Thanks to 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 the new book the ice at the end of the world which tells the story of how people encounter, studied, settled and have been unsettled by the grad grade sheet that cos greenland the largest island and what changes with this puppy impact of Global Warming of the sea levels please take this moment to silence your cell phones. Before we begin tonights program, we must take a moment to reflect on some recent issues as many of you know our founding benefactor and friend died. He was 100yearsold. It was his and his wife dorothys generosity that made the center possible. It was dorothys idea it should include creative writers along with scholars and other nonfiction writers. She died in 2009. Since the beginning of the Coleman Center to hit the 15 fellows and their dates up to his apartment for dinner and conversation. His pride in the work of the 300 fellows at the center and its first 20 years was infectious and his gifts and short fellows would be working here on new books for many years to come. He gave to the arts, education and research all over the city in the country and the Library Performing Arts to the museum, to the metropolitan museum or the Botanical Garden and his ang others to give generously until it hurt was legendary. He wrote about you cant take it with you. The art of taking and giving money. He was quick with it and inspirational till the end. We continue to thank him and we will miss him. As many of you know the series presents the work of the center for scholars and writers for the ninemonth term to cover their expenses. We find books for sale but tonights guests and generously agreed to sign them after the program. You will about 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 microphone our staff will hand down the aisle. Leading the discussion tonight will be the past from a victoria johnson who was a fellow from 20152016. The coleman sent her book to launch was medicine in the garden of the early republic and it was published last year and hailed in the New York Times has both an ambitious and entertaining book and a finalist for the los angeles books awarded the National Book award and the pulitzer prize. She had a hell of a year. Victoria johnson holds a degree from yale and sociology from columbia and is an associate professor of policy and planning at Hunter College degree of she speaks tonight of course with jojohn a frequent contributor. She writes on science, nature, technology and the bestselling first book the idea factory published in 2012 posts a story of the Research Wing of at t and its impact on American Innovation throughout the 20th century. Of the new book usa today writes a review that cannot five minutes ago the ice at the end of the world offers a compelling narrative about the intrepid human beings whose curiosity about the world worse then to forbidding places and you will also find it when they go there they bring hot chocolate. Elizabeth was at a gripping and important book. We will open the floor to questions from all of you in the program. Meanwhile please welcome victoria johnson. [applause] i want to begin by congratulating you on the brilliant and important book. This book, the ice at the end of the world manages to be both haunting and poetic, and to offer the reader a scientific narrative that will be hugely enlightening to many. I was reminded why i was reading your book with the historian noted. She insisted to understand nature and celebrate nature, one must be both poet and scientist. , your last book was about bell labs. Labs. This was in suburban new jersey so then we went to one of the most punishing expanses of land and ice on earth. In the introduction, you offer a tantalizing remark by scientists who in the 1930s flew over greenland and you quote him as saying im looking at a landscape whose simplicity is nowhere to be surpassed on earth then after the introduction you take us on a journey with scientists trying to unlock those secrets. Could you tell me what got you interested in when did you decide that might be a book in this . First, thank you. That is very kind. I sort of found myself asking myself as i am on this plane to greenland, its not easy to get there. You have to go through denmark and then you fly if youve never been to greenland, but i ended up taking six trips and i often sort of wonder 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 new products that change the world. When i was done with that, ive been focused on Climate Change because i had 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 id written this book on innovation. They really want to write about discovery that is this kind of thing that happens before innovation happens. When we find new knowledge and we are actually trying to maybe just find new knowledge and do something with knowledge and i think that takes us to about 2012 when my first book came out and just about that time, the Greenland Ice sheet started to melt pretty dramatically. There were a couple of days where the whole ice sheet completely melted. And i think that this was a time where Climate Change stories were not in the news as much as if you were following certain news organizations or an news feeds, you could sort of follow the news and it struck me that maybe this was a way to sort of right about Climate Change, but i already knew that there was a kind of deeper story of discovery, not only how we knew that this was melting, but how we sort of have investigated as well. I began to read and think about how to structure and it began from there. 