[applause] thanks to all of you for coming out on this balmy evening for a conversation on the history of a very cold place. Were proud to present jon gertners new book, the ice at the end of the world, which tells the story of how people have encountered, studied, settled and been unsettled by the great ice sheet that covers greenland, the worlds large island, and of what changes to the ice sheet can tell us about the ongoing impact of Global Warming on sea levels and what it threatens for the future of civilization. My name is salvatore, director of the coleman center. Please take this moment to silence your cell phones. Before we begin tonights program, we really must take a moment to reflect on some recent news. Last friday, as many of you know, louis cullman, our founding benefactor and friend, died. He was 100 years old. It was his and his wife dorothys ingenious generosity that made this center possible. It was, in fact, dorothys idea that the place should include creative writers along with scholars and other nonfiction writers. She died in 2009. Every year in the fall since the beginning of the Cullman Center, louis had the 15 fellows and their dates up to his apartment for dinner and conversation. His pride if the work of the more than 300 fellows of the center in its first 20 years was infectious, and his gifts insured that fellows will be working here on new books for many, many years to come. Louis cullman gave to arts, education and research all over the city and the country. He gave to the library of performing arts, to the metropolitan museum, alma and the new york bow botanical gard. And his urging of others to give generously until it hurt was legendary. He wrote a book about giving. You cant take it with you the art of making and giving money. He was suave, spry, quickwitted, e ebullient 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 louis Cullman Center for scholars and writers. The fellows are some of the very best and most promising academics, independent scholars, poets, play wrights, artists and fiction writers at work today. They come here from around the country and the world to use the unparalleled collections housed at this library to write the books of tomorrow. When the fellows publish the books they write here, we try to show them off at a program like this one. If youd like to know more about events in this series, visit nypl. Org conversations. In the hall youll find books for sale by tonights guest, and he generously agreed to sign them after of the program. Youll note that tonights event is being recorded for later broadcast by cspan, so when its time to ask questions a little more than halfway through the hour, we ask that you stand and, please, use a mona one of our staff 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 20152016, who wrote her own Cullman Center book which we were proud to help launch here last year with, american eden. It was published last year, hailed in the New York Timeses as both an ambitious and entertaining book. It was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times book award, the National Book award and the pulitzer prize. Shes had a hell of a year. Victoria johnson holds degrees in philosophy from yale and in sociology from columbia, and she is an associate professor of urban policy and planning at hunter college. She speaks tonight, of course, with our friend, jon gertner. Hes a frequent contributor to Many National magazines, most often to New York Times magazine where he writes on science, nature and technology. His best selling first book, the idea factory, published in 2012 told the story of bell labs, the Research Wing of at t, and of its impact on American Innovation throughout the 20th century. Of his new book, usa today writes in a review that came out about five minutes ago [laughter] that the ice at the end of the world offers a, quote, compelling narrative about the intrepid human beings whose curiosity about the world lures them to forbidding places, end quote. Youll also find that when they go there, they bring hot chocolate. [laughter] because theyre norwegians. Elizabeth kolbert calls it a gripping and important book. Well open the floor to questions from a all of you later in the program from all of you later in the program. Meantime, please welcome victoria johnson and jon gertner. [applause] thank you, salvatore. Jon, im going to given by congratulating you on a beautiful and important book. This book, the ice at the end of the world with, manages to be both haunting and poetic and to offer the reader a scientific narrative that, i think, will be hugely enlightening to many readers. I was reminded while i was reading your book of what the historian andrea wolfe has noted about an explorer. She said that he insisted that to be, to understand nature and to celebrate nature, one must be both poet and scientist. So your last book was about bell labs. It was in suburban new jersey. And then we went very far to one of the most punishing expanses of land and ice on earth. In the introduction to the ice at the end of the world, you offer a tantalizing remark by the scientist ann solga, who in the 1930s, flew over greenland. You quote him as saying im looking at a landscape whose vast simplicity is nowhere to be surpassed on everett and which yet on earth and which yet conceals a thousand secrets. You then take us on a journey with explorers and scientists who are trying since the late 19th century 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 . Sure. Well, first, thank you, that was very kind. And im thrilled you liked the book, and thank you all for coming as well. You know, i sort of found myself asking myself as im on this plane to greenland, okay, why . Its not easy to get to greenland either. You have to go through denmark, and then you fly on air greenland, if youve never been to greenland. But ended up taking six trips there, and i often sort of wondered how i got there. But, you know, my first book, innovation, and it was very focus thed on what we focused on what we do to solve problems, what we do to kind of, i think, create new products that change the world. And when i was done with that, i had really been focused on Climate Change because i had also been writing for the New