By WUWT Regular “Just The Facts”
According to USA Today on April 3rd and repeated on April 4th:
“Keith Baugues is not a scientist, but that didn’t stop him on a recent wintry day from expressing skepticism about global warming — something that is broadly accepted in the scientific community.”
“Baugues studied engineering at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute and has spent six years at the Department of Environmental Management and nine years with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.” USA Today
So what did Keith Baugues write such that USA Today chose to identify him as “not a scientist”?:
“He took to a government message board one day in February, complaining that his normal 45-minute commute had turned into a painful three-hour slog. “Anyone who says global warming is obviously suffering from frostbite,” he wrote.”
“Baugues would later say he was only joking. But he wasn’t just any government bureaucrat. Baugues is assistant commissioner in the Office of Air Quality in the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, the man in charge of cleaning up Indiana’s air.” USA Today
And what was the predictable response to an “assistant commissioner in the Office of Air Quality” joke and declaration that “I am a skeptic on global warming”?:
“Reaction was swift, according to remarks posted to the message board reviewed by The Indianapolis Star. Several IDEM staff members wrote that the comment flew in the face of nearly unanimous scientific consensus and offended and embarrassed them.
“Either support consensus science or please keep your opinions to yourself. The rest of us are embarrassed by your unwillingness to accept what is happening,” one worker wrote.
Another said that Baugues “should not speak on such matters until he is better informed.” Then that person, who was not named, took pains to point out that recent extremes of cold weather were caused by warming global temperatures. That resulted in more water being absorbed into the atmosphere, pushing the arctic jet stream farther south.” USA Today
The assertion that “warming global temperature” “resulted in more water being absorbed into the atmosphere, pushing the arctic jet stream farther south.” is demonstrably false. Even the author of the paper that this assertion has based upon has backtracked and said “I also agree that greenhouse-gas induced warming will reduce, not increase, the likelihood of breaking cold temperature records” Dot Earth
The claims of Baugues detractors appear to be empty rhetoric, e.g.:
“‘The fact that [Baugues] disparages the exact kind of science that disproves his statement only further illustrates how out of touch this administration is with the current environmental crisis facing not only Hoosiers, but the entire world,” the person wrote.'”
Furthermore, USA Today uses two duplicitous canards in claiming that:
More than 97 percent of the world’s climate scientists agree that warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities, according to several studies published on the NASA website.”
Firstly, the 97 percent number has been demonstrated to be false and the claim that “warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities” is erroneous, because there is no credible evidence that Anthropogenic CO2 emissions prior to 1950 were sufficient to influence Earth’s Temperature. In fact NASA’s website actually states that:
“Climate model simulations that consider only natural solar variability and volcanic aerosols since 1750—omitting observed increases in greenhouse gases—are able to fit the observations of global temperatures only up until about 1950.”
Duplicity aside, USA Today’s “not a scientist” attack is similar to one that was leveled against our own Willis Eschenbach by this site PopularTechnology.net, i.e.:
“He is not a “computer modeler”, he is not an “engineer” and he is certainly not a “scientist” (despite all ridiculous claims to the contrary).”
Popular Technology cites Webster’s definition of a Scientist to support their assertion, i.e.:
“a person who is trained in a science and whose job involves doing scientific research or solving scientific problems”
PopularTechnology.net claims that:
“Willis has no educational background or any professional experience as a scientist. The only thing he can be considered is an amateur scientist.”
However, Webster is but one definition of a scientist, so let’s take a look at the others. Dictionary.com defines a scientist as:
“an expert in science, especially one of the physical or natural sciences.”
“a person who studies or practices any of the sciences or who uses scientific methods”
Oxford Dictionary defines a scientist as:
“A person who is studying or has expert knowledge of one or more of the natural or physical sciences”
Google Dictionary defines a scientist as:
“a person who is studying or has expert knowledge of one or more of the natural or physical sciences.”
Wikipedia defines a scientist as:
“A scientist, in a broad sense, is one engaging in a systematic activity to acquire knowledge. In a more restricted sense, a scientist is an individual who uses the scientific method.[1] The person may be an expert in one or more areas of science.[2] This article focuses on the more restricted use of the word. Scientists perform research toward a more comprehensive understanding of nature, including physical, mathematical and social realms.”
