Paul N. Edwards, A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (MIT Press, 2013)

Edwards’ A Vast Machine analyzes different types of knowledge-making techniques and how they come to bare on past, present, and future understandings of the climate crisis. In doing so, Edwards sheds light on how the use of computational methods to produce climate data positions the environment as something that can be known and acted upon. Tracing the history of climatology and numerical weather prediction, Edwards argues that climate science is a global knowledge infrastructure informed by history and that the building of technical systems to gather climate data has created an “infrastructural globalism” that has shaped methods and practices of data collection. These claims support Edwards’ view that data are collected (and used) for a particular purpose and, therefore, that data are not neutral. This position extends into Edwards’ concluding remarks on climate-change policy, journalism, and “citizen-science” projects, which, he argues, are marred by both partisan, non-expert views, and the general lack of scientific certainty about the climate crisis. Ultimately, Edwards’ technically-driven account of the numerical politics of global warming thoughtfully analyzes how climate data are informed by and intertwined with the infrastructures and institutions that create and govern them. -HH