MANY readers would recall the schoolboy definition of an expert.
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Kids would recite "X, the unknown quantity, spurt, a drip under pressure".
The first time your columnist heard this mantra was when it was yelled by a freckle-faced lad swinging upside down from a tree branch.
He was talking about a new science teacher who, indeed, found himself stressed.
Educators, of course, encourage students to identify and specialise in subjects that they're interested in.
University swats get to know more and more about less and less.
Such musings are a response to a serious-minded, if anonymous, emailer with an apparently unquestioning faith in experts.
White-coated boffins who assume that their wealth of knowledge in a teensy-weensy area means we must believe everything they say.
In many cases they may be correct - even if not always.
As British playwright George Bernard Shaw noted in 1906 "every profession is a conspiracy against the laity".
That means us ordinary chaps.
Do you sometimes get the weird feeling that some wild-eyed specialists push the envelope to (a) make themselves appear more important and, at the same time (b) suck us in?
Your commentator is especially vexed on this matter after an In Black and White column several weeks ago on climate change.
The emailer reckoned most experts agree global warming is happening.
It's all to do with "the science", you see.
Unlike other disciplines, "on heat" climate scientists apply a cast-iron "no questions, please" attitude often based on the very personal reason that they need continued funding and associated pension benefits.
The anonymous academic emailer reckoned yours etc had no right to comment on climate science as we were not, er, a climate scientist.
"Until you have the initials PhD (climate science) after your name, leave the topic to those who have dedicated a lifetime of research to it," the emailer finger-wagged.
A good a reason as any, we reckon, to ignore the warnings of our favourite climate change experts, Tim "Dinosaurs" Flannery and Al "Carbon Footprint" Gore.
It was Flannery, a palaeontologist by trade, who warned around 2000 that Adelaide and Perth would soon run out of water. (The sound you hear is water cascading over reservoir walls).
Now Timbo, in a column in Melbourne's Age newspaper this week, has attempted to identify Godzone's traditionally disastrous bushfires as dead-set signs of climate change.
Gore, that well-known tobacco farmer, industrialist, and mega- domestic power consumer, went further and even produced a shock horror doco, An Inconvenient Truth, which warned of drowning polar bears, rampant bushfires and possibly plagues of frogs - although we didn't stay for that bit.
There are many other unqualified Gaia botherers threatening dire weather events in our time.
Even real experts have problems with what are, at best, educated guesses.
In 1923, US physicist Robert Millikan forecast that "there is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom."
Albert Einstein in 1932 pooh-poohed nuclear energy for domestic purposes because "it would mean the atom would have to be shattered at will."
British mathematician and physicist Lord Kelvin once gazed into a crystal ball before claiming "radio has no future."
Digital Equipment Corporation founder, and computer geek, Ken Olson chanced his arm a bit in 1977 when he reckoned "there is no reason why anyone would want a computer in their home."
As far as climate science goes, and with traditional "God- fearing" religion all but deceased, climate changists are no more than the fear-provoking fire-and- brimstone preachers of our time.
Of course, real experts, such as those trained in medical and legal fields, must be respected for their, er, expertise, but so-called "experts" just plain guessing the weather?
Give us a break.