9-minute read
keywords: oceanography
“This isn’t merely a diverting tale about some salty water. This is the story that defines planet Earth” (p. 13). With that quote from the introduction, oceanographer Helen Czerski sets the tone for this book. In a break from many other books about the deep sea that talk about animals, Blue Machine focuses on the ocean itself, revealing a fascinating planetary engine. Equal parts physical oceanography, marine biology, and science history, topped off with human-interest stories, Czerski has written a captivating book that oozes lyricism in places.
Blue Machine: How the Ocean Shapes Our World, written by Helen Czerski, published in Europe by Torva (a Transworld Publishers imprint) in June 2023 (hardback, 447 pages)
Czerski is an accidental oceanographer, stumbling into the discipline from a background in physics. She boasts a long list of science communication credentials as a TV presenter, podcast host, columnist, public speaker, and author, having previously written Storm in a Teacup and her Ladybird Expert primer on bubbles (her area of expertise). I find the deep sea endlessly fascinating and have been drawn ever further into oceanography through my reviews, yet something was always missing. This book has finally scratched the oceanographic itch I have long been trying to satisfy. How so?
Start with that introduction. If you zoom right out, what sets a planet’s temperature, and with it the potential for life, is the balance between energy input from the sun and energy loss to the universe in the form of heat (infrared radiation). From this grand, cosmic perspective, what the ocean with its circulating currents does is intercept some of that incoming energy and prevent it from immediately escaping again, instead “diverting it on to a much slower path through the mechanisms of the Earth: ocean, atmosphere, ice, life and rocks” (p. 5). From an energy point of view, “the Earth is just a cascade of diversions, unable to stop the flood but tapping into it as it trickles past; and the ocean is an engine for converting sunlight into movement and life and complexity, before the universe reclaims the loan” (p. 6). To me, this was such an awe-inspiring, attention-grabbing perspective on life on Earth, expressed so eloquently, that I wondered: is Czerski the new Ed Yong of oceanography? Tell me more, please!
“[I] have been drawn ever further into oceanography through my reviews, yet something was always missing. This book has finally scratched the oceanographic itch I have long been trying to satisfy.”
Blue Machine is Czerski’s third and biggest book yet, written in seven chunky chapters that mostly clock in at 60+ pages. She keeps the flow going, however, by alternating between scientific explanations and facts, fascinating experiments, and remarkable historical episodes. So let us have a look at each of these in turn.
What helps to understand the above idea of energy diversion is the fact that the ocean is a vast three-dimensional environment that is constantly in motion, creating and maintaining differences at different scales. Three basic parameters to consider are water temperature, which represents the heat stored by the ocean, salinity, which affects water density and thus drives its motion as parcels of water sink and rise, and Earth’s spin, deflecting this motion through something called the Coriolis effect. Heat and salinity furthermore create different layers of water that do not readily mix, meaning the ocean is stratified. This results in gigantic underwater conveyor belts that span the globe, and enormous underwater waterfalls near both poles where ice formation leaves behind saltier water that sinks, in the case of the Denmark Strait Overflow tumbling down 2.5 km into the depths of the North Atlantic. What makes these processes interesting is the shape of the container holding all this water: i.e. the position of the continents, the shape of their coastlines, and the topography of the underwater landscape with shallow continental shelves and deep ocean basins. Invisible to the naked eye, the local gravitational pull of the underlying rocks deforms the water surface over very large areas, creating domes and holes spanning tens of metres vertically, a shape known as the geoid. These are but some examples of the many fundamental features and principles of the ocean engine described in the nearly 200 pages and three chapters making up the book’s first part. Czerski admits that she cannot squeeze the full complexity of the ocean into one book, so topics covered in recent popular books such as tides, the origins of the ocean, or the interaction between oceans and past and future climate change are treated more briefly or not at all.
Admirably, Czerski is equally at home in the marine biology department and she features some wonderful critters here. There are the gargantuan shoals of lanternfish whose daily vertical migrations show up on sonar as a false ocean floor moving up and down, something that baffled oceanographers for decades. There is the extremely long-lived Greenland shark, a cold-water specialist with a life span of probably centuries. Or take Ramisyllis multicaudata, the utterly bizarre branching worm of many anuses—and I mean hundreds of anuses. And wait until you read about whale earwax(!), “one of those rare substances where evolutionary coincidence indulges scientific curiosity so generously that it feels like winning the lottery” (p. 247). Extruded by internal tissue but unable to escape a whale’s non-existent outer ears, it piles up inside and contains its life story. True, bizarre critters abound in all good popular science books about the deep sea. Helen Scales’s The Brilliant Abyss and Alex Rogers’s The Deep could give Czerski a run for her money, except that her physics background allows her to show how the physical and biological worlds intertwine. A beautiful example of this is the mesoscale eddies that are spun off by oceanic gyres: large islands of rotating water that are warmer or colder than their surroundings and become temporary havens for all the plankton and fish that find themselves inside. The formation of these wandering buffets is such a regular phenomenon that large ocean predators such as tuna can make a living by roaming the seas in search of them.
“bizarre critters abound in all good popular science books about the deep sea [yet] her physics background allows her to show how the physical and biological worlds intertwine.”
The second captivating element is the many ingenious experiments that she describes here, both historical and current. We almost developed a method to collect a long-term dataset on the global ocean’s temperature using sound. Several quirks of how the ocean works and is stratified mean that sound can travel around the globe, sound waves bouncing up and down in certain layers. A successful pilot experiment in 1991 deployed large oceanic speakers and a global network of receiving stations, but the idea never went beyond this proof of concept. More successful is the Continuous Plankton Recorder Survey which has been running for the last 90 years, with ships towing mechanical recorders that use elegant internal clockwork to capture plankton on long strips of mesh and have gathered valuable long-term records.
The third element to her book is how the physical world entwines with human history. Many organisms, humans included, will hitch a ride on currents if these take them somewhere useful, but the reverse is also true, “humans created ‘usefulness’ wherever the currents took them” (p. 186). One example is the narrow northern half of the Indian Ocean where gyres do not form but seasonal currents flow eastwards and westwards. The 14th-century Chinese Ming Dynasty used these to send expeditions of large ships laden with valuables up and down the coast of Asia and Arabia, trading goods for political influence and prestige. I was similarly captivated by the poorly known story of the 18th-century Scottish herring lassies: bands of female contractors who travelled south along the English coast each summer, pursuing the herring fleet, who pursued the herring, who pursued their copepod prey drifting south on the Gulf Stream’s currents. While the men worked the boats out at sea, the women were ready in ports and at beaches to gut, salt, and pack each day’s landing before the freshly-caught fish could spoil. Hard-working, skilled, and independent, they were decades ahead of most other women in Victorian England.
“Though a popular mantra in politics is that we need to follow the science, she opposes this “for the simple reason that science does not lead.” […] we have to decide what we [value] for ourselves and our communities.”
All of this is backed up by an attitude that, coming from a scientist, is refreshingly clued in to social issues. This becomes explicit in the final chapter where she addresses the environmental issues she has side-stepped so far. Though a popular mantra in politics is that we need to follow the science, she opposes this “for the simple reason that science does not lead. Where leadership comes from is a clear statement of values” (p. 381). Science can inform these, yes, but we have to decide what we care about for ourselves and our communities. Going down this path involves hard questions without simple answers, and nuance rather than binary “I am right, you are wrong” categories. It also means breaking with our perception of “the ocean as the end of a one-way pipe, [for] that is not how nature works” (p. 289). There is no “away” on this planet for our trash. And it means breaking with a culture “based on building and expanding and consuming and creating without having to think too much about the planetary life-support system” (p. 386). Her thinking here is influenced by her contact with Polynesian cultures that value cooperation, openness, and teamwork, in contrast to the Western mindset of ownership and power play.
