China Lake A journey into the contradicted heart of a global climate catastrophe

In China Lake, author Baumgart explores humanity's plight in the 21st century as it attempts to mitigate climate change. Primarily, he focuses on the problematic but potentially unavoidable geoengineering approach referred to as solar radiation management. Among the ethical and social considerations of such a major intervention into the climate system, Baumgart weaves in passages discussing shamanism, weather warfare, and personal reflections on his family. The wandering narrative is part literary memoir, part inquiry into scientific ethics, and part study of human nature. While other books offer more detailed and definitive accounts of the current state of climate change mitigation and the pros and cons of geoengineering as a mitigative response, China Lake succeeds in juxtaposing the scientific with the artistic and the personal with the universal in a way that adds deeper meaning to the explored issues. This book will be of most interest to those concerned with climate change, scientific ethics, and literary non-fiction as a genre. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above. --Jason L Rhoades, Antioch University New England

A unique, alarming portrayal of the American military-industrial complex, the crisis of climate change, and the nature of truth and despair.In 2013, Baumgart was granted a rare visit to China Lake, a 1.1-million acre bombing range in California's Mojave Desert, by way of a tour of the petroglyphs in the Coso Range. Accompanied by his mother, an ailing New Age climate change denier lured by the spiritual significance of the landscape, the author sought to investigate the military's work in atmospheric alteration, examining our global climate crisis and its deep cultural roots through the lens of weather modification and geoengineering. Baumgart delves into the history of cloud seeding and its role as a Cold War weapon. Despite a dubious scientific reputation, related conspiracy theories, and public calls for caution, research in controlling weather progresses today at China Lake as modern cloud seeding is now used in the U.S. and around the world. Baumgart's dreamlike, nonlinear narrative is composed of dizzying juxtapositions, illuminating the parallels and paradoxes of modernity and antiquity, devastation and healing, science and the supernatural. Resisting simple answers and constantly challenging assumptions, the author explores collective and personal anxieties surrounding human-nature relationships and the planet's current peril, interwoven with childhood nostalgia and reflections on family, loss, and time. Summoning the absurd in the ordinary and exposing our rejection of our earthly home, he analyzes technocratic fixes to cultural problems and the unintended consequences of humans playing god, attempting not only to control nature, but to render it a weapon. Can man ultimately harness the world? Will the stars disappear? How will humanity respond to looming extinction? Can the Western world adopt a new narrative? How might we find meaning and cope with despair? In this striking, poetic literary debut, Baumgart examines these questions and others that are profoundly resonant in our time. Nearly indescribable and utterly engrossing, this book is an urgent and terrifying cultural reflection, a startling look in the mirror. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.