文档介绍：A VAST
MACHINE
COMPUTER MODELS, CLIMATE DATA, AND
THE POLITICS OF GLOBAL WARMING
PAUL N. EDWARDS
A Vast Machine
A Vast Machine
Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming
Paul N. Edwards
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
© 2010 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any
electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information
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Set in Stone by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited. Printed and bound in the United
States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Edwards, Paul N.
A vast machine : computer models, climate data, and the politics of global
warming / Paul N. Edwards.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-262-01392-5 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Weather forecasting. 2. Climatology — History. 3. Meteorology — History.
4. Climatology — Technological innovation. 5. Global temperature changes.
I. Title.
2010
— dc22
2009030678
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
for Steve
The meteorologist is impotent if alone; his observations are useless;
for they are made upon a point, while the speculations to be derived
from them must be on space. . . . The Meteorological Society, therefore,
has been formed not for a city, nor for a kingdom, but for the world.
It wishes to be the central point, the moving power, of a vast machine,
and it feels that unless it can be this, it must be powerless; if it cannot
do all it can do nothing. It desires to have at mand, at stated
periods, perfect systems of methodical and simultaneous observations;
it wishes its infl uence and its power to be omnipresent over the globe
so that it may be able to know, at