If I need to sound a critical note it is the lack of illustrations. Though the UK version features nice endpapers and a stunning cover (a map of the world using the Spilhaus projection—there is a nice write-up on the ESRI website that shows John Nelson’s version with ocean currents that is used on the dustjacket), there are only two maps and two illustrations in the rest of the book. Especially some of the physical oceanography principles would have benefited from explanatory diagrams.
Blue Machine is an engrossing odyssey into oceanography. Czerski brings her substantial experience in science communication to bear on this topic and has written a transformative book. She brings to life the watery fabric of the ocean itself in ways I have not encountered before.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
Other recommended books mentioned in this review:
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Marine biologist Helen Scales returns for her third book with Bloomsbury’s popular science imprint Bloomsbury Sigma. After shells and fish, she now drags the reader down into the darkest depths of the deep sea. Both a beautifully written exploration of the ocean’s otherworldly wonders and a searing exposé of the many threats they face, The Brilliant Abyss is Scales’s most strident book to date.
The Brilliant Abyss: True Tales of Exploring the Deep Sea, Discovering Hidden Life and Selling the Seabed, written by Helen Scales, published in Europe by Bloomsbury Publishing in March 2021 (hardback, 352 pages)
Sir David Attenborough has probably said it best: “No one will protect what they do not care about; and no one will care about what they have never experienced“. Both Scales and the publisher have taken that message to heart and the book is neatly designed. As with her previous book, illustrator Aaron John Gregory is involved again, this time providing two beautiful end plates and an eye-catching cover, while the colour plate section contains some outstanding photos. But at the heart of The Brilliant Abyss is Scales’s captivating writing.
First, consider the landscape. As she explains, the seabed, shaped by plate tectonics, is far from a featureless bathtub. Spreading centres create mid-ocean ridges, colossal mountain ranges that girdle the planet, while subduction zones where oceanic crust plunges back into the planet form deep-sea trenches of terrifying depths. The abyssal plain in between is studded with active or extinct underwater volcanoes that form seamounts of great import to marine life. Wherever magma approaches the surface, percolating seawater becomes superheated, rising back to the surface laden with dissolved minerals and metals. They form hydrothermal vents: towering structures that are home to unique fauna and are “the deep-sea equivalent of hot springs and geysers on land” (p. 97). Woven throughout is a history of scientific exploration, from the first oceanographic expeditions to today’s robotic submersibles, and from pioneering deep-sea explorers to today’s trench-diving billionaires.
Otherworldly as the landscape is, the real stars of this realm are its fauna. Scales’s knowledge and love of marine biology shine through here, as she populates the pages with a bewildering cast of creatures. Notable examples of bizarre deep-sea fishes are included, but she gives you so much more. Whale carcasses, so-called whale falls, become complete ecosystems, home to bone-eating Osedax worms with unusual sex lives. Large gelatinous members of the drifting plankton, such as colonial siphonophores and giant larvaceans, form previously underappreciated links in the food web. Hydrothermal vents are crowded with worms and furry Yeti crabs that domesticate symbiotic bacteria capable of chemosynthesis, the “dark alternative to photosynthesis” (p. 104). Meanwhile, one species of snail makes its shell out of iron! And then there are the corals. No, not the familiar tropical corals who “hog not only the sunlight but the limelight” (p. 129); the lesser-known cold-water corals that occur at great depths and grow even slower.
“[…] the real stars of this realm are its fauna […] whale falls become complete ecosystems, home to bone-eating Osedax worms with unusual sex lives. […] Meanwhile, one species of snail makes its shell out of iron!”
And if the intrinsic value of biodiversity does not sway you, Scales is no stranger to discussing the deep’s instrumental values. The capacity of seawater to absorb heat and carbon dioxide. The role of global oceanic currents in regulating our climate. Or the carbon pump provided by marine snow; the constant rain of dead plankton, fish poop, and other organic debris that descends into the depths. And what of the quest for new classes of biological compounds with antiviral, anti-bacterial, or anti-cancer properties that could form the pharmaceutical drugs and antibiotics of the future?
Two-thirds through the book Scales switches gears. Now that she has your attention, it is time to highlight the many dangers the deep faces. Deep-sea fishing targets long-lived, slow-growing species such as orange roughy. Vulnerable seamounts with millennia-old corals are destroyed by trawlers in a matter of hours. Meanwhile, the promise of food for everyone is not being met. Vast catch volumes are being turned into fish meal for aquaculture and pet food, or questionable nutraceuticals such as omega-3-oil supplements. And where Daniel Pauly already gave me reason to be suspicious of the Marine Stewardship Council, Scales lays bare their dubious raison d’être: funded by royalties from sales of their eco-labelled fish, there is an imperative to keep certifying fisheries. She calls their scandalous certification of the “recovering” orange roughy population a “case of a dead cat bouncing, with a green-washed eco-label tied to its collar” (p. 204).
Scales made me shudder with her stories of pollution, especially the persistent legacy of the large-scale dumping of chemical weapons. But the topic that concerns her most is the looming spectre of deep-sea mining. Though much is still on the drawing boards, mining licenses are being issued and exploratory missions are taking place. What for? The minerals and metals contained in seamounts, hydrothermal vents, and the polymetallic nodules littering the seabed, which take millions of years to form. As with fishing, “the slow pace of the deep is out of step with the timescale of impatient human demands” (p. 205). Here too, the position of the body that oversees protection of the seabed, the International Seabed Authority, is incredibly compromised. Next to issuing mining permits they unbelievably have already assigned areas to be exploited by their own mining company!
“To think that [deep-sea mining] will result in anything but the rapacious plundering of ecosystems we have seen on land seems highly unlikely in her eyes. Meanwhile, the mining PR-machine is already running at full tilt […]”
Scales’s focus on deep-sea mining is urgently needed. Scientists have been sounding alarm bells in the peer-reviewed literature regarding its impact, but this topic is still mostly hidden from the public at large. Her descriptions of the destructive practices and the size of the machines involved are chilling. To think that this will result in anything but the rapacious plundering of ecosystems we have seen on land seems highly unlikely in her eyes. Meanwhile, the mining PR-machine is already running at full tilt, and Scales deftly disarms their arguments as to why deep-sea mining is necessary. She agrees that the shift to renewable energy requires infrastructure that needs tremendous amounts of diverse metals. However, as a detour into the design of wind turbines shows, predicting which ones will be needed is difficult. And whether the seabed is the best place to get them is highly questionable.
Scales tackles many of the same topics that Alex Rogers covered in The Deep. Her tone is more strident but no less knowledgeable and, as opposed to The Deep, her book does include endnotes with references. I recommend them both highly. Meanwhile, her call “to declare the entire realm off limits [to] extraction of any kind” (p. 286) meshes seamlessly with Deborah Rowan Wright’s bold vision laid out in Future Sea.
Whether you enjoyed her previous books or are new to her brand of writing about marine biology, I urge you to read this book. Next to an unforgettable trip, she provides a rousing rallying cry for the preservation of the deep sea. The Brilliant Abyss is, true to its title, brilliant.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
Other recommended books mentioned in this review:
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What is the price of humanity’s progress? The cover of this book, featuring a dusty landscape of tree stumps, leaves little to the imagination. In the eyes of French journalist and historian Laurent Testot it has been nothing short of cataclysmic. Originally published in French in 2017, The University of Chicago Press published the English translation at the tail-end of 2020.
Early on, Testot makes clear that environmental history as a discipline can take several forms: studying both the impact of humans on the environment, and of the environment on human affairs, as well as putting nature in a historical context. Testot does all of this in this ambitious book as he charts the exploits of Monkey—his metaphor for humanity—through seven revolutions and three million years.
Cataclysms: An Environmental History of Humanity, written by Laurent Testot, published by The University of Chicago Press in November 2020 (hardback, 452 pages)
To be frank, Testot deals with the first 2,988,000 years in the first two chapters. Understandably, as the pace of progress was initially slow, and comparatively little information is available to us from the palaeontological and archaeological records. Thus, he starts his history proper with the agricultural revolution ~12,000 years ago. Given the synthesizing nature of this book, Cataclysms will be a feast of recognition for readers that are familiar with the literature.
