The Ice at the End of the World: An Epic Journey into Greenland's Buried Past and Our Perilous Future

by Jon Gertner

A riveting, urgent account of the explorers and scientists racing to understand the rapidly melting ice sheet in Greenland, a dramatic harbinger of climate change

“Jon Gertner takes readers to spots few journalists or even explorers have visited. The result is a gripping and important book.”—Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of  The Sixth Extinction

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • The Christian Science Monitor  •  Library Journal

a remote, mysterious island five times the size of California but with a population of just 56,000. The ice sheet that covers it is 700 miles wide and 1,500 miles long, and is composed of nearly three quadrillion tons of ice. For the last 150 years, explorers and scientists have sought to understand Greenland—at first hoping that it would serve as a gateway to the North Pole, and later coming to realize that it contained essential information about our climate. Locked within this vast and frozen white desert are some of the most profound secrets about our planet and its future. Greenland’s ice doesn’t just tell us where we’ve been. More urgently, it tells us where we’re headed.

In The Ice at the End of the World, Jon Gertner explains how Greenland has evolved from one of earth’s last frontiers to its largest scientific laboratory. The history of Greenland’s ice begins with the explorers who arrived here at the turn of the twentieth century—first on foot, then on skis, then on crude, motorized sleds—and embarked on grueling expeditions that took as long as a year and often ended in frostbitten tragedy. Their original goal was to conquer Greenland’s seemingly infinite interior. Yet their efforts eventually gave way to scientists who built lonely encampments out on the ice and began drilling—one mile, two miles down. Their aim was to pull up ice cores that could reveal the deepest mysteries of earth’s past, going back hundreds of thousands of years.

Today, scientists from all over the world are deploying every technological tool available to uncover the secrets of this frozen island before it’s too late. As Greenland’s ice melts and runs off into the sea, it not only threatens to affect hundreds of millions of people who live in coastal areas. It will also have drastic effects on ocean currents, weather systems, economies, and migration patterns.

Gertner chronicles the unfathomable hardships, amazing discoveries, and scientific achievements of the Arctic’s explorers and researchers with a transporting, deeply intelligent style—and a keen sense of what this work means for the rest of us. The melting ice sheet in Greenland is, in a way, an analog for time. It contains the past. It reflects the present. It can also tell us how much time we might have left.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, History, Environment, Nature, Travel, Climate Change

448 pages, Paperback

First published June 11, 2019

About the author

In addition to writing books, I’m a longtime contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine. My journalism and book reviews have also appeared in Wired, The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. My magazine stories tend to address contemporary issues in science, technology, and business; my books focus more on historical episodes that have had a significant but underappreciated influence. To put it slightly differently: In longer projects, I’m trying to pay close attention to certain aspects of our past so we can better understand the present, and perhaps the future.

My first book, The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation (Penguin Press, 2012) chronicles a generation of scientists working at the 20th Century’s greatest laboratory and explores the importance of technological innovation. The Ice at the End of the World, (Random House, 2019) details 150 years of exploration and investigation on the Greenland ice sheet, beginning in the 1880s. A story about the process of scientific discovery, the book aims to tell how the work in Greenland, aided by an evolving array of technological tools, has led us to a profound understanding of our current climate crisis.

My next book for Random House will examine NASA’s long-running Voyager mission—its engineering, scientific observations, and legacy. The book will likewise explore the underlying principles of long-term projects and durability.

Reviews

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 Impeccably presented and in an interesting manner, the author begins with a lost colony on Greenland, and the early explorers who wanted to cross the frozen middle of Greenland. Hazardous, so many deaths, attempts, but eventually much was discovered. Scientific exploration was accomplished at this time as well. Even early on it was determined that if Greenland's ice melted, the sea levels would rise by 25 ft. Amazingly given the primitive tools of the time, it would later be determined he was off by only eight inches. Incredible. I enjoyed this first part of the book, close up looks at what they are, definitely not for me, what they took with, their plans and how they survive or didn't. Men with such a sense of adventure and purpose.

The second part of the book brings us up to date with what has been going on in Greenland since that early time. Military base and studying the core ice, work stations and drilling into the ice. Ice rooms carved out so men could work and study. One humorous note is that loud music is piped through the rooms to stage off loneliness, Pink Floyd, K. D. Lang. When it was suggested that classical music be played, work production dropped by 50%. Guess one needs the best to keep going. Parts of the middle of the book I felt dragged s bit, a little repetitive or just too long at specific times.

Now core ice is being studied, and has great importance as to what is happening in our world, and what is to come. They don't know exactly when but seem to feel the results will be swift moving,
leaving us little time to prepare. All in all a good book on a subject and place I knew little about, as well as another warning on how our planet is being harmed.

The author gave a four star delivery of his book.

[Max · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has three themes, all centered on Greenland’s ice sheet 1,500 miles long, nearly 700 miles wide and up to 10,000 feet deep holding three quadrillion tons of ice. Gertner begins with adventure describing explorations of Greenland’s ice covered interior from the 1880’s through the 1930s. In this part Gertner gives us the personal stories of the explorers, the risks they took and the hardships they endured. The second section of the book skips to the late forties following WWII. Exploration continues but the adventure is largely gone as vehicles and planes take over from men with iron wills, dog sleds and horses. Gertner still profiles the people but mostly in terms of their contributions to science. The story becomes one of scientific discovery. This leads to the third story, climate change, the future of Greenland’s ice sheet and glaciers, and what that holds for the world. My notes follow.

Gertner begins his history of explorations of Greenland’s interior with the expedition of Fridtjof Nansen in 1888. At the time no one had crossed Greenland’s interior. The west coast of Greenland was accessible with Danish Settlements and native Inuit ones. The east coast was inaccessible. It was enclosed in miles of pack ice drifting on the seas offshore. Nansen would cross east to west. It was simpler to start in the west but there was no exit once you got to the east coast. Nansen had a ship offload him and his men on the pack ice. They took two boats to navigate the ice. They nearly drifted out to sea trapped by the ice. It took them eleven days just to make it to shore. Then they had to climb the high cliffs of ice and avoid the many crevasses which could mean instant death. Once on the ice sheet they could use snowshoes and skis. They pulled their sleds themselves so they wouldn’t have to carry food for dogs. Their trip across the narrower south end was 350 miles. It took them about ten weeks from the time they left their ship to reach a settlement on the west coast. The interior of Greenland was bleak, barren and COLD. Their success required meticulous planning and the determination to persevere against the bitter elements. A fall or injury could be catastrophic. They became the first men to cross the interior of Greenland. Nansen would return to Denmark to widespread acclaim.

The next expedition was by an American Robert Peary in 1892. He had hoped to be first to cross Greenland. Now he felt he had to do more than Nansen. He decided to travel on the ice sheet near the north coast of Greenland going from the west coast to the east coast and then returning, 600 miles each way. Perry spent the winter on the west coast so he could get an early start at the end of April. His team would use sled dogs. He counted on excursions down the ice sheet to the north coast to hunt for muskox and seals to replenish his food. The north coast was uncharted territory. He was taking a big chance, but it worked. Peary would make the first maps of the north coast. They reached their destination on the northwest most part of the coast on July 4. He planted a U. S. flag on top of a cliff overlooking a glacier. Hungry and with very little little food to spare they returned in early August. Peary too achieved notoriety and hit the lecture tours back in the U. S.

