Blue Machine: How the Ocean Shapes Our World

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But when explaining the physics of light, waves, bubbles, salinity, water density, temperature, the tiniest molecule and the broadest ocean, Czerski may well be peerless. In the scientific sections, Blue Machine is a dazzle of stories beautifully told. Take this description of sunlight transformed by Earth: Modern ocean science, combining local measurements, long-haul efforts like CPRs, and new remote observations from surface probes and satellites, has pieced together a grand picture of this vital part of the Earth system, so often unregarded by landlubbers. And Helen Czerski, urging us to see the ocean as a presence, not an absence, has done a remarkable job of shoehorning an overview of the whole shebang into a single, very readable volume. This is a fascinating book and one that I read in chunks over several days. I thought this book was so well laid out and explained and I definitely closed the book at the end knowing I knew more now than I did before. The explanations made sense and this is what I really liked about it.

Czerski is a wonderful writer ... Blue Machine really does change the way you see the world.' Daily Mail Earth is home to a huge story that is rarely told - that of our ocean. Not the fish or the dolphins, but the massive ocean engine itself: what it does, why it works, and the many ways it has influenced animals, weather and human history & culture. This is the spectacular story of Earth's dynamic ocean. Helen Czerski, clearly passionate about it, chooses to present it as an astonishingly elegant and incredibly complex engine of life that powers all the functions of our planet, fueled by the energy of sunlight. Although physics is her touchstone, Czerski weaves in plenty of marine biology, along with personal encounters with the ocean as a diver, rower, or scientist on a research ship navigating between ice floes, and encounters with other intrepid researchers working on the surface or down in the depths. Her intense involvement with Hawaiian canoeists, tapping the energy of the ocean waves to move faster than seems possible, allows her to wax lyrical about the lessons of teamwork. And it underscores her message that a removed scientific understanding of the ocean is a poor thing without engaging with it more directly, physically and culturally. The term "Blue Machine" is a metaphor used to describe the Earth's oceans as a complex, interconnected system that plays a fundamental role in shaping our planet's climate, ecosystems, & even human civilisation.

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What happened with the advent of fossil fuels: “This great synthesis of human and nature was about to be jettisoned by economics, technology and the demands of convenience. The most fundamental aspect of this upheaval wasn’t the shift from wood to metal, or from free wind to expensive coal, or from the irregularity of weather to timetabled reliability, although those were important. It was the change from voyaging with nature to voyaging despite nature. For a steamship is just a mechanism. Apart from the need to keep shoveling coal into its boilers, you could pretty much switch a steamship on, point it in any direction and walk away while your ship moved itself around. The centuries of collaboration between humans and nature were over.” You could really conclude that this just didn’t apply to ships. The advent of mass utilization of fossil fuels severed the connections between humans and nature allowing us the illusion that we could impose our will, our insatiable quest for material abundance, to bulldoze, air condition the earth into submission to suit our needs and comfort without considering the repercussions on the earth’s natural systems. That illusion is now coming to an end.

The Earth’s oceans are vast, and yet they often seem invisible. We had to go into space to really appreciate that the defining feature of our planet is not land but water. The Apollo programme sent men to the moon, but I think that its most significant achievement was to let all of us see the Earth. All of our fresh water is borrowed from the ocean – every cup of tea, every waterfall, 60 per cent of you and me, the most expensive champagne, your dog’s territorial liquid markers, and the snow covering the top of Everest.” Through stories of history, culture, and animals, she explains how water temperature, salinity, gravity, and the movement of Earth's tectonic plates all interact in a complex dance, supporting life at the smallest scale—plankton—and the largest—giant sea turtles, whales, humankind. From the ancient Polynesians who navigated the Pacific by reading the waves, to permanent residents of the deep such as the Greenland shark that can live for hundreds of years, she introduces the messengers, passengers, and voyagers that rely on interlinked systems of vast currents, invisible ocean walls, and underwater waterfalls.Through stories of history, culture, and animals, she explains how water temperature, salinity, gravity, and the movement of Earth’s tectonic plates all interact in a complex dance, supporting life at the smallest scale—plankton—and the largest—giant sea turtles, whales, humankind. From the ancient Polynesians who navigated the Pacific by reading the waves, to permanent residents of the deep such as the Greenland shark that can live for hundreds of years, she introduces the messengers, passengers, and voyagers that rely on interlinked systems of vast currents, invisible ocean walls, and underwater waterfalls. Lively and engrossing.... Czerski is an exceptionally able guide.... Alongside her vivid portrayal of waters sliding over one another, colliding, mixing and turning into ice or water vapour, she explains how the living beings within the sea also form part of the ‘blue machine’.... [An] excellent and important book.

While it was all good and entertaining, the author really found her voice in Part Three of the book: The Blue Machine and Us. It was also in this section that I found the real flaws of this book as well. I get that 'the road to disaster is paved with good intentions' and that the ocean is so complex, and there's no way to begin to harness hydropower without having unintended consequences. However, in then in the next line- "one thing we know for sure is that we need to wean ourselves off greenhouse gasses." The author making the point that we need to learn how to live with the ocean, but doesn't want that to have unintended consequences, but also recognizes the need for somewhat drastic change because humanities current course of action is having disastrous effects on our environment, but doesn't want to propose any recommendations. Czerski argues throughout that to truly see the miraculous oceans, to understand and to feel our connection to them, is vital and integral to our history and our future. Her outstanding book advances that understanding and honours that connection. Her readers will see the seas anew. From space, our entire tiny Earth is a blue dot. Blue — the color of the ocean that blankets most of it, making Earth as we know it possible. Lively and engrossing [...] Alongside her vivid portrayal of waters sliding over one another, colliding, mixing and turning into ice or water vapour, she explains how the living beings within the sea also form part of the 'blue machine' [...] [Cerzski's personal experience of both Polynesian canoes off Hawaii and ice floes near the North Pole is not icing on the cake but part of the argument of this excellent and important book."

Riveting.... The cultural history fascinates.... Wide-ranging and meticulously detailed, this captures the wonder, beauty, and intrigue of its subject. Lively and engrossing ... Alongside her vivid portrayal of waters sliding over one another, colliding, mixing andturning into ice or water vapour, she explains how the living beings within the sea alsoform part of the 'blue machine' ... [Cerzski's personal experience of both Polynesian canoes off Hawaii and ice floes near the North Pole is not icing on the cake but part of the argument of this excellent and important book. David Abulafia, The Spectator Although I was looking forward to the chapter on “voyagers” – and Czerski is passionate on the Hawaiian and Polynesian arts of canoeing and navigating at sea – it contains the only error I could identify. Comparing the operation of a sailing ship with that of a steamer or motorised vessel, and lamenting the loss of the human-ocean connection that tall ships demand of their crews, she writes: This is a book about the blue machine that drives our planet. We are taken on an intimate tour of the sea, it's layers, it's inhabitants from the smallest to the biggest, and how it effects our lives. I learned that salt - no matter how exotic it appears or where it comes from - is in fact all the same. A scientist’s exploration of the “ocean engine”—the physics behind the ocean’s systems—and why it matters.