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 to europe. Can you tell us, im sure theres other people whtheothero greenland, but can you tell us what its like and what were your First Impressions if you remember them and what did you do . Sometimes i had the opportunity to fly on some flights and some literary flights. Part of the problem and to bring this you can go directly from jfk or newark. You kind of flight over green land in fact to greenland, which is theres a theory that you can do it all in one day tha but i t think you can. You have to maybe missed the connecting flights because from new york to copenhagen. The first time i landed there i remembered taking a deep breath and the air is so crystal. This 56,000 people, there is no real industry, no trees. In many ways it is a combination and i dont see this pejoratively at all, but a kind of third world, first world companiecompanies to become shoe where did mark has brought in a certain amount of sophistication but where that kind of traditions also exist and where there is basically pockets of villages that feels like something from another century without any kind of modern conveniences. The overwhelming feeling is once you get out of the village of this kind of beautiful emptiness of just rocks and late stage for one almost forever in a way that as somebody told me there are so many links in a land that they dont even have names. There are just too many to name it when you are flying over all of them are driving past them there are no roads connecting the town so sometimes you take them from town to town and you are really any kind of place that feels i think which is kind of rare today untouched. I know you did a Archival Research but how did you go about connecting the research in england . One thing i found a little disappointing is only a short Summer Season so its not like you can just pick up and go during the winter or something. Historical time in the winter and they keep it part of the work between may and august. So if you want to embed yourself with a group doing some work there you have to work ahead of time and i did a variety of things and work towards getting involved in different projects. There were some flights where they did something called remote to send thing. Yoviewers were flying over the e sheet all day long, not on the ground up kind of measuring it from above. I spent the time with those measuring glaciers and others measuring the algae that grows on it and the bald water streams. Usually it is just working a year ahead of time to get involved in the project stand i cant explain how many scientists are there during the season. It is like the los alamos of the modern era except everyone is studying ice rather than nuclear or atomic energy. And just oceanographers and those who are digging into the ruins of ancient culture is an exciting place to be for science, but again you have to kind of work in advance. You chose to work with one of those i think it was 2015. I thought it was a brilliant way to open the book because you ups along with you and you reflect on this vast expanse and begin to reflect on the history and its a way of introducing the reader to the scope of what we are about to embark on serving as a personal guide and i felt i was being taken by the hand that led theathenthat led to a very r terrain. Could you read from the beginning . Could i borrow someones book, i left my look. [laughter] it was known as an ice bridge flight and i ended up with this team for about a week and what you would just sho do this to sn a town and the team was there and they outfitted a special plane that was a c130 military plane and inside was pretty much emptied out of seats, but they have all sorts of special equipment within the inside of it and it was sort of a stateoftheart vehicle to measure the ice from above. You would wake up in the morning and then you would follow research and wrote on a particular day and the plane would measure the ice from above any murderous ways, by radar, laser and photography. Im going to pick up on that first day if i could. It was my first flight with the team and its kind of fills in a little bit of what we were doing. On the morning after the c130 arrived, we took off on that first flight. From the wes the west coast plas the island to the southeast sout towards greenlands rugged eastern coast where the dark jagged peak would like the animal teeth from a prehistoric cover the ice. If it be a long ride. The largest island about five times the size in th a poignant, three times the size of texas just over 80 of the land is covered by the central ice sheet and was home to the population of about 56,000 people most of whom are descendents of the native inuit and this is the least densely populated area on earth. The technician spent very little time so they began to scrutinize their computer screens and the data streaming. That point i made my way through the main cabin into the flight deck so for three hours when we last approached the east coast so without exception, beauty and uncommon strangeness. To survey the landscape. And in the coastal mountains the only color was a light blue of the sky that radiated the rain cloud down there were no people no houses and for hours on end i. C. E. And rock somebody would think we left no trace at all. Many of the pieces places during the course of the day and those that followed i could piece to gather the history of an island where they have a vast emptiness that turned out to be anything but empty brick along the coast the peninsulas capes and glaciers of those who had passed this man expeditions many of these were fairly obscure. But down below there were reminders of more recent age of science to those coordinates to those historical sites the forties and fifties the scientific outpost remain with the understanding of the earth they were now invisible lost two decades of accumulated i. C. E. And snow near where they want stood i could discern a place that was once functional research station located in the dead center at a height of 10000 feet and then all signs of civilization go away and the plane i have to remind myself that i recall the story from the early 1930s of a german glaciologist. As a passenger to have a brutal winter and has traversed it many times and to be transfixed later he would write i said to myself that landscape whose vast simplicity that is concealed of