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dreamer_easyI'm gripped by Steven Poole's Unspeak, a book about about how soundbite terms ("pro-life", "anti-social behaviour") contain entire arguments. The second chapter explains how fossil fuel interests and collaborating governments shifted the language of debate, so that, for example "global warming" became the less threatening "climate change", as well as how they invented a "controversy" - which leads to this gem:
"Other deniers had a rather shaky grasp of science. The British pundit Peter Hitchens, for example, wrote: 'The greenhouse effect probably doesn't exist. There is as yet no evidence for it.' To this, George Monbiot offered the following unimprovable riposte: 'Perhaps Mr Hitchens would care to explain why our climate differs from that of the moon.'"
"Other deniers had a rather shaky grasp of science. The British pundit Peter Hitchens, for example, wrote: 'The greenhouse effect probably doesn't exist. There is as yet no evidence for it.' To this, George Monbiot offered the following unimprovable riposte: 'Perhaps Mr Hitchens would care to explain why our climate differs from that of the moon.'"
