| Title | A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming |
| Publication Type | Book |
| Authors | Edwards, Paul N. |
| Number of Pages | 547 |
| Publisher | MIT Press |
| City | Cambridge, MA |
| ISBN Number | 978-0-262-29071-5 |
| Abstract | 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. |
| Notes | 'Edwards’s book illustrates the complex and tricky processes by which climate knowledge became global knowledge – how it had to become global knowledge in order to make a political case for global warming. In bringing to the fore a history of disagreement and debate – what he refers to as “data friction” – he makes the important claim that negotiated and contested collection methods, metadata standards, and computer models largely mediate what we currently know of climate science and global warming. \n - poiril'
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| Short Title | A Vast Machine |
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