Latent Decision Potential

Too much EPA.  That is the Air Vent theme for Earth Day.  This business, and it is a business, was started by president Richard Nixon.  It has been a highly successful business on a large scale in that it initially resulted in one of the cleanest industrial countries in the planet’s history.   Today, the ‘published’ budget for the EPA is about 9 billion dollars per year and productive industry is being systematically eliminated.

No doubt should be given to the EPA effectiveness with respect to certain aspects of its existence but there is no limit to their function.  There are other federal agencies for compliance, and then state agencies by the ton. The dollar volume is astronomical simply to keep us from polluting.   There is no limit to environmental control.

Correlations to business

As a business owner, one of the key problems we face is not laziness of employees, it is rather employees trying to do too much.   I’ve been at this for a couple of decades, and I can tell you that people who work, want to work better.  The result is that they ADD work to themselves when they detect a problem.  It happens more often than you can imagine.  When an employee spots a problem they typically decide that an added procedure will correct it.  No management need be involved, in their opinion, and the new process begins.  Unless someone with a clearer head happens by, the process will become rock solid procedure.  The procedures pile up until you have big costs. This is such an ingrained part of human understanding that it is as much a law as the second law of thermodynamics. For cost reasons, in healthy companies, you are required to develop a strong culture for rejecting these sorts of procedure.   It must come from the top down, and MANY companies fail miserably at this.

QC departments are a perfect example.  Like environment, you can never have enough quality control.  No amount of procedure ever can give perfect quality and many companies find themselves buried in massive quality control procedures to the point where nobody can make money.   We won’t do automotive work for that reason.

In the case of government, there is literally zero resistance to added process, except for the fact that people don’t want more work and have little power to add more process.  Liberals don’t understand that this is a truly positive feedback loop.  For example, can you name the negative side for the EPA to add ANY item to their list of controlled environmental aspects?

No down side I know of…..

New EPA regulation has no downside and has even added tiny creeks across private property to their purview, seasonal puddles, and CO2 gas which has NO measured negative impact. It also has no known downside for over-predicting problems from any other item which can be ascribed to humans. Any item which can be claimed to have an intimated effect on the environment is fair game.  Fish shrinking, increased drought, reduced crops, meat-eating. The rule becomes, anything which can be popularly controlled, should be.

Like climate science, no negative feedback on any individual proposing a new rule — whatsoever

Rules instead are a positive feedback.  They exist for the pure purpose of revenue because more government people are necessarily required to manage new rules.  ANY rule you can imagine or sell is equivalent to more revenue.  ANY invention of need is a positive for the corporation titled EPA.

People  don’t understand math, they do not understand evolution, and they do not understand the power of an impetus across a large body of ‘latent decision potential’.

It isn’t my fault, but it is my blog so I’m writing about it.

Climate science is an opportunity for the epa (lower case as they now deserve) like any other.   It has grown into a monster with minimal basis in fact, and acquires existence through exaggeration. I’m tired of people who cannot parse its truths from its nonsense, and I’m equally tired of people who cannot stop pedantically arguing the nature of the minutia.  Climate models failed and oceans are big enough to absorb all of global warming energy…..period… There are a lot of smart people in the skeptic world who haven’t figured out that the oceans are truly dominant.   The oceans truly are.  A thousand years of global warming energy can result in literally 1 degree. Sometimes, when something is really obvious, it is still hard for humans to see.  That is something which has sat in my mind for recent months, but is the subject for a different post.

In the meantime, temperature observations failed to meet climate models again today. (in clear violation of strict EPA regulation)

Persuant to  EPA regulation  no. 543025.53 section 254,

No snow shall occur past April 15, as snow is not required after popular taxation.

Michigan experienced very poor visibility in our particular location due to an uncooperative Christian god who shall be fined $527.23 per regulation 543025.56 section 17.  Minority Muslim gods are exempt from rule 543025.56 per EPA affirmative action rule 125932.56.

This was the view while driving to lunch. 4-22-2015.

Lewandowsky Strike 4?? Really….

So a Stephan Lewandowsky interview deserves publication here.  H/T Barry Woods.

Turn your mental filter on, this will cause brain damage.