Some examples include the near-simultaneous rise of agriculture in several places, with geography playing an important role in which plants and animals were available to domesticate, or the fall of the Late-Bronze Age civilizations in the 12th century BCE. The myth of virgin rainforests and the long history of agriculture practised in the jungle. The microbiological onslaught that accompanied the Columbian exchange when Christopher Columbus and other explorers brought new epidemics to the Americas, or the scourge of mosquito-borne diseases that later decimated European colonialists overseas. The medieval Little Ice Age and the global crises it precipitated, or the worldwide impact of the Tambora volcanic eruption. The Great Acceleration in the 20th century and the recognition of the Anthropocene. All of these have been chronicled at length in books and other publications.
“Given the synthesizing nature of this book, Cataclysms will be a feast of recognition for readers that are familiar with the literature.”
Testot also mentions episodes that I was barely familiar with; partially, I suspect, because he can draw on the French history literature. For example the eruption of the Samalas volcano that seems to have served as a transition between the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. Or the 15th-century mining for silver in the Andes and the immense pollution that caused. Or the environmental roots of the expression “mad as a hatter” (it involves the 17th-century beaver trade). Cataclysms sometimes seems to forget it is an environmental history book. Thus, the environment takes a backseat when he describes the Axial Age, the period between 800 and 300 BCE that saw the birth of universal religions and philosophies in both Asia and Europe that are still with us today. Similarly, the chapter charting the rise of money, empires, and trade in Europe and Asia before the Common Era only at the very end examines the environmental impact of it all.
The book’s style might divide opinions. Testot throws all his eggs in the proverbial narrative basket. The book is clearly deeply researched, but the notes section at the end encompasses a mere 16 pages. Testot must have decided that supporting every claim and fact with a footnote would have distracted from the story he tells. Although the references contain many interesting books and publications, those wishing to check up on certain claims will have to do their own research. Furthermore, the book is strikingly devoid of photos, maps, graphs, and tables, bar a single chart of the human world population through time in the appendix. As such, I felt Cataclysms did not deliver on the dustjacket’s promise of providing “the full tally” the way e.g. Vaclav Smil did in Harvesting the Biosphere. Those wanting a more data-driven overview will probably want to check out Cataclysms‘s big contender for 2020, Daniel R. Headrick’s Humans versus Nature. I had the chance to rifle through a copy, though not yet read it in full. At 604 pages with a 100-page notes section (and some illustrations), it promises to be a denser read.
“[The book] will undoubtedly charm newcomers to the field with its narrative style and ambitious scope […] but I suspect that seasoned readers will crave something more dense and data-heavy.”
Testot’s outlook for the future is bleak, though his concluding chapter wanders somewhat aimlessly. Rather than offering an overview of which planetary boundaries we have breached and how far in overshoot we are, Testot focuses on what he calls the upcoming Evolutive Revolution before turning to some likely consequences of climate change. This final revolution could either pan out as the pipe-dream of transhumanism where nano-, bio-, and information technologies converge into the singularity that would make humans immortal / obsolete as Artificial Intelligence takes over (something Testot is critical of), or we may end up as mutants in the chemical cesspit that we are making of our planet. Throw in a conclusion and an epilogue to the English edition that both reiterate main points from the book, and it starts to feel a little bit like Tolkien’s struggle to let the reader go in the last book of The Lord of the Rings.
Environmental history has become a rather crowded subject and opinions will probably be divided on whether Cataclysms stands out from the crowd sufficiently. It will undoubtedly charm newcomers to the field with its narrative style and ambitious scope—Testot knows how to spin a fine yarn and provides an entry point to many fascinating chapters in world history that readers will want to explore further. I certainly enjoyed reading it, but I suspect that seasoned readers will crave something more dense and data-heavy.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
Other recommended books mentioned in this review:
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The legendary British broadcaster and natural historian Sir David Attenborough needs almost no introduction. Since his first appearance on our television screens in 1954, he has gone on to a long and distinguished career presenting and narrating groundbreaking nature documentaries. And he shows no sign of slowing down. His voice and style have become so iconic that he has been dubbed the voice of nature. Over the years, he has increasingly expressed concern over the state of the natural world, and in A Life on Our Planet Attenborough fully engages with this topic. However, when you turn to the title page you will notice the name of a co-author, Jonnie Hughes, who directed the Netflix documentary tied in with this book. As Attenborough explains in his acknowledgements, Hughes has been particularly instrumental in the writing of the third part of the book, together with substantial assistance from the Science Team at WWF. This is Attenborough’s witness statement, yes, but whose vision of the future is it?
A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future, written by Sir David Attenborough with Jonnie Hughes, published by Witness Books (an imprint of Ebury Press) in October 2020 (hardback, 282 pages)
A Life on Our Planet is divided into three parts, the first of which features highlights from Attenborough’s filmmaking career. Interwoven with vignettes that you might recognize from his autobiography are short episodes in the history of life on our planet and the rise of human civilization—this is Attenborough writing at his finest. Overlaid is his increasing concern for the changes he has witnessed. Each chapter heading ominously lists the human world population, the atmospheric carbon level, and the estimated percentage of wilderness remaining in a certain year.
The brief second part, “What Lies Ahead”, serves as a bridge to the third part and introduces several important concepts. One is the Great Acceleration, the period following the 1950s in which our activity and impact on the environment ramped up tremendously. The other is the Planetary Boundaries model drawn up by Johan Rockström and colleagues, which I brought up in my previous review of Planetary Accounting. This Earth systems science framework demarcates a “safe operating space for humanity” by identifying nine planetary processes and systems with their boundary values, several of which we have exceeded with our actions. In just ten pages, the book then looks ahead to some likely environmental tipping points in our near future, such as forest dieback and permafrost melting. I was expecting a longer section along the lines of Lynas’s Our Final Warning and Wallace-Well’s The Uninhabitable Earth, but clearly, this book has no interest in dwelling on the catastrophes ahead.
“Interwoven with autobiographical vignettes are short episodes in the history of life on our planet and the rise of human civilization—this is Attenborough writing at his finest.”
This brings us to the vision for the future, which is where the question of authorship becomes increasingly blurred. At times I was not sure whether I was reading Attenborough’s voice or a WWF policy brief. The book takes the planetary boundaries model with its ecological ceiling and Kate Raworth’s modification known as the Doughnut model, which adds a social foundation to it, i.e. the minimum requirements for human well-being. It then outlines some of the changes required to significantly reduce our impact on the planet, leaning towards “green” and nature-based solutions aimed primarily at restoring biodiversity. The overall tone here is hopeful and the book hits many relevant points, though I have some criticism.
Let’s start with what I appreciated. First, and this feels like Attenborough speaking, it gets its philosophy right, tackling anthropocentrism: “We moved from being a part of nature to being apart from nature […] we need to reverse that transition” (p. 125). It also acknowledges the shifting baseline syndrome in the context of fisheries and beyond: how each generation takes an increasingly impoverished environment as the new normal. Right out of the gate it tackles the need to move beyond the paradigm of perpetual growth and abandon Gross Domestic Product as our prime measure of welfare. Agriculture will have to rely on far less land through solutions that are high-tech (e.g. hydroponic greenhouses run on renewable energy), or low-tech (e.g. a shift away from monocultures to something more approaching functional ecosystems via regenerative farming and the growing of mixed crops). Most important would be a change from a meat- to a plant-based diet. Attenborough again: “When I was young […] meat was a rare treat” (p. 169). We should want less stuff and require our things to be repairable and recyclable, moving ultimately towards a circular economy. This all ties in nicely, although it is not spelt out here, with an ethos of self-limitation that we need to reclaim.
“This brings us to the vision for the future, which is where the question of authorship becomes increasingly blurred. At times I was not sure whether I was reading Attenborough’s voice or a WWF policy brief.”