A more serious effort to document Greenland was made by Knud Rasmussen. He grew up in Greenland and was 1/8th Inuit. He moved with his family to Denmark when he was twelve. Inspired by Nansen and Peary he vowed to return. But he did more than just demonstrate his prowess at conquering the icy interior. He documented the geology, the ecology and the culture of the Inuit. In 1902-3 he traveled along Greenland’s west and north coasts going from Inuit village to village ending with the Polar Inuit, the northern most tribe in the world. His books about the Inuit, their beliefs and practices, published in 1904, made him a national celebrity in Denmark. He would spend the next several decades recording tens of thousands of pages of notes of his interviews and impressions of the Inuit. He established a permanent trading station on the northeast coast at a settlement his partner named Thule (Too-lee) station. In April 1912 Rasmussen and his team begin an expedition of undetermined length traveling on the ice sheet near the north coast of Greenland where they could hunt and then to look for evidence of a long missing explorer. They mapped new areas of the coast and revisited Peary’s cliff. They never found traces of the explorer. In September they just made it back before running out of food. In 1917 Rasmussen led a second expedition along the north coast taking along a geologist and botanist. Sadly they had insufficient food, the dogs were eaten, the botanist died of starvation and one other man got disappeared and died. These trips were exceedingly dangerous and run with razor thin margins for error.

In 1913 the German Alfred Wegner led an expedition of four men 700 miles from the northern east coast to the central west coast. They spent the winter near their starting point to get going as early as possible in the spring. Rather than dogs they used Icelandic horses to pull the sleds, all of which died on the way. Suffering numerous near calamities and injuries, the men arrived on the west coast barely alive. Wegner would return to Greenland in 1930 to set up a weather monitoring and research station in the center of the ice sheet, some 250 miles from the west coast. Three men stayed the winter at the station, one because he was too injured to return. They lived in quarters they dug out below the ice. Turns out, living in the ice was much more comfortable than living in tents on the surface. The real problem was getting enough supplies to last until spring. Wegner led a resupply mission in the fall which ran into constant delays but made it delivering the needed supplies. The weather turned brutal. He and his companion did not make it back. Wegner’s body was found the next spring. His partner’s never was. No one knows exactly what happened to them. The station was resupplied in the spring and the men were determined to conduct the experiments Wegner planned. They dug a 50 foot shaft down in the ice measuring density at different depths. They set off explosives to determine the depth of the ice sheet from waves reflected from bedrock.

The age of machines entered the exploration of Greenland in 1949 when Frenchman Paul-Emile Viktor used weasels, WWII army vehicles designed for harsh cold weather conditions, to carry his party to the center of the ice sheet near where Wegner had set up his station. They were able to erect comfortable quarters with electricity. They could be resupplied by air. Teams of eight men spent two winters there and continued the weather and ice sheet measurements of Wegner’s team. Digging down into the snow, the scientists could determine the annual snowfall and even past temperatures as Wegner’s team had also done establishing a baseline for future measurements. They even bored through the ice to take the first core, but the quality was poor and the analytical techniques available were limited.

Everything changed when, in the fears of the cold war, The U. S. began building a huge airbase in 1951 at Thule, near Rasmussen’s old trading post. A decades old discussion with Rasmussen led one of the planners to suggest the site. The Inuit settlement there was moved north as the base drove away wildlife and was destroying the indigenous culture. The establishment of the base enabled exploration on a greatly expanded level and the U. S. government would fund much of the research. The military needed to understand the stability and future of the ice sheet and glaciers. This gave a big impetus to the development of modern glaciology. Henri Bader was a Swiss citizen and chief scientist of SPIRE which had been set up by the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers to study snow, ice and permafrost. The military gave him a big budget which he put to good use. While personally he was interested in the structure of snowflakes and how their composition affected glaciers and the ice sheet, he built a team for other work. He hired Carl Benson who would transform the local studies by Wegner and Viktor into studies across the ice sheet determining annual snow fall levels and temperatures throughout much of Greenland. These measurements taken 1953-55 would be valuable sixty years later to show where the ice was receding and where it was stable.

In 1959 the U. S. began building Camp Century in Greenland’s interior. It was built under the ice. The purpose was declared to be that of improving building and survival practices in the Arctic. Another purpose was stated to be scientific exploration, which was a cover for the real purpose, to find out whether missiles could be successfully placed under the ice sheet. But the money for exploration was well used. More ice cores were drilled. Drilling techniques improved as did analysis. As opposed to sea bed cores, ice cores contained air bubbles which could reveal past climate. In the 1960s they were drilling to bedrock uncovering thousands of years of atmosphere. The U. S. lost interest in Camp Century and future exploration funding had to come from traditional sources which limited operations. Still in 1981 a 6600 foot ice core in excellent condition was drilled which now could be inspected with mass spectrometers for oxygen and hydrogen isotopes that would reveal the climate over 100,000 years ago.

In 1992-93 two teams at the summit of the ice sheet in Greenland drilled ice cores 10,000 feet down before they hit bedrock. The sites were strategically placed 30 kilometers apart to not interfere with each other but to allow comparison to confirm their findings. The 1981 ice core had noticed rapid changes in temperatures 11-12,000 years ago. Was this an anomaly? The two new ice cores matched each other perfectly and confirmed abrupt climate change. 11,700 years ago average temperatures rose about 18 degrees Fahrenheit in just a few years. The earth’s atmosphere quickly transitioned from the last ice age. The reason isn’t known, but the most prevalent theory is that ocean currents changed involving positive feedback loops. Some think atmospheric circulation changed. It may have been both.

In the 1990s new technology came to the fore. NASA began using aircraft with laser altimeters which combined with GPS allowed accurate mapping of the elevation of the Greenland ice sheet. In 1999 a report based on six years of data showed that parts of the ice sheet were quickly thinning. In 2003 NASA launched a satellite, ICESat, which performed the same measurements over Greenland and Antarctica constantly. Another satellite, GRACE, measured minute changes in the Earth’s gravity. Gravity is not even over the earth’s surface. The loss of ice over Greenland would reduce the gravity measured there. A report of GRACE’s findings in 2009 showed that Greenland’s annual ice loss was 286 billion tons. In 2012 a satellite showed that melt water was all over the ice sheet, its entire surface was melting. The arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet.

ICESat failed and was retired in 2010. GRACE continued but couldn’t give the fine detail provided by ICESat. So laser altimeter surveying again was done by airplane. Glaciers became the focus of understanding how and where the ice was lost. Glaciers regularly calve icebergs and drain meltwater to the sea. Glaciologists soon realized that many glaciers were unstable and that if some collapsed they alone would raise ocean levels significantly: Jacobshavn in Greenland by a foot and Thwaites in Antarctica by two feet. Worse they are supporting structures for the ice sheets. Thwaites holds back the West Antarctic ice sheet which contains enough ice to raise ocean levels twelve feet.