What a complete loser.  He should be pushing a shopping cart collecting cans.

Is tax law complicated enough yet?

What did your April 15 look like? This was ours.

It costs a hundred dollars just to mail first quarter taxes.   While these are all checks to various branches of government, it is of course the huge amount on them that matters.   I’m thinking that the huge stack of electronically filed paperwork, massive fees paid to people just to calculate the pile and the ridiculous multiples of my take-home actually paid into the government, perhaps even a liberal could see reason for tax reform.  ….. maybe… maybe not.

Four times a year.

Entrepreneurs Regulation

Kenneth Fritsch noted in the comments section of the Entrepreneur’s Experience post the following poignant reality:

I would suspect that besides taxes, a more hidden expense for small businesses and businesses in general is the cost of regulations.

He would need a federal license to be more correct — probably.  In fact, I think the FDA or the ATF or perhaps the EPA has some regulation to say as much.  Hard to tell which division holds responsibility.  I do know that the FDA (food and drug administration) seems to regulate the import of plastic ultra-sonic welders.   At least I know that on two occasions (at the FDA request) I’ve filled out an FDA form with a statement written on it that the form is not required as there is no regulation.   Of course the “form” has no space for such statements so I just write it in the ‘address’ block.   On two other occasions, no form was required.   Basically it is paperwork with no readers, that regulators don’t even know whether it is needed, but sometimes must be used.

So today I received a new shock.  It just crossed my mind that perhaps I should explain that I’m a middle class progeny.  No big money in my history, the spoon in my mouth was stainless steel rather than silver.  Not that I’m complaining, money is horribly unimportant in case you haven’t learned that lesson, until you have none of it of course.   So the shock was not the 20 pages of new employee manual compliance law we received yesterday, it was a notification from our customer that we must now comply with affirmative action law.

—-

xxxxx Company is a federal contractor or subcontractor subject to the Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA), as amended, Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Action of 1973, as amended (Section 503), and Executive Order 11246. As a federal contractor, xxxxx Company is obligated to take affirmative action to employee women, minorities, individuals with disabilities, and veterans. xxxxx Company is also required to inform everyone with whom it conducts business that they may have the same obligations.

This notification does not imply that your organization has the same affirmative action obligations under VEVRAA, Section 503, and Executive Order 11246, as referenced above. Your obligation under those regulations is based on a number of factors, including size of workforce and dollar amount of subcontracts. However, we are required to notify you of your potential obligations as a subcontractor.

We appreciate your cooperation in our effort to fully comply with these Federal requirements.

—-

Just another day, another pile of regulations….

I called our HR manager and found out that he wasn’t aware that we subcontract to the government through our customers.  I didn’t know he didn’t know and didn’t know that he needed to know.  Whatever… On brief reading, if we sell X amount of goods, to the government as a subcontractor,  SUB being the operative word, we must comply with affirmative action law.   I have no actual idea what that means at this moment.   I do know that we have NO idea how many of our products end up on government vehicles vs private.   Our customers don’t tell us which goes where and to whom….   Why would they?

I have not one clue when we ACTUALLY crossed the dollar thresholds to be a fully regulated govt subcontractor, but from what I’ve read online, we crossed the threshold some time ago…  I really don’t know how we would ever figure out when that actually happened.   Hell, I don’t even know if we haven’t crossed the line for some obscure reason.  We will ask lawyers, and they will tell us.

Anyway … reading this from Wiki:

The Executive Order also required contractors with 51 or more employees and contracts of $50,000 or more to implement affirmative action plans to increase the participation of minorities and women in the workplace if a workforce analysis demonstrates their under-representation, meaning that there are fewer minorities and women than would be expected given the numbers of minorities and women qualified to hold the positions available. Federal regulations require affirmative action plans to include an equal opportunity policy statement, an analysis of the current work force, identification of under-represented areas, the establishment of reasonable, flexible goals and timetables for increasing employment opportunities, specific action-oriented programs to address problem areas, support for community action programs, and the establishment of an internal audit and reporting system.

