“As I have argued for years, we simply do not know the answer [to the sensitivity of climate to greenhouse gas forcing]. There is a wide margin of error in many of the ingredients that go into the [climate] models. For example, we do not know some of the radiative properties of the aerosols to a factor of 5. No matter how good your climate model is, you cannot compensate for that uncertainty. The range of uncertainty is broad enough to accommodate [Patrick] Michaels (well, maybe North) and [Jerry] Mahlman.”
– Gerald North (Texas A&M) to Rob Bradley (Enron), September 17, 1999
…“One has to fill in what goes on between 5 km and the surface. The standard way is through atmospheric models. I cannot make a better excuse.”
– Gerald North (Texas A&M) to Rob Bradley (Enron), October 2, 1998
“We do not know much about modeling climate.