A skeptics dictionary
Wonderful homage to Ambrose Bierce. From Tunku Varadarajan at
The Daily Beast:
A taste:
Very nearly a hundred years ago, Ambrose Bierce compiled A Devil's Dictionary, in which he sought to puncture the cultural cant of his time. Here is an attempt�at much shorter length�to prick a very contemporary kind of cant, that which has swollen the debate on climate change to ungovernable proportions.
A is for anthropogenic: (as in anthropogenic global warming, or �AGW�), a $10 word for "man-made" which global-warmists wield as proof of expertise�no one more so than Al Gore, who, after having invented the Internet, turned his prodigious mind to the conundrum of AGW.
B is for Bj�rn Lomborg, the Danish professor whose book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, should have put Al Gore out of business forever; for the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) that aren�t ready to abandon the good, carbon-burning life just yet; and for boondoggle (see "ethanol," infra).
C is for the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, the now-discredited source of much of the data used to fuel climate hysteria. In November, in an episode that was oh-so-predictably dubbed Climategate, a cache of leaked emails showed that researchers systematically hid or manipulated data that was inconsistent with the accepted narrative of man-made climate change. (Read John Tierney's clear-headed critique here.) Don't forget carbon dioxide, a colorless, odorless gas once considered essential to life on earth, not to mention bubbles in Champagne. (Although it's now regarded as a poisonous pollutant, you can, however, trade it.) Think also of consensus � the idea that science is settled by an asserted poll of experts after all objections from dissenting scientists have been suppressed.
Heh... Be sure to check the link for the Devil's Dictionary too -- some wonderful stuff there. Still very relevant after 100 years.
Posted by DaveH at December 7, 2009 8:57 AM