York Times magazine. Id been writing about Climate Change for a few years. And i wanted to do a book on that. I wasnt quite sure how to go about doing a book on that. And at the same time, i also thought, well, id written this book on innovation, i really want to write about discovery which is sort of this kind of thing that happens before innovation happens. You know, when we find new knowledge and were not trying to make a new product. Were actually trying to find new knowledge and maybe do something with knowledge. And i think that takes us right about 2012 when my first book came out. And and just about that time the Greenland Ice sheet started to melt quite dramatically. There were a couple of summer days where the whole ice sheet, actually, the surface of the ice sheet completely melted. And i think this was a time where Climate Change stories werent really in the news as much. And if you were following certain news organizations or news feeds, you could sort of follow that news. And it sort of 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 melting, but how we sort of had investigated it as well. And i had 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. Right. This is a place that for many of us is a tip of land we see on the inflight map on the way to europe. Could you tell us what it was im sure there are people in the room who have been to greenland, but can you tell us what it was like there . What were your first impressions, if you remember them, and what did you do there . Yeah. Well, sometimes, sometimes i flew commercial, and sometimes i had the opportunity to actually fly on some nasa flights, and there are military flights. Part of the problem with getting to greenland is you cant go directly from jfk or newark. As i said, you kind of fly over greenland, and then you fly back to greenland which is, theres a theory e that you can do it all in one day, but i dont really think you can. You have to run through the copenhagen airport at breakneck speed and maybe miss the connecting flight that goes from new york to copen payingen and copenhagen and then greenland. The first time i landed there, i remember faking a big breath taking a big breath. This is a country where theres only 56,000 people, theres no real industry. There are no trees. In many ways, its a combination and i dont say this pejoratively as at all, but its a kind of third world first world combination. Denmark has brought in a certain amount of sophistication, but where the kind of inuit traditions also exist and where this is basically, you know, pockets of villages that really feel like something from another century without plumbing, without any kind of, you know, modern conveniences. And the overwhelming feeling is that once you get out of the village of this kind of vast, beautiful empty emptiness of just rocks and lakes that go on almost forever in a way that as somebody told me there, theres so many lakes in greenland that they dont even have names. They dont theyre just too many to name. And when youre flying over them or when youre driving past them and there are no roads connecting the towns, so sometimes youre taking these small airplanes from town to town, youre really in the kind of place that feels, i think which is kind of rare today feels untouched. And how did you go about conduct i know you did Archival Research for this book and also interviews, but how did you go about conducting research in greenland . I mean, one thing i was, found a little disappointing once i started, and probably my editors did too, is that, you know, theres only a short summer season. So its not like you can just pick up and go to greenland during the winter. Its dark all the time in the winter, and they really keep it, they really keep the science part of the work to between may and august. So really if you want to go on, if you want to embed yourself with a scientific expedition or a group that are doing some work there, you really have to work a year ahead of time. And i did a variety of things. I worked a lot, you know, getting involved with different nasa projects. There were some flights over greenland where they did something called Remote Sensing where theyre trying to measure the ice sheet so, you know, maybe well talk about that in a little bit. But youre sort of flying over the ice sheet all day long. Youre actually not on the ground, youre kind of measuring it from above. I spent other time with glacologists, measuring algae that grows on it and measuring mill water streams. So i think, i mean, usually its just working a year ahead of time, trying to get involved in a variety of scientific projects. And i cant even sort of explain how many scientists are there during summer season. I call it in the book, like, the los alamos of the modern era, except everybodys studying ice rather than Nuclear Energy or atomic energy. And really not only glaciologists, but oceanographers and even, you know, those who were digging into ruins of ancient cultures. So its a real exciting place to be for science. But, again, you have to kind of work in advance. And you chose to open the book with one of those flights. I think it was in 2015. And you, i thought it was a brilliant way to open the book, because you take us along with you. You reflect on this vast expanse beneath you, and you gun to reflect on the history 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 that i was being taken by the hand and led into a very unfamiliar terrain. Could you read from the beginning of the i could. Can i borrow someones book . [laughter] i forgot, i left my book in there. Yeah, i should know this book by heart. [laughter] thank you, ill give this right back. So if i could set this up, you know, it was what was known as a nasa ice bridge flight. And i ended up, you know, with this team for about a week, and what you would do is you would show up in this 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 seats, but they had put, you know, all sorts of special equipment within the inside of it. And this plane was sort of a state of the art vehicle to measure the ice from above. 