Carbon capture will have to be achieved not by high-tech solutions, but by both reforestation on land and the farming of kelp forests in the sea (Ruth Kassinger already made the point in Slime that algae might just save the world). Both these solutions will help the massive rewilding efforts this book envisions: Marine Protected Areas will help fish populations to recover, resulting in sustainable fisheries, while on land more habitat will become available for wild animals. And, finally and importantly, the book tackles human population numbers, aiming for the humane solution of stabilising the world population as quickly as possible at 9–11 billion people by lifting people out of poverty and empowering women.
The holistic package proposed here, underpinned with examples of success stories from around the globe, almost makes it sound like we can have it all. Can we? The authors acknowledge that many of these transitions will not come easily and will require everyone to come together and cooperate (in itself a tall order). Where achievability is concerned, the devil is in the details, and I do feel that these are sometimes glossed over and that taboo subjects are avoided.
Take agriculture—there is no mention of the tremendous potential of genetically modified organisms. Similarly unmentioned regarding renewable energy is the concept of energy density and our reliance on increasingly energy-dense fuels as civilization progressed. There is no consideration of the tremendous amount of resources needed to build and maintain the necessary infrastructure. A combined solution of renewable and nuclear energy (admittedly a non-renewable) is considered a no-no. And though a circular economy is a step up from our linear system of produce-use-discard, you cannot endlessly recycle: a constant influx of virgin material is required. Not all metals can be economically recovered, nor all the compound materials we make unmade. Ever tried unfrying an egg? Entropy does not run that way.
“The holistic package proposed here […] almost makes it sound like we can have it all. Can we? […] these transitions will not come easily and […] the devil is in the details.”
The word “overpopulation” is studiously avoided, which is remarkable as Attenborough has been outspoken on the subject elsewhere (see this short explainer or the 2011 RSA President’s Lecture). The closest he gets to it here is when he writes that “we have overrun the Earth” (p. 100). Later, the possibility of a demographic transition to a declining world population is mentioned, but not the suggestion put forward by some that a lower world population of, say, 2–3 billion might be more sustainable. And though Attenborough points out increased longevity as a contributing factor, there is no examination of our relationship with death. Should we really direct all our efforts to maximising life span? At what cost, both environmental and quality-of-life-wise? And, lastly, the now-dominant narrative of female empowerment is only half the story and puts the onus squarely on their shoulders. Making contraception and abortion available to women is needed, but better still would be to prevent pregnancies by starting with male education. Condom, gentlemen?
Admittedly, I am arguing details here. Though they need serious consideration in my opinion, much of what is proposed here is sensible. A Life on Our Planet is very accessible and admirably concise. Its central message, that things cannot continue as they are, stands. If there is anyone who can communicate this to a wide audience, it is Sir David Attenborough. Some of the writing here will stick with you long after you have closed the book: “We often talk of saving the planet, but the truth is that we must do these things to save ourselves.” (p. 218). Here speaks a wise elder who, even at 94, indefatigably defends our environment.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
Other recommended books mentioned in this review:
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What I am about to write is probably going to upset many people, but… I am growing frustrated with the narrative of much of the environmental movement. Taking to the streets to protest and demand change, to “do something!”, is all fine and dandy, but it is also a bit hypocritical. It fosters a narrative in which the onus is always on others and it begs the counter-question: “what are you willing to give up?”. That is the hard question.
There, I said it. You have the option to stop reading now.
In all seriousness, if we want to avert dangerous climate change or allow forests to recover from deforestation, how much change is enough? How much are we allowed to consume? Planetary Accounting will not offer you final prescriptive answers, but it is an important first step in quantifying per capita quota for what each of us can consume and pollute without it costing the planet.
Planetary Accounting: Quantifying How to Live Within Planetary Limits at Different Scales of Human Activity, written by Kate Meyer and Peter Newman, published by Springer in March 2020 (hardback, 290 pages)
This book follows on perfectly from Kallis’s Limits that I just reviewed, which urged for a culture of self-limitation. The immediate follow-up question then is: how much? In Planetary Accounting, sustainability scientists Kate Meyer and Peter Newman take the planetary boundaries framework as their starting point and translate it into planetary quotas. If the former can be likened to a patient’s diagnosis, the latter can be interpreted as the doctor’s prescriptions: here is the amount and direction of change needed.
In case you are not yet familiar with it, the planetary boundaries framework was developed by Johan Rockström and colleagues and presented in a 2009 Nature paper, followed by a book for a general audience in 2014, and further refinements proposed in a 2015 Science paper. It is an Earth systems science framework that demarcates a “safe operating space for humanity” by identifying nine planetary processes and systems with their boundary values. Think climate change, biodiversity loss, or ozone depletion. For several of these, we have crossed the limit and are collectively pushing our environment towards a new state that is likely to be a lot less friendly to human life. A case is even being made that we have entered a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene.
You might ask why it matters that we emit more nitrogen and phosphorus into our environment than we should, or are seeing species extinction rates far above background values. Surely, our world always changes and is not a museum piece. Consider the following, I think very interesting, argument. Some authors propose that it took the stable climatic conditions of the Holocene for civilization to take off. Not because climate drove civilization—humanity was rearing to go—but because we needed a stable window of opportunity. Meyer & Newman mention Cook’s A Brief History of the Human Race, but I came across this same argument in Dartnell’s Origins where he suggested that there may have been earlier attempts at migrating out of Africa or developing agricultural civilizations, that simply fizzled out before taking off because environmental conditions were unfavourable. Rockström and colleagues argue that the state of the planet during the Holocene is the only one we know of in which settled societies can thrive. Whether we can in other environmental states is unknown, nor do we know what new balance the Anthropocene will reach. So, how lucky, really, are we feeling?
“it took the stable climatic conditions of the Holocene for civilization to take off. […] Whether we can [thrive] in other environmental states is unknown […] So, how lucky, really, are we feeling?”
This introduction is accompanied by a very capable routing of the arguments of climate change denialists and a brief exploration of other environmental impact assessment frameworks before Meyer & Newman turn to the limits of the planetary boundaries framework. One issue is that it describes the problem, but does not prescribe solutions. Some translation is needed and to that end, Meyer & Newman here propose the planetary accounting framework.
The bulk of the book describes this framework and develops quotas for each of the nine planetary boundaries, though it should be noted that readers might have to turn to supporting publications, including Meyer’s PhD thesis, for more details. What this exercise reveals is interesting. Four planetary boundaries have been exceeded, three not yet, and for two we lack information. The planetary quotas calculated here show we exceed seven, are at the limit of one and lack information for the last. If that seems confusing, remember that boundaries describe the state of the planet and quotas our annual impact. Some boundaries will be breached soon if we maintain current rates.
To illustrate this with an example. For climate change, one planetary boundary is an atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration of 350 ppm (parts per million), which has been exceeded. The corresponding quota is based on CO2 emissions, expressed in gigatonnes. To meet the target of the IPCC climate change scenario that the authors have selected (limit global warming to +1.5 °C by 2100) we should change our emissions from the current +36 to -12 GtCO2/year. This is an example where we should not just reverse direction (i.e. emit less), we should be actively removing atmospheric CO2. Deriving quotas for all boundaries is not necessarily straightforward and Meyer & Newman have drawn on the knowledge of a large body of specialists when developing the planetary accounting framework, with caveats, justifications, and assumptions described here.
“[The planetary boundaries framework] describes the problem, but does not prescribe solutions. Some translation is needed and to that end, Meyer & Newman here propose the planetary accounting framework.”
Each chapter also gives suggestions on how these quotas can be achieved at different levels (from individuals to nations) and in different sectors (communities, governments, and businesses). They call their approach poly-scalar. Although this is a first step in translating planetary boundaries to something more actionable, you will notice that this is still several steps away from usable advice. The authors acknowledge that more work is needed, that there are different ways to achieve these quotas, that the quotas are moving targets subject to revision, and that there will be a lot of political and ethical horse-trading when it comes to deciding who has to sacrifice what (especially in the developed vs. developing world). In short, they have laid out the total amount of change needed but how we are going to achieve this is yet to be decided.
