Experts were surprised

From Dan Gardner's Future Babble. Page 34. Speaking of the dreadful history of experts forecasting oil prices.

This simple truth was brutally underscored during the Carter years, when all the smart people agreed with New York Times columnist Tom Wicker that the energy crisis was "real, growing, and a grave threat to modern civilization." Ordinary Americans didn't buy it. Poll after poll showed most Americans thought rising prices at the pumps were nothing more than a scam of the oil companies. There was no real shortage. Wait a little while, the whole thing will blow over, they thought, and oil will be as cheap as ever. This attitude drove the smart people crazy. "There should be no such thing as optimism about energy for the foreseeable future," The New York Times lectured in 1980, when prices were at their peak. "What is certain is that the price will go up and up, at home as well as abroad." Americans, who thought otherwise simply didn't know the facts, the smart people believed. And for good reason. A New York Times/CBS poll taken in 1977 found that more than half of college-educated Americans believed there was an oil shortage, but only one-quarter of those with a high school education or less agreed. "Moreover," The New York Times reported, Americans "were surprisingly ignorant of some basic energy facts. Despite all the publicity over the past four years about rising oil imports, which currently account for almost half the country's total needs . . . only 48 percent knew the United States must import oil." For Jimmy Carter, it was all too frustrating. "The American people have absolutely refused to accept a simple fact. We have an energy crisis. We have shortages of oil. The shortages are going to get worse in future," the president complained in 1979.

Six years later, the world was awash in cheap oil. Experts were surprised. The ignorant masses were not. It's a funny old world.