A Vast Machine

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.