[Vision2020] MIT Press: Paul N. Edwards "A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming"

[Ted Moffett]

There are a wide variety of views on climate change science, and everyone
who follows the scientific method with integrity is a skeptic.  The grouping
of views into two opposing camps on anthopogenic climate warming, "skeptic"
and "non-skeptic," is a false and misleading dichotomy.

Some explicitly state the climate models "ignore real data," *(read here: *
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/about-us  "...unwise reliance on imperfect
climate models while ignoring real data...), which implies not just a faulty
model, but deliberately using a model to replace "real data," as though
there is data without a model.  This is a central issue in "A Vast
Machine."  As author Edwards wrote in "A Vast Machine," as quoted in a
review of this book from American Scientist website:

http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/how-we-make-knowledge-about-climate-change

In the countless political controversies over climate change, the debate
often shakes out into a contest: models versus data.

 This supposed contest is at best an illusion, at worst a deliberate
deception—because *without models, there are no data*. I’m not talking about
the difference between “raw” and “cooked” data. I mean this literally.

 ------------------ The following essay by Edwards in "Science" journal
might more fully explain this point of view.  Note the essay is from 2004,
revealing Edwards has been working on his book, "A Vast Machine," published
in 2010, for many years
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/304/5672/827 BEYOND THE IVORY
TOWER:
"A Vast Machine": Standards as Social Technology*Paul N.
Edwards**<http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/304/5672/827#affiliation>
--------------
Regarding the DiPuccio "weblog" on ocean heat, for a self described
"skeptic," you are remarkably unskeptical when it comes to presenting
"scientific" statements as reliable, from sources that do not represent a
comprehensive and balanced view of all the published peer reviewed science
on a given issue.

You state unequivically that this "weblog," which is not published in a
credible peer reviewed science journal, demonstrates that "the climate
models" (all existing climate models regarding ocean heat, or only some?))
"have gotten the heat content of oceans wrong."  You also write that the
models all use the "same type of assumptions" which does not say anything
without specifics.  Of course all the climate models of integrity will
follow the law of conservation of energy (
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/thermo1f.html ) , for example.
This is not an error in the models.

At least Pielke's website warns the reader that DiPuccio is "not a published
climate scientist."

Without extensively researching this question, I would not assume this
DiPuccio "weblog" is an expression of a comprehensive and balanced analysis
of all the published science on this issue.

There are many theories and arguments presented in the world of science,
many of which are shown via peer review to be highly questionable.  Other
theories and arguments hold up to rigorous skeptical peer review.  Without
surveying all or most of the scientific peer review literature on a given
question, the question remains insufficiently examined.

I doubt you have done this research... If so, please correct my statement,
and present the comprehensive research.   If not, why jump to the conclusion
this DiPuccio "weblog" is authoritative science?

At website below read a paper published in the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences in Dec. 2009, by Vermeer and Rahmstorf, where they state
that "ocean heat uptake is not sufficiently understood" revealed by the fact
that "observed sea level rise exceeded that predicted by models" for the
examples they list.  They explore errors in climate models in this paper.

The climate model Rahmstorf uses for the physics of the oceans accounts for
this uncertainty, if I understand correctly.

However, this uncertainty does not lead the authors to conclude that the
predictions of significant sea level rise by 2100 due to climate warming
from human impacts, are largely unreliable, given a range of predictions for
sea level rise, 75 to 190 cm (.75 to 1.9 meter), from 1990 to 2100.  Note
this prediction states that IPCC AR 4 (2) predictions of sea level rise are
lower than their findings, if I read correctly:

*Global Sea Level Linked to Global Temperature*

http://www.pnas.org/content/106/51/21527.full.pdf+html?sid=33ab2f75-9b36-4b19-9688-7bc5bcb1ccc7

 On 9/14/10, Paul Rumelhart <godshatter at yahoo.com> wrote:

>
> Skeptics aren't saying that the very idea of modeling climate is wrong,
> just that too much import is being placed on the specific climate models
> that are currently being used.  These models should only be considered to be
> useful if their predictions are verified as accurate.  That's where the
> problems lies.  These models all make the same type of assumptions, and
> haven't had a very good track record for predicting climate changes as they
> occur.
>
> I'll dig up some more references when I have more time, but here is an
> article that describes how the climate models have gotten the heat content
> of the oceans wrong.
>
>
> http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2009/05/05/have-changes-in-ocean-heat-falsified-the-global-warming-hypothesis-a-guest-weblog-by-william-dipuccio/
>
> Paul
>
> Ted Moffett wrote:
>
>> http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12080 <
>> http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12080>
>>  A Vast Machine
>> *Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming*
>> Paul N. Edwards <
>> http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/author/default.asp?aid=572>
>>
>> Table of Contents and Sample Chapters <
>> http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12080&mode=toc>
>>
>>
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> Edwards argues that all our knowledge about climate change comes from
>> three kinds of computer models: simulation models of weather and climate;
>> reanalysis models, which recreate climate history from historical weather
>> data; and data models, used to combine and adjust measurements from many
>> different sources. Meteorology creates knowledge through an infrastructure
>> (weather stations and other data platforms) that covers the whole world,
>> making global data. This infrastructure generates information so vast in
>> quantity and so diverse in quality and form that it can be understood only
>> by computer analysis—making data global. Edwards describes the science
>> behind the scientific consensus on climate change, arguing that over the
>> years data and models have converged to create a stable, reliable, and
>> trustworthy basis for establishing the reality of global warming.
>>
>> *About the Author*
>>
>> Paul N. Edwards is Associate Professor in the School of Information 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.
>>
>> Reviews
>>
>> "I recommend this book with considerable enthusiasm. Although it’s a term
>> reviewers have made into a cliché, I think /A Vast Machine/ is nothing less
>> than a tour de force. It is the most complete and balanced description we
>> have of two sciences whose results and recommendations will, in the years
>> ahead, be ever more intertwined with the decisions of political leaders and
>> the fate of the human species."
>> —*Noel Castree*, /American Scientist/
>>
>> "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. [...] /A Vast Machine/ puts the whole
>> affair into historical context and should be compulsory reading for anyone
>> who now feels empowered to pontificate on how climate science should be
>> done."
>> —*Myles Allen*, /Nature/
>>
>>
>>
>> Endorsements
>>
>> "/A Vast Machine/ is a beautifully written, analytically insightful, and
>> hugely well-informed account of the development and influence of the models
>> and data that are the foundation of our knowledge that the climate is
>> changing and that human beings are making it change."
>> —*Donald MacKenzie*, Professor of Sociology, University of Edinburgh,
>> author of /An Engine, Not a Camera/
>>
>> “This important and articulate book explains how scientists learned to
>> understand the atmosphere, measure it, trace its past, and model its future.
>> Edwards counters skepticism and doom with compelling reasons for hope and a
>> call to action.”
>> —*James Rodger Fleming*, Professor of Science, Technology and Society,
>> Colby College
>>
>> “With this new book, Paul Edwards once again writes the history of
>> technology on a grand scale. Through his investigation of computational
>> science, international governance, and scientific knowledge production, he
>> shows that the very ability to conceptualize a global climate as such is
>> wrapped up in the history of these institutions and their technological
>> infrastructure. In telling this story, Edwards again makes an original
>> contribution to a crowded field.”
>> —*Greg Downey*, University of Wisconsin-Madison
>>
>> ------------------------------------------
>> Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>
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