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 from above in a variety of different ways, by radar, by laser and photography too. So im going to pick up with that first day, i think, if i could. It was on my first flight for, with the nasa team on the c130, and it kind of, i think, fills in a little bit, if i could, of what we were doing. On the morning after our c130 arrived, we took the off on that first ice bridge flight. Our route from the west coast was plotted across the island due southeast toward greenlands rugged eastern coat where dark, jagged teeth jutte up from a prehistoric coast of ice. It would be a long ride. Greenland is the worlds longest island, about five times the size of california and three times the size of texas. Just over 80 of the land is covered by the central ice sheet. Though its home to a population of about 56,000 people, most of whom are descendants of the native inuit, this is the least densely populated nation on earth. Only antarctica is more barren, and only it has more ice. After we took off, we scutted through a layer of thick clouds for a half hour, but the sky soon cleared, and the white world below came into crisp resolution. The strategy is not to fly high, but to fly low, staying steady all day at 500 feet is ideal 1500 feet is ideal. There was agreement on the c130 that the ice sheet, at least from our height, tended to look at handmade paper with visible fibers and textured imperfections. But the technicians on the flight spent very little time gazing out at the scenery. With the clearing weather, they began scrutinizing their computer screens, watching sign waves and radar images and the data streaming in about the ice below. At that point i made my way through the main cabin toward the front of the plane. From there i could hop up a short ladder to the flight deck and watch through large cockpit windows that the pilot skimmed over greenlands frozen interior. For three hours we passed above this pale world until we at last approached the east coast and began trailing the snaking coarse course of big glaciers, down through mountain valleys to the oceans dark edge where they collapse and explode into the icebergstrewn chaos. Without exception what lay below was a sight of uncommon beauty and uncommon strangeness. Taking in the immense expanse of greenland from low altitude was like surveying the landscape of some kind of frozen exso planet. There was the hard blackness of the coastal mountains, soft whiteness of the ice sheet. The only color intruding was the light blue of the sky and a deeper blue from crevasses in the ice that illuminated a marine glow. Down below there were no people, no houses, no movement for hours on end there was only ice and rock, ice and rock. In my notebook i wrote, someone would think weve left no traces here at all. Many of the places below have names though, and during the course of the day and those that followed, i could piece together from my aerial view the history of an island where men and women had spent centuries charting an apparently vast emptiness. The names of explorers whod passed this way on expeditions in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Many of these people were fairly obscure, all of them now dead. But down below there were also remindsers of a more reminders of a more recent p place of science. Scientific outposts in the middle of the ice sheet. These camps were invisible, lost between decades of accumulating ice and snow, but near to where they once stood, i could discern a place that was still functional. A research station located in the dead center of the ice sheet at an altitude of about 10,000 feet. A cluster of buildings comprised the camp. Down below i saw a few tractors frosted white and then all signs of civilization fell away and our plane was beginning over the nothingness of the ice sheet. I had to remind myself that it wasnt actually nothingness. I recalled a story from the early 1930s about a german glaciologist who took one of the first flights over greenlands central ice, the white desert as it was sometimes called then, as a passenger in a small airplane. He had already spent a brutal winter in the center of the ice sheet. Hed also traversed it many times by dog sled. But the view from above that day was different than what heed had so far encountered. It transfixed him. He would hater write i said to myself, im looking at a landscape whose vast simplicity is nowhere to be surpassed on earth and yet also conceals a thousand secrets. I see we both have the same 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, am i well, how did you make that decision . Because i loved it as a way of opening the book. But after that you end up, you take us on a monthly chronological, not entirely but largely chronological trip through greenlands history with the explorers and scientists. How did you decide not to put yourself in . I struggled a lot, and this is sort of the inside baseball stuff for writers. I sort of had settled on writing a chronological history. But i also wanted to have some kind of way to frame that history. And i cant, you know, what keeps writers up at night is how much of the first person do i put in or not, and youre sort of thinking about this all the time, and i carried that question around with me for years. And the solution and andy, my editor, thought it worked, i think, i hope okay, it worked. Was to put myself in the introduction and to put myself in the epilogue. And those are here and now sort of moments in time where im kind of introducing the book, but then the actual chapters of the book go back to the 1880s, which well talk about in a minute, and i took myself completely out of that part. And i think it seemed very hard to kind of the stories of those explorers and scientists in history were so rich, i couldnt imagine that i either needed 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 just out of the picture. So you can see my hand in there a little bit. You know, sometimes itll be like to go to this place today you can see x, y or z, but genre speaking, i wanted to step out generally speaking. And it was liberating, actually, because its nice not to be in the story sometimes, but to pull the strings. Well, as a biographer, i couldnt help but read this book as a biography of an island. And i thought that was a really 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 had 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 to be in there. Sure. Id be happy to. I read victorias amazing book, and im sure you struggled with the same thing because theres just hers is a wonderful cast of characters in new york city late 1700s, early 1800s. As we know, you have to leave some people on the cutting room floor, and thats harold. Like, can you tell a story and include everyone, and i dont think you can. So the first thing i struggled with is this question of where does the story begin. And i think that i tried a couple things. Greenland are, actually, was settled in the 400s 1400s, im sorry, it was in the 900s by eric the red who was cast out of iceland are. 