As a conservative SOB with no care what you have for your “personal engagement equipment”, our company hires the best people we can find.  Naturally, being conservatives, we are over 70 percent women, who apparently are deemed minorities?  Dunno really…   Do we have to increase the number of men, perhaps we need some artificial tanner, or perhaps some whitener?  Hard to really tell.   I have no idea if we pay the ‘right’ ratio, no idea if we comply with whatever new regulation, but I do know that our lawyers will be telling us soon — for $450/hr. — plus our time — plus our managers time—- etc..

Maybe there is some exemption for us that I don’t know.  I don’t know because I posted it at the moment learned about it to share the experience with tAV readers.  Even not knowing is a cost to us, because we have to PAY $$ to find out.

It’s just another day too, nothing special—  ever heard of California prop 65?   We got this notice just recently:

Back in February we sent a letter by fax requesting that you review the items they provide to us and identify if any of them contain the chemicals listed by the California Prop 65 legislation. We have not received a response to date. Please take a moment to review the letter and listing of parts. If your parts do not contain any of the chemicals then you just need to list the part number and state none on the reply form. We need to finalize our listing so we can reduce our legal risk and update the packaging accordingly.

We are still trying to figure it out because we have 2800 part numbers with thousands of subcomponents and with 800 chemicals, it takes a huge amount of time to figure out.  Here’s the link:

http://oehha.ca.gov/prop65/background/p65plain.html

Over 800 chemicals listed, which do you carry, which are exempt, how do you reply.  Lead has a dash though it but lead compounds don’t.  If you solder with lead, dashes are apparently exempt, but do you have the compounds in your product??  For Lead, you are also exempt if exposure is below a certain level, but exposure is in units of human absorption per day, yet the product lead percentage is in weight.  How can we actually know what absorption per day people would experience if the light is on the side of a truck? It doesn’t matter really because as a company we are guilty first anyway. Especially in California. Now we have replied to these requests many times, but the recent one above is pretty large terms of part qty and takes huge time.   If we blow disclosure, there are teams of lawyers ready to sue to make money based on imagined problems rather than actual ones.  What do you do?   You comply as best as you reasonably can …. but you really can’t.

Not that this cost individually would even scratch the surface of the taxes we pay.  Also not that that matters to most readers.   What we are experiencing at the very rare size private company we are, is immoral from a government and tax standpoint.     The system is designed to resist success for manufacturing in particular.  The tax and regulation load is so dramatic that I cannot find the words to explain.  All you need to do to see the truth is to look around at which country USED to be #1 in manufacturing, and now has so little manufacturing.  Of course, most of us simply look to what happened today, rather than what happened over time to the macro-economy.

Of course, liberals never listen, and I mean never, but it is good to vent anyway.   Better out than in, but as America’s economy continues to collapse, the sane voters ought to take note.

 

Thermorons

What I don’t like about climate in blogland is people who don’t understand science at all, yet pretend they do.   Outside of climate science, there are plenty of people who reject climate science completely simply because they recognize it for the political nonsense that it is.   They have no real concept as to whether the underlying physics actually functions, nor do they care, because they are smart enough to see through the lies and exaggerations and we all know if you catch the salesman in one lie, there are probably others as well.   Of course that is why Climategate is still being talked about.   The lies were exposed quite clearly so no amount of political committee “investigation” can shove it back under the carpet.

But it is the thermal whacko’s that bother me.   I cannot stand some of the inaccuracy or wrongheadedness spouted with respect to global warming.   People run around all the time spouting off about the second law of thermodynamics, in a manner which has Clausius flipping in his grave.   It is disastrously misleading what they write, and like the exaggerations of politicians climate scientists, it can do no good for those who would accurately expose the science problems with climate extremism.

The second law does not prevent radiation from a cooler body being absorbed by a warmer body….

That is not what it says.   Nobody with any thermodynamics background of useful proportion believes that.   Only fools who think they know something even dare write it and I’ve been told that by people far too often.  I can’t really fathom how people make such bold statements about the laws of thermodynamics when it is absolutely obvious they have no understanding whatsoever.  What is wrong with people such that they don’t feel the need to actually learn something before opining?  It seems an important step in making bold statements — that you know what you are talking about — as it prevents accidental jackassissm from occurring.  Hell, every radiative physics equation would break down were that true.  The very concept is so effed up that it even creates time paradoxes, yet opine they do!!   And quite loudly.  Isn’t the internet wonderful………..

