Blogospheric opinion has divided on predictable lines over the Queensland Land and Resources Tribunal’s rejection of objections to a new coal mine by environmental groups who wanted offsets for the carbon emissions of the mine. Brickbats have come from Andrew Bartlett, Tim Lambert and Robert Merkel, while Jennifer Marohasy and Andrew Bolt have cheered the Tribunal and its presiding member, President Koppenol.
But this looks awfully like an own goal for the denialists to me.
The environmental groups relied on the IPCC and Stern reports, but the Presiding Member did a little digging on the Internet and came up with the responses recently published in World Economics. These were two papers, one on the science of global warming and one on the economics (there was also a separate piece by Tol and Yohe, to which the comments below do not apply).
I plan a full-length response when I get some free time, but for present purposes its sufficient to observe that the list of authors coincides pretty closely with the promoters of, and witnesses at, the bogus House of Lords inquiry, set up and run by Nigel Lawson, Chancellor of the Exchequer under Margaret Thatcher.
This effort seemed like a modest success at the time, since it was one of the few occasions when a body with an impressive sounding title came down in support of denialism, but it turned out to be a massive strategic error, since it led directly to the establishment of the Stern Review, which not only discredited the climate science denialism being promoted by Lawson, but also challenged the view, supported by a number of prominent economic modellers in the field, that policy responses should incorporate a large preference for current over future generations, and therefore a strong bias against short-term action. Debate over this is continuing, but (in my view at least) the advocates of immediate action have gained the ascendancy.
Having been prosecutor, judge and jury in the case against climate science, Lawson is now appearing as a witness in the appeal against the judgement of the Stern Review. His already weak position is undermined by the inclusion of well-known hacks like Ross McKitrick of the Fraser Institute in the team.
Coming back to the Land and Resources Tribunal, a judge in an ordinary court who made a decision based on stuff he found on the Internet, which had not even been led in evidence, would be lucky to get off with a stern talking to from the Court of Appeal. Certainly, no such judgement could stand, even if the material on which the judge relied stood up to critical scrutiny, as the Lawson-McKitrick piece most certainly does not.
The Tribunal is not a court, but I imagine there must be some sort of review process to respond to such an obvious breach of standard procedure. Even if this decision stands, the reliance of the Tribunal on such a weak reed is hugely problematic for the denialists. The weight of evidence is so strong that future cases fought on the same ground will inevitably be won by environmentalists. A far worse result for environmentalists would have been one that ruled climate change considerations out of court on statutory or procedural grounds.
I’m not convinced that legal actions like this are necessarily the best way to go in achieving a coherent national and global response to climate change. But I’m confident that this will turn out to be a Pyhrric victory for denialism.
Update An interesting aside is that Greg Koppenol’s bio reports that he “appeared as counsel in a large number of cases including some of the most important in Australia’s history – Mabo (No. 2) and Wik.” I was of course interested to find out what role he played in those cases, and unsurprised to find that he appeared for the state of Queensland against both Eddie Mabo and the Wik people.
The legal tactics employed by the state government throughout the Mabo case were deplorable, including personal attacks on Mabo that were irrelevant to the main legal points at issue, but relied on fomenting division among potential claimants. As we have seen in numerous recent cases, the Queensland legal establishment protects its own, and it’s not surprising to see that Koppenol’s career hasn’t suffered in the slightest from this episode.
John Quiggin 
Theres seems to be some confusion as to what the tribunal actually is eg
“The Tribunal is not a court…..I’m not convinced that court actions like this are necessarily the best way to go….”
This is what they are http://www.lrt.qld.gov.au/LRT/general_info/about.asp
Thanks, Rog, fixed now. The website states that the Tribunal is not bound by the rules of evidence, but I still doubt it will be able to get away with this.
John,
I would prefer it if you did not use the word “denial”, if only because it is an insult to all those who suffered from the Holocaust.
Well said Richard. It is a horrible word with horrible connotations and used quite deliberately.
John,
Why do you think the House of Lords enquiry was bogus? Did you actually read it?
Nigel Lawson was a member of the committee, but he was not the dominant force. If anyone, David Pearce was. Do you want to besmirch his memory?
Richard, feel free to suggest a different term. Clearly neither skeptic nor contrarian is appropriate, since these people are credulously willing to accept any claim that supports their political preferences.