In the 2010s both atmospheric and sea temperatures were rising. Arctic sea ice was rapidly receding allowing the darker water to absorb more heat creating a positive feedback loop. Half the ice loss in Greenland is through the glaciers, the other half is on the surface of the ice sheet. Some of this water is stored in the underlying layers of the ice sheet creating an aquifer the size of West Virginia. One day this water could gush into the ocean. As the ice recedes and more human and biological activity takes place around the ice sheet, more dust, soot and other particles land on it, darkening it and melting it faster. Climate scientists also worry about the release of methane, a strong greenhouse gas, from permafrost which would create another positive feedback loop.

The major question scientists are asking is will the rise in temperatures lead to abrupt changes and if so when. It could take many decades or centuries for large glaciers and ice sheets to collapse or it could happen sooner and abruptly. The scientists don’t know. The current Arctic warmth is enough to eventually melt the Greenland ice sheet which would raise sea levels over twenty feet. Unless the world lowers carbon emissions significantly the loss of the ice sheet is inevitable. So even if this and the next generation don’t have to deal with it, later ones will. The current consensus of climatologists calls for a one meter (3.2 feet) rise in seas level by 2100. But it doesn’t stop there, larger sea level rises following are already “committed” meaning inevitable based on current conditions. The current commitment is 2.3 meters (7.5 feet). If temperatures continue to rise this century as they have, then a twenty foot sea level rise would be committed. Even the one meter rise would mean some low lying nations would be destroyed, beaches and shorelines eroded, increased flooding, infrastructure and property damaged, and aquifers contaminated with salt water. Along the U. S. coast 5 million people and 2.6 million homes are on property less than four feet above high tide. Rich coastal nations like the U. S. would pay a heavy price; poor coastal nations would be devastated.

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Arctic exploration was extremely dangerous and took some highly dedicated/obsessive personalities to undergo the arduous trips necessary to learn about this massive ice island. Gertner documents these first expeditions in Part 1—“Explorations”. There were Fridtjof Nansen and Otto Sverdrup (1888-89), Robert Peary (1891-1892), Knud Rasmussen and Peter Freuchen (multiple times between 1912-1921), Alfred Wegener (19112-13 and 1930) and others that made the trip before motorized vehicles made the task less difficult. These men were interested in mapping out Greenland, but not pursuing scientific inquiry.

In Part II, “Investigations”, Gertner follows the evolution of scientific studies of the ice sheet between 1949 and 2018. This is the section that I found most fascinating (but then, GR readers know that I am a bit if a science nerd). The author details the challenges that needed to be overcome to obtain continuous ice cores suitable for establishing a chronological record of Greenland’s history. Eventually, a multiyear, international effort provided the changes in climate that occurred over the past 400,000 years. What they discovered is the core provides evidence of previous climate change occurrences, and that they happened over much shorter timespans than scientists predicted.

Most important, Gertner provides us with the descriptions of the upheavals that may happen when Greenland’s three quadrillion tons of ice liquefy. There are roughly a half-billion people currently living on land that will disappear as the sea rises. And it is unlikely that there is the collective political will to stop greenhouse gases that continue to melt Greenland’s ice a little more each year.

Recommend Gertner's well-researched account.

[Numidica · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book will tell you pretty much everything you need to know about the exploration of Greenland, and how it became the laboratory in which scientists learned to read ice cores to understand the climates of the past. The early explorers of Greenland like Wegener and Rasmussen were adventurers as much as scientists. I was happy to run into Alfred Wegener again, because my mother told me about him and his plate tectonics theory when I was about ten years old, and I did a sixth grade science report on Wegener and his theory. The pre-WW2 scientists were as much adventurers as scientists, and Wegener died on the ice sheet after resupplying the outpost he had established. He started the fatal trip because he knew he couldn't over-winter at the outpost; they lacked sufficient rations, so he turned back (in November) heading for the west coast and died, of course, because unprotected November on the Greenland ice sheet is not consonant with life. Knud Rasmussen was an anthropologist as well as an explorer, and he documented much of Inuit culture in Greenland before the influence of Western peoples became dominant there.

WW2 brought the Americans to Greenland (and they have never left), and after WW2, the French came to Greenland under the leadership of the incredibly resourceful and interesting Paul-Emile Victor, who organized the first motorized scientific expedition to the middle of the ice sheet. A host of other scientists began to descend upon the ice, with the American Army largely funding their efforts right through the 1960's as Greenland became a somewhat bizarre pawn in Cold War military strategy. The Army Corps of Engineers had a plan to build tunnels in the ice in which ICBMs would be shuttled around, invisible to Russian satellites. The idea should never have passed the smell test, but an enterprising and persuasive Swiss scientist named Bader, who was attached to the project, convinced the US Military that massive research on the Greenland ice was necessary to enable the ICBM tunnels, so Bader was given funding to start drilling ice cores at greater and greater depths, thus beginning the collection of ice cores and the associated climatological history that has been teased from air bubbles and particles trapped in the ice.

The story the ice tells is that climate has changed amazingly quickly in the past, and so it is reasonable to believe it can do so again. The scientists working on the ice now are in a race with warming as Greenland's ice melts and pours into the north Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. The interesting and alarming thing is what the scientists say among themselves, which is that the IPCC's predictions of sea level rise by 2100 are too conservative by at least half. One said, in effect, if the IPCC says sea level will rise by one meter by 2100, you can be sure the real number is at least two meters, and probably more. And Greenland is not even the biggest problem in sea level rise; that would be the West Antarctic Ice Sheets. The author does not delve deep into the science of warming, but he makes clear how the ice cores illustrate that past warmings have often been extremely rapid, and he references scientific discussion of some of the same technology Elizabeth Kolbert explores in Under a White Sky: injection of reflective particles into the stratosphere to shade the earth to slow warming, along with devices to scrub CO2 from the air. The fact that such ideas are discussed seriously among sober scientists, inclined to conservative estimates and approaches, is a hint at how bad things really are.

The book was perhaps a bit more than I really wanted to know about Greenland, and I wish the science had been more center stage, but I enjoyed it and the stories of the explorers and scientists of the ice.

[Jerrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fascinating book. Part 1 was a look at the early exploration of Greenland by European and American adventurers. Part 2 was a more scientific look at what the ice of Greenland has revealed about the history of the global climate, the changes seen in the past, and what it has revealed about our potential future. Engagingly written, but I would have liked a bit more on the climate change issue.

[Vicky Hunt · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Microcosm of Glaciology: And The Politics That Pay

The book that needed to be written; The Ice at the End of the World is that book that briefly surveys the history of Greenland’s exploration, and the work that is done in those research stations we know exist, but know little about. I have read a large number of books written by and about polar explorers and expeditions. But, I have not yet found good books on what is happening in those research stations and in the field of glaciology. In the first part of this book Mr. Gertner brings the focus to Greenland in an approach that is historically oriented and covers the early explorers of Greenland. He continues this chronological ordering of events in the second half, but there the locus of movement is through the group agencies of governments and research teams. And, that is where we see the bulk of the ‘new material’ presented.