In terms of Webster’s definition of a scientist as “a person who is trained in a science and whose job involves doing scientific research or solving scientific problems”, it is shown to be inaccurate by the fact that Einstein was a Patent Clerk when he wrote the Annus Mirabilis papers:
“The Annus Mirabilis papers (from Latin annus mīrābilis, “extraordinary year”) are the papers of Albert Einstein published in the Annalen der Physik scientific journal in 1905. These four articles contributed substantially to the foundation of modern physics and changed views on space, time, and matter. The Annus Mirabilis is often called the “Miracle Year” in English or Wunderjahr in German.”
“At the time the papers were written, Einstein did not have easy access to a complete set of scientific reference materials, although he did regularly read and contribute reviews to Annalen der Physik. Additionally, scientific colleagues available to discuss his theories were few. He worked as an examiner at the Patent Office in Bern, Switzerland, and he later said of a co-worker there, Michele Besso, that he “could not have found a better sounding board for his ideas in all of Europe”.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annus_Mirabilis_papers
So what do you think, what defines a scientist?
For fucks sake that didn’t go through? What kind of shit filter does this site have?
Alexa rankings are not accurate and are largely determined by people dumb enough to have the Alexa toolbar installed. The keywords are a joke.
Google
can I use the word …page rank
ROFLMAO, the word “page rank” is filtered without the space? Are you serious?
[Reply: WordPress does a lot of the filtering. In this case, neither “page rank” nor “pagerank” are listed as trigger words by Anthony/WUWT. Complain to WordPress if you like. ~mod.]
This is too stupid. I can say Fuck but I can’t say “page rank”. Out of here before I break something.
REPLY: No, you can’t, it’s in the banned words list, “page rank” is not but may be in wordpress.com larger list of things that look like SEO spam. And please take a loooooooooooooong break. While I count you as a friend of skeptics, your attitude and constant picking of fights is getting tiresome for both me, and the moderators. Some readers are also complaining about you.
Learn how to pick your battles and we’ll all be better for it.
-Anthony
A scientist uses the scientific method to study nature, people and society. Einstein was not an amateur scientist. He was a patent clerk but he studied post-graduate physics. IMO the greatest amateur scientists were Faraday, Edison, Wright Bros., Tsiolkovsky and Farnsworth. None of them had college education in science or engineering.
I ‘m not much into at reading the comments and opinions of scientists and nonscientists regarding the causes of climate change , but it imposes a fundamental question : How many people who deal with science , can draw conclusions and to convince others of the truth of some of their evidence obtained through model or some of the ” omnipotent ” mathematics , and to not serving the feeling that some U.S. government forces and laws of nature that we neither know , nor do I want to deciphering . It’s a miracle , maybe it’s an epidemic that so many researchers ignored the mutual relations of the heavenly bodies in our solar system . If using intuition and our consciousness , which is related to the awareness of the universe (as in anyone ) , then we all realized that the human factor is irrelevant compared to those resulting from the forces that prevails among the heavenly bodies .
I hope you will find some of those that my be read, it will be of interest to hear how I can explain . But we should not expect that I would give it free of charge -back and contractual obligations to respect copyright. The more I read into these supporters of ” Mr. CO2 ” More and more I am convinced in my evidence that I’m working longer hours .
Basic indicators of climate change in the sun Jege and their numerous cycles , but they are not pathogens because the spots just a consequence of some other things that cause not only climate change but also other phenomena such as earthquakes and others .
Mods, Poptech needs to get a break from this site as he has descended to unacceptable language and thread diversions. He’s behaving like a child throwing tantrums.
I would love to see a staged dramatic reading, between two older, classically trained actors, of the last 50 posts in this thread.
Science is merely applied reasoning. Applied reasoning does not exclusively belong to scientists. You can perfectly apply reasoning without being a scientist.
