Embracing an uncertain future

摘要

Many people find climate models puzzling. As some of the most complex computer codes ever written, necessarily riddled with approximations and errors but also uniquely tested, these 'surrogate Earths' occupy a strange limbo between direct observations and conceptual tools. A Vast Machine traces how the development of these models has shaped both the way climate scientists think, and the institutions in which they work. A thorough and dispassionate analysis by a historian of science and technology, Paul Edwards' book is well timed. Although written before the University of East Anglia e-mail leak, it anticipates many of the issues raised by the 'climategate' affair.