Forcings and Felt-Virtualities: Do Climate Models Have Affects?

The paper explores the perhaps daunting technicalities of computational modelling of climate sensitivity in the light of experience/sensings of temperature.

It has two threads. First, it argues that the modelling of sensitivity has implications for how change is experienced. In this line of thought, calculations of temperature are not thermodynamic abstractions, but rather they are felt-virtualities, or approximations to contemporary experience of temperature.

Second, it argues that the modelling of sensitivity is a 'forcing,' or a way of obliging something to be felt. The obligation is to feel temperature in its sensitivity to change.

Both threads of thought will be explored through a prototypical model of sensitivity, James Lovelock's Daisyworld model, a model that exemplifies contemporary efforts to articulate the artificiality of climate. Just as Daisyworld is a parable for Gaia, the Daisyworld implementations in computer code could be seen as 'geostories' (Haraway; Debaise) for an experience of felt-virtuality or increased sensitivity to change through contemporary approximating devices.

Adrian Mackenzie (professor in the School of Sociology, Australian National University) researches how people work and live with media, devices, knowledges and infrastructures. He often focuses on software and platforms. He has a keen interest in the methodological challenges of media and science infrastructures for sociology. He is currently researching models, apps and sensors for extreme events.

This lecture is part of the MAKING SENSE OF ALGORITHMS virtual lecture series curated by David Howes and sponsored by the Centre for Sensory Studies in collaboration with the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture (CISSC).