The Basement

Matthew Hurst makes the assertion that we've hit the tipping point with gas and oil prices. I think he's right – so I started running my own BlogPulse Trends to see what else I could find and this is what I discovered...

(Click here for your own BlogPulse Trend graph.)

Look closely – particularly at the green line which represents mentions of "oil" and "price" or "prices" but no mention of "Iraq" and it's relationship to the dark blue line which represents mentions of "Iraq" and a least one of a list of anti-war words I came up with but no mentions of gas or oil.

Mar 16: Green Spikes – Oil prices hit record high of $56/barrel
Mar 31: Dark Blue Spikes
June 21: Green Spike – Oil prices hit record high of $59/barrel
June 29: Dark Blue Spike – Bush's Iraq speech and a huge surge in anti-Iraq posts

I'm not sure what happened in late April (I don't have time to dig tonight) but I think it is important. There's a surge in mentions about Bush and Oil (light blue) - but they're seperate from the mentions of Bush and Iraq (purple is Bush, Iraq & Oil). Again, a few days later a surge of of anti-war rhetoric - but this time it's sticky and it's starts to swell - but still seperate from oil and gas discussions.

These are the big points. It seems like when ever there's increased buzz about high oil prices, it's followed with a surge of anti-war posts which don't mention oil or gas prices. That's important, so I'm going to say it again – high oil price posts lead anti-war rhetoric post that don't mention oil or gas prices. This is not a huge surprise I guess – but this might indicate that we aren't terribly honest about our anti-war sentiments – maybe not even with ourselves. This seems to suggest that we were all okay with sending our young overseas to die as long as we didn't feel it in our wallet at the pumps. But once that happened, we suddenly develop issues with the war – of course, they are completely unrelated to oil or gas prices.

Now look at the purple line. It represents mentions of Bush, Iraq and oil or gas. I think this line represents the level to which the American people (or at least those posting to blogs) associate Bush's action in Iraq with oil and gas prices. When this line trends up, it's really bad for the Bush administration. Once this line begin its upward trend, people are no longer separating the concepts, they are no longer thinking rationally. I think Matthew's right – we've reached the tipping point on gas prices, but it might also be the tipping point for the Bush administration and American support for the war effort.

This might suggest that rising oil prices are the catalyst for American people turning against Bush's war effort – but we're going to use something else as an excuse.