a thousand secrets. We both have the favorite line in the book. That is so beautiful and haunting. Thats only one of two spots in the book where you introduce yourself as a narrator. Right. Had you make that decision cracks because largely chronological trip through greenland with the explorers and scientists. How did you decide not to put yourself in quick. I struggled a lot with that inside baseball stuff for writers. I had settled on writing a chronological history but i also wanted to have some kind of way to flight one frame the history so how much of that first person do i put in or not . And i carry that around with me for years in the solution and through the introduction and to put myself in the epilogue that is the here and now moments of time to introduce the book but then the actual chapter that goes back to the 18 eighties and i took myself completely out of that part. It seems hard. But the stories of those explorers and scientist in history are so much i cannot imagine a needed or wanted to be a part of it. It would be much better if i was out of the picture so you can see my hand in there a little bit. But generally speaking i wanted to step out and it was very liberating actually its nice not to be in the story sometimes but to pull the strings. As a biographer i couldnt help but read this as an island. And that there was a intriguing literary challenge with 150 years of history and then to engross the reader at the same time to challenge to introduce a huge cast of characters and weaving their stories together. Also reflect on how you decided who made the cut. And i read victorias amazing book and i struggled with the same thing because hers is a wonderful cast of characters in the late 17 hundreds or early 18 hundreds. So you have to leave people on the floor and thats part of it so you tell a story and include everyone but i dont thank you can. So the first thing i struggled with was the question where does the story begin . So greenland was settled in the 14 hundreds im sorry in the nine hundreds eric was a murderer but also a very good marketer. He got people to follow him to greenland i guess it was nicer than iceland purportedly but he lived in greenland from the year 1000 through 1420 but what became clear is that this was a story how geologic time in human time intersect because of the big question was when did human beings actually start to go onto the i. C. E. And investigate . So the first part of the book is about exploration and it charts an early period of time Free Technology no air travel. You had to fly onto the i. C. E. Sheet there were no trucks. What you could do is look inside but nobody knew what was in the middle of the i. C. E. Sheet. You can sort of see greenland they are but it 1500 miles long and 700 miles across and about 10000 feet altitude. But these people who started to think they wanted to cross the i. C. E. Sheet were basically insane. [laughter] those who were a norwegian who looks like he just killed the bear or something. [laughter] it to be cultured and gentle in some ways and actually pulling sleds and its like a big dome of climate then slide down the other side and then they skied down the other side. After his crossing writing this amazing book and then a fine illustrator as well in helping expatriates of world war i. To be fortunate there was an archenemy and writers love that kind of thing but then years later to go across the i. C. E. Cap first finding out the look on his face is that he felt Somebody Just died. And through that innovation that to do this right you had to adopt so rather than pulling a sled to outfit the dog teams and those which worked much better trying to reach the north pole but in the early part of his career he crossed the greenland i. C. E. Sheet twice and also brought some modern tools into the area of Northeast Greenland and what happened was when he moved on to other pursuits, and then to set up something the station it is which where they set up shop the northwest corner of greenland. Part danish and part greenlandic. And apart from crossing the i. C. E. Sheet he brought greenland to the rest of the world it went about to collect tales but also brought scientist in commerce to those areas greenland and they were partners in the early 19 hundreds and that in turn give them guns and one of the great characters of literature and as a scandinavian saga and came back to denmark to become a writer. His beard is actually kept in a box. [laughter] and then to lividity apartment in manhattan. Is now 64000dollar question he won the 64000dollar question. He knew everything but his life was amazing. There was a. Where the explorers went to question science and science took precedence over geographic exploration and those who cross the i. C. E. Sheet several times in the early 19 hundreds but then to come up with this grand plan for Research Expeditions on the i. C. E. Sheet. It was called the bid i. C. E. Station and his idea and on the center of the i. C. E. Sheet all winter. But did not work out too well. As you can see in these two fellows in the third dug into the i. C. E. And lived in the cave for the entire winter and it gets worse than that. Actually his toes were frozen and they started to thaw out in the cave and they got gangrene with no medical tools i will not tell you what happens next you have to read the book there was kind of a happy ending but it was a grisly year on the i. C. E. And the temperatures above would go minus 85 or minus 90 degrees fahrenheit. Down below that they could live through that with a small amount of kerosene. So you dont have to be a superhero or superhuman strength it with this age of modern polar expedition to get to the i. C. E. Caps to reduce the risk for those doing work that goes back to the work of the 19 forties and fifties. The second half of the book measures is in the i. C. E. Sheet of the midst of Climate Change and then to photograph the i. C. E. Course. There are several chapters and that is a recording device