Some insights from this year's meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

"We are basically looking now at a future climate that is beyond anything we've considered seriously in climate model simulations."

Chris Field, co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's second working group

"[Cloning a Neanderthal] starting from the DNA extracted from a fossil is and will remain impossible as far as I can see into the future."

Svante Pääbo, sequencer of the Neanderthal genome

"If life did happen many times, there could be something like a shadow biosphere that either was, or is, all around us."

Paul Davies, Beyond Center, Arizona State University

"[President Obama] sees the value of science not just as a way of keeping those strange members of our society employed who want to go off and do quirky things. … He is really valuing the product."

James McCarthy, AAAS president

Sources: Nature, Wired Science