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, i guess, purportedly that it was nicer than iceland. But the greenland no, sir, as they norse, as they became known, lived there until about 1420. And at first i did think of beginning with them the, but what really became clear to me is that it was a story of how human time and geologic time kind of intersect. So for me, the great question was, you know, when did human beings actually start the kind of go onto the ice and start to investigate it. And for that reason, i began with [inaudible] and do you want me to, i brought some slides. So i have some the first part of the book really is about exploration. And in many ways, it sort of charts this early period of time pretechnology. There was no, there was no air travel. You couldnt get onto the ice sheet or fly onto the ice sheet. You couldnt take a tractor on it, there were no automobiles, no trucks. What you could do was stand on a mountain or hill and hook inside of it, but nobody really knew what was in the middle of the Greenland Ice sheet. So you can i have a, you can sort of see greenland there. That ice sheet is 1500 miles long or tall or, you know, if height, and 700 miles across in the bidest place. Widest place. And in the center, the its about 10,000 feet in altitude. But these people who started thinking that they wanted to cross the ice sheet, i mean, they were basically insane. [laughter] the first one was a norwegian and really got this idea in the early 1880s. Nanson looks like he has just killed a bear. Actually, once he on a dare k he did eat a bears heart. I dont know if you remember that part. But, actually, he was incredibly cultured and intellectual man and gentle in some ways. And he crossed the ice sheet actually pulling sleds with four other some norwegians and icelanders. The ice sheet is like a big dome, so you kind of climb it and then slide down the other side. Nanson brought skis, so they kind of climbed it pulling sleds, and then they skied couln the other side. And after his crossing, he wrote this amazing book, actually, which i recommend if youre super interested in the arctic. And he was a very, very fine writer and illustrator as well. He actually won the nobel prize in the 1920s. He for humanitarian reasons, helping expatriots in world war i. I was really fortunate that nanson had this kind of arch enemy who was robert fury, and, you know, writers love that kind of thing. This is him later in his life. His great dream was to cross greenlands icecap first. When he found out that nanson had done it, his wife had said the look on his face was like he had just heard or that somebody died. And this is, you know, as you perrys great revelation is he believed to actually do this right, you had to adapt, and you methods. So he rather than pulling a sled or skiing, he had dog teams. He wore, as you can see, furs which worked much better. He, his most famous for actually trying to reach the north pole, which is debatable whether he ever did. He said he did. But, you know, in the early part of his career what he did was he crossed the greenland are ice sheet twice. And he also kind of acculture ated or brought some modern tools, 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 tulle station which is where perry had set up shop. And this is that northwest corner of greenland. Rasmussen was part danish and part green landic. He was a handsome man, he was magnetic. He apart from crossing the ice sheet, he kind of brought greenland to the rest of the world. There are statues of rasmussen all over greenland. He was an earth nothinger if who went about collecting tales of the native inuit, but he also brought scientists and brought commerce to the Northern Areas of greenland, and he did it with, i think your favorite character, this guy, Peter Freuchen. These guys were partners in the early 1900s whered they set up in this remote area. Natives could trade fox pelts, and they would in turn give them guns and knives and things really to avert winter time hunger. Peters one of the great characters, i think, in all of literature. He was a hulking, huge guy. His life was like a scandinavian saga. He lived in betweenland for years. He came greenland for years. He came back to denmark to be a writer. He fled the nazi regime in 1944. He went to sweden and shaved off his beard. I actually saw his beard. [laughter] its kept in a box in copenhagen. Somebody kept it. And afterwards peter came to new york, and this guy who had been all over greenland and the like lived in an apartment in manhattan, had a Little Country house in connecticut. And if youve ever seen that old game show, the 64,000 question, Peter Freuchen won the 64,000 question. He had questions about whaling and harpoons and oceans, and he knew everything. But his life was really just quite amazing. There was a period, im going to go a little farther, a period where the explorers bled into the questions of science, and science took precedence over geographical exploration. And really the turning point was this fellow, a german scientist who had crossed the ice sheet several times in the early 1900s. But in 1930 he came up with this very kind of grand plan for a greenland research expedition, setting up stations in different parts of greenland on the ice sheet including one in the center of the ice sheet called mid ice station. And he, his idea was that they, he would, he and a few scientists would man this station in the center of the ice sheet all during the winter. It didnt the work out too well. It, as you can see, the hut never