Drilling for time: ice cores and the synchronization of temporalities in glaciology, 1935-1978

Abstract: Since their emergence in the 1950’s, ice cores have ventured from being scientific objects of concern to a limited number of glaciologists to becoming one of the most iconic representations of anthropogenic climate change. This thesis aims to historicize the way in which ice cores became enrolled into climate discourse, particularly emphasizing the production and representation of temporalities of the global climate that the ice cores made possible. Focusing on the ice core drillings conducted in Greenland during the International Geophysical Year 1957-1958, as well as at the American military base Camp Century in the late 1960’s, the thesis explores how the ice cores became entangled in broader political geographies of Arctic science, cultural conceptions of a planetary crisis and an extension of the temporal boundaries of environmental politics. By studying ice core science as a practice of synchronization, aimed at bridging the divide between human history and natural history, ice cores are seen as a part of a larger geopolitics of temporality, in which the temporal framework of global environmental politics were produced. As the ice core expanded – materially, temporally, discursively – during the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, ice core scientists became authorities on subjects previously seen as outside their scope. As ice cores today occupy a solid position in climate discourse, the temporalities and future narratives they enable have undergone a process of reification in order to fit in broader political and cultural frameworks. This thesis adds to the growing literature on temporalities within environmental humanities by highlighting the process through which ice cores were written into modern climate discourse.