...the computer models are very good at solving equations of fluid dynamics but very bad at describing the real world. The real world is full of things like clouds and vegetation and soil and dust which the models describe very poorly.

The world is just - it's wonderful when you look at all the detail. It's just amazing.

We cannot hope to either understand or to manage the carbon in the atmosphere unless we understand and manage the trees and the soil too.

I'm a mathematician, basically. What I do is look around for problems where I can find useful applications for mathematics. All I do, really, is the math, and other people have the ideas.

Younger people have so many opportunities. I don't see any pessimism among them.

The progress of science requires the growth of understanding in both directions, downward from the whole to the parts and upward from the parts to the whole. A reductionist philosophy, arbitrarily proclaiming that the growth of understanding must go only in one direction, makes no scientific sense. Indeed, dogmatic philosophical beliefs of any kind have no place in science.

Nothing is boring if you look at carefully.