientist but a lot of them were taken rigorous measurements of temperature and as well as snowfall. What we found today is we can actually use a lot of the data to compare with how the world has changed. We also took photographs of glaciers and we have paintings of glaciers and we compare them today of what they look like many years ago. I think its unusual in a way have passed in the arctic has become so much more valuable to the present because the rate of change is a a significant and o worrisome. One thing ive found striking about the book is that much of the first half is about the physical threats faced by the early explorers, and gradually as scientists begin to realize that greenland is teaching us about what were doing to the planet, the threat becomes, that youre describing, is turned outward and its vast. Its to the whole of humanity. So as the physical threats of those who are in greenland declined somewhat, and the research is more machine driven and a little safer, the threat in the book becomes the sense of threat becomes larger and larger. Yeah. I mean, and its a very sort of lovely way to put it. I think thats right, that this place that was kind of either a place to get across, if youre and explore, a physical challenge or sort of ego driven sort of thing, and then it became sort of place to sort of study, and out became a place that almost is kind of melting at a rate where it creates almost, if not an existential threat, a kind of unbelievable sort of economic and, you know, certainly a massive threat to see levels as they rise and all sorts of other implications, how it might affect ocean circulations and temperatures and other things as well. I think well open it now to audience questions. Please, as solids were noted, if you raise salvador noted, iff you racial hand ill call and you, a mic will be brought to you. When youre done with your question had the mic paxil can get it to someone else. What are the natural fauna in greenland . What animals exist in what do they live on . Its mostly theres rich history, musk ox which are this sort of grazing animal, enormous kind of bearded animals. They can standing up and go to Something Like minus 50 degrees. They are incredible animals. Polar bears and then theres various birds. There are no pink ones. They are down at the south, okay, yeah. And those are, thats mostly what is hunted there along with halibut, which would be the main fish as well. Over here. Jon, great presentation, thank you. Im wondering, how seized are the natives of greenland of the threat of Climate Change . Assuming that theyre fairly a look to it and alarmed about it, do they have any leverage, visavis any of the larger powers that could actually do something about it . Sort of doubleedged, because Climate Change for them and a recession of the ice sheet kind of presented Economic Opportunity. Greenland has probably a vast storehouse of minerals under the ice sheet, and especially whats known as rare earth metals, which are valuable for electronics, has certain at certain phase of the ice sheet has receded its greater Economic Opportunity for the island. I dont want to get too deeply into the politics, what happens is, at the moment denmark gives a certain block grant of mike to greenland and greenland is sort of on a path to independence pending a kind of greater economic independence. So things like mineral development, things like oil and Gas Development or sort of appealing to the indigenous population, and thats coupled with i think the key and bar mental awareness to try to preserve it but those are in conflict. There is a tension there. I cant say im an expert on greenland politics at the moment, but theres an effort towards both come towards preservation conservation but also utilization i think of the land and resources. Lets go over here. You said Climate Change was part of what first got you interested in this topic and this book provides a wonderful avenue for your average reader to think about human relationship to the environment. But at the same time he recently published an oped in the New York Times calling for greater optimism, albeit moderated, toward Technological Solutions to Climate Change. So my question is how do you reckon reconcile those two backbreaker for projects . It seems to me a Technological Solutions inherently operate away from public opinion, an ordinary peoples understands of the environment in beautiful books such as this. Yes, its a great question. So i would never really describe myself as like a super optimistic person, but optimism sort of seems to me, i think the problem with the word optimism in some ways is that it sort of as of this kind of implication thinks might take care of themselves. What i think in many ways societies decide how they want the future to be in the sense of investing dollars and effort to try to achieve whatever goals that might be. In this case environmental goals. I also think when we talk about solutions to Climate Change, what i really think of is averting the worst impacts that if they quit in a very difficult place, as and the scientists nw which i agree with talk about limiting those kinds of temperature rises to two degrees celsius. I would see my optimism, whats in there is really the fact that we can avert the worst impacts because we have over the last couple of decades really developed a whole range of tools for renewable energy, and that if we were to deploy them, i mean, your question is a good one. Would to be done, if i understand correctly, privately or independently or done through sort of agreement. I mean, i dont think you can Deploy Technology like solar power, wind power, hydroelectric power, noncarbon emitting kinds of solutions to Climate Change or averting the worst impacts without policy and changes in politics, you know, in our politics. So i think that on the one hand, if a look at whats happening nationally, it can be pretty grim and will not really moving in that direction at all. In fact, we are moving in the opposite direction, but at the same time theres encouraging things if you look towards california which has created a vast deployment of Renewable Energies, Energy Generation i think on some days, over 50 f the electricity that is generated there is by wind and solar. Their benchmarks for what theyre going to meet in terms of Renewable Energies in, you know, 2030, 2035 are very, i think they are very on target to meeting those. When i look, when we look for kind of example of how this could work we can look to california and californias 40 million people. Its almost as large as a midsize european country. I think that for me that give you some encouragement that Technological Solutions when they put into play by way of smart policy, can work. Ill just say one last thing, and thats, you know, the notion that the apocalypse is coming and we are past tipping points and the like and is nothing we can do, i just dont understand that argument at all. I think the more we do, the better the future will be