I have two points of criticism. First, with the book itself. Though accessibly written, it suffers noticeably from typos and spelling errors that should have been picked out in the editorial stage. Furthermore, seeing the importance of the subject matter, the book is exorbitantly priced, probably putting it out of reach for many readers. I recommend you also have a good look at the website of The Planetary Accounting Network, the non-profit that Kate Meyer founded after completing her PhD.
My second point of criticism is with the planetary accounting framework, which has its limitations. There is no mention here of non-renewable resources: all the ores and other minerals we extract from the planet’s crust, many of which, such as rare metals, are vital to the technological solutions we envision will help us address environmental problems. Whether their framework can be expanded and adjusted to account for these is questionable, seeing such resources are finite. Furthermore, Meyer & Newman are conspicuously silent about overpopulation, although occasionally mentioning that quota sizes will depend on future population growth. I know that I am starting to sound like a stuck record, but should there be a population quota? Depending on living standards plugged into your equations, some authors have tentatively concluded that 3 billion is a more sustainable limit and that we cannot justify having more than one child.
Of course, it would be unreasonable of me to expect their framework to be a cure-all—they acknowledge it is not “one supersystem to solve everything”. Keeping that in mind, Planetary Accounting is a first step in translating the planetary boundaries to something more actionable, and Meyer & Newman provide a valuable roadmap that I expect will be widely welcomed.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
Other recommended books mentioned in this review:
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We tend to think of forests as static. Trees, after all, do not move. But that is a perspective foisted upon us by our limbed existence. Science reporter Zach St. George unmasks this illusion in plain terms: when trees die or new ones sprout, the forest has moved a bit. “The migration of a forest is just many trees sprouting in the same direction” (p. 2).
There is no shortage of books on trees, but this sounded like such an unusual take on the subject that I was utterly stoked when I learned of The Journeys of Trees. A journalist who delves into the palaeontological record to consider the slow-motion movement of forests over deep time? Get in here!
The Journeys of Trees: A Story about Forests, People, and the Future, written by Zach St. George, published by W.W. Norton & Co. in August 2020 (hardback, 244 pages)
The question of where in space and time organisms live where they do, and don’t where they do not, is the purview of the academic discipline of biogeography. St. George’s handling of ecological concepts here is excellent, especially when considering the many unknown factors that keep a tree from growing somewhere, or his clear breakdown of different niche concepts (his description of Hutchinson’s fundamental niche as a multidimensional hypervolume is fascinating). He traces the interest in questions of biogeography back to 18th-century naturalists such as Alexander von Humboldt, Asa Gray, and Darwin and Wallace. It was not just dinosaurs that fossil hunters unearthed, but also fossil trees, revealing that they had grown in places they now no longer did.
There are spine-tingling peeks into the deep past sprinkled throughout this book. Giant sequoias—today restricted to a few groves in North America—once towered over trees from Alaska to Europe while the quintessentially British oak spend the Pleistocene ice age in Spain and France. He mentions the ecological anachronisms of plants that have become marooned when their pollinators went extinct. Or, and this one blew my mind, the striking pattern seen in forest invasions. Time and again, tree species on one continent succumb to insects or fungi native to their sister species on another continent. This hints at the boreal forest that once ringed the globe at northern latitudes and connected these forests. As St. George explains, each continent now has its own oaks, maples, chestnuts, pines, etc. evolving separately, but their shared history is recent enough that they are still vulnerable to each other’s pathogens and pests.
“There are spine-tingling peeks into the deep past sprinkled throughout this book […] and I would have happily had St. George discuss nothing but palaeobiogeography.”
Through these examples, St. George cultivates a mindset that Marcia Bjornerud has called “timefulness“. For me, this is the rare, vertigo-inducing sensation where you find yourself peering down the yawning chasm of deep time and, for just a fleeting moment, connect with its incomprehensible vastness. Not many books manage to induce this and I would have happily had St. George discuss nothing but palaeobiogeography. However, there are two important topics linked to the present and the future that almost eclipse his writing on the ghosts of the past: the burden of invasive species and the question of forest conservation in the face of future climate change.
Plants do not just move themselves, we are increasingly doing the moving for them. While naturalists and geologists were still getting to grips with the age of the Earth and concepts such as biogeography, the Industrial Revolution was busy producing its legacy of Victorian plant hunters filling up botanical gardens and private collections in Europe, and entrepreneurs moving trees to improve colonies overseas. One such thread that St. George follows here is the story of how the Monterey pine growing in California and Mexico ended up blanketing New Zealand.
But each such translocation is an experiment. We take species out of their evolutionary context at our peril. Each journey that moves plants, wood, or even soil brings the risk of unwanted stowaways. Only a minority of translocated species become a problem, but with global trade and travel having increased exponentially, so have the risks posed by invasive species. A recent example recounted here that came to light only in 2001 is the decimation of North America’s ash trees when they fell victim to the emerald ash borer, a small beetle imported from Asia, possibly in pallet wood.
“it is exactly [the] legacy of species invasions that is now causing great tension […] when considering the future of the world’s forests, [particularly] the conservation initiatives taking matters in their own hands by planting trees in new areas.”
As St. George highlights, it is exactly this legacy of species invasions that is now causing great tension in the academic and conservation communities when considering the future of the world’s forests. As the deep-time perspective of The Journeys of Trees already reveals, forest migration is closely linked to climate change, and there is plenty of that in store, with St. George highlighting the risk of exacerbated droughts and fires in particular. One difference with past climate change is that in the geologically speaking short intervening time we have laid claim to vast swathes of the Earth’s surface, largely deforesting it.
Thus, the third and final important form of forest migration that St. George considers here are the conservation initiatives taking matters in their own hands by planting trees in new areas, often in the face of caution urged by ecologists. This varies from “assisted population migration” where trees are planted in their current range, to forward-looking initiatives better labelled “assisted range expansion” where they are planted outside of the current species’ range. St. George discusses Connie Barlow’s Torreya Guardians project that is planting Florida torreya all over North America, and the living seed bank of giant sequoias created by timber company Sierra Pacific Industries.
The flap text on the dust jacket mentions that the book focuses on five trees, but the story defies any rigid or chronological organisation, looping round in circles and delightfully intersecting its own narrative in numerous places. Much as I had hoped, The Journeys of Trees ended up being a fascinating sylvan road trip that sets itself apart from the many books written on trees, not least by its deep-time perspective.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
Other recommended books mentioned in this review:
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When we think of animal navigation, the dramatic comes to mind: globe-trotting birds, migrating monarch butterflies, and ocean-crossing whales. But on a smaller scale, navigation is no less vital and no less interesting. Take the humble desert ant. Desert Navigator is the culmination of a lifetime worth of study by German zoologist Rüdiger Wehner and his many collaborators. It is an astonishing and lavishly produced book that distils half a century of experiments into a richly illustrated narrative.
Desert Navigator: The Journey of an Ant, written by Rüdiger Wehner, published by Belknap Press (a Harvard University Press imprint) in February 2020 (hardback, 392 pages)
Unless you live in a desert environment, chances are that you have never seen a desert ant. Speedy silver bullets that dart across the sand on long legs, ants of the genus Cataglyphis (cataglyphs to you and me) live in the deserts of North Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and Asia. In a beautiful example of parallel evolution, the deserts of Southern Africa are host to the genus Ocymyrmex, while the Australian outback is home to Melophorus ants. Wehner calls them little thermal warriors, as they stand out for their thermophile (heat-loving) behaviour. When pretty much every other living creature tries to find shade, these ants come out at the hottest part of the day to forage in murderous temperatures, tolerating surface values of 57-63°C.
