‘console’ is undefined error for Internet Explorer

I’m using Firebug and have some statements like:

console.log("...");

in my page. In IE8 (probably earlier versions too) I get script errors saying ‘console’ is undefined. I tried putting this at the top of my page:

<script type="text/javascript">
    if (!console) console = {log: function() {}};
</script>

still I get the errors. Any way to get rid of the errors?