The Economy: Dan W- "Chance of Rain 100%"

"Maybe you knew this already. When I lived in Texas I chased storms. I took pictures of tornadoes. I taught myself how to read raw weather data and to do my own forecasting based upon this raw data rather than have to rely upon the words of the talking heads on The Weather Channel. It was interesting and exhilarating. I miss it. Anyway, one of the forecasting tools that I used was the diagram you see above. It's called a Skew T Log P diagram. The pressure component on the chart is measured as a logarithmic function, hence the name "Log P".

Basically speaking, air pressure decreases exponentially with height. Look at the diagram. Can you see it? At or near the surface or planetary boundary layer, the air pressure hovers somewhere around 1000mb. (Not if you're in Denver, CO. of course, but I'm not in Denver, CO) As height increases, air pressure decreases. That's pretty basic stuff. "Less" air, less weight, less pressure. Air pressure can never really be directly associated with exact height measures (in feet from the surface for example), only approximate values. Anyway, the Skew T Log P diagram is used by meteorologists to examine wind speed and direction, temperature and dewpoint, all as they change with height. This gives us a pretty good picture of what is happening the higher up into the atmosphere we go, and thus we can pretty accurately predict what will happen to a parcel of air as it rises into that environment.

So what the hell is my point here, you wonder? It's the log thingy. Take another look at the diagram. Notice how, as we move closer to 1000mb of pressure, the isotherms become more tightly packed? In other words, the closer we get to the ground, pressure INCREASES exponentially. From 800mb of pressure to 1000mb of pressure is usually only a few thousand feet. Why is this? Well, air pressure compounds, if you will, like interest compounds. As air stacks up (assuming no other environmental factors), it simply gets heavier more quickly.

Some folks recently have been commenting that some of my "predictions" are even now coming to pass. Schools going to 4 day weeks, school systems closing many of their schools in an effort to dramatically slash their budgets, food stamp programs being overrun by applicants, etc. The reason why my predictions seem pretty run-of-the-mill to me is because of the Skew T Log P diagram. Or, more to the point, it seems pretty straightforward to predict increasingly bad times when the bad times are getting worse NOT in a linear progression, but exponentially. Just as the air gets heavier and heavier more quickly as you approach "sea level", so too does the bad stuff "compound" with time. Unemployment begets more unemployment with each passing day. 500,000 new unemployed in February means 650,000 in March and 800,000 in April. The increase is not linear. Diminishing financial resources within a system increases stress upon that system more rapidly with every passing day; that's why people refer to it as a death spiral. And lest you think my predictions so far are grimly accurate, wait until the streets are filled with dispossessed and there is too much rioting for FOXNEWS to cover and the banks are closed and the electricity is off and not only are people hungry, but YOU are hungry! I say the chance of rain is, oh, 100%."

- Dan W, http://ashizashiz.blogspot.com/