Vast Machine

<b>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.</b><p>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 <i>A Vast Machine</i> 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.</p>