“The pull on an object moving overhead can be greater wherever the mass is denser— for instance, above mountain ranges like the Rockies or Alps, or over vast ice sheets like Greenland’s. These gravitational variations can have subtle but important effects. They can influence the paths of satellites and ballistic missiles, for instance, which is something the U.S. military cares deeply about. They can also affect the oceans, since sea levels can be distorted in some locations by the gravitational effects of what lies far beneath the water’s surface. Down below, there are deep trenches, submerged mountain ranges, and the remnants of lost continents that slid under the seafloor hundreds of millions of years ago. If you could gather an improved measurement of the planet’s mean gravity field, the data could prove useful in fields ranging from aeronautics to oceanography.”

I excitedly bought this book the day it released on Audible. But, it was so intensely interesting that I immediately added the Kindle whisper-sync to read along. Of course, when he mentioned Nansen’s ship was called the Jason, I had to read Jason and the Golden Fleece as well, to fully enjoy the reference there. That is a great work and it gives you some idea of the spirit of these early explorers. With my habit of researching every new thing I saw, it has taken me almost three weeks to finish the book. But, it could have been read much faster.

“Coming toward it from the west coast, the ice sheet gives an impression not of a desert but of an ocean—not only because it seems to capture the entire horizon, but because it is sculpted into hillocks and hollows, like a roiling sea on a day of serious weather. Sometimes, the ice sheet has also struck me as the photographic negative of an ocean. Rather than darkness streaked with white foam, it is lightness streaked with silt and dust.”

The author starts with the ski treks across the continent, and the deaths of some of the early expedition members. Then he moves to the American military base that was established at Thule during WWII, where we built air strips and brought in planes and trucks. This made cross continent travel a rapid proposition, instead of something that consumes whole seasons. He reminded us that the US only did that because of military interests with Germany and then the Cold War with Russia. He mentions that we did not have women explorers, but I know of none from other countries either. He complains that though the Science teams had unlimited budgetary funding for any of the work that they wanted to do, via riding along with the US military, it was for selfish reasons on our part.

Then, the Cold War ended, and the free-flowing budget. Explorers were back to square one with obtaining funding for polar expeditions. But, they had made a lot of progress during those years, and had banked a large store of ice cores. This is where the book got interesting on a scientific level.

“…glaciers known as “outlet” or “marine terminating” carry such importance. They flow from the edges of ice sheets and end at the ocean.”

The details that I found most intriguing were the early sub-ice bases, the building of and work at the bunker, the US operation of Thule, GRACE, and the IceBridge program. But, more important, he went into the details of the more recent melting of the Greenland ice sheet. He spoke briefly of the reaction of the Inuit to the new land that is appearing in Greenland where the ice sheet once rested.

“The Arctic is the world’s cooling system,” –attributed to a Finnish official

At times, the book seems to be a bit too political, with criticism of United States policy and Americans in general. For example, when discussing the early explorers, Gertner brings out the negatives of the personal life of the American on the ice. Yet, he presents the other explorers as perfect humans, which I don’t think really exist. He complains that American culture has had an impact on the culture of the Inuits because they could buy groceries and cigarettes at the base… but, he doesn’t seem to think that the Finns, the British, the Germans, the French… have impacted Inuit culture. More experienced authors choose to write from a historical and scientific framework, and avoid political alliances in issues of Science. They try to remain unbiased. Objectivity seems to be a trait Gertner is acquiring in his writing. But, overall I was very satisfied with the amount and detail of the scientific information presented.

Here, I will insert 4 opinions, which you can take or leave by passing on to the next section:

1. He seems a bit unsophisticated in money matters by thinking that any government budget is going to allocate unlimited funding to science on a perpetual basis, without some civilian or military spinoffs to directly pay for the project. Yes, I see the realities here on the ice. But, does he see the other problems that exist on the Earth? In California at the moment, nearly 69% of Californians are homeless. Yes, it may be a bad thing if the airport is submerged due to climate change. But, I don’t think that a large percentage of the population could afford airline tickets. Governments are constrained by all the problems of the populace, not just research goals.
2. America is an open media country and we know all the short-comings of our leaders. Many other countries do not share the problems of their own. He mentions that Robert Peary had children with an Inuit woman, as well as with his wife, who was in Greenland with him. He never says whether any of the other men lived as monks or visited the local women since their wives were not there. Throughout the first section, he only deals with Science where the other countries are concerned, but gets personal with the Americans. Of course, he is an American. Maybe his own knowledge of the real human element was limited to that of America.
3. We don't have a government that is ruled by military, business, religion, or Science. Oligarchy is rule by few powerful people, as in financial Oligarchies that are ruled by business interests. Corporatocracy is a more pejorative term meaning rule by corporations. Military Dictatorships, a Stratocracy, or juntas are rule by the military. Technocracy is rule by Scientists. Theocracy is rule by religion. Ideally, a Democracy is not supposed to be ruled by special interest groups. The people are represented by their leaders who make decisions that reflect the interests of the whole. This is why no decision is ever made by governments, unless it will have a direct effect on the current generation, as he pointed out.
4. As a total offside comment, it seems sad to me that often it is the US Americans who are opposed to abortion who are the most willing to ignore scientific reality, environmental pollution and mismanagement, and wildlife trafficking. It would seem that people who think children have a right to life would be concerned about the life they are leaving behind. I think this happens because many Americans vote by party, and support the policies of their chosen party, rather than thinking about the issues. In a better world, politicians would want to do the right things, and not just follow the platform.

Gertner gives glaciology a thourough treatment in this book. He covers some of the more well known glaciers, like Helheim Glacier in east Greenland, Jakobshavn Glacier, a fracturing river of ice, flowing from a channel on the western edge of the ice sheet, and Thwaites in Antarctica. He explains the support of ice shelves. He talks about the Paris Accord goals. The most realistic answer he presents is the fact that the year 2100 has increasingly become a benchmark for the climate community, for working towards concrete improvements in managing the human effect on the environment.

“A few thousand years ago, for instance, Alley notes that “you can see the little blip of the Romans.” This would mean the residue of ancient smelters, in Spain and elsewhere, which the Romans used to burn ore to render silver. The process released lead into the air as a by-product, which eventually was deposited in snow that fell on Greenland. In more recent cores, Alley says, we can see lead traces from the fumes of the industrial revolution, which began in the late 1700s. And then eventually, in cores from the twentieth century, the unmistakable fingerprint from leaded gasoline comes through. And yet, something interesting happens in the 1980s. Lead traces in the ice mostly disappear. “We turned it off. We cleaned it up,” Alley says, pointing to the switch in automobiles to unleaded gasoline after lead was banned by environmental regulations. “And the world didn’t end, and the economy didn’t end. And you can’t look back at economic data and find a horrible disaster that happened when we decided we didn’t want to poison ourselves with lead.”

