Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment

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.



Keywords: ice cores, Arctic science, temporalities, Environmental humanities, climate modelling, history of science, Willi Dansgaard, Anthropocene, synchronization, temporal regimes

The aim of this study is to, with a particular emphasis on the Swedish meteorologist Bert Bolin, present the process of co-production between science and politics that led to a broad consensus regarding climate change among international climate scientists. The study follows Bolin from the early 1960’s, and the start of his international career, to the climate conference in Villach, Austria 1985, where a large group of scientists agreed on the reality of climate change. Bolin’s efforts to move the climate issue from the national state to the global dimensions of climate politics is visible throughout the entire process leading up to the conference in Villach. Furthermore, Bolin was an early advocate for a more interconnected relationship between science and politics in the field of global climate change.
In addition to highlighting Bolin’s importance for the evolvement towards a global climate consciousness, the study shows how the scientific consensus reached in Villach depended on factors outside the field of climate science. It was not only empirically verified research that led to an agreement in the scientific community, but rather an intricate process involving political and social globalization and new transnational institutions.

Keywords: Bert Bolin, History of Science, climate change, co-production, boundary work, Science and Technology Studies

Using creative non-fiction as an entry into the subject, the essay explores the history of visibility standards for US wilderness areas and the tensions between the spatiality of early environmentalist imagination and the current moment of the Anthropocene.