A friend of mine was gloating because one of my "predictions" turned out to be "false". I stated last year, about three months before hurricane Katrina that the price of gasoline would hover around 1 dollar a liter, AND that it would stay that way pretty much the whole year 2006. OK, so today he told me "Look! Look! The price of gasoline is under $1.00 ! You were wrong!"
Well, unfortunately for my friend, the price of gasoline is now 99.9 cents a liter at most gas stations, which means that it is not even a cent lower than a dollar, it's a tenth of a cent. Furthermore, he must have forgot that when you round out numbers, you round it out to the next highest. Another reason to turn that gloating into an overreaction is the fact that 2006 is still not over. If the price of gasoline does drop under, say 94 cents a liter and for at least a month, not a week, and that it stays there (no rollercoasting from 95 to 1.01 every other day) THEN my prediction will have turned out to be false.
But his gloating is understandable: he owns two cars. And he lives out in the burbs. He has been "suffering" of high gas prices for quite a while now and he has been showing signs of desperation; for instance, he is sure that the increase in gas prices is the result of a vast conspiracy between the government and the oil companies OR he is sure that the OPEC is at it again, just like 1973 (depending on his mood)... He sees absolutely NO link between his way of life (hyperconsumption of oil products) and the relentless increase of prices at the pump. Of course, he knows that maybe two cars is too much considering his situation, and when confronted with the fact that he overconsumes, he usually says that at least he does not own a snowmobile or a four wheel all-terrain or, worse of all a Hummer or an RV.
Thus, every little bitty sign of "hope" he sees, he interprets as another cue to "stay the course".
This is annoying because there is quite a lot of people like him out there. Especially in Canada. And some of them also do not want to see the rise in gas prices as a warning sign. If cars were running on natural gas, though (which underwent a five-fold increase in 3 years) I shudder to think what the reactions of people like my friends would be...
Posted by phonono at août 23, 2006 09:04 AM