As regards Lawson’s role, he and several rightwing economists wrote to the Times in 2004 attacking climate science and Kyoto. The Committee then decided to hold an inquiry, invited Lawson’s friends and a lot of well-known call-them-what-you-wills as witnesses and reported in terms almost exactly the same as those of the letter. Subsequently Lawson (along with the same group) has emerged as one of the main critics of the Stern Review which rejected the Committee report. Pardon me if I see a pattern here.
According to Wikipedia
“Denialism occurs when government, business or interest groups purposefully seek to publicly deny or discount the findings of social or scientific research, and influence the way the research is disseminated, reported, interpreted and acted upon in the formulation of public policy. Common forms of denialism are holocaust denial, AIDS reappraisal, global warming controversy, and the creation-evolution controversy.”
This seems like an accurate definition.
Richard, take it from someone who lost relatives in the Holocaust(me). There are all kinds of denialism. Holocaust denialism is the worst, but it’s not the only kind.
On David Pearce, he was an IPCC author. The besmirchers of his memory are those who say the IPCC authors are unscientific and politically motivated.
Coming to the substance of the House of Lords Economics Committee report, it was terrible. The Committee had no qualifications in climate science and heard from hardly any qualified witnesses, instead entertaining the likes of McKitrick, the George C. Marshall Institute and so on.
The Report began by conceding ignorance, but instead of deferring to qualified bodies like the IPCC, the Committee decided to work on the assumption that its witnesses were just as likely to be right as the real experts. The economic analysis that followed was necessarily worthless, since the inputs were garbage.
And, if you look at the publicity arising from the House of Lords report, most of the what-you-wills who made use of the report knew this. They touted the rejection of climate science and the grossly overheated interpretation of the Castles-Henderson stuff. The rest was, rightly enough, ignored.
One doesn’t like to use terms that give offence, but the term ‘denialist’ does seem to have a warrant in both logic and usage in the context of climate change.
But looking at the abstract of the Tol and Yohe article it’s clear that Tol accepts AGW and the need to do something about it. The Stern Review, in his estimation, is born of alarmism and dubious economics thereby distracting from the important message:
The article looks exceedingly interesting. Unfortunately those of us on the fringe can’t read it without paying.
Nevertheless Tol has been pressed into service as a “denier” at this Canadian site. I can’t imagine he’d be happy about that.
From his home page and his cv (pdf) (both in need of an update) he is clearly a man of considerable achievement. I’d question whether it is necessary or appropriate to pin a label on him.
JQ, it’s important to note this from the Tribunal’s judgement:
“Apart from having no demonstrated impact on global warming or climate change, any such condition would have (as Dr Stanford said) the real potential to drive wealth and jobs overseas and to cause serious adverse economic and social impacts upon the State of Queensland. Absent universally applied policies for GHG reduction, requiring this mine (and no others) to limit or reduce its GHG emissions would be arbitrary and unfair. That cannot be what our law requires.”
The GHGs are a side issue, especially since 98.3% of emissions will be generated at end use, mostly overseas.
Here is the abstract of the House of Lords report. It is clearly the work of raving lunatics and racists. Their call for more Treasury input has given us the Stern Review. Inbreds!
I quote verbatim:
The Committee, having considered various aspects of the economics of climate
change, calls on the Government to give HM Treasury a more extensive role, both
in examining the costs and benefits of climate change policy and presenting them
to the United Kingdom public, and in the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC).
We have some concerns about the objectivity of the IPCC process, with some of
its emissions scenarios and summary documentation apparently influenced by
political considerations.
There are significant doubts about some aspects of the IPCC’s emissions scenario
exercise, in particular, the high emissions scenarios. The Government should press
the IPCC to change their approach.
There are some positive aspects to global warming and these appear to have been
played down in the IPCC reports; the Government should press the IPCC to
reflect in a more balanced way the costs and benefits of climate change.
The Government should press the IPCC for better estimates of the monetary costs
of global warming damage and for explicit monetary comparisons between the
costs of measures to control warming and their benefits.
Since warming will continue, regardless of action now, due to the lengthy time lags
in climate systems, and since there is a risk that international negotiations will not
secure large-scale and effective mitigation action, a more balanced approach to the
relative merits of adaptation and mitigation is needed, with far more attention paid
to adaptation measures.
