New Zealand Journal of Forestry (2009) 54(3): 6–12
©New Zealand Institute of Forestry

Professional Paper
Some basic questions about climate models

David B. South ¹, Peter Brown ² and Bill Dyck <sup>3

1</sup> David South is a Forestry Professor at Auburn University
² Bill Dyck is a Science and Technology Broker who has worked for the plantation forest industry
³ Peter Brown is a Registered Forestry Consultant.
⁴ The authors’ statements should not be taken as representing views of their employers or the NZIF. Full citations may be found at: https://fp.auburn.edu/sfws/south/citations.html

Some foresters are concerned about increasing CO₂ levels in the atmosphere while others doubt that CO₂ has been the main driver of climate change over the past million years or over the past two centuries (Brown et al. 2008). We three admit that (1) we do not know what the future climate will be in the year 2100, (2) we do not pretend to know the strength of individual feedback factors, (3) we do not know how much 600 ppm of CO₂ will warm the Earth and (4) we do not know how the climate will affect the price of pine sawlogs in the year 2050 (in either relative or absolute terms). The climate is not a simple system and therefore we believe it is important to ask questions. The following 15 questions deal mainly with global climate models (GCM).
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