摘要：Ice cores from Antarctica, Greenland, and the high-mountain cryosphere have becomeessential sources of evidence on the climate dating back nearly 800,000 years. Earthscientists use ice cores to understand the chemical composition of the atmosphere, whichhas been trapped in the air bubbles between the ice crystals as they form annually; thisknowledge also feeds into modeling the climate’s future. Ice cores are not simply importantsources of environmental knowledge, but have become important elements of global environmentalrepresentations and politics since the 1980s. Ice cores do a lot of work. This articleis specifically concerned with examining how the practices involved in drilling, analyzing,discussing, and using ice cores for both science and broader climate or environmental policiesand cultures take part in constituting the temporalities of the global environment. Wesuggest that ice core discourses have constituted and advanced specific textures and sensibilitiesof time in relation to Earth’s past, the history of humans as both species and civilization,and certain apocalyptic and determined futures. While the evidence from ice cores ismeant to point toward obvious choices to control our global future, the temporalities of icecores might not lead the same way. This article joins an increasing concern in the environmentalhumanities with temporalities, and encourages greater attention to temporalities inenvironmental history
关键词：ice cores; ice; cryosphere; temporalities; deep time; polar regions
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