I recommend this book for anyone interested in the science of glaciology. It is an intriguing work, and well written. I did feel like the focus strayed from the science a few times, and focused on politics a bit more than it could have. But, that is not unusual in pop science. This is not an academic work at any rate, and is written as something for the average adult reader. And, it is written in a manner that is easy enough to follow, without too much scientific jargon. I enjoyed reading it and will hopefully read more of Mr. Gertner’s books in the future, though they may not find a spot in my current Journey Around the World in 80 Books for 2019. So many books. So little time.

[Robert Sheard · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this fascinating. It's part explorer history, part scientific laboratory. It's really a history about how we know what we know (and don't know) about Greenland and the Arctic.

Of course, in the end, it's frightening because we've known for decades what was happening with climate change and humanity refuses to act morally or selflessly to mitigate the impending changes that the loss of the Greenland ice sheets and mega-glaciers in Antarctica will bring about. It's the same selfish impulses we see in the USA today with the Covid-19 pandemic. Rather than be inconvenienced, too many will risk their lives (and others' lives) by refusing to quarantine. As a species, we're not all that bright.

[Barbara K · Rating 4 out of 5]

Curiously (given my fondness for books on polar exploration), I enjoyed the second part of this book, which describes in depth the techniques and politics of glaciology and other ice-related sciences, more than the introductory description of early European and American exploration of Greenland. I guess I prefer detailed stories of individual expeditions more than short versions of multiple explorers (I prefer novels to short stories, so I suppose that makes sense in a way).

My already not-very-high opinion of Robert Peary fell even more when I read of how he extracted two meteorites and sold them to raise funds for his future explorations. Nice for him, but not so great for the local populations who lost their only source of metal for making weapons and tools. And it was sad to read how Alfred Wegener, who developed the theory of Pangaea and continental drift as I learned in Assembling California, died in an effort to bring supplies to his colleagues in the interior before winter set in.

But what really fascinated me was the detailed descriptions of how the significance of ice cores became obvious, the progress of the technology for their extraction, the implications of the enormous weight of the ice on the ground in Greenland, and the integration of land and air based methods of improving our understanding of exactly what goes on with all that ice. Most importantly, the all too scary prospect of what could happen to low-lying cities, and even countries, if major ice sheets in Greenland or Antarctica break off.

That information is all very well presented, and if it interests you, you can skip the first part of the book without missing anything.

[Carly Friedman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fascinating book that covers the long history of the exploration of and research on Greenland's ice. It starts with early explorations of the area. What crazy adventures! I cannot imagine anything worse that trekking across all that ice. This section definitely reminds me of Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage.

Then the book turns to early research on glacial layers and historical temperature changes. Like the early expeditions into the area, the scientists were really charting unknown territory. The work was also brutally difficult. The were sacrificing comfort and time from home, in addition to risking their careers.

It was clear how technological advances, sometimes influenced by the military, had an impact on the exploration and research of the area. I enjoyed learning about how satellites started to be used in the research.

Starting in the 90s, researchers were surprised by the speed of glacial loss. They are used to change over centuries and some early-career researchers were warned that they would find it boring. Ha! I would like to learn more about glacial break up and computer modeling. There wasn't much detail but it sounds fascinating.

The evidence on glacial loss and sea level rise is obviously very scary. I would also love to learn more about the innovative technological solutions to climate change. I like how the book ends with a warning that we have to do SOMETHING SOON but that it is not too bleak. We can likely fix this if we start soon. This part reminded me of The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming, another great book on the topic.

I highly recommend this book for the thrilling adventures and fascinating research on such an important topic.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

• THE ICE AT THE END OF THE WORLD: An Epic Journey Into Greenland's Buried Past and Our Perilous Future by Jon Gertner

This was a "hybread" process - for those audio/hardcopy book consumptions 🧊

First half of the book described in detail the 19th/20th-century expeditions in Greenland, the northern ice sheets and glaciers. Danish, Norwegian, American, and German "explorers", many trying to beat and best the efforts of those before them in the name of imperialism and subjugation, and maybe a little bit of scientific inquiry...

It was a rascal lot - sure, they were brave and intrepid, but Gertner shares some particularly gnarly details of abandoned Inuit families, pillaged lands, and severe animal cruelty. Knud Rasmussen is probably the most famous of Greenland explorers, and while still a person of his time, he shifted exploratory focus to recording Inuit life, ethnography, and learning more from the Indigenous people of this ice island and their body of knowledge, as well as involved meteorological observations.
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The 2nd half of the book focuses on the nascence of glaciology as an interdisciplinary science, and how tandem research in Greenland and Antarctica lead to understanding Earth's climate history through ice core samples.

Gertner interviews and works along a number of scientists conducting research in Greenland, sending ice samples back to their laboratories for further investigation.

It is through this sampling that projections can be made about future sea level rise, about past climatic events, like the 'Little Ice Age', and even see direct evidence how shifts in human behavior, such as the availability and widespread use of unleaded gasoline in the 1970s actually changed the color and particulate matter of the ice in these polar glaciers.

A detailed (sometimes dense) and fascinating look at the history of exploration and science in Greenland, and the continued research shedding light on what could come next for our Earth and humankind in this Anthropocene epoch.

[Susan Paxton · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an important book. Deniers argue that climate change is a recent and invented or, conversely, a "natural" phenomenon. Jon Gertner spent several years working on this book to prove that the current climate change is none of those things, but in fact has been evident for many decades and is human-caused. The arena he selected for his tale is Greenland, the world's largest island, covered in a sheet of ice that is in places several thousands of feet thick, and his method is looking closely at a number of the expeditions that have explored this forbidding place and, over decades, explicated the science of change.

It's an addictive read, graced with fascinating characters, some well-known - Nansen and Peary - and others less so but who deserve to be, such as Alfred Wegener and Paul-Emile Victor. Gertner has a novelist's eye for compelling details about people, and each of his characters is well drawn and their explorations and findings thoroughly explained in a way that is less a dry science book but a very interesting story. In recent years the study of Greenland has expanded from treks over the ice and months spent in stations observing the weather, to drilling for deep ice cores and satellite studies. The most frightening result from all of this information is less that the climate is warming, but how the ancient ice cores show that climate change can occur rapidly - within years, not centuries. We may be rapidly nearing such a tipping point, and the end result is unpredictable.

Gertner also touches on some other research, including into the dangerous Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica. The endnotes are very helpful, as is his comments on his sources, which hopefully will lead many to further reading.

You'll come away from this with a deep understanding of Greenland and some of the most recent insights into the current state of climatology. This is vital, and the sad thing is that the people who need to read this book will not.

[Irene · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a survey of the scientific exploration and research of Greenland’s glaciers over the past century and a half. Through courageous explorers and dedicated scientists, this research has helped humans understand how polar ice impacts global meteorology and geology. As the survey moves to the present, this research is revealing alarming facts about climate change and devastating predictions about the melting of these vast fields of ice in the near future.

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

In a line: One part history of the early efforts to explore Greenland's vast ice sheets, one part history of how paleoclimatology was born.

