Paper short abstract:

Unlike the weather, climate is supposed to be beyond people’s immediate experience of the environment. Nonetheless, based on the analysis of the history and practice of the geosciences, I show that geoscientists turn what is ‘invisible’ to the senses ‘visible’, by playing with shorter time scales.

Paper long abstract:

As the distinction between climate and weather suggest, knowledge about climate is supposed to be beyond people's immediate experience of the environment, in that it requires the implementation of a long-term record. Based on the analysis of the history and practice of the geosciences, I show that geoscientists have mastered the craft of turning what is 'invisible' to the senses 'visible' by playing with shorter time scales. In thinking and communicating about the past, geoscientists would compress and accelerate long-term environmental processes, often at the cost of dissociating them. Attending to the historical circumstances of the development of this capacity, I show that the objective detachment scientists perceive while envisioning the past, coincides with an optical understanding of time that follows the image of the telescope. Challenging the distinction between climate and weather, and the ideal of objectivity on which it rests, I conclude by discussing recent approaches in environmental anthropology that have adopted it.