The biggest breakthrough in the next 50 years will be the discovery of extraterrestrial life. We have been searching for it for 50 years and found nothing. That proves life is rarer than we hoped, but does not prove that the universe is lifeless. We are only now developing the tools to make our searches efficient and far-reaching, as optical and radio detection and data processing move forward.

Vegetation is really controlling what happens...whereas the emphasis in the climate models has always been on the atmosphere.

Everything in my life was luck. The key to having an interesting life is to always say "yes" to anything crazy.

The glory of science is to imagine more than we can prove.

Scepticism is as important for a good journalist as it is for a good scientist.

I am hoping that the scientists and politicians who have been blindly demonizing carbon dioxide for 37 years will one day open their eyes and look at the evidence.

The technologies which have had the most profound effects on human life are usually simple.