China Lake: A Journey into the Contradicted Heart of a Global Climate Catastrophe

by Barret Baumgart

Barret Baumgart’s literary debut presents a haunting and deeply personal portrait of civilization poised at the precipice, a picture of humanity caught between its deepest past and darkest future. In the fall of 2013, during the height of California’s historic drought, Baumgart toured the remote military base, NAWS China Lake, near Death Valley, California. His mother, the survivor of a recent stroke, decided to come along for the ride. She hoped the alleged healing power of the base’s ancient Native American hot springs might cure her crippling headaches. Baumgart sought to debunk claims that the military was spraying the atmosphere with toxic chemicals to control the weather. What follows is a discovery that threatens to sever not only the bonds between mother and son but between planet Earth and life itself.



Stalking the fringes of Internet conspiracy, speculative science, and contemporary archaeology, Baumgart weaves memoir, military history, and investigative journalism in a dizzying journey that carries him from the cornfields of Iowa to drought-riddled California, from the Vietnam jungle to the caves of prehistoric Europe and eventually the walls of the US Capitol, the sparkling white hallways of the Pentagon, and straight into the contradicted heart of a worldwide climate emergency. 

 

Genres: Nonfiction

300 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 1, 2017

About the author

WEIRD NONFICTION

❝​🇨​​🇭​​🇮​​🇳​​🇦​ ​🇱​​🇦​​🇰​​🇪​ ​🇮​​🇸​ ​🇦​​🇳​ ​🇦​​🇵​​🇴​​🇨​​🇦​​🇱​​🇾​​🇵​​🇸​​🇪​ ​🇴​​🇫​ ​🇹​​🇭​​🇪​ ​🇼​​🇪​​🇮​​🇷​​🇩​❝ --​🇷​​🇮​​🇨​​🇭​​🇦​​🇷​🇩​ ​🇵​​🇷​​🇪​​🇸​​🇹​​🇴​​🇳​

“ʏᴜᴄᴋ ᴄᴏɴꜰɪʀᴍꜱ ʙᴀᴜᴍɢᴀʀᴛ’ꜱ ꜱᴛᴀᴛᴜꜱ ᴀꜱ ᴏɴᴇ ᴏꜰ ᴛʜᴇ ʟᴇᴀᴅɪɴɢ ᴄʜʀᴏɴɪᴄʟᴇʀꜱ ᴏꜰ ᴛʜᴇ ᴄᴀʟɪꜰᴏʀɴɪᴀ ᴡᴇɪʀᴅ.” --ᴇʀɪᴋ ᴅᴀᴠɪꜱ

Barret Baumgart is an essayist, screenwriter, and the author of the nonfiction books China Lake and YUCK. His essays have appeared in The Paris Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Iowa Review, The Rumpus, Vice, LitHub, The Seneca Review, and The Literary Review, among others. He lives in Los Angeles.

Reviews

[Evan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An incredible, nearly indescribable book. Packed with pithy interviews, dry reporting, drunken ramblings, deeply-felt personal reminiscences, well-researched histories, and conspiracy theories, the book tries to do everything, and nearly succeeds. The split between personal memoir and journalistic non-fiction is the most glaring, but even there the author manages to bridge the divide by the end, turning the scattered, non-linear structure into a virtue, as the book's incoherence eventually comes to embody its core theme.

If the book is truly "about" anything, it's the history and future of geoengineering in the Anthropocene, and the effect it would have - or perhaps already is having - on the human psyche. Baumgart seems almost purposefully unstuck-in-time, veering focus wildly from 15,000 or more years ago to thousands of years in the future to assess the impact human civilization has and will have on global ecological and chemical systems, and the associated impact on human culture and civilization. The book reads like a eulogy, highlighting some of human civilization's greatest cultural achievements, before accepting the inevitability of civilization's demise, or worse - self-imposed imprisonment.

Deeply pessimistic, the author only finds rare silver linings, like the thought that a particulate solar shield would cause glorious sunsets (while blotting out the stars), or the idea that some humans will inevitably survive to carve future petroglyphs, and live full lives (past a Late-Anthropocene population bottleneck). These speculative scenarios don't give much hope, and one is tempted to follow the author's lead, and drive whiskey-drunk into the desert blasting metal music -- while whiskey, driving, and metal all still exist. In the scattered uncertainly of the book's structure, the author's own palpable, desperate grasp for meaning mirrors civilization's current struggle to justify its own existence.

[Schuyler Wallace · Rating 2 out of 5]

When I saw the advance for Barret Baumgart’s book “China Lake,” I snapped it up. The Naval Weapons Center at China Lake has been my neighbor for many years and I have visited it several times. It seemed reasonable to have a closer look.

I found the book to be a strange mishmash of environmental science, global warning, personal memoirs, Grecian and Native American mythology, familial conflict, heavy drinking, and insomnia. The inclusion of marathon running, shamanism, chemtrails, petroglyphs, and childhood fears added to the muddle. Unfortunately it became too much of a chore to sort it all out and I skimmed over most of it.

There is important information here. Global warming is a real threat and the author has delved into its murk with admirable tenacity. Unfortunately the complicated and divided opinions are so difficult to understand that his effort falls flat, weighted down by its own complexity. It doesn’t help to further cloud the muddle with nonsensical tales of mother and son on a road trip and endless reflections of a checkered past. The repetitious nature of his writing was also very off-putting.

It’s particularly depressing to find that proposed solutions are extremely unrealistic. In particular, the dumping of millions of tons of opaque white sulfur dust into the stratosphere to reflect the sun’s light away from us seems idiotic in its concept. Think about the many tons of carbon byproduct that join the sulfur from the heavy bombers needed to do the seeding. The public protests that the author covers are also completely lacking any productive input other than allowing wackos the opportunity to wear funny hats and shriek over loudspeakers.

[Robert Morgan Fisher · Rating 5 out of 5]

What if someone wrote a memoir about the end of civilization and they were right? To really understand the dire situation that's been handed to millennials like Barret Baumgart, one needs to go back about--say--five years. To a time where we thought there might be hope. Then one should also go back 30 years and then 9,000 years. Look at the historical record carved into the petroglyphs of China Lake and beyond. Take your mother--because the earth is your mother.

I don't think I've ever seen such an accumulation of well-researched data so perfectly juxtaposed with a poet's perspective. Baumgart is as honest as he can be, humble, anxious and leaves every conclusion up to the reader. He's a seeker of information, a good listener and knows there are no easy answers. Well worth your time.

[Chris Carlton · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author puts it all out there; yearning for a traditional nuclear family, existential stress over impending environmental disaster, and plenty of wicked humour. This may not be the book for you, in fact it probably isn't. But it's a unique voice carrying a message that we can no longer afford to ignore. It's not a lecture on the scientific minutae of global warming, but rather one person's attempt to process what the coming century shall almost certainly bring...

[DiAnne Warfield · Rating 3 out of 5]

Holt-Delhi Nonfiction Book Discussion title September 2018.

[Barb Flory · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the most depressing books I have read in a long time. Basically, our planet has no future. Well that's good to know. :(

[Ilib4kids]

Avery borrowed this book.