arrived that they were going to live in. So these two fellows and a third actually dug into the ice and lived in a cave of the ice for the entire winter. The one on the left is johannes and the guy on the right is fritz. It gets worse than that. When one arrived, his toes were frozen, and they started to thaw out in the cave x they got gangrene, and they didnt have any medical tools. I wont the tell you what happened next, you have to read the book. It kind of has a happy ending, but it was a pretty grisly year in the ice. And at some point, you know, the temperatures above would go to, like, 85, 90 degrees fahrenheit. So they found by going down below the ice, they could live through it with a small amount of kerosene. This man, surprisingly, is french. His name was victor, and what victor did, and the age of machines kind of began with him. And this idea that you didnt have to be a kind of superhero or superhuman strength and endurance to kind of do work on the ice sheet. You could bring planes, you could bring tractors, you could have air drops to people in the middle of the ice. And really he began this kind of age of modern polar expedition. And even today this idea of getting to the icecaps and bringing teams and keeping them safe and reducing the risk for people who are doing work in extreme conditions goes back to victors work in the 1940s and 1950s. And then i just have one more. A lot of the second half of the book is about science, and its about measuring the ice sheet in an age of Climate Change. This is actually a piece of artwork by a woman named peggy weil who did an exhibit. She photographs ice cores. Theres several chapters in my book that are about the practice of what scientists would do is they would drill into the ice. Because the ice is a kind of 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, even tens of thousands of years ago, as well as what the atmosphere was like. And its provided an incredible tool. You can actually see some layers of the ice there which sort of point to different years, and you can see some layers of ash which were volcanos actually. You can see the remnants in some ice cores of vesuvius and loki and all sorts of other markers that help scientists figure out what date they are. Its a kind of fascinating sort of and incredibly valuable tool. Im sorry, probably went on too long, but thank you. So you can see the cast of characters is just incredibly rich and charismatic and maybe a little crazy. And i wondered as i was reading, you know, there are many ambitious people in new york city, but we dont all run towards danger and death. Can you talk about some of the hardships that these men endured and the animals endured and and and what you understood, came to understand drove them. Yeah. I think in that sort of age where the questions were geographical, where they were trying to either do things that nobody had done before with nanson or with perry, it became this question of ego. You know, in the modern day we sort of think of, i think, explorers and scientists as different kinds of people. In that era it was more complicated. Nanson was, had a ph. D. In ocean ogg any oceanography, and he did early work in neuroscience. And he was doing things to prove they could be done, like crossing the ice, but he was also sort of investigating this ice sheet which was this remnant of a sort of ancient age. So its a combination of things x. And for him, i think the physical challenges just went with the sort of idea of if you were going to do science in a remote area of the world, that was just part of what you endured. With berry the emphasis was perry the emphasis was not at all on science. It was on endurance, it was on vanity, and if you were bringing the dogs with you, one of the great challenges of crossing the ice sheet was you had to have enough food for yourself and the dogs, and if you ran out of food, you ate the dogs. And sometimes you fed the dogs to each other. So these trips were absolutely awful, you know . By the end theyre all starving, and theyre miserable, and some of them not the people i just showed you, but some of them did die from starvation. And that was always a risk in the back of their mind, that this was a place where you couldnt call for help. I have written down a quote from perry, the man putting in his application to be a companion of perrys on one of the voyages, and he perry told him, this was in the 1890s, quote, death will be hovering near us always. Some of us more than likely will never return to civilization. I advise you not to go if there is any fear in your heart. Very inviting job interview. And he went anyway. Yeah. Which is amazing. Yeah. So the Indigenous People of greenland play important roles in your book and in the success of some of these expeditions. Could you talk about them . Sure. When i talked a little bit about how the greenland norse arrived in the late 900s, the inuit came over probably from canada about a hundred years later. Theres not a lot of evidence of how they overlapped with the greenland norse. What we know is that the greenland norse died out, and the inuit did not. They figured out a way to not live in greenland in spite of the ice, but because of the ice. And all of their kinds of the way that they structured their life, their hunting was just astounding how they came to understand a way to eke out a living in this really, a place where you couldnt practice agriculture. It was all hunting kind of economy. What you did was you hunted for seals, you hunted for an animal in greenland called musk ox which are a kind of goatlike creature. Sometimes you gathered eggs and birds, or you hunted for polar bear, which was a great delicacy if you could kill a polar bear and eat that. And you wore furs, and that was the way that you endured. I think its really interesting today, i talked to a few hunters who remain, and theyre licensed now by the state of greenland. And in an era of Climate Change, its sort of poignant. On the other hand, somebody once told me, a greenlandic hunter, you know, weve been here a thousand years, and well be here when the rest of you are gone. We know how to endure. But at the same time, its taken a toll on their traditions and their ways of life. And these harbors that