John
Scientist cannot be defined without first defining science. For climate and weather, IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report provides authoritative examples of the two contemporary, competing models for science. It says:
Science may be stimulated by argument and debate, but it generally advances through formulating hypotheses clearly and testing them objectively. This testing is the key to science. In fact, one philosopher of science insisted that to be genuinely scientific, a statement must be susceptible to testing that could potentially show it to be false (Popper, 1934).[¶]
In practice, contemporary scientists usually submit their research findings to the scrutiny of their peers, which includes disclosing the methods that they use, so their results can be checked through replication by other scientists. The insights and research results of individual scientists, even scientists of unquestioned genius, are thus confirmed or rejected in the peer-reviewed literature by the combined efforts of many other scientists. [¶]
It is not the belief or opinion of the scientists that is important, but rather the results of this testing. Indeed, when Albert Einstein was informed of the publication of a book entitled 100 Authors Against Einstein, he is said to have remarked, ‘If I were wrong, then one would have been enough!’ (Hawking, 1988); however, that one opposing scientist would have needed proof in the form of testable results.
Thus science is inherently self-correcting, incorrect or incomplete scientific concepts ultimately do not survive repeated testing against observations of nature. Scientific theories are ways of explaining phenomena and providing insights that can be evaluated by comparison with physical reality. Each successful prediction adds to the weight of evidence supporting the theory, and any unsuccessful prediction demonstrates that the underlying theory is imperfect and requires improvement or abandonment. …
The attributes of science briefly described here can be used in assessing competing assertions about climate change. Can the statement under consideration, in principle, be proven false? Has it been rigorously tested? Did it appear in the peer-reviewed literature? Did it build on the existing research record where appropriate? If the answer to any of these questions is no, then less credence should be given to the assertion until it is tested and independently verified. Paragraphs, bold added, IPCC, AR4, ¶1.2 The Nature of Earth Science, p. 95.
The other definition from IPCC is what can be deduced from the rest of it Assessment Report. The work has arguably no predictions, but certainly no tested predictions significant to the global climate problem. It is infected with examples of subjectivity, expressed at every turn, in opinion words and word roots, including, for example, may, certainty, consider, understand, could, confidence, assum*, agreement, should, infer, knowledge, might, reliable, plaus*, expert, consensus, judg*, reasonable , peer, believe, think, catastrophe, and on and on. That work, borne of “Publish or Perish”, thrives on the failed peer-review system, known not for any guarantee of scientific quality, but instead for conformity to dogma.
IPCC’s definition is a decent start at defining Modern Science as it is practiced, and has been practiced, pragmatically for four centuries. The climate work IPCC reports is nothing but Post Modern Science, mostly a post World War II phenomenon. The two models of science are mutually exclusive.
Poptech must be an engineer. I’m an engineer in maintenance and have had to make scientist stuff work in the real world. It’s amazing how many demonstrations have to be made to these scientists to prove to them, (That Don’t Work!).
Happy to be an engineer now.
Yeah, wiki sucks, in my opinion too.
Still waiting for someone to prove this climate crap to me in defensible science, without going ballistic like some “cult follower”.
In my misspent youth, I studied science only to find that I could never become a scientist. But in the process was instructed on the scientific method as being central to what makes science, how to differentiate it from non-science, and in the process was taught that a scientist is one who uses the scientific method to do research on the physical universe.
The scientific method I was taught was as follows:
1) make observations (anything that cannot be observed cannot be studied by science)
2) use only those observations that are repeatable
3) look for patterns in multiple observations (steps one and two in Richard Feynman’s formulation, presupposing that steps one and two above already made, steps one through three in Gerald Holton’s 1996 formulation of the Einstein School of Inductive Method of Science, again based on the same presupposition) an observed pattern is called a hypothesis
4) run experiments, the only valid ones based on steps one and two above
5) a hypothesis that has not been disproved by experimentation at some point can be called a theory, the line is fuzzy so don’t make a big thing about it
6) goto step 4) because even theories can be disproven by experimentation
This method puts severe limits on what science can study. In other words, science can study only a subset of present day phenomena. For example, fossils are found in the rocks, present phenomena, but how and when they got there cannot be observed. People may make guesses based on their à priori beliefs, but because their guesses cannot be observed, are they science? According to the definition I was taught, no.
The observation was made once that the sun’s shadow went backwards. This observation was made ca. 700 BC. Is this a scientifically valid observation? No, this was a one time event, one time observation, an observation that cannot be repeated, therefore science cannot touch it. People can speculate, but those speculations are not science because those speculations are not based on observation.
