This is a lecture from Colloquium Series Department 1.

Paleoclimatology is the science of the future. Proxy-data and model-based reconstructions of climatic events in Earth’s long history are a fundamental way to gauge the sensitivity of the whole Earth system to abrupt climate perturbations, such as the one we have now initiated. The epistemic importance of these techniques grows with every ppm of carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere (and every drop of ocean pH in the fourth decimal place) that pushes us increasingly outside the norm of recent climatic variability. Taking off from the perception that the climate dispruption of the Anthropocene is essentially turning back the clock of millions of years of climatic evolution and that analoguous episodes in the deep past may hold keys to what is directly ahead of us, my presentation will introduce contemporary and historical vistas into the symbiotic relationship between proxy data generation and paleoclimate modeling. This reciprocity operates, with great productivity, at the edges of what can be known and thereby invites intriguing ways of further speculation on the nature of these signals and how they mirror present states of our technological civilization. I will end with a short glimpse into such ventures of planetary evolution and (geo-)historical recurrence.