used to be iced in that allowed them to dog sled on the waters and hunt for seals are now all melt ld, and its, as one person in the book said whos an inuit woman, the weight of the sun is getting heavier. I was struck by how different explorers had different relations to the inuit. Could you talk a little bit about freuchen who married an inuit woman . She went with him to copenhagen, and she had a very strong reaction. Yeah. He married a young woman and brought her home to copenhagen, and she didnt really like it. She felt that life had no value when you had to, when everything was kind of available at the store. So was given to you. And she became very depressed, actually. And, i mean, in greenland nothing was ever easy. I mean, sometimes you cant you didnt know where your next meal was coming from. Of course, theres sort of a tragic ending to that. Is she got they both got sick during the influenza outbreak of 1918 right after the break, and she passed on. Freuchen ends up remarrying. But, right, that notion that greenland, as hard as it was, was something that, you know, culturally to the indigenous, you know, the inuit was, there was nothing, to place more beautiful and no way of life that could equal that. And i wonder if that reaction that she had to the feeling that life had no meaning, if you didnt have to struggle every moment, is something that the explorers got addicted to or interested in . Attached to, that feeling of struggle and triumph . Im sure they did. I mean, sometimes, i mean, perry especially if you read robert perry in a comfortable room and youre sort of wondering why anybody could possibly sort of subject themselves to such misery year after year after year after year, its incomprehensible except, one, the goal or the sort of, you know, maybe egodriven 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, so far from the world in a place of life and death where things had great meaning. So im going to shift now to the second half of your book and the Scientific Investigations. And youve emphasized that its not a clean break between the explorers and the scientists. But in the postworld war ii area, the u. S. Government became very interested in greenland. Can you tell us what their interest was and how that supported or thwarted Scientific Investigation in the region . Yeah. I mean, one reason i wrote about these explorers was because in a way its hard to understand why the United States ended up building a base in greenland unless you sort of explain why people like rasmussen and why people like robert perry had sort of charted this land before. What ended up happening was that the u. S. Army and air force actually took a cue from rasmussen and years later built a very large base at tooley. So that old station that rasmussen had set up eventually became 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 that the military was there, some scientists took advantage of that as well to do research on the ice sheet. And thats really how that era of modern glaciology began. Can you talk about some of the discoveries that were made in that era . Sure. When i talked about living under the ice that those guys were doing at the mid ice station, they really began this practice of digging into the ice sheet and starting to understand that it actually carried a record of ancient times, ancient temperatures. What happened years later when the u. S. Army was there was that different scientists again sort of wanted to do a kind of more methodical and more scientifically rouse way of rigorous way of drilling into the ice sheet. And they used tooley air force base as a sort of staging ground for that. And theres one character in my book, a swissamerican scientist named henry boddard, and he in turn kind of used military money really to kind of follow his scientific curiosity. And he could kind of, you know, in the cold war the budgets were immense, and he could they could literally, you know, bring a team of scientists to the middle of the ice sheet, create a camp, pay for everything and really conduct a science experiment to try and figure out how to get an ice core out of the ice. And that was really going back to the 1950s and 1960s. You talk, one of the beautiful things about the structure of this book is that were constantly turning back over our shoulder to look at a past explorers, past scientific discoveries about the ice. And you talked about the fact that its not Laboratory Work, its not the usual Laboratory Work where your colleagues are living and standing around you. You refer to the fact that your colleagues are sometimes deceased in a way. Yeah. Theres a part in the book where i talk about how some of these questions from the arctic are so hard but also so new, that might be yeah. That in is many ways some of the data and research from 50 years ago or 100 years ago, some temperature reading, for instance, especially in an age of Climate Change. I mean, a lot of these explorers i just showed you, they werent necessarily great scientists, but a lot of them were taking very rigorous measurements of temperature as well as for snowfall. And what we found today is we can actually use a lot of that data to compare it with how the world has changed. And its become quite valuable. Weve also, some of them took photographs of glaciers. We even have paintings of glaciers, and they can compare them today to what we have, what they looked like many years ago. And i think its unusual in a way how the past in the arctic has become so much more valuable to the present because the rate of change is so significant and so worrisome. So one thing that 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 as to whole of humanity. So as the physical threats of those who are in greenland decline somewhat and its in the research its much more machinedriven and a little safer, the threat in the book becomes, the sense of threat becomes larger and larger. Yeah. P i mean, its, and its sort of a lovely way to put it. I thinks right, that this place that was a kind of either a place to get across if you were an explorer, a physical challenge or sort of, you know, egodriven sort of thing, and then it became sort of a place to sort of study the, and now it became a place that the 