A Spoonful of Sugar Helps the Large Steaming Vat of Sewage Go Down

Here is a letter I just sent to Republican Whip Eric Cantor. Even though he is a big light rail guy, I am proud to call him my representative.


I would like to start by praising your excellent work in the House. Fighting the cap-and-trade was certainly a difficult battle. Too bad a few Republicans thought that there was a way to sweeten that pile.

That gets to the theme of this letter: No matter how much sugar you use, a vat of sewage is still a vat of sewage. Little add-ins here and there to sweeten the deal on bad legislation will result in more bad legislation.

And now the purpose of this letter: health care. The Dems have been running ads against you for some vote you made against health care reform. I say, "Thank you Mr. Cantor for having the courage to say 'No' to bad legislation."

This health care catastrophe that the President and the Democrats are trying to force down our throats (and exempt themselves from at the same time) is a large steaming vat of sewage. They will promise little (or big) add-ins to make it more palatable. But remember, no matter how much sugar you pour into it, it will still be a vat of sewage.

So, please fight to have all Republicans (and as many Democrats as possible) continue to vote "NO" against any health care reform package.

I personally fear any "fix" from Washington. They always have high-handed approaches with severe unintended consequences. That is why I beg you to fight for a solid "NO."

Remember, if someone approaches you with a bad idea, it is a bad idea. There is no half-way to a bad idea, whether it is doing drugs, getting pregnant, or voting for bad legislation.

Thank you,
Frank Doss

Health Scare

As though it will do any good, I have sent this letter to my two Senators. Sadly, they are both cool-aide drinkers (or is that "distributers"). After sending Warner my note, they triggered off my "Health Care" subject and gave me the leftie lecture on how important it is that the government be involved in end-of-life and all that.

The letter:

So here we go with another so-called crisis. Yet something else not to let go wasted. Yet another bill that absolutely must be forced through before anyone can read it, debate it, or inform the public about it.

But what the heck, the voters are stupid, right? They wouldn't understand even if it were explained, right?

No. So now we stand to have legislation forced on us that will require everyone to have health insurance if they want it or not. Another extra-Constitutional "right" created in Washington. Non-taxpayers will be declared entitled to taxpayer-provided health care.

To make things worse, there is no record in the many times it has been tried that the people of any nation with governmental health care ever being better off. The elderly are sacrificed. Those with treatable, but expensive, cancers are sacrificed (think leukemia).

Simply put, no Virginian should vote for any so-called health care reform package. So doing would put their position in the Congress at risk.

Vote NO on any health care bill.

Dems are determined on climate control

Senator Webb (D-VA), who campaigned as a conservative Democrat, again sent me his form letter saying that he will make sure whatever climate control legislation involves the "other major emitters" and is "fair." To him, I say:

Senator Webb,

I have received your form letter talking about going after all major CO2 "emitters." Please don't send it again. It does not reflect well on you.

CO2 is essential to life on our planet. Historically, we currently have low levels of CO2 in our atmosphere. Sure, there's more than 100 years ago, but geologically speaking 100 years is nothing.

I am going to cut my discussion down to some bullet points:
-There is no evidence of global warming. If anthropogenic global warming were true, the temperatures of this past decade would have gone up, not down.
-Even if there is global warming, there is no evidence of it being caused or contributed by humans.
-Even if there is man-made global warming, there is no evidence it would be bad for us. In fact, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that cold is very BAD for us. We have been having a relatively cool summer. Many farmers around the globe have already been hit by it.
-Even if there is global warming that is bad for us, man-made or not, there is no evidence that there is anything we can do about it.

-CO2 is a RARE trace gas that is essential to our biosphere.

Let me put that a different way: We have trace gases--gases that are rare amongst the other gases in the atmosphere. CO2 is rare amongst these trace gases. And the stuff is critical for plants to live and thrive. Animals on this planet need plants to live and thrive so they can, in turn, live and thrive. By taking CO2 out of the atmosphere, we are killing the planet.

So, to answer your point about making sure whatever legislation that is approved is "fair," the only fair climate control legislation... no... the only SMART climate control legislation is that which is voted down.

As I promised Senator Warner, even though I am not normally politically active, I will spend personal effort, capital, and time to campaign against any Virginia Congressional representative who votes for any climate control bill.

Thank you,

Frank Doss

And now for a carbonated beverage. With hops?

Have you ever noticed that when people diagram how CO2 does its global warming, they draw a big barrier cloud high over the ground? It sits there like a green house roof letting the sun's energy in, but blocking the heat from escaping.

I wonder how the CO2, which is heavier than air, stays up there. I touched on this before in talking about canaries in coal mines. The further down in a coal mine you go, the higher the risk you have of CO, methane, and CO2 poisoning. Those items are heavier than air, and as such displace the air way down there, thanks to gravity.

So is CO2 a magical one-way mirror that passes IR in, but blocks UV from going out? Of course not! CO2, as with H2O vapor are gases. Both absorb UV in the same limited wavelength range. But there is so little CO2 compared to H2O that we need to talk about fractions of a percent.

H2O vapor and CO2 are UV "sponges" that only absorb UV energy at a very limited frequency. There is more H2O and CO2 UV absorption capacity than UV energy to absorb.

Having more sponges under a faucet does not cause water to be absorbed any faster - especially when you have more sponge capacity than water.

I like to illustrate this with a huge swimming pool into which some dumped 20 gallons of water. The water represents the UV energy that green house gases can absorb. Some of the water goes down the drain. Next we throw in 1000 blue sponges. These sponges represent water vapor. Somewhere in those 1000 sponges is one green sponge. That sponge represents all of the green house gasses. One little corner of that green sponge (difficult to see) has been colored black to represent CO2.

