The 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.
- ISBN10 0262518635
- ISBN13 9780262518635
- Publish Date 8 February 2013 (first published 1 January 2010)
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 22 January 2022
- Publish Country US
- Publisher MIT Press Ltd
- Imprint MIT Press
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 552
- Language English
- URL http://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262518635