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 sea levels as they rise and all sorts of other sort of implications that might affect ocean circulations and temperatures and other things as well. So i think well open it now to audience questions. Please, as salvatore noted, if you raise your hand, ill call on you, and a mic will be brought to you. And please stand up and use the mic, and then when youre done with your question, hand the mic back so we can get it to someone else. Yes, here. Jon, what are the natural fauna in greenland . What animals exist, and what do they live on . Its mostly seal, theres rich fishery, theres musk ox which are this sort of grazing animal. Its an enormous kind of bearded musk ox can stand being out in the cold to Something Like 50 degrees. Theyre incredible animals. Poe e lahr bears and then theres polar bears and then theres various birds of different stripes. There are no penguins, theyre down to south, okay . [laughter] 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 . And assuming that theyre fairly alert to it and alarmed about it, do they have any leverage visavis any of the larger powers that could actually do something about it . Yeah. Its sort of doubleedged because Climate Change for them and a recession of the ice sheet kind of presents an Economic Opportunity too. I mean, greenland has probably a vast storehouse of minerals under the ice sheet, and whats known as rare metals which are valuable for electronics. As certain areas of the ice sheet has receded, its created Economic Opportunity for the island. And i dont want to get too deeply into the politics, but what happens is that at the moment denmark gives a certain block grant of money to greenland, and greenland is sort of on a path to inagainst pending a kind of independence pending a kind of greater things like oil and Gas Development are sort of appealing to, you know, the indigenous population. And thats coupled with, i think, a keen environmental awareness to try and preserve it. But those are in conflict. Theres a tension there. I dont think i cant say im an expert on greenlandic politics at the moment, but there are both theres an effort towards both, towards preservation conservation, but also utely sawtion, i think, of the land and the resources. Lets go right here. So you said that that Climate Change was part of what first got to you interested in this topic, and this book certainly provides a wonderful avenue for your average reader to think about human relationships to the environment. But at the same time, youve recently published a 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 reconcile those two very different projects . Because it seems to me that Technological Solutions to Climate Change inherently operate in the very technocratic space away from Public Opinion and ordinary peoples understandings of the environment and beautiful books such as this. Yeah, thats a great question. So i would never really describe myself as, like, a super optimistic person. [laughter] but, you know, optimism sort of seems to me as i think my problem with the word optimism in some ways is that it sort of has this kind of implication that things might take care of themselves when i think in many ways societies decide how they want the future to be in the sense of investing dollars and effort and vast resources to try and achieve whatever goals that might be. And 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. I think were in a very difficult place, and the scientists now which i agree with talk about limiting those kinds of temperature rises to 2 degrees celsius. So i would say my optimism, whats there is really the fact that we can avert the worst impacts because we have over the last couple decades really developed a whole range of, you know, tools for Renewable Energy and that if we were to deploy them, i mean, your question is a good one, would it be done if i understand it correctly independently or through sort of agreement. I mean, i dont think you can Deploy Technology like solar power, wind power, hydroelectric power, noncarbonemitting kinds of solutions to Climate Change or to averting the worst impacts without policy and changes in politics, you know, in our politics. So i think that on the one hand, if we look at whats happening nationally, it can be pretty grim, and were not really move anything that direction at all. In fact, were moving in the opposite direction, but at the same time, theres encouraging things if you look towards which has created a vast deployment of Renewable Energies, energy generation. I think on some days, you know, over 50 of the electricity thats generated there is by wind and solar, and there are benchmarks for what theyre going to meet in terms of Renewable Energies in the late 2030s, the year 2035 are very, i think theyre very on target to meeting those. So i think when i look for, when we look for a kind of example of how this could work, we came up to california, and california has 40 million people. Its almost as large as a kind of midsized european country. And i think that, for me, gives me some encouragement that Technological Solutions, when theyre put into play by way of policy and smart policy, can work. And ill just say one last thing and thats that, you know, the notion that, you know, the apocalypse is coming and that were past tipping points and the like and theres nothing we can do the, i mean, 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 we kind of join up with that kind of cult of doom, well be in an even bigger predicament than we are already. Over here. Thank you. This sounds like a fabulous book, so congratulations. Im looking forward to reading it. Secondly, im wondering just how going to greenland six times actually changes you personally, because its, you know, youre a guy from, what, rural sorry, suburban new jersey, right . What does it do to you when you go and immerse yourself in a culture like that . How does it change the way you view yourself and your life and how you live . Yeah, thats great. I think that im trying to think of who said you have to leave, you know, to sort of understand, you know, to definitely broaden your mind. But i, i remember talking to some scientists about how they felt about greenland, and