Oceans are critical to the earth systems processes that sustain life on this planet.  They constitute a huge assemblage that stores and redistributes heat, minerals, organic materials, carbon, and water across the globe, north to south and from the deep to the shallows and onto land.  Oceans concentrate 50 times more carbon than the atmosphere and they have absorbed 90% of the warming that has occurred in recent decades as a result of anthropogenic climate change.  This BLUE Readings seminar will try to understand the ocean as a vast blue machine, part of an earth system complex responsible for the five basic cycles on this planet: the distribution and circulation of soils, air, water, ice and life. It will also try to understand the role of oceans in maintaining and exceeding safe and just earth systems boundaries in the Anthropocene.

To do so, we will read and discuss two texts:

• Czerski, H. (2023). Blue Machine. How the Ocean Shapes Our Our World. New York, Penguin Books.

• Rockström, J., et al. (2023). "Safe and Just Earth System Boundaries." Nature 619(7968): 102-111.

Helen Czerski is an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at University College London where she studies the effects of the bubbles underneath breaking waves in the open ocean on weather and climate. The article by Johan Rockström et al. is a follow-up on an earlier Stockholm Resilience Center study of earth systems limits.  This new article finds that seven out of safe earth systems boundaries have already been crossed in recent decades, foreshadowing not merely mass extinction but also an uncertain and unjust future for human life on the planet.

We will read the entire Czerski book, but if your time is limited or if you cannot get hold of the book, you could also listen to this popular dissemination talk by Helen Czerski at The Royal Institute a couple of months ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNUcwcO6ASY.  The article by Rockstrom et al is only 8 pages long.  It is available open access online.

The Blue Readings seminars are open to everybody with an interest in oceans and the trouble they are in. If you want to join us at Moesgaard, just show up. To get a Zoom link, please write to Nils Bubandt at bubandt@cas.au.dk.