The Music of the Gyres
Our oceans are singing us an important song. It’s time to listen.
One of the world’s great ocean currents is slowing much faster than we ever thought it would. This according to a study published last month in the journal Nature. If that current, known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, continues to decelerate at its present rate it could collapsed entirely by century’s end. The world to follow will be so climatically chaotic that the extreme weather events of 2023 will seem quaint.
This news was oddly familiar to me because at the beginning of my writing career The New York Times happened to assign me a book to review called “Flotsametrics and the Floating World.” Other than my review, the book received scant attention at the time and disappeared quickly (as most books do). But news of the AMOC’s potential near-term collapse brought the odd science of Flotsametrics back to me in a troubling way. I share the review of the book below in hopes that others will be equally disturbed.
Flotsam and jetsam are two differentF things. Flotsam is an accident, debris that has fallen into the water haphazardly — a container full of sneakers swept off the deck of a freighter, for example. Jetsam, meanwhile is a thing of intent, cast into the sea deliberately, like a message in a bottle. This…