How do they survive such extremes? Wehner appropriately opens the book with an introduction to the biology of desert ants. Here, he details their morphology and behaviour, highlighting how they cope with the heat through for example a thermal shield of silvery hairs that covers parts of their body, clever use of small-scale temperature variations just above ground level, and careful prevention of dehydration. Speed is of the essence to get the most out of their foraging trips, so Wehner examines their locomotion and long-leggedness.
Navigation, however, is at the core of this book. Given that their nest opening is but a small hole in the ground and there is a high price to pay for getting lost, how do these ants navigate such barren and featureless environments? How do they, without fail, find the shortest way home after having wandered about in search of food?
“When pretty much every other living creature tries to find shade, these ants come out at the hottest part of the day to forage in murderous temperatures, tolerating surface values of 57-63°C”
To answer these questions, the book takes a tour through five decades of experimental work, regularly venturing into research on related insect groups and covering a large body of older research published in German. What stands out is just how far you can take various lines of inquiry in that amount of time. Desert Navigator is not a difficult book to read, but it is information-dense. Every section, sometimes every paragraph, summarises a different study. To avoid vague or hasty conclusions, Wehner stresses the importance of careful experimental design and the field biologist in me delighted in the many unusual contraptions and clever solutions to answering questions. In what follows, I can only cover some examples of particularly memorable findings.
Tiny as they are, Wehner shows these cataglyphs to be miracle insects. This starts with the diversity of environmental cues they use to find their way: polarized light* (something humans cannot perceive, but many animals can), gradients in both the intensity and spectrum of light that indicate the azimuth or compass bearing of the sun, the earth’s magnetic field, even wind direction. Just as humans focus images on a tiny pit in their retina called the fovea, the compound eyes of insects have specialised areas too. Blocking different parts of ant eyes has revealed how the dorsal rim area (found towards the top) is both necessary and sufficient to observe polarized light. And we can even trace how this is processed in the brain. Ant brains are incredibly tiny, but certain neurological architecture and pathways are conserved across the family tree of arthropods, so work on the larger crickets and locusts has been enlightening.
Finding your way home involves having a sense of distances. Ants employ an internal step counter and measure optic flow, the speed with which your environment moves past your eyes as you move. This has involved ingenious experiments lengthening (with stilts) or shortening (poor buggers) ants’ legs, or manipulating optic flow using striped conveyor belts, resulting in ants overshooting or undershooting their nest when returning. Why do ants use both? Wehner argues the latter could be an evolutionary hangover as ants are related to flying hymenopterans that use optic flow rather than a step counter to estimate distances.
“To avoid vague or hasty conclusions, Wehner stresses the importance of careful experimental design and the field biologist in me delighted in the many unusual contraptions and clever solutions to answering questions.”
Combining distance and direction is known as path integration or dead reckoning. Picking apart this process has involved allowing ants to walk to a feeder and then catching and releasing them elsewhere. They will walk back the right distance in the right direction to where their nest should be. Further work with ants walking part of their route through tunnels showed that only steps taken under an open sky count when calculating the return route though. But ant navigation also incorporates visual landmarks (most likely the general appearance of an ant’s panoramic view), and olfactory cues (the smell of the nest in particular). Young ants have been shown to go on learning walks and do visual scanning maneuvres to observe their nest from various angles. Here, too, further work has tried to link this to brain regions, with the so-called mushroom bodies being likely candidates for the long-term storage of landmark information.
Researchers have even started probing how these systems come together and interact. Presenting ants with conflicting information by moving familiar landmarks leads to compromise trajectories between what path integration and landmark views tell them, while further work shows landmark recognition to become more important closer to the nest. Ants will even employ error correction strategies by purposefully undershooting their target or navigating downwind of nest odour plumes.
Mammals seem to build a mental map of their surroundings, but insects? While some have claimed bees do, Wehner and others contest this, arguing that combining several routines is sufficient for successful navigation. As he puts it succinctly, ants know where to go without necessarily knowing where they are.
“Mammals seem to build a mental map of their surroundings, but insects? [Wehner argues that] ants know where to go without necessarily knowing where they are.”
A highlight of this book are the full-colour illustrations. Text and images complement each other perfectly: you need one to understand the other. No fewer than three graphic designers are credited in the acknowledgements, hinting at the staggering amount of work involved. The vast majority of illustrations have been redrawn from roughly 100 different scientific publications, covering five decades. This will have included everything from hand-drawn illustrations in the early days to those produced with graphic software recently. Had these been reproduced as is, which happens, the mixture of visual styles would have been jarring. Now, the book is presented in such a smooth, uniform style that it almost goes unnoticed, so this is a point of praise worth reiterating.
After Wilson’s and Hölldobler’s book The Ants in 1990 and Tschinkel’s The Fire Ants in 2006 (and with Army Ants also published in 2020), this title joins what is becoming an illustrious line-up of in-depth books on ants published by Harvard University Press. I praise them unreservedly for the lavish production values they have heaped upon it. Desert Navigator is a myrmecological masterpiece and a fitting milestone in Wehner’s long and successful research career. If you have any interest in ants, insect behaviour, or animal navigation you absolutely do not want to skip this astonishing book.
* Since we cannot perceive polarized light, a short explanation is called for. When emitted by the sun, travelling light waves can oscillate up and down, or side to side, or really any angle in between. When light enters the atmosphere and water bodies, it scatters. Air and water molecules filter out waves with certain oscillation directions, leaving only waves oscillating in other directions. The result is called polarized light.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
Other recommended books mentioned in this review:
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or To figure out how old a tree is, all you have to do is count its rings, and some truly ancient trees grace the pages of this book. But, as tree-ring researcher Valerie Trouet shows, that is the least fascinating thing you can derive from wood. Revealing the inner workings of the academic field formally known as dendrochronology, Tree Story is an immersive jaunt through archaeology, palaeoclimatology, and environmental history. A beautifully written and designed book, it highlights the importance and usefulness of tree rings in reconstructing past climate and linking it to human history.
Tree Story: The History of the World Written in Rings, written by Valerie Trouet, published by Johns Hopkins University Press in May 2020 (hardback, 246 pages)
The first things that struck me when opening Tree Story were the beautifully designed endpapers (more on the illustrations later). At the front of the book is a world map with thumbnails of important trees and sites, and what chapters they feature in. At the back is a timeline of key historical periods and events, both human and climatological. Too few publishers make use of this, so we are off to a great start.
The first few chapters of Tree Story provide an excellent introduction. Trouet traces the history of dendrochronology to its unlikely birthplace in the Arizona desert, explains how tree rings are actually formed in living trees, and how, based on fluctuating climatic conditions, their appearance changes. Years with good growing conditions result in wider rings, while challenging years with droughts, storms, or other climatic upheavals result in narrower rings. That last factor is key when it comes to dating (in the chronological sense): the unique pattern of wider and narrower rings acts as a barcode. By looking at many trees in different parts of the world, researchers have constructed large databases of overlapping tree ring patterns that go back millennia. Using these can tell you how long ago a certain tree died, and therefore how old a wooden object or building is.
Having covered these basics, the bulk of Tree Story consists of a series of immersive chapters that look at some of the most interesting studies done using tree rings. For one, they play an important role in palaeoclimatology. The historical record of weather stations only extends back a few centuries, so to reconstruct past climates, palaeoclimatologists use proxies: indirect traces that correlate with climate. These have been collected from ice cores, lake sediments, stalagmites, and, of course, tree rings. But the pattern of rings only reveals so much. The width of rings will not tell you if a tree was stressed because of drought or cold, for example. By looking closer with lab instruments you can measure the wood density in individual rings, and that is primarily determined by temperature. It was one of the many proxies used by climate scientists to reconstruct the famous hockey-stick graph of past temperatures.
“harvest dates […] of trees used in the construction of historical buildings […] has revealed phases where building activity peaked, alternating with periods where plagues or the collapse of empires saw construction grind to a halt.”