and drilling can reveal what the right kinds of tools and scientific instruments for tens of thousands at that point to different layers of volcanoes actually and the remnants of i. C. E. Courses. And it is a fascinating and incredibly valuable tool this cast of characters is incredibly rich and charismatic and a little crazy. There are many ambitious people but to run towards danger and death can you tell me about those hardships and then come to understand it in those age that they were geographical and then that question of ego. In the modern day the explorers and scientists are different kinds of people and then to do early work in neuroscience. And doing things like crossing the i. C. E. And investigating the i. C. E. Sheet of the combination of things and for him the challenges that if you do science of the remote area of the world that is just endured with. The emphasis was not all in science it was on endurance and vanity and one of the great challenges is you have to have enough food for yourself and the dogs and if you ran out you would eat the dogs sometimes you fed the dogs to each other. Then they are starving and miserable in this was a risk in the back of their mind that you could not call for help. And then a man putting in his application they told him in the 18 nineties death will be hovering near us always they will never return to civilization if there is any fear in your heart. And he went anyway. So that indigenous plays in the success of those expeditions. Talk about how the greenland norse arrived about 100 years later theres not a lot of evidence how they overlapped. What we know the greenland norse died out. They figured out a way not in spite of the i. C. E. But because of the i. C. E. The way they structured their life in the hunting as they come to understand that you could not practice agriculture. And what you did there was an animal called the musk ox. Sometimes you gathered eggs and birds or printed with polar bear which was a great delicacy. You wore a fur and so it is interesting today. I talked to a few hunters who remain that are licensed by the state of greenland in the era of Climate Change it is poignant somebody once told me we have been here 1000 years but at the same time it has taken a toll on the tradition and those that used to be iced in and those on the water and then as the sun gets heavier. And different relations in different explorers but talk about it went with him to copenhagen and had a very strong reaction. He married a young woman and brought her home to copenhagen and she did not like it. She felt life had no value when everything was available at the store or was given to you. She was very depressed. And nothing in greenland was ever easy sometimes she didnt know where your next meal was coming from. There is a tragic ending and they both got sick with influenza outbreak in 1918 right after the war and she passed on and he did remarry. But that notion that as hard as it was and then to equal that. I wonder if that reaction that she had that life had no meaning to struggle every moment is something explorers got addicted to and attached to that feeling. Especially if you read robert in a comfortable room and you wonder why how anybody could possibly subject themselves to such misery year after year after year, it is incomprehensible except the goal except the ego driven goal that seems to have no value to me but that thrill so far from the world in a place of lifeanddeath. And a clean break from the scientist. But then the Us Government became very interested in greenland. And with that Scientific Investigation and to understand why they built a basin greenland or why people had certain charge of the land before but what ended up happening is the us army and air force took the cue from rasmussen inbuilt very large base so what he set up eventually was an incredibly Large Air Force base so there was a moment in the cold war when it was just across the Arctic Circle at the same time the military was there scientist took advantage of that to do research on the i. C. E. Sheet and that is the era of modern glaciology began. Talk about the discoveries made in that era. Talking about living under the i. C. E. At the mid i. C. E. Station, they really began this practice and began to understand to carry the times and temperatures. But what happened years later is that different scientists wanted to do a more methodical way of drilling into the i. C. E. Sheet to create these i. C. E. Cores and to use the air force base as a staging ground and there is one character in my book a swiss american, and he used military money to pay for his scientific curiosity and in the cold war the budgets were immense and literally could have it team of scientists in the middle of the i. C. E. Sheet pay for everything and conduct a science experiment to figure out how to get the i. C. E. Core out of the i. C. E. That goes back to the fifties and sixties. With the structure of the book constantly looking at the past and the explorers passed and those discoveries. And you talk about the fact its not Laboratory Work where your colleagues are living in standing around you. But the fact sometimes they are deceased. Yes. There is a part right talk about these questions are so hard but so new. In many ways the data and research from 50 or 100 years ago like temperature readings especially in the age of Climate Change. These explorers werent necessarily great scientists but they were taking very rigorous measurements of temperature as well as snowfall and what we found today is we can use a lot of that data to prepare how the world has changed and it has become quite valuable. We also have photographs of glaciers. Now we can compare them to what they looked like many years ago. It is unusual in a way how the past of the arctic has become so much more valuable because the rate of change is so significant and worrisome those declined somewhat in the research that is machine driven. The sense of threat becomes larger