We are concerned that UK energy and climate policy appears to be based on
dubious assumptions about the roles of renewable energy and energy efficiency
and that the costs to the UK of achieving its objectives have been poorly
documented. We look to the Government, with much stronger Treasury
involvement, to review and substantiate the cost estimates and to convey them in
transparent form to the public.
We think that current nuclear power capacity, before further decommissioning
occurs, should be retained.
We urge the Government to replace the present Climate Change Levy with a
carbon tax as soon as possible.
We are concerned that the international negotiations on climate change reduction
will be ineffective because of the preoccupation with setting emissions targets. The
Kyoto Protocol makes little difference to rates of warming, and has a naïve
compliance mechanism which can only deter countries from signing up to
subsequent tighter emissions targets. We urge the Government to take a lead in
exploring alternative “architectures� for future Protocols, based perhaps on
agreements on technology and its diffusion.
You are wasting your breath Richard. Quiggin and others use the word “Denialist” precisely because of the pro-nazi connotations. They aren’t going to stop using it in the interest of politeness.
Uncle Milton, the IPCC is not a monolith. David Pearce was an author in AR2, and did not return in AR3 or AR4 because he thought that the IPCC was too politicised.
Brian, I do not deny that climate change is real, but I do deny that disaster is imminent and that Kyoto is a step in the right direction. That makes me a two-thirds denier. I’ll wear that label if it helps to ridicule the awful campaign against free speech and unprejudiced scientific inquiry.
Richard, I agree that the abstract wasn’t too bad. But oddly enough, the press release announcing the report led off with the sentence
“The science of climate change leaves considerable uncertainty about the future.”
which appears nowhere in the abstract, and was obviously outside the competence of the committee to decide. Of course, the abstract had to get past the whole committee whereas the press release could be written by the promoters of the exercise.
If the analysis had taken uncertainty seriously, it would have noted that it goes both ways, and because of convex damanges strengthens the case for action. As I noted, what is meant here by “uncertainty” is splitting the difference between the IPCC and the Exxon shills.
The coverage of the report followed the line of the press release not the abstract
Here’s a fairly typical example, from Bob Carter, one of the science authors for the world economics piece.
Oddly, it this kind of shift from report to summary to press release that critics of the IPCC complain about. It happens all the time, but rarely as blatantly as in this case.
Yobbo, as I said to Richard, feel free to suggest another term for people who reject scientific evidence on the basis of ideological prejudice or financial self-interest.
Obviously “skeptic” won’t do for people who swallow any piece of evidence, no matter how shoddy that supports their preconceived views. I used “contrarian” for a while, but gave it up. It applies somewhat to Lindzen and a few others, but the majority of these guys are marching in lockstep with the Exxon/Republican machine. If their next sheet of talking points said that global warming was good for the Right, they’d change their tune in an instant.
Yobbo, we may refer to people who reject scientific evidence on the basis of ideological prejudice as Quigginites.
John Q believes that people have zero time preference, that Nick Stern delivered a high quality report, that Greenpeace is an honest scientific organisation, that a report can be judged by its press release, and that there is no uncertainty about climate change.
John Q clearly rejects the science, and he seems to do so because of ideology. Quigginite is an appropriate term for people with similar attitudes.
As I’m sure you’re aware Richard, most of your claims are false, so I’ll only point out the most blatant lie and leave it at that.
*You say I believe “that there is no uncertainty about climate change”.
*Two comments previously, I said “If the analysis had taken uncertainty seriously, it would have noted that it goes both ways, and because of convex damages strengthens the case for action.” And you have read numerous posts from me emphasising and amplifying this point.
For the record, I do believe that Nick Stern delivered a high quality (though certainly not perfect) report, and that, as far as the political impact of reports is concerned, the content of the press release is at least as important as what is actually in the report (as it happens, I noted similar concerns about the press release of the Stern report).
Perhaps we could all empathise a little and call them the ‘one percenters’ like the new left green denialists John? You know those that peddle the nonsense that reductions of CO2 emissions to 40% of 1990 levels, will only cost us around 1% of GDP. Now none other than the World Bank has reported a 1% fall in Asian GDP last year due to oil supply constraints, largely due to price increases. (I quoted in the Hair Shirts post previously) Presumably this 1% GDP fall was accompanied by massive falls in GG output in Asia then John? What, orders of magnitude of 60% or so John?
Or should we call them the 1990s sixty percenters, as it’s a bit more flattering than 2007 one percenters?