One problem is that even when a theory is proven false, the math developed from that theory will often continue to be used as long as it gives results within usable limits. Some start early, for example Tesla rejected Quantum Mechanics because it predicted results that were different from what he found in the lab, and he considered those differences to be significant enough to reject Quantum Mechanics altogether. But most people prefer to tweak the math to continue to give acceptable results than the pain of developing a new mathematical framework for their studies. For example, after Dr. Thomas G. Barnes retired from UTEP, he revisited the original 1912 experiment comparing Einstein’s relativity theory against Newtonian physics: both theories predicted gravitational lensing — but in Dr. Barnes’ review, he found that a constant used in the math had been discovered decades later to be incorrect, and when he inserted the corrected constant, Relativity came out a poor second. But it will take more than that and the problem illustrated in the following video for most scientists to go through the pain of developing a new mathematical framework for physics.
Poptech says: April 7, 2014 at 1:10 am
Maybe you are illiterate
Yes, in fact I am not actually writing this, rather just pecking at the keyboard randomly, and sometimes it makes some sense…
and missed the three articles I cited?
None of which offered any evidence that Willis “misrepresents his credentials”, and the fact that three articles each offered three different labels, i.e. scientist, engineer and computer modeler, would lead a reasonable observer to the conclude that the journalists applied the labels themselves, versus Willis misrepresenting them.
Are your requirements failing you? Don’t be afraid answer the question.
Is a ten year old who uses the scientific method for their science fair project a scientist?
Ten seems a bit young to fully comprehend and apply the scientific method, however this “13-Year-Old” who became the “Youngest Scientist to Achieve Nuclear Fusion” certainly deserves consideration:
“At the average science fair you probably would expect experiments about plant growth under different circumstances, egg drops, or batteries made from food. A nuclear fusion reactor that creates helium from hydrogen would probably be quite unexpected, but that’s exactly what 13-year-old Jamie Edwards from Lancashire did.”
http://www.iflscience.com/physics/13-year-old-becomes-youngest-scientist-achieve-nuclear-fusion
You still haven’t answered:
What does the subject matter of the research have to do with it’s categorization as science?
ROFLMAO! I just spit my drink all over the floor. Alexa rankings are largely determined by people naive enough to have the Alexa toolbar installed or too foolish to have an Anti-Virus program installed that would flag it as ad-ware.
Funny, it seems like everyone with poorly trafficked sites doesn’t like Alexa:
http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2014/03/anthony-watts-falls-in-love-with-alexa.html
My Google PageRank is higher than this site and I have barely done anything to optimize that.
Too bad that hasn’t translated into page views, and once people get to your site they seem to in quite a hurry to move on i.e.:
PopularTechnology.net – http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/populartechnology.net
Global Rank: 662,688
Bounce Rate: 85.20%
Daily Pageviews per Visitor: 1.20
Daily Time on Site: 2:29
WattsUpWithThat.com – http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/wattsupwiththat.com
Global Rank: 9,471
Bounce Rate: 40.70%
Daily Pageviews per Visitor: 3.24
Daily Time on Site: 8:37
Writing blog posts does not make you a scientist.
Clearly, however researching, writing and defending hundreds of blog posts, utilizing the scientific method, does. It is engaging in scientific process.
FYI – both Daily Telegraph cites were from skeptic friendly authors – lets see how many times that happens in the future.
He was cited twice in the last 8 days;
https://www.google.com/search?q=willis+enchambac&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=sb#channel=sb&q=willis+eschenbach&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&tbm=nws
by Salon;
http://www.salon.com/2014/03/31/while_the_world_burns_climate_deniers_are_headed_to_vegas/
and The International:
http://www.theinternational.org/articles/525-climate-change-why-is-the-public-so-conf
Similar to you, they harp on his credentials, rather than his body of work. It is probably because they are afraid of him and what he represents.
– – – – – – – –
Further in development of a conception of science, we must address the beginning of what we call science. How did science first appear out of non-science?
It appeared when there was cultural shift (philosophically reasoned basis) to use applied reasoning as the only means to real knowledge (knowledge of reality).
There was applied reasoning before science but culturally (philosophically) it was not considered a means of either conceiving of or knowing reality.
John
Back in the early 90s, while I was working in a privaste research lab belonging to a telecommunications company (we were NOT “climate scientists”, almost everybody had their doctorate in physics of math) one of the physicists circulated a bit of early internet humor called “The Scientist Test”. It had only two questions, and if you answered “yes” to both then the test concluded you were a scientist. I think of this test when I hear people talking about the “consensus”; the questions were: 1. Are you an expert in some very narrow field of inquiry? 2. Do you disagree with everyone else working in this field?