Researchers have also compared harvest dates of thousands of trees used in the construction of historical buildings. This has revealed phases where building activity peaked, alternating with periods where plagues or the collapse of empires saw construction grind to a halt. One prominent example is the complex decline of the Roman Empire, which was illuminated (as Trouet gracefully acknowledges here) in Kyle Harper’s excellent book The Fate of Rome. Wood in historical buildings or archaeological dig sites can also cast a light on the history of regional deforestation and the ensuing timber trade as people started importing wood from forests further away from major population centres. This is the subtle art of dendroprovenancing.
Even more jaw-dropping is the link Trouet has drawn between tree rings, shipwrecks, and pirates. Hurricanes that rip leaves and branches off trees result in years of poor growth, leaving a visible mark in the tree-ring record. But hurricanes also sink ships. And when she compared the historical record of shipwrecks with that of hurricanes captured in tree rings, the two matched beautifully. At the same time, an extended period of reduced sunspot activity known as the Maunder Minimum reduced temperatures and, with it, storm activity, coinciding with the Golden Age of Piracy from approximately 1650–1720.
“Even more jaw-dropping is the link Trouet has drawn between tree rings, shipwrecks, and pirates. […] As you keep reading, the exciting examples of cross-disciplinary science underpinned by tree rings just keep coming, right up to the final chapter.”
As you keep reading, the exciting examples of cross-disciplinary science underpinned by tree rings just keep coming, right up to the final chapter. The impact of past volcanic eruptions such as Tambora. The fluctuations of the jet stream blowing high up in the atmosphere that shows in tree rings at ground level. The amazing story of how a suspected large earthquake in the Pacific Northwest was confirmed by historical records of a tsunami of unknown origin in Japan. The history of forest fires and different fire regimes read from tree scars. The Little Ice Age in Europe and how it was cleverly exploited by the Dutch. Some authors, notably archaeologist Brian Fagan, have build careers on investigating the link between climate and the rise and fall of nations, although Trouet is quick to point out that it is an oversimplification to think that climatic changes alone topple civilizations. Other factors are just as important in determining the resilience of societies.
The clarity of Trouet’s explanations stands out, as does the book’s pacing: chapters are just the right length and never outstay their welcome. Thoughtful little extras are the glossary, the list of tree species, and separate lists with references and recommended reading. Add to this her personal stories and anecdotes based on a twenty-year career. She strikes the right balance between entertaining the reader without overshadowing the scientific narrative. And she moves you: these stories will make you laugh, cringe, or (in the case of the relentless persecution that followed the publication of the hockey-stick graph) anger you.
“A massive shout-out to the illustrator, Oliver Uberti. […] His [infographics] are uniform, clean, crisp, legible, clearly labelled, and (importantly) designed to be printed in grayscale—and those lovely endpapers really turn the book into a keepsake.”
Without wanting to take your attention away from the wonderful book that Trouet has written here, I want to give a massive shout-out to the illustrator, Oliver Uberti. His style looked familiar and I realise I have previously heaped praise on his infographics when reviewing Who We Are and How We Got Here. His illustrations give the book a certain cachet and are uniform, clean, crisp, legible, clearly labelled, and (importantly) designed to be printed in grayscale—and those lovely endpapers really turn the book into a keepsake. Publishers and authors should pay close attention and be lining up to commission him.
Tree Story is a sublime example of what booksellers have lately started calling smart non-fiction: sophisticated academic books for a broad audience (often published by American university presses) that are just a few notches above the yuck or wow-factor of more generic popular science. The excellent clarity and pacing that Trouet brings to this fascinating topic meant I that tore through Tree Story in a day. If I added ratings to my reviews, this book would be a ten out of ten. Already, this is a very strong contender for my book of the year.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
Other recommended books mentioned in this review:
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After I reviewed Joy McCann’s book Wild Sea I became fascinated with the three-dimensional nature of ocean currents. She captivated my imagination with her vivid description of the formation of bodies of heavy, cold water plunging into the abyss around Antarctica. So when Cambridge University Press announced this textbook it seemed like the perfect opportunity to dive deeper into this topic.
Ocean Circulation in Three Dimensions, written by Barry A. Klinger and Thomas W.N. Haine, published by Cambridge University Press in March 2019 (hardback, 470 pages)
Both authors are oceanographers that actively teach courses on ocean circulation, so the material and exercises presented here have been field-tested on undergraduate students. Their preface contains suggestions for teachers on how to build a two-semester course out of this book, while a useful table indicates which chapters to read before others. This thoughtful level of organisation characterises the book as a whole. The three dimensions of ocean circulation are also applied figuratively, with each chapter divided into three sections: observations of ocean movements, concepts to explain these observations, and theory to quantify and apply these concepts.
The first two chapters review the foundations of physical oceanography you need to be familiar with, of which three pillars stand out. First are the physical characteristics of the ocean, specifically the importance of temperature and salinity, but also the influence of Earth’s rotation, which affects ocean circulation through the Coriolis force. Second is how oceanographers gather their data: via submerged sensors attached to stationary or moving platforms, or via satellites. With so much of oceanography now done using computers and remotely collected data sets, it is easy to forget where your data come from. It is equally easy to forget their limitations, which feeds into the third foundational pillar: mathematical models.
The oceans are enormous and largely inaccessible, and datasets are often limited in either time or space. You can collect long time series in one location, or you can cover more ground but only collect snapshots. Satellites and remote sensing have advanced the field tremendously, but these time series are relatively recent, often have some limitation on spatial resolution or on how deep they can probe the ocean, and are of limited duration: satellites only last so long and new space missions require continued funding. As such, physical oceanography, and therefore this book, rely heavily on numerical models to fill in the gaps and make predictions.
“A useful table indicates which chapters to read before others. This thoughtful level of organisation characterises the book as a whole […] with each chapter divided into three sections”
Having explained these basics, Klinger & Haine first consider the upper ocean, then the deep ocean, and finally the unique circulation patterns at the planet’s poles. What these chapters reveal is the beautiful complexity and diversity of circulation mechanisms. I will attempt a brief summary – with advance apologies if I oversimplify or butcher concepts given my limited background knowledge.
So, at the surface, wind drives the formation of gyres (frequently mentioned in news reports on plastic pollution and oceanic garbage patches). But rather than centrally located whirlpools, the Earth’s rotation causes them to be offset to the west, leading to powerful western boundary currents hugging the coasts of various continents. The constant churning of wind and waves turns the top layer of the ocean into a mixed layer with a relatively uniform vertical profile of temperature, salinity, and density. Gyre circulation at depth differs from the surface. As you descend, pressure rises and circulation patterns slow down and weaken, building up vertical shear. At the equator, currents differ again, with converging and diverging surface flows dominating, leading to upwelling and downwelling through so-called Ekman suction and pumping, transporting water vertically. Here, the three-dimensional character of ocean circulation comes to the fore, with surface and subsurface waters flowing in different directions.
An interlude, chapter 7, talks about meanders, eddies, and small-scale mixing processes. The authors then complete the circulation picture by looking at polar overturning cells where water sinks into the abyss, moves at depth over long distances, and wells up again near the equator. This is where the topography of the ocean bottom comes into play, with sills and marginal seas having an influence. Because of the position of the continents, the world’s oceans have several north-south corridors such as the Atlantic, where the direction of flow is along lines of longitude or meridians, hence this is called meridional overturning.
“The oceans are enormous and largely inaccessible, and datasets are often limited in either time or space. […] As such, physical oceanography, and therefore this book, rely heavily on numerical models […]”
The planet’s poles deserve special attention. The main reason is that the South Pole with its raging Antarctic Circumpolar Current connects to and interacts with all of Earth’s major ocean basins. This involves all the processes discussed so far. Together with the difficulty of gathering data here, this is still aqua incognita, so to speak: many questions remain and many details are sketchy. The other reason why the poles deserve attention is that they are, well, polar opposites. While the South Pole is an isolated landmass surrounded by water, the North Pole is a land-locked ocean partially covered with sea ice. Narrow passages such as the Bering Strait and the Barents Sea Opening are the only connection to global ocean circulation.