they i often got the same answer that they were, they would find it addictive, that you would go there to this kind of vast, empty place, and then youd come back home, and youd find yourself wanting to go there again. And i think, for me, more than anything it changed my idea of space and density. I remember being in greenland in this kind of vast, empty area and then coming back to new york and being in midtown like two days later and thinking, oh, my god, this is just unbelievable. And, which also makes me think of Peter Freuchen a lot, this fellow who spent his life in these empty places and then lived his life on the Upper West Side which is, to me, incredible. More than anything, i think probably i was less impacted by the cultural changes than by those ideas of density and, you know, spaces that were unspoiled, untrammelled, places where people dont really go and dont most people dont want to go. And that can change your whole view of really the earth, i think, and nature. It certainly changed mine. Yes. Lets wait for the microphone. Oh, im sorry. Thank you. Thank you for a wonderful presentation. Ive been to greenland and seen the spaces, romped around there. My question is does greenland and greenlandly call for a new definition finish history call for a new definition of what we understand . Ive been to greenland and ive seen houses underneath the tundra and the ice of significant populations that were built there before 1400. And we know that greenland got much colder after 400. And 1400. And, of course, the population reduced. Getting colder in 1400 was not necessarily, was not resulting to the chemicals and Global Warming things that we talk about today. Maybe we ought to redefine what Global Warming is and understand really what has causeed it rather than blaming it entirely on the industrialization of the world. I mean, i yeah, i mean, i respectfully would disagree. I think that, you know, i mean, i understand that point, there has been this historic variability in climate, and i think what youre referring to is a sort of little ice age which began around the 1200 and went from there. One reason we dont know what happened to the greenland norse is we think that maybe the climate got much colder and they couldnt actually survive there. But i think when we look at sort of changes in temperature in greenland and they correlate with co2 and even when we have ice cores especially from antarctica and we can see historically how going back, you know, tens and hundreds of thousands of years when co2 levels rise, temperatures rise too, we can kind of get the sense that were doing something very, very serious and very different than whats happened historically. So i think it is different this time, and i think we have a lot of scientific proof to show that. Its not as if the Greenland Ice sheet is going to fall into the ocean tomorrow, but those trend lines because weve been able to measure the ice sheet and how it loses really somewhere 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. So we have time for one more question. Oh, right here. Hi, jon. I was noting when you were showing off the slides and then, of course, as you were taking us through the different parts of the book, wondering if you could talk a little bit about your experience as a researcher and writer especially given the fact that youre not necessarily an academic, that perhaps you approached it more as a discovering journalist, but how you gained entry into the scientific community, how you were able to speak to some of the native inhabitants there the, how you got to be escorted by a nasa, you know, commuter plane, Something Like that. How did you actually get to do the research you did to write a book this vast . Yeah. Sure, it wasnt fast though. [laughter] it took five or six years. It felt slow in part because of what i said before, that you had to kind of work a year ahead sometimes to actually get permission to kind of tag along. Yeah, partly it was making the case saying im writing this book about the Greenland Ice sheet, and youd actually be surprised on how many journalists actually want to go to greenland. Its a popular destination, and to get a spot on the ice bridge plane was kind of a coveted, exciting thing, for sure. One thing that helped is that i did get the chance to do a couple stories 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 come out 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. But, you know, it was a constant education for me being around, you know, brilliant scientists who had spent their lives, and i dont think we understand the kind of sacrifices that they make. Its really amazing. I mean, its exciting for them to be up in greenland for months at a time doing this work, but at the same time its not easy work, and its kind of theyve spent their lives kind of dedicating months away from home, sometimes living on the ice sheet, you know, in camps that can be fun for a while but can get kind of dreary after a long time. And its really, i mean, we have the data and the insight that we really kind of cherish because of their sacrifices, i think, and their work. So i want to congratulate you again on a wonderful book, and hell be signing it out there if youre interested, and thank you all for coming. [applause] and the cullman folks and salvatore for having me and andy, my editor, for helping so much for the book. And thank i know a lot of familiar faces, and some people ive seen and, like, oh, my goodness, im so happy youre here. Yeah, im happy to sign a book if anybody wants that, and some folks, as you know, i invited this is a reception after and feel free to join us. Thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] booktv recently went to capitol hill to find out what books are on the reading lists of members of congress. Congressman bill johnson representing ohios 6th district, what are you reading . Oh, my goodness, thats almost its too big to say, because im in the process of five different books. Aye pretty much finished ive pretty much finished one of them, the latest one, grant by ron chernow. You know, you talk about what informs my work here in congress, i think its vitally important to understand our nations history, to understand both the victories and