My reading journeys have taken me to Greenland recently, but instead of reading more about the Viking settlements there, I wanted to read about another tribe: the explorers and scientists who willingly endured months of supremely hostile terrain for both glory and science. The Ice at the End of the World is one half history of Greenland’s early exploration, one half chronicle of its role as a site for constant scientific investigation. The latter is particularly important given the poles’ roles in regulating our global climate – and their testimony, buried in ice, as to how much has changed and how quickly.

At first, they came only to see if it was possible for a man to cross the ice. Human settlement in Greenland, even among the Inuit who are well accustomed to its severities, is limited to the coastal fringes. When explorers like Peary and Wegener landed in Greenland and began preparing for their expeditions – learning as much as they could from the Intuit, who had centuries of accumulated knowledge for how to move and survive in daunting near-polar conditions – their native hosts could only think them lunatics for wanting to trespass into the wastes haunted only by gods and death. The early expeditions first accomplished simply getting across the great ice in the midst of Greenland without perishing; later ones would push north in an effort to determine the land’s boundaries. Did the ice go ever north, linking with the north pole? Or were there limits?

Although scientific research was conducted in these early jaunts – explosives were used to set off seismographs and monitor how long it took the sound waves to radiate down to bedrock before rebounding to the surface again -- intense efforts to map the thickness of the ice sped up after World War 2, in part because of advance of air traffic infrastructure into Greenland during the war, and in part because of the United States’ sudden strategic interest in the area. Greenland may have been useful during the war for protecting shipping traffic, but in the next war, against the Soviet Union – it would be vital. The north may very well be the front lines, and bases couldn’t be built without really understanding the science of the ice sheets -- how they moved, settled, grew. So began Project Century, which combined science and military aspirations: the United States’ fondest hope was to base nuclear weapons in Greenland in case the Cold War became an active conflict. This project would result in extensive ice core samples being taken and analyzed.

Ice at the End of the World begins with journeys of physical exploration, of men trekking the interior of hitherto-unseen ice sheets….but page by page, it transitions slowly into a journey of mental exploration, of men and then women searching for answers, and finding them. They realize that Greenland’s ice cores carried the history of past temperatures with them, because different isotypes of oxygen appear at differing frequencies at greater or lower temperatures. That ice told a story – one that challenged the idea that climatic shifts were bound to be slow and gradual. They could be, in fact, fast and disastrous – and that was true not only of the past, but of the future. Could global civilization survive a shock imposed by some of the radical climate shifts they’d seen in the ice?

We’re still working on the answer to that one. In an age of growing awareness regarding our role in atmospheric instability, some people believe we’re doomed, that Earth will become unlivable. Others simply believe we’ll watch cities like Miami became new Atlantises (Atlantii?), but otherwise adapt.

What is known is that The Ice at the End of the World is a terrific read, combining the best parts of an adventure novel – the exploration of the unknown, the endurance of hard ship, the celebration of ingenious adaptations to severity -- with a history of a paleoclimatology, and the dawning of one of our age’s most talked-about scientific issues.

[Tomislav · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read an advance reader copy of Jon Gertner’s The Ice at the End of the World, in uncorrected proof ebook, provided to me by Penguin / Random House through netgalley, in return for promising to write an honest review. The book is scheduled for release on June 11, 2019. Jon Gertner is an American writer, the author of The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation (2012), which I have not yet read, and a longtime contributor to the New York Times Magazine.

The book first follows a historical approach to the exploration of the Greenland Ice Sheet, and then transitions into a historical presentation of the subsequent scientific investigations, right up to 2018.

Greenland is the largest island in the world, located in the Arctic Ocean between North America and Europe, and barely inhabited. It is largely covered with a mile-thick continental glacier – much like that which retreated from northern North America and Europe a mere 10,000 years ago – and like the one which still covers Antarctica. Gertner covers the first expeditions to cross that Ice Sheet episodically, beginning with Fridtjof Nansen’s 1888 expedition of five men pulling five heavy sledges. The stories introduce the characters, describe the techniques and technologies used, include interactions with the sparse indigenous cultures, and dramatically trace the events of those critical crossings. An interesting historical photograph introduces each story, and they reminded me of memoirs of the early Antarctic expeditions I have previously read. Indeed, a few of the individuals are the same. Up until the interregnum of World War II, the interests of these early explorers such as Robert Peary, Knud Rasmussen, Peter Freuchen, and Alfred Wegener were personal fame and national prestige. Some data was collected, but primarily of a cartographic nature.

A new era of exploration began in Greenland at the onset of the Cold War in the late 1940s. Because Greenland is strategically located between the nuclear superpowers of the United States and the Soviet Union, the US spent enormous amounts of money and manpower developing the military utility of the region, even offered to purchase it in its entirety from Denmark. Military technology and logistics required large amounts of accurate data, and natural science researchers were able to quietly piggyback. However, with the development of intercontinental missiles based in the homelands, the high-spending period passed, leaving infrastructure in place for more purely scientific endeavors. With time it has become apparent that the ice sheet is not in a steady state, and not even just receding at a geological pace. GPS-indexed air and satellite observations have detailed how the retreat is accelerating. Deep core samples of the ice have shown that periods of relatively rapid climatic change do occur. The system is complex with positively reinforced cycles that could continue to drive ice sheet collapse once initiated. Coming up to the present day, Gertner focuses on research into the mechanisms of those sudden changes, which could potentially push sea level rise in unexpected large steps over the current 3 mm per year.

The Ice at the End of the World is both an entertaining history, and a clear explanation of the current state of knowledge of glaciology and its relationship to oceans and climate. This book is timely, and I am highly recommending it.

[Karyl · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fan-freaking-tastic, though somewhat depressing, book. I’ve long been fascinated by the coldest regions of our planet, and of the intrepid explorers who have mapped them, and the hardy native groups who have made these areas their home for generations. I wasn’t quite sure what I was getting into with this book, but it quickly drew me in and held me captive for 300 pages.

Gertner begins his book with a look at modern scientific research being done on this huge island covered by ice, but then moves back in time to the earliest known settlement. Each chapter of the first half features an expedition funded by Europeans and Americans, hoping to crack the mystery of the large ice sheet. Gertner knows how to write, and his book reads more like a novel in places, though it’s clear he’s done his research thoroughly. The second half of the book reveals discoveries scientists have made regarding the history of the earth through analyzing ice tubes drilled thousands of feet down, as well as advances in our understanding of climate change. That’s where the depressing aspect of this book comes in — our climate is changing rapidly and it doesn’t seem to matter to most people.

I would have liked to have learned a little more about the Inuit living in Greenland, especially their traditions and culture, as well as how the advance of modern technology and the retreat of the glaciers have affected them. Gertner does do a quick mention of it, but I would have liked a little more detail, possibly an entire chapter devoted to these people.

This is a highly fascinating and important book, and one I can recommend wholeheartedly to everyone.