Unfortunately for those large numbers of us who would rationally dispute the nonsense of climate science, there are still too many of the hard-core anti-AGW thrill-seekers in the world.  They are self-appointed saviors from the obvious exaggerations of the equal but oppositely self-appointed savior scientists who are in the business of making those exaggerations!  Attracted like magnets perhaps?

The second law does not prevent energy conduction from a cooler body to a warmer body either….

That is not what the second law of thermodynamics says and NOBODY with even a semi-functional thermodynamic understanding thinks otherwise.  If someone tells you that energy cannot transfer from the cold body to the warm one,  find someone else to explain it because you have just found yourself in the presence of a serious non-expert on thermodynamics.

I’m sick and tired of the whole mess.   Really, if you find yourself falling for that nonsense, turn it off and consider reading a thermodynamics book.  They are absolutely dry reading but if you are going down the thought path described above, you need to do something or you will break your brain!!  Broken and lost!

Alternatively, if you don’t want to spend months reading the driest literature you ever imagined, (it ain’t Dr. Suess folks) you could simply understand that the second law was written as a bulk property law.   If you flip a coin a quadrillion times, you will get an average of 50% heads every time.   Thermal interactions between billions of atoms are very fast and repeatable as energy is never lost, thus they can be well described by probability.  Thus we can say with absolute 100% certainty that NET heat always flows from a hot to cold body.

Energy as heat conducts and radiates in both directions between hot and cold bodies.  Anyone who tells you otherwise is FLAT WRONG and will eventually cause you brain damage!  If you escape thermodynamic brain damage caused by one of these a train-wrecks of a mind, you might find yourself next hearing about politics or gravity or spacetime with equally accurate descriptions.  The result of bad data, tearing trough your delicate neural structure like a bull in a china shop. Ignorance is absolutely contagious, and you don’t want to spend your days repairing your mind from such damage!

Consider that in each body there exists molecules and atoms at completely different quantum energy states – all at the same time.  On that scale, there are hot and cold molecules in any body, all the time.   Absolute zero temperature is the only possible exception where a body of molecules doesn’t exhibit multiple simultaneous energy states that I am aware of, but I’m an engineer, not a particle physicist.  But the point I’m trying to make is, how the hell would one atom would know enough about its neighbor atoms to know NOT to absorb a photon from a colder body than the average energy of its immediate neighbors?  Average energy of course being temperature.   Are there labels on the photons, do atoms take polls of each other?  Clearly not and that alone proves the mind-breaking, neuron-trashing concepts these people spout is flat stupid.  The NET heat flow however, is from hot to cold, always, because of the higher probability of energy transfer from a body which has higher excitation to a lower excitation body- and thus the second law of thermodynamics holds true.

So don’t be a thermal moron.   Be a thermal truther.  I’m sure the one thing we can agree on is that the world has enough morons.

The good news for skeptics is that on the other side, it is the “main stream” AGW scientists who are the whackos, exaggerators and cause-driven lunatics who see thermal trends in tree-rings, sheep or fish dimensions, and mollusk shells and finger-paint pictures of climate doom using weak math and really bad data.   It leaves actual climate skeptics squarely in the reasonable middle, and there are a lot of us.

How do you find us?  How do you know when you’ve run into a reasonable climate opinion?  We never dispute whether absorbing gasses — actually absorb.  We don’t fret about imperfect performance of a blackbody or reasonable approximations or parametrization of equations (although we can question some of them).   There is no room for us to imagine that some form of magic bullet is going to come along and prove the basic concepts of climate science wrong.  And we universally recognize that climate models have failed.  Unbeknownst to the thermorons, those opinions come from understanding rather than some hopey-feelie happy thoughts far too often used as a substitute for logic by the extremes on both ends of this particular discussion.

I don’t really care to be in the middle, but as is often the case in this life, nobody really gave me a choice.  Stay safe folks, the world is a dangerous place and a brain is a terrible thing to waste!