Observa, maybe you should take a course in economics before continuing on this line. I suggest you look at the distinction between welfare losses and transfers (hint: check the report on Russia). There are other errors in your post, but I’ll only pick the most relevant.
“that Greenpeace is an honest scientific organisation”
what an odd accusation.
also, i think “dead enders” is a better term than “denialists”.
Well John I can afford to wait till the verdict is in on these finely nuanced calculations of welfare transfers over the decades to come, but I gather some Mexicans are getting a little nervous about the expert one percenters wanting to pour the world’s crops into their petrol tanks, among other things.
I guess the trogs just need to appreciate that in the long run we’ll all be dead but the calculations must go on.
I think that climate change denialists are a far greater risk to the welfare of society than David Irving and his fringe fellow travellers.
I think the Tribunal could have handled their issue far more delicately, and still achieved their predetermined outcome.
Koppenol didn’t just do his own web searches, he made his own scientific conclusions from those searches
“[18] If a comparison is made of temperatures over the last 55 years (1951-2006), as the IPCC presumably did in reaching its conclusion, the chart shows that average temperatures increased from 13.85¡C (1951) to 14.45¡C (2006)—an increase of 0.6¡C. As “mostâ€? of that increase is said by the IPCC to be due to increases in GHGs, it follows that the temperature increase of concern is about 0.45¡C (0.45¡C being 75% of or “mostâ€? of 0.6¡C ). With all respect, a temperature increase of only about 0.45¡C over 55 years seems a surprisingly low figure upon which to base the IPCC’s concerns about its inducing many serious changes in the global climate system during the 21st century ”
Koppenol has set himself up as an expert witness, which as is obvious from the above he clearly isn’t, accepted uncritically and without cross examination his own expert evidence, and then made a judgment based on that evidence.
There are presumably limits to this kind of abuse of process, even in Queensland. If the decision is appellable (and decisions from these kinds of bodies are usually appellable on process grounds) the lawyers for the environmental groups will have a field day.
going back to quiggin’s point about the decision, this comment sticks out:
“a judge in an ordinary court who made a decision based on stuff he found on the Internet, which had not even been led in evidence, would be lucky to get off with a stern talking to from the Court of Appeal”
section 49 of the land and resources act makes interesting reading. on the one hand, as has been pointed out by others, the tribunal is not bound by the rules of evidence. moreover, it “may inform itself of anything in the way it considers appropriate”, presumably including randon internet searches not suggested by counsel. but on the other hand, the tribunal “must…observe natural justice.”
lawyers will note the use of discretionary and mandatory language (“may inform itself” vs “must observe”). it seems clear from the decision that the tribunal member’s consideration of the “Carter-Byatt critique of the Stern Review” was objected to by the qld conservation council. how it could possibly be appropriate for the tribunal to consider this material anyway is left as an exercise for the reader.
“I think that climate change denialists are a far greater risk to the welfare of society than David Irving and his fringe fellow travellers.”
With news of the banning of the humble light globe wilful, some of us are having severe doubts about that.
Not clear on the meaning of the update.
Which principle is being objected to:
1) Koppenol working as hard as he can for his paymaster?
2) Koppenol working for the government?
3) Koppenol’s brief being to oppose aboriginal claims?
4) Koppenol working on a brief, or for a party which was not “approved”?
5) Koppenol years later (now) writing a judgement which wasn’t the “approved” outcome?
6) A lawyer using courtroom tactics which are not as dry as a public reading of the telephone directory?
Are you confident Richard that you don’t yourself suffer from an ideology, perhaps “anthropocentrism”?
Weitzman (PDF):
…
There won’t be any good meaning to our “adaptation to climate change” if we lose too many ecosystems and other species along the way through climate change that our negligent actions have wrought. Somewhat analogously we may as individuals be able to adapt to such things as life in a prison cell, isolated from most of what for others is “life”, but nobody wants to have to do that. What too-rapid climate change will bring us is an age of damaged natural systems dominated by weeds and “pest species”, surviving at the expense of the myriad complex (read “beautiful” if you like) ecosystems that have crystallised into existence over the ages of more stable climate in a cooler world. This is not good and is a consideration beyond the purview of economics, at least of economics as we have known it, so we need much more than just economic analysis of the IPCC’s science.