I came late to this thread which seems to have become somewhat intemperate and focused on one individual.
Here is the Oxford English dictionary definition of a scientist
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/scientist
Here is the web site of the worlds oldest scientific organisation which has a who’s who of famous members.
https://royalsociety.org/about-us/history/
The first paragraph clearly defines the meaning of a scientist. It seems clear that a scientist is someone with a special knowledge of natural or physical sciences. They don’t need to have a science degree in one, as several of the foreign members illustrate, one being an economist.
I think by any reasonable definition of the term Willis could be defined as a ‘scientist’ albeit an amateur or citizen scientist. I have no axe to grind or any special knowledge or affinity to either Willis or Poptech, but it seems to me that this discussion has been very bad tempered and centres on the meaning of one word. By any reasonable and objective reading of what constitutes a scientist Willis is one and if others call him this I would see no need for him to correct them.
I admire your work Poptech, but with respect I think it would be best to let the matter rest
Tonyb
IIRC, Robert Heinlein defined an engineer is a rule-of-thumb scientist, and a philosopher as a scientist with no thumbs. In short, an engineer cares more about whether something works or not rather than why it works. A philosopher does not care whether the idea works or not as long as it’s shiny. A scientist tends to want to know “why” in real world terms.
It may be easier to define who is not a scientist than who is. I would say that anyone who is so very innumerate as to not understand how the omission of any pertinent variable, or the inclusion of any variable that is not precisely accurate, in a computer predictive model, will compound these errors with every iteration of the model, cannot be described as a scientist, no matter what his ‘qualifications’ and no matter what his occupation. That would rule out most of the supposed 97%..,
Also, the difference between a capable scientist with a degree and one without is the vocational vs avocational distinction. “Amateur” tends to denote a lack of refined skill. Even some of the more extreme avocationalists posting about climate are pretty skilled. They may not listen well, but the skill is definitely there.
Obviously consensus defines science, therefore scientists are defined accordingly by consensus. If you’re part of the “in crowd” you can therefore call yourself a “scientist”, having been popularly accepted into the fold. This is just like it was in Copernicus’ time. Only completely opposite of that.
John Whitman says:
April 7, 2014 at 7:36 am
Science is merely applied reasoning. Applied reasoning does not exclusively belong to scientists. You can perfectly apply reasoning without being a scientist.
John
You want to see Francis Bacon, The New Organon about that. Bacon decried “empiricalists” not because they were empiricists – which is a modern criticism by post-modern/normal writers – but because they were not systematic. Prior to Bacon, systematic investigation was a hit-or-miss practice used by some, ignored by others. Bacon observed that huge volumes would be written based upon the results of a single experiment which was not replicated.
Richard Oritz says, “This method puts severe limits on what science can study.”
That is the strength of all genuine science and the scientific method. It is by definition limited in its scope to what can be observed, measured, repeated, and utilized in technology. And even in these cases, there may be many working hypotheses to interpret the data.
Scientists today use the limited nature of scientific knowledge to assure a trusting public not only that they have objectively adhered to these standards, but also that this is the only valid way to understand any subject. And yet, these limitations are constantly thrown out the window, and scientists assert their greatest authority in areas that are not even suitable to actual falsifiable, measurable, and observable phenomena. Science is a limited method of understanding. If it is not, it is not science. What is now being practiced is termed scientism.
chuckarama says:
April 7, 2014 at 1:49 pm
Obviously consensus defines science, therefore scientists are defined accordingly by consensus. If you’re part of the “in crowd” you can therefore call yourself a “scientist”, having been popularly accepted into the fold. This is just like it was in Copernicus’ time. Only completely opposite of that.
Not obvious at all. Consensus is politics, and while scientists, especially academics and government forms, may play politics, the sole criterion of being a scientist is whether the individual in question practices an adherence to scientific principles. Politics can’t start or stop a nuclear reaction, can’t tell you if your house will really fall down that hill side, or if the nice flat beside the creek is a 100-year flood plain or not. Politicians can decree anything, but they cannot necessarily make it so. King Knut deliberately provided an object lesson in this to his court long before Bacon delineated a scientific method.