I found the observation and concept sections of each chapter reasonably accessible, and some of the illustrations particularly helpful, though I would have liked a glossary. Klinger & Haine define important terms, but I had to go back repeatedly to look up basic concepts such as geostrophic flow that remained abstract to me. As far as the book’s level is concerned then, this is an advanced-level text – personally, I would have benefitted from first reading an introductory oceanography textbook. Students will want to tackle this book in a classroom setting, especially once it gets to the theoretical sections. I read through these only to discover mathematical operators that I didn’t even know existed. One of the endorsements printed on the book mentions the option of self-study, though my impression is that this is the preserve of advanced students and professional oceanographers who are both familiar and comfortable with the mathematics and modelling used here.
“The planet’s poles deserve special attention […] the Southern Pole with its raging Antarctic Circumpolar Current connects to and interacts with all of Earth’s major ocean basins.”
The above is, of course, not a criticism of the book, but is good to know going in. Minor suggestions for improvements would be aforementioned glossary. Similarly, an online module with animations to help visualise movements and dynamic processes (such as was included with the CUP textbook Structural Geology) would be nifty, though I recognize the time, skill, and effort involved in creating these. No, what I really felt was missing was a final integrative chapter bringing together all the concepts that have been treated separately up to that point. Clearly, different modes of circulation dominate in different parts of the oceans, and at different times, but none of them occurs in isolation. So, what, ultimately, does ocean circulation in three dimensions look like? A short ocean-by-ocean walkthrough would have been instructive. That said, I certainly would not suggest ditching the current last chapter. Here, Klinger & Haine briefly explore the link between ocean circulation and the global climate, palaeoclimatology, and the possibility of abrupt climate change.
Ocean Circulation in Three Dimensions is one of the first books I know of to tackle this topic head-on. The authors explore competing models and explanations and are mindful to highlight that this is forever work-in-progress. Nevertheless, as an overview of our current state of knowledge, this book will be a valuable reference work for professionals. Similarly, the book’s structure and plentiful exercises make it a useful textbook for students, though they will probably need a classroom or graduate course setting to get the most out of it.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
Other recommended books mentioned in this review:
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or Collapse is a feature, not a bug. This motto is almost like a mantra to physical chemist Ugo Bardi. He is interested in complex systems and how they collapse. Whether they be human-made structures, companies, societies, or ecosystems; he follows the thinking of Roman philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4BCE–65CE) who wrote, in Bardi’s words, that “growth is slow, but the way to ruin is rapid”. This led Bardi to write The Seneca Effect in 2017, which was reviewed here previously. Now he is back with Before the Collapse, a book aimed at a wider audience that promises to help readers understand and navigate collapses in their lives.
Before the Collapse: A Guide to the Other Side of Growth, written by Ugo Bardi, published by Springer in October 2019 (paperback, 242 pages)
Bardi opens his book with a chapter on modelling. Before we even get to describing the growth and collapse of complex systems, he wants readers to understand how we do this describing. The thing about complex systems is that they are… well, complex. Whether it is the weather forecast or the depletion of fossil fuel reserves, scientists often turn to models, and this approach is often eyed suspiciously or even belittled by the general public. Something that he thinks is entirely unjustified.
So, before proceeding, Bardi wants readers to understand the difference between top-down and bottom-up approaches to building a model, and their advantages and limitations. He is especially interested in the failure of models to predict rapid, unexpected changes (so-called tipping points, though Bardi calls the catastrophic variants Seneca cliffs), and their inability to foresee statistical outliers: the unpredictable, potentially devastating, never-before-experienced events that have been popularised as black swans. He also highlights the psychological biases that lead us to disbelief models, whether through emotions, biases, gullibility, inappropriate rules of thumb, or a false sense of security that makes us overestimate the chances that model predictions will be wrong.
“[Bardi] is especially interested in the failure of models to predict tipping points, and their inability to foresee statistical outliers: the unpredictable, potentially devastating, never-before-experienced events popularised as black swans”
With the value of models sufficiently established, Bardi moves on to describe the anatomy of complex systems and the various growth modes by which they can develop. But the bulk of the book is a catalogue of catastrophes. As in The Seneca Effect, this includes human-engineered structures, financial and societal collapses, resource depletion, famines, and ecosystem collapse, but also some new categories such as natural disasters, warfare, epidemics, and depopulation. Some examples were already covered in his last book, including the peak oil concept and the Irish famine of 1845. Others, though, are new, such as the 2018 collapse of the Morandi bridge in Genoa, the bankruptcy of video rental company Blockbuster, the great 1966 flood of Florence that Bardi experienced personally, and some of history’s most fatal wars. Bardi writes of them with his typical sense of often grim and ironic humour, and a bold, fearless attitude that sees him confront uncomfortable facts of life with almost Stoic calm.
The book’s preface promises that this is a completely new and different book, though I feel he only partially delivers on that promise. If you have not read The Seneca Effect this, of course, is not much of an issue. The blurb mentions that “this book will help you […] face failure and collapse at all scales […] and navigate the swirl of events that frequently threaten your balance and happiness“, and the preface expresses the hope that “you will find this book useful for your life and your career“. Based on this I was expecting if not a kind of self-help book, at least something in the way of applied lessons on a personal level. But it seems that once Bardi gets to his chapter on strategies to manage collapses, he has abandoned this plan and partially retreads his last book, though, admittedly, with some new examples.
“Given that we have depleted easily accessible fossil fuel and mineral resources during the past few centuries, could we reboot civilization after a crash?”
So, the option of technological progress against collapse is new. Here, Bardi focuses on new ways to meet our energy needs, covering the pipe dream of cold fusion research, futuristic concepts such as universal mining machines, and our likely saviour, renewable energy. The section on avoiding overexploitation is confusingly more a showcase of how not to avoid collapse, highlighting how politics and greed often come together to deplete the resources we depend on.
Not new is the section on the Iago strategy, previously covered as hostile collapses – this is the dark side of the Seneca cliff, the use of deception and betrayal to avoid ruin by destroying an opponent in, for example, warfare. Also not new is the discussion on different forms of governing resources, the tragedy of the commons, the question of whether democracy and privatisation can stave off collapse, or the example of Japan during the Edo period as a rare case of a zero-growth society with exceptional long-term stability.
“[…] unless you are in a position of power, you have little influence to change or avert collapses. For most people, the best strategy is to familiarise yourself with the concept of collapses so that you may both understand and recognize them”
And The Seneca Effect also already explored the possibility of rebound after collapse, though Bardi here asks the interesting question if this would be possible after the collapse of our current society. Given that we have depleted easily accessible fossil fuel and mineral resources during the past few centuries, could we reboot civilization after a crash? Keep in mind that geochemical processes will not replenish these reserves in our lifetimes, if ever. Still, he thinks recycling mineral resources to kick-start a renewable-energy–based infrastructure could be an option. I would add that we might also want to have at hand ample copies of Lewis Dartnell’s The Knowledge.
If I have to be critical, I have two gripes with this book. One is that I feel the book wanders a bit. I personally very much enjoy the subject matter and am happy to accompany Bardi as he muses his way through the book. But I do think it would have benefited from both proofreading to catch out grammatical errors, and especially from some critical editorial attention. A revision of the text might have resulted in something more coherent and novel that truly sets itself apart from his previous book, something it now only partially succeeds in doing.
Second, as mentioned above, based on the blurb and the preface I expected a slightly different book with more actionable advice (a six-point summary at the end of the book contains a few pointers). However, given the nature of complex systems it appears that, unless you are in a position of power, you have little influence to change or avert collapses. For most people, the best strategy is to familiarise yourself with the concept of collapses so that you may both understand them and recognize when they are imminent or already underway. And that is something this book does succeed in. I am convinced that readers will come away with plenty of ideas to mull over.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
Other recommended books mentioned in this review:
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