even if it has problems. And i think that if he kind of joint up with that kind of cold of doom, we will be in the even bigger predicament and we are already. Over here. Thank you. First of all i sounds like a five euros book, so congratulations. Looking forward to reading it. Secondly, im wondering just that going to greenland six times actually changes you personally. Because youre a guy from, what, suburban new jersey. What does it do to you when you go to and immerse yourself in a culture like that has to change the way you yourself in the way unit . Thats great. I think that im trying to think of who said you have to leave to sort of understand, to definitely broaden your mind. I remember talking to some scientists have felt about greenland, and often got the same answer that they would find it addictive. That you would go there to this vast into place and you would come back, and you would find yourself wanting to go there again. I think for me more than anything it changed my idea of space and density. I remember being and greenland in this kind of vast, empty area and then come back to new york and being in midtime midtimeo days later thinking oh, my god, this is just unbelievable. Which also makes me think of this fellow who was spent his life in this empty places and then lyndon, on the upper west side, which to me was just incredible. So more than anything i think probably i was less impacted by the cultural changes than by those ideas of density and spaces that were unspoiled, untrammeled, places where people dont really go and dont come most people dont want to go. And that can change your whole view of both the earth i think in nature, and it certainly changed her mind. Changed mine. Lets lets wait for the microphone. Im sorry. Thank you. Thank you for the wonderful presentation. Ive been to greenland and seeing the spaces and walked around there. My question is, does greenland and greenland history call for new definition of understanding of what we think of in terms of Global Warming . Ive been to greenland and they seem houses underneath the tundra and the ice, significant populations that were built there before 1400 and we know for reasons that we are not clear about that those, greenland got much colder after 1400 and, of course, the population reduced. Getting colder period in 1400 was not necessarily, was not a result to the chemicals and Global Warming things that we talk about today. That maybe we ought to redefine what Global Warming is and understand really what has caused it rather than blaming it on, entirely on the industrialization of the world. Yeah, i mean, i respectfully would, i think i would disagree. I think, i mean, i understand that point. There has been this historic variability and climate, and think what youre referring to is sort of a ice age which began around the 1200s and went from there. One reason we dont know what happened to greenland norse is a think maybe the climate got much colder and they couldnt survive there. But but i think when you look at sort of changes in temperature in greenland and how they correlate with co2, and even when we have ice cores especially antarctica, we can see historically how, going back ten and hundreds of thousands of years when you two levels rise, temperatures rise, too. We can get the sense we are doing something very, very serious and very different than whats happened historically. I think it is to put this time at a think we have a lot of scientific proof to show that, and its not, the Greenland Ice sheet is not going to fall into the ocean tomorrow but those trendlines because weve been able to measure the ice sheet and out loses really summer on average of 300 billion tons of ice per year, we really know that things are moving in a certain direction and they seem to be accelerating at the same time that our temperature measurements keep going up. We have time for one more question. Over here. I was noting when you were showing off the slides and then of course as you taking us through the different parts of the book, wonder if you could talk a little bit about your experience as a researcher and writer, especially given the fact you are not necessarily an academic that perhaps he approached it more as a discovering a journalist, but how you gained entry into the scientific community, how do you were able to speak to some of the native inhabitants of their, heidi got to be escorted by an nassau, you know, commuter plane come Something Like that. How did you actually get to do the research you did to write a book this fast . Yeah, sure. I was a fast though. It took like five or six years. It felt slow in part because what i i said before dutch up o kind of work a year ahead sometimes to get permission to kind of tagalong. Partly it was making the case think of writing a book about the Greenland Ice sheet. Youd be surprised on how many journalists want to go to greenland. It is a popular destination. To get a spot on the ice bridge plane was a coveted, exciting thing for sure. One thing that helped is i did get the chance to do a a couplf stores for the New York Times magazine in the course of doing this, and for sure that helped as well. A lot of times different organizations are more responsive to the idea that a story is being written that will, soon rather than a book that might someday come out, you know. So that was helpful for many reasons, to actually get along with them. It was a constant education for me being around brilliant scientists who it spent their lives. And i dont think we understand the kind of sacrifices that they make. Its really amazing. Its exciting for them to be up in greenland for months at a time doing this work, but at the think that its not easy work, and its kind of, you spent their lives kind of dedicating months away from home, sometimes living on the ice sheet in camps that can be fun for a while, but can get kind of dreary after a long time. We have the data and insight that we really kind of cherish because of their sacrifices, i think, and their work. Somewhat to congratulate you again on the wonderful book, and he will be signing it out there if youre interested. And thank you all for coming. [applause] i just want to thank you for having me and my editor for helping so much for the book. I know a lot of familiar faces and some people ive seen like, oh, my goodness, im so happy you are here. So yeah, im happy to sign the book if anybody wants to have that come in some folks you know are invited to reception after and feel free to join us. Thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] you are watching booktv on cspan2 with top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. Booktv, television for serious readers. Okay, if i could ask you to take your seats. You guys are the best behaved in the room. Nice job. I wait for the adults to catch up. Welcome. Good morning. We are thrilled to have you here with us this morning for a very special program at the reagan ranch center. I name is andrew coffin as a