Steve, I think it’s pretty clear that (6) is the point, at least if by “not as dry as …” you mean what I think you mean.
1. Koppenol P was right, that new coal mine in and of itself will have a close to nil impact on global emissions of CO2-e, as those involved in mining the coal amount to only 1.37 mt of CO2-e over mine life. That will add (using Tim Lambert’s data) 0.000049 per cent to the current global total of atrmospheric CO2-e. Shock, horror, definitely this mine should not be allowed to proceed!
2. JQ’s commentary failed to notice Hugh Saddler’s crucial point in his evidence to Koppenol that in Kyoto and the approved accounting mechanisms and protocols, it is the final user/emitter who counts, not the first except for its own direct emissions. JQ’s support for refusal of permission for the mine to operate is of a piece with his general “witches of Salem� approach and with his tacit support for the Garrett/Brown/Flannery campaign for phasing out coal mining and exporting, which logically will also extend under Rudd’s ALP to phasing out iron ore mining, iron and steel processing, and the whole bauxite/alumina/aluminium production process, all of which are (a) wholly dependent on cheap electricity generated by cheap coal and (b) liable under Kyoto for their emissions. Ironically, his blog and its server are major contributors to global emissions of CO2-e – servers and their cooling absorbed the power from fourteen 1,000 MW power stations in 2000, more now, almost wholly produced by coal in the Australian case. Koppenol P should have directed the QCC to sue for closure of the JQ server as that would save more CO2-e than the coal mine project they attacked.
Richard Tol:
Most unfair. John Q doesn’t reject the science out of ideology. He rejects it because he doesn’t understand it. Try pinning him down on one substantial scientific climate issue and you’ll see what I mean. He will quickly start attacking the scientists themselves rather than their science.
“Quigginites” is rather too kind. But more appropriate descriptions are not printable here.
Denialist is obviously a prejorative term and I think it is used to try and shame people into following the mainstream and/or alarmist view.
I propose four levels of GW opinion:
1. denial — those who deny things that are all but impossible to deny. Examples would include people who say that temps haven’t increased or people who say that greenhouse gases don’t have a warming effect.
2. skeptics — those who question that GW will really be that bad or the solutions that good. Basically somebody who is skeptical of any of the mainstream main points
3. mainstream — those who believe all of the following: we’ll see 3-4 degree warming this century; it will lead to significant (though not catastrophic) negative consequences and that Kyoto (and other similar) steps should be taken now.
4. alarmists — those who believe we are heading quickly into a catastrophy and who use over-blown scare stories to try and encourage fear so that people support drastic government action
Obviously, (1) and (2) are GW non-activists while (3) and (4) are activists… however it seems to me that the real debate is between the skeptics and mainstream and both sides use the tag “denialist” and “alarmist” in an attempt to insult their opponents. It’s easy to find an idiot on the other side of the debate, but we would all be better served by looking at the strongest parts of our opponents arguments and dealing with those.
Good Analysis John I would agree with your 4 categories.
It is annoying that people who disagree with one aspect of climate science(for example climate models predicting future temperatures) are lumped together as denialists.Is everybody supposed to agree with every aspect of climate science? What sort of wierd world is that?
Excellent analysis JH.
The science says that whether its 3 or 4 degrees will make a big difference. 2 degrees (which is pretty much locked in) will give us what we’re experiencing now only more so (such as irreversible damage to coral reef systems ansd the disappearance of small mountain glaciers). 3 degrees is qualitatively different, with the Greenland ice sheet irreversibly melting and large scale species extinction.
At four degrees, we start to get sea level rises that threaten major cities and huge declines in crop yields.
So while 3 degrees might hot be catastrophic, 4 degrees probably will be.
#33
John H, the overwhelming majority of game theorists believe that an international treaty for climate policy will not work. The majority would be mainstream I guess, but they are clearly skeptical of one of the basic tenets of the current climate consensus.
I think the only distinction is between those who are open to debate, and those who are not — who close their eyes for facts and doubts just because it does not fit their position.
Current climate policy is full of taboo subjects, and saying that someone who breaks a taboo is a skeptic only reinforces that.
#36
Uncle Milton, please read the literature.
Fair enough with the 4 categories JH but I’d quibble about the Kyoto luvvy bit in 3. We may have to bear in mind this category is a broad church and may include some of us alarmists at Kyoto/plastic shopping bag/light bulb ban economics we’re being lumped in together with. Perhaps 3a and 3b delineating market men from the quantity control freaks.