[Tiffany · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is almost two books in one. We cover the early days of Greenland exploring, where there death defying treks using skis, dogsleds, and Icelandic horses, involved some scientific observation but mostly just old-school "because it was there" exploration. It's fun to read about although you'll definitely have your feelings about the explorers, some of whom were total jerks to the native Inuit population. Then we morph into Greenland exploration that is less death defying (in the age of radios and supplies that can be airdropped and military bases) and more strictly scientific. There's lots of interesting things about all that we can learn about earth's history simply by studying the ice. But here's where things get globally depressing as the author details how very many years ago the scientific community started identifying the problem of melting ice. He tries to end on a hopeful note--here in the ice we can see where the world stopped pumping lead into the atmosphere because it was poisoning us and if we did that, we can stop with the CO2, right?--but even his best effort isn't quite good enough for me to finish this book feeling anything except "our species is doomed."

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a history of Greenlandic exploration, initially for the sake of exploration, and then for the sake of science. As we followed the history closer to the present, we got more of the science, what it tells us about what is happening to Greenland's ice sheet (hint: it's melting), and what the impact of global warning and ice melt will do for the future of this planet and the world as we know it.

The line that struck me most in this book was about how rarely in the history of the world has a civilization undertaken a project that is meant to aid the next generation or the following that wouldn't also aid the current generation. Fighting global warming would be just such an undertaking to save the future of our world without doing anything to improve our lives now. I don't see our societies being set up to do such a thing. Especially reading this during the coronavirus, and seeing how unprepared we were for the economic impact of something like a pandemic, I don't feel optimistic that we would make any real strides to address this problem until it is already upon us. I hope I'm wrong.

[Kaitlyn Joy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received an Advanced Review Copy of The Ice at the End of the World: An Epic Journey into Greenland’s Buried Past and Our Perilous Future by Jon Gertner from the publisher Random House through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

What It’s About: A history of glacierology, with scientific fact interluded in.

I'll be honest, I really didn't love this. I'm a scientist but know nothing about Glaciers and Greenland and so was excited to see the implications of global warming but I really found it rather dull.

I would say if you have a passion for glaciers or Greenland, you may find this book fun but it was not for me.

[Andy Kindle · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most impactful part of this book was that in the stories it told about the history of Greenland exploratory by adventurers and scientists, it told the story of the ice sheet's changing climate. There was a clear progression throughout the stories, without the author pointing it out, of a steadily warming climate as explorations spanned decades. Most poignant was the first science settlement dug into the glacier and the increasing pressure of accumulating snow and ice collapsing roofs to current science bases built on stilts and having the glacier disappear beneath them.

[Peter Corrigan · Rating 4 out of 5]

News flash!--It's warm and getting warmer out there! Look at the winter just ended (Dec 23-Feb 34) with its record-shattering warmth in much of the central and eastern U.S. But how warm you may ask? Well, according to Jon Gertner's outstanding recent entry in the global warming chorus, warm enough to melt vast quantities (~280 million metric tons) of ice from Greenland every year. Some occurs through accelerated glacier calving and some from straight melting, the interplay is complex. Chapter 16 is called 'Meltwater Season' and therein are all the unnerving details and statistics on how much and exactly why this is happening. The rapidity of the current changes to the ice sheet (and climate) are perhaps the most unsettling findings. I suppose you could skip to that summary chapter or to the Epilogue for the Cliff Notes version but you'd be missing out on a great story and a ton of context told in two parts.

Part I is called 'Explorations' (1888-1931) and does a fine job describing the earliest expeditions to the frozen north and reprised for me a long ago interest in Arctic exploration. Full of the incredible difficulty of survival and the hardships these explorers faced it was actually the most 'entertaining' of the reading. Featuring mini-bios of such Arctic legends as Fridjtof Nansen (first to cross the ice sheet in 1888), Robert Peary (several Greenland expeditions which included 'stealing' one of the largest meteorites ever found from northern Greenland and supposedly first to reach the North Pole in 1909), Knud Rasummussen, Peter Freuchen and Alfred Wegener (who also is credited with the theory of Continental Drift but met his end on the ice sheet in 1931 during a heroic rescue). They had some amazing insights these early explorers, despite their crude tools. No one knew of the ice sheet was 'stable' in those halcyon days. Amazingly, the Wegener team made an estimate that sea level would rise ~24 feet if the ice sheet ever did melt completely which is still very close to current estimates which have benefited from probably billions of $ in scientific research efforts.

After beautifully setting the stage with these intrepid explorers, Part II is 'Investigations' covering roughly 1949 to 2018. This section is certainly interesting but lacks some the human drama of the old days. Still there is plenty to marvel at, the early attempts to retrieve ice cores and their valuable climatic data is well covered. Perhaps most irritating was reading about the U.S. military and its takeover of Greenland starting with Thule and of their insane plans to build an ICBM complex under the ice sheet to hide from Soviet eyes. The lengths to which the American empire would go to 'prevail' in a nuclear war with Russia were so extraordinary that perhaps one could take some hope from such institutional single mindedness toward solving a problem (i.e. global warming). But war planning and empire building is so much more fun! Back to the book however, it lacked a thorough analysis of climatological aspects of the current and forecast ice-melt, preferring to concentrate on the logistics, personalities (glaciologists rule!) and a few broad conclusions deriving from the research projects. On a personal note, I almost (italics) attended graduate school at Ohio State in order to work under their Byrd Polar Research Institute parts of which became involved in parts of these ice core projects. Who knows, I might have reached Greenland! The author discusses several of them which projects are many and varied--Dye-3, Station Centrale, GRIP, GISP-2, Thule, Swiss Camp, Camp Century, Jakobshavn Glacier. Gertner is a reporter not a climatologist, so it may be unfair to criticize the relative lack of scientific discussion, but it is overall a valuable survey and the complexities involved in glaciology are not ignored. For anyone looking for a 'one-stop shop' on past and present issues related to the Greenland ice this book will be hard to top. There are plenty of references for further reading and a good source material discussion from which and I will be adding several books to my 'Want to Read' list, as if it were not long enough! Solid 4-stars, really 4.5.

[CJ Sinclair · Rating 3 out of 5]

[Cross-posted to Sinclair Scribes]

I usually love a good environmental science book, especially one with a lot of interesting historical notes. But for me, The Ice at the End of the World fell a little short of my expectations. Most of the time, I like reading about the scientists and doctors and such who pioneered new fields that are in the process of maturing in today’s world, but the people that this book primarily focuses on were less pioneers in their field and more “gentleman adventurers” who jumped at the chance of being the first man to do something new.

Sure, there was a little more science and discovery as the years went on and the technology changed across the period of time covered by the book, but a good chunk (more than half) of the book’s “run time” is dedicated to men who just dog-sledded across the Greenland ice sheet—and did a generally poor job of it. There were also several mentions of how these men mistreated the native Greenlanders, but the criticism of that behavior and the discussion of its long-term effects on the native population were quite muted.

I would’ve much preferred it if the book had simply summarized the early exploration age of Greenland and jumped directly into the scientific age, when people started using new equipment to make important observations about the ice sheet, and then moved on to a more in-depth discussion of the climate change implications of the ice sheet melting.

In short, I think the primary focus of the book was centered on the wrong people and the wrong decades. While there’s surely a place for discussing the early European explorers of Greenland, I don’t think that discussion fits very neatly into a book that is ostensibly about the global importance of the ice sheet and its relation to climate change.

