A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global WarmingThe science behind global warming, and its history: how scientists learned to understand the atmosphere, to measure it, to trace its past, and to model its future. Global warming skeptics often fall back on the argument that the scientific case for global warming is all model predictions, nothing but simulation; they warn us that we need to wait for real data, “sound science.” In A Vast Machine Paul Edwards has news for these skeptics: without models, there are no data. Today, no collection of signals or observations—even from satellites, which can “see” the whole planet with a single instrument—becomes global in time and space without passing through a series of data models. Everything we know about the world's climate we know through models. Edwards offers an engaging and innovative history of how scientists learned to understand the atmosphere—to measure it, trace its past, and model its future. |
Contents
1 | |
Seeing the Planetary Atmosphere | 27 |
International Meteorology and the Réseau Mondial | 49 |
4 Climatology and Climate Change before World War II | 61 |
5 Friction | 83 |
6 Numerical Weather Prediction | 111 |
7 The Infinite Forecast | 139 |
8 Making Global Data | 187 |
11 Data Wars | 287 |
The DoOver | 323 |
13 Parametrics and the Limits of Knowledge | 337 |
14 Simulation Models and Atmospheric Politics 19601992 | 357 |
Consensus Controversy and Climate Change | 397 |
Conclusion | 431 |
Notes | 441 |
509 | |
Other editions - View all
A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global ... Paul N. Edwards No preview available - 2013 |
A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global ... Paul N. Edwards No preview available - 2010 |