After reading Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species, Thomas Henry Huxley sent a letter to Darwin including this passage:
I finished your book yesterday… Since I read Von Baer’s Essays nine years ago no work on Natural History Science I have met with has made so great an impression on me & I do most heartily thank you for the great store of new views you have given me… As for your doctrines I am prepared to go to the Stake if requisite… I trust you will not allow yourself to be in any way disgusted or annoyed by the considerable abuse & misrepresentation which unless I greatly mistake is in store for you… And as to the curs which will bark and yelp - you must recollect that some of your friends at any rate are endowed with an amount of combativeness which (though you have often & justly rebuked it) may stand you in good stead - I am sharpening up my claws and beak in readiness.
Huxley championed the cause of evolution, and was instrumental in persuading both the scientific community and the British public of its truth. He later came to be known as “Darwin’s Bulldog.”
His letter is a pretty good expression of my view of the global warming issue. I’ve already witnessed far too much of the abuse & misrepresentation which has been heaped on climate scientists, especially James Hansen and Mike Mann. I too am sharpening my claws.
Therefore I’ve changed my pseudonym to “Hansen’s bulldog.”
Woof.