[Phil Boyd · Rating 4 out of 5]

100 years of exploring the ice covering the top of the world. Gives a great look at how glaciology has advanced thanks to the studies done in Greenladn (in part because of the Cold War). Also provides some context for people trying to understand how melting ice sheets are going to create sea level rise and just how much of a problem it is.

[Jacqueline Worboys · Rating 5 out of 5]

Greenland’s remote, mysterious island, with its tiny population, has always attracted the lure of travel by those who wonder and wander. Gertner writes a clear and enticing history of how, in the past one hundred and fifty years, scientists and explorers have sought to learn more about this gateway to the North Pole. The reader cannot help but marvel at the determination or foolhardiness that drove men to walk across the treacherous landscape in life-threatening weather. In the second part of the book, the author examines the effects of the ice melting and the world-wide consequences that threaten shorelines, economies, weather systems and migration patterns. This book is well-written, engaging and contains important information for us all.

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had hoped to learn much more about current Arctic research: the people, the techniques, the results. Toward the end, there are some details about why ice-core drilling is tricky. But the large majority of the book focuses on older history, especially on early trips across Greenland. This is fine, just not what I had expected.

> Years later, Freuchen would remember these moments—the harsh weather, the dwindling provisions, and Rasmussen's inexplicable good humor. "Nothing draws men closer than to hunger together, to see death in each other's eyes," he wrote. "Lying together in snow huts during snowstorms of many days' duration, waiting for better weather, and seeking to drown our hunger by each telling the other everything he knows—then you pour out your life."

> The men stored barrels of fuel near the derrick—not because they needed to burn it, but because they had come to understand that it was necessary to fill the deep hole they were making with fluid that held a density equal to ice. That way, the hole wouldn't close up on them. The ice sheet tended to seal itself like that. If you were drilling deep and weren't careful the ice would grip your bit, freeze it in place, and not let go

> Dansgaard began some of this work in 1952, when he collected rainwater in his yard with a beer bottle and a funnel. What he then began to understand was that warm weather storms produce moisture with a higher percentage of "heavy" 18 O than cold weather storms.

> Henri Bader had piggybacked on the U.S. military's Arctic programs to fund his research efforts, but by the late 1960s, the United States became engaged with the Soviet Union in a different manner—from a distance, rather than up close, due to the development of longer-range ballistic missiles and bombers. Thule's air base was reduced both in size and scope, and dollars for the American military began flowing toward other geographic regions.

> an electrical conductivity test. By moving two electrodes along the ice, they could run a current through a core segment and note the response to the voltage, which varies from season to season due to dust particles, and which can jump in sections where the ice is suffused with acidic volcanic residue. "There's this eruption that shows up in the electrical conductivity test that we call the Caesar volcano [newly reported to be Okmok, in Alaska!], because it's pretty close to 42 B.C.," says Steffensen. "Plinius the Elder wrote that when Caesar was killed the gods were so ashamed of what Rome did that they hid the sun behind a red veil for an entire year.

> The notion that carbon dioxide could trap energy close to earth's surface and thereby warm the planet actually dated back more than a hundred years—to the research (in 1856) of an American named Eunice Foote; to the lab experiments (in 1859) of a British scientist named John Tyndall; and to the calculations (in 1896) of a Swedish chemist named Svante Arrhenius. In 1938, a British engineer named Guy Callendar evaluated thousands of weather measurements and put forward proof that the world's industrial emissions were already warming the earth

> In a paper published in 1967, two scientists working at a government funded laboratory in Washington, Syukuro Manabe and Richard Wetherald, explained how they had created a crude but effective model to simulate earth's atmosphere and see what would happen if atmospheric CO 2 levels in the future doubled from their concentrations from before the industrial revolution. This, the first computer modeling study of climate change—unknown to the general public, but later voted by earth scientists as the most important climate paper ever published—showed that global temperatures would go up on average by 2 degrees Celsius, or about 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit

> The date is "11.7," or 11,700 years ago. Core 1678—a half-cylinder—is broken in places where chunks have been cut for research. It is a strangely unattractive piece of ice: discolored, clouded with dust, uneven. "See how wide the bands are spaced here?" asks Fitzpatrick, pointing to one end of the core. "And then: Boom. All of a sudden they get tighter here." She points again from one side of the ice core to the other to emphasize how it shows temperatures and snowfalls began leaping to a new state that was ultimately about 18 degrees Fahrenheit warmer. "So that's it," she says. "Ice age here. Not ice age there. We think this was in the space of a few years. And the whole point is, we all once thought that would take thousands of years."

> "If you look at the modern warming of the Arctic, in a five-year period from 2007 to 2012, we see a doubling of the length of the summer in the eastern Arctic, and that is equivalent to a 5° centigrade rise in temperature in less than five years," says Paul Mayewski, who had been in charge of the GISP-2 drilling project twenty-five years before. "There is no doubt that that is an abrupt climate change event."

> "It's so beautiful, so clean in the ice core records. And you can just see: This lead is human caused. And then you see: This is when humans decided that we didn't want to do that anymore."

[Kayla · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most poignant question of this book: what would it take for one generation to act in the interest of the next one, regardless of personal loss?

[Donna DRB · Rating 5 out of 5]

I highly recommend this fascinating and important book, beautifully written by New York Times bestselling author and long-time friend Jon Gertner. After finishing it, I had a real understanding of not only Greenland's past (including jaw-dropping accounts of exploration) but also Greenland's current and future impact on our world. A must-read book!

[Kasia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Greenland ice is old. Like Persian Empire and Jesus walking on earth old and also deep. It can tell as a lot about our past.
But now this ice is melting… fast. If by some miracle we could stop global warming now, in a few (million)years we will probably loose Florida but still save New York.

[Kazen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm glad I learned about Greenland but man, I had to prop my eyelids open for long stretches. I appreciate how Gertner frames the explorer stories, keeping the native peoples at front of mind, but a 300+ page newspaper article isn't quite my thing.

Full thoughts in my Booktube Prize vlog: https://youtu.be/Fh0DoDPw_kw

[Marge · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most of this book details the history of early explorers on Greenland which was certainly interesting and also distressing. Reading about death, near death, having to eat their horses and dogs that pulled their sleds for food and continual struggle to survive was almost unbearable for me, but does show our strong desire to explore our world and challenge ourselves. Also this provides a sharp contrast to how much the climate and conditions have changed over 200 years.

The information from centuries past in the ice cores of Greenland tells us amazingly detailed facts of our planet’s condition and change. Again, we have also invaded the lifestyle of the Indigenous People and provides another story of change.

[Charles Fried · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you want an excellent introduction to climate change this is the book. There are great stories of the early explorers of Greenland, as well as recent scientific expeditions. This book is suitable for both scientists and non-scientists, full of anecdotes, and people, and stories, as well as scientific material clearly and simply explained. This is a frightening book. It scares me that we have climate change deniers, dangerous idiots, running our country. They should be required to read this book.