JH: Excluding (1), what about those of use that believe how bad the effects are likely to be lies on a probabilistic distribition, rather than categorical groups (unless you are saying where people believe the mean to be)? This is after all what the models predict.
Koppenol P was right, that new coal mine in and of itself will have a close to nil impact on global emissions of CO2-e, as those involved in mining the coal amount to only 1.37 mt of CO2-e over mine life. That will add (using Tim Lambert’s data) 0.000049 per cent to the current global total of atrmospheric CO2-e. Shock, horror, definitely this mine should not be allowed to proceed!
JQ’s commentary failed to notice Hugh Saddler’s crucial point in his evidence to Koppenol that in Kyoto and the approved accounting mechanisms and protocols, it is the final “Scope”) user/emitter who counts most, not the first and second “scopes”, which are its own direct emissions. JQ’s support for refusal of permission for the mine to operate is of a piece with his general “witches of Salemâ€? approach and with his tacit support for the Garrett/Brown/Flannery campaign for phasing out coal mining and exporting, which logically will also extend under Rudd’s ALP to phasing out iron ore mining, iron and steel processing, and the whole bauxite/alumina/aluminium production process, all of which are (a) wholly dependent on cheap electricity mostly generated by cheap coal and (b) liable under Kyoto for their emissions.
Ironically, JQ’s blog and its server are major contributors to global emissions of CO2-e servers and their cooling, which absorbed the power from fourteen 1,000 MW power stations in 2005, more now, almost wholly produced by coal in the Australian case (see Financial Times, 16 Feb 07, re Koomey of Stanford, a vastly inferior university to UQ of course). Koppenol P should have directed the QCC to sue for closure of the JQ server as that would save more CO2-e than the coal mine project they attacked.
“the overwhelming majority of game theorists believe that an international treaty for climate policy will not work”
Richard, you keep making these claims about the beliefs of “the overwhelming majority” of economists, with no supporting references or when pressed, references that are totally irrelevant.
Having followed this topic at least since the Pethig volume in 1993, I can assure readers that Richard Tol’s claim here is wrong. There’s a huge literature on this topic which does nto reach the negative conclusions he claims.
And of course reaching such a conclusion on purely game-theoretic grounds would be highly suspect, given the success of the Montreal protocol on CFCs. Of course, the scale of the problems is different, but most game-theoretic reasoning is scale invariant.
If there’s a problem and international treaties are claimed to not work, what would work? (Disclosure: yes I’ve read some of Richard’s published analysis)
If there’s no problem but scientists agree there is one, why is there no problem?
John Q
You’re calling the kettle black.
Henry Tulkens is the only game theorist who argues that international environmental treaties work, and only because he assumes that utility is linear in income. Release that assumption, and even his model falls apart.
If you want to know why Montreal is no model for climate, read Scott Barrett’s work. If you want to know why Montreal did work, read Dick Benedick’s work.
For future reference, just read stuff before you form let alone express an opinion.
“feel free to suggest another term for people who reject scientific evidence on the basis of ideological prejudice or financial self-interest”
That describes about 95% of the world JQ, including a great many on your side of politics who reject basic economic theories. But we don’t refer to them as “denialists”, because it is a perjorative term used to silence debate, no different than calling someone “racist” at any opportunity (also a long-favoured tactic of the left).
And there’s no point with me suggesting alternative terms because we both know you’re quite happy with the one you already use. Ecstatic even.
JQ since the shoe fits let them wear it. After all Creationists often wear it with pride.
BTW
AAAS: front group for dirty hippies?
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/2/20/1047/91617
“The American Association for the Advancement of Science joins the ranks of the alarmists”
Gez when will these pro-science scientists learn not to get in bed with the hippies?!!
If these guys are alarmists, I’m in good company 🙂
Richard, my source is Stern, Figure 13.4, page 294. Original sources are in the Figure.
Oh I forgot for the “denialists� here is your poster boy.
Charlie Rose – CRICHTON (FROM 11/26/02) / RIPERT – Google Video
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1036326626968292162&q=MICHAEL+CRICHTON+on+Charlie+Rose
For future reference, just read stuff before you form let alone express an opinion.
perhaps you should tell me what specifically i should read, before i express an opinion about this charming comment.