Vast Machine Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming

Name: Vast Machine Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming
Price: 11.07 USD
Availability: InStock
ISBN: 9780262013925

ISBN-10: 0262013924

ISBN-13: 9780262013925

Edition: 2010

Authors: Paul N. Edwards

List price: $33.00

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Description:

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 MachinePaul Edwards has news for these doubters: without models, there are no data. Today, no collection of signals or observationsâ€”even from satellites, which can "see" the whole planet with a single instrumentâ€”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…

Book details

List price: $33.00
Copyright year: 2010
Publisher: MIT Press
Publication date: 3/12/2010
Binding: Hardcover
Pages: 528
Size: 6.50" wide x 9.50" long x 1.50" tall
Weight: 1.936

Paul N. Edwards is Professor in the School of Information and the Department of History at the University of Michigan. He is the author of The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America (1996) and a coeditor (with Clark Miller) of Changing the Atmosphere: Expert Knowledge and Environmental Governance (2001), both published by the MIT Press.



Acknowledgments


Introduction



Thinking Globally



Global Space, Universal Time: Seeing the Planetary Atmosphere



Standards and Networks: International Meteorology and the Rï¿½seau Mondial



Climatology and Climate Change before World War II



Friction



Numerical Weather Prediction



The Infinite Forecast



Making Global Data



The First WWW



Making Data Global



Data Wars



Reanalysis: The Do-Over



Parametrics and the Limits of Knowledge



Simulation Models and Atmospheric Politics, 1960–1992



Signal and Noise: Consensus, Controversy, and Climate Change


Conclusion


Notes


Index