I have the freedom to do what I want... bright people to talk to every day.

The Ph.D. system was designed for a job in academics. And it works really well if you really want to be an academic, and the system actually works quite well. So for people who have the gift and like to go spend their lives as scholars, it's fine. But the trouble is that it's become a kind of a meal ticket - you can't get a job if you don't have a Ph.D.

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

There is no way to find the best design except to try out as many designs as possible and discard the failures.

We do not know how much of the environmental change is due to human activities and how much [is due] to long-term natural processes over which we have no control.

I think it's a big mistake to decide too soon what you're going to do with your life.

Things are always more complicated than most people believe.