and larger. A physical challenge or a sort of ego driven sort of thing. I will call on you and a microphone will be brought to you. Please stand up and use the microphone and when you are done with your question, he and the microphone back so we can get it to someone else. The. Being out in the cold two minuss 50 degrees or something. They are incredible animals. I am wondering how caesar the natives of greenland of the threat of Climate Change do they have any leverage on any of the larger powers that could actually do something about it . Its sort of double edge because Climate Change for them and the recession presents an Economic Opportunity. Greenland has probably a vast house of minerals under the ice sheets and especially what is known as rare earth and metals that are valuable for electronics with certain areas that have preceded its creative Economic Opportunity for the island. I dont want to get too deeply into the politics, that what happens is at the moment, denmark gives a certain block grant and greenland is on a path of independent pending the kind of greater economic independence, so things like Mineral Development and oil and Gas Development are sort of appealing to the indigenous population. And that is coupled with the environmental awareness to try to preserve it, but there is a tension and im an expert on the agreement politics at the moment, but there is an effort towards both lets go over here it certainly provides an avenue for the average reader to think about them in relationships to the environment. But at the same time an oped in the New York Times calling for the greater optimism albeit moderated towards the solutions to Climate Change. So how to reconcile the projec projects. I would never describe myself as a super optimistic person. Optimism sort of seems to me. In this case the environmental goals and when we talk about solutions to Climate Change is averting the worst impacts that we are in a very difficult place with the celsius, so we could avert the impact for the past couple of decades we have developed a whole range of tools for the renewable energy. With the policies and changes in politics. It can be pretty grim and we are not really moving in a direction at all. We are moving in the opposite direction. The electricity generated by wind and solar and the benchmarks it was 2030 the year 2035. By the policy and smart policy it can work and i will say one last thing the notion that the is coming and we are past the Tipping Point and the like. What do they do to you when you go to a culture like that as it changes the way you view your self and your life and the way you live. Thats great. I am trying to think of who said you have to leave to understand and broaden your mind. The. It also makes me think of this fellow tha theyve spent his li. [inaudible] my question is does greenland and the history call for a new deposition and understanding of what we think of in terms of Global Warming . To greenland and i seen houses underneath and significant populations that others build their and for reasons that we are not clear about the population reduced and it wasnt resulting to the chemicals that Global Warming things that we talk about today. Thabut rather than blaming it entirely on the industrialization of the world. Ie understand that point there has been a variability in the climate, and i think that what you are referring to is what began around 1200 went from there. One reason we dont know what happened is we think that maybe the climate was much colder and could actually survive there but i think when we look at the changes in temperature in greenland and how it correlated and even when we see historically how going back tens and thousands of years when the temperatures rise, we kind of get the sense that we are doing something very serious and very different damn much has happened historically. So, i think it is different this time. We have a lot of scientific proof to show that. And its not as if it is going to fall into the ocean tomorrow, but those trend lines because we have been able to measure somewhere an average of 300 billion per year. We know that things are moving in a certain direction and seem to be excellent rating at the same time that the temperature measurements keep going up. Have time for one more question. I noticed while youre showing off the slides to different parts of the book. Wondering if you can talk about your experience as a researcher and writer. In part what i said before that you had to kind of work a year ahead sometimes to get permission to tag along and yes i mean partly it was making the case im writing this book about the ice sheet and could be surprised how many actually want to go to greenland. One thing that helped in the course of doing this for sure that helped as well the Different Organization and the idea that a story is being written that will come out soon rather than a book that might some way come out so that was helpful for many reasons to get along with them. But it was a constant agitation for me being around brilliant scientists who had spent their lives, and i dont think that we understand the kind of sacrifices that they make. Its amazing. Its exciting for them to be in agreement for months at a time that the sambut at the same timt easy work and its kind of theyve spent their life kind of dedicating months away from home on the ice sheet and camps that can be fun for a while but this kind of dreary after a long time and we have the data and the insights we cherish because of the sacrifices i think in their work. I want to come gradually view a gampeelagain on a wonderful b. He will be signing out there if youre interested. Thank you all for coming. [applause] thank you for having me and for helping so much in the book. Ive seen them like mike is im so happy you are here. So im happy to sign a book if anybody wants that and there is a reception afterwards. Feel free to join us. Thank you. Author of space the freemarket frontier talks about sending