The pool has only 20 gallons of water. Putting in more yellow or black sponges will not change that. While we can increase the heat retention capacity, we are not increasing the amount of heat.

Oh, also don’t let people get away with telling you that all of the CO2 in the water is increasing the acidity of the oceans. Water does not hold CO2 in solution very well. Especially warm water. Especially agitated water. And really especially agitated warm water, like the parts of the oceans that are being said to becoming acidified.

Here is a quick home-based experiment for you. Go get a carbonated beverage from your fridge. Take a taste. Nice and fizzy, right? Now leave it sitting open on your counter for a while. Or put it in the fridge. You can shake it from time to time if you wish. Wait a couple of hours. Take another taste. Fizzy? I didn’t think so.

The axiom to remember: CO2 is a rare trace gas that is essential to our biosphere.

At which point do Christians stop being called “Satan skeptics?”

I found an article on FoxNews yesterday. In this article, two paragraphs caught my eye. The first paragraph talks about how global temperatures have declined. Then the second paragraph calls Inhofe a “global warming skeptic.” If you believe the facts and deny a falsehood, you are a “skeptic?”

From FoxNews:
The 98-page report, co-authored by EPA analyst Alan Carlin, pushed back on the prospect of regulating gases like carbon dioxide as a way to reduce global warming. Carlin's report argued that the information the EPA was using was out of date, and that even as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have increased, global temperatures have declined.

"He came out with the truth. They don't want the truth at the EPA," Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., a global warming skeptic, told FOX News, saying he's ordered an investigation. "We're going to expose it."

My letter to my Senator..

Senator Webb,

I wish to raise your attention to the crime against the American people perpetrated today in the US House of Representatives.

If we permit the so-called clean energy bill to pass in any form, only harm can come to Virginia and the US. There are no benefits or returns to Virginia that could justify your vote on this bill. No so-called "jobs created" or fiscal return could be great enough to pay for the harm in this bill.

The real crime is that the bill is based on what, at best, is questionable science. At worst, the science is a total sham. Why on earth are we trying to reduce the amount of a rare trace gas that is essential to our biosphere!?

Additionally, cap-and-trade has not worked in any country it has been tried. There is no reason to expect it to work here.

I have heard people apply the Pascal's Wager to this argument: if we are right about anthropological greenhouse warming, wouldn't it be better just to be safe? This argument is just as wrong as the science it is trying to advance.

The facts are that this bill will raise taxes and expenses on everything. Our economy is in enough trouble already!! Anyone who says I am wrong on this is calling President Obama a liar. He himself said that his plan (the plan being advanced in this bill) will "necessarily raise" energy costs.

Please keep in mind that you campaigned as a moderate to conservative candidate. Voting for this bill would show you to be a liar. However, I am certain you are a man of honor. I hope I can count on you to do the right thing: vote against any and all bills reported to address greenhouse gases or climate change.

Technical Stuff Is Boring

I have a few friends who like to talk nothing but technical stuff when we meet. As an IT professional with more than a few years' experience, I can usually hold my own in these conversations.

The sad thing is is that some of these folks are fairly new to the field and are very excited about the new little things they have just learned or the earth-shattering problem they are having with a project they are on. Imagine if I were to bring this conversation to you:

"I am building a systems monitoring environment. I found Nagios to be on one hand too flexible and thus a pain to configure and too inflexible and incapable of monitoring things in the manner they need to be monitored on the other. As a result, I have dusted off my old AlertCentral I started around the time of my Computer Sciences Corporation days. That one was originally mostly written in KSH, but the next version was mostly in PERL. The first two versions stored alerts in flat files. The flat files made aging and escallations very difficult. As such, I am writing AC III almost entirely in PERL. All alerts are stored in MySQL. The WEB interface for configuration and alert handling is written in PHP with some Java. The really tricky part is notification. Everyone does pager (text or number) and e-mail. I am doing my notifications in VOICE. The voice module is written in Voxeo's callxml and PHP. calxml does the text-to-speech (TTS) for me. It even does the "Press or say 'one' to repeat" part. The voice module interacts with MySQL to enqueue and track call progress. The PERL modules on the monitoring server can interact with that MySQL database so it knows what to do next."

That sort of conversation is usually done in one breath. After the first five words, even the most technical audience has pegged his empathy guage and is thinking of how to break away for another beer and someone who will be quiet long enough to listen to his own long-winded boring story.

These long prattlings erode friendships and make listeners' lives difficult. To illustrate this point, there is a guy who rides the bus with me. He always want to talk about technical problems at work with me. (He found out I know the difference between a bit and a byte.) His speech is usually a complaint about how stupid someone he works with is and how he is going to implement a particular technical solution to fix that person's mistakes. The language is always sprinkled with random four-letter words that rhyme with "Pumpkin."

If he worked with me, he would be eroding what I like to call "colleague equity." "Colleague equity" is that bit of "gung ho" spirit you work up with someone by A) not being in their face all the time, and B) carrying more than just your bit of the load.

A shop in which the employees have built up a lot of colleague equity with each other, especially with management, has high "psychic income." "Psychic income" is the enticement an employee feels to continue working for an employer, even if the pay and benefits are poor.

Oh, a technical term: casters-up. This is the status a piece of equipment enters when it ceases to function properly, or "died." This is comparable to road kill that might have its legs (or casters) pointing up in the air. Usage: the system has gone casters-up.

Help desk people are accustomed to working with callers who have a faulty "chair to keyboard interface." You can probably figure that one out.

Data files that have been lost or deleted have gone into the "bit bucket."

There are more of these really exciting terms. They will come along later... hopefully in context.