Oil QUIETLY closed at a record high today

The last time oil was anywhere near this price was last August when many were justifiably concerned that Israel had lit the fuse on what could explode into World War 3 in the middle east. And now with very little attention from the media, oil has quietly surpassed this former high. I looked for a mention of this on the major news web sites just now and found hardly anything. This just stuns me when I think about the vital importance of oil to life as we know it.

Why is the media whispering about something so important? Could it have anything to do with their dependence on advertisers who would like their customers to believe everything is just fine? Any thoughts?

Davis County "Energy Recovery Facility"

Whenever I see the sign on Highway 89 for the garbage burn plant by HAFB, I always have to chuckle.

ENERGY RECOVERY FACILITY - EXIT 404

They call it an energy recovery facility because the methane recovered from burning Davis County's garbage is used by HAFB for generating electricity. To be clear, I think it's good that Davis County's trash is burned instead of just thrown in a conventional landfill.

But calling it an energy recovery facility is, IMHO, almost Orwellian.

Just think about it; how much fuel does it take for all of those trucks to slowly go through neighborhoods picking up trash and then drive it up to HAFB? Even though I've never crunched the numbers, I would be willing to bet that the operation is a net energy loser when everything is taken into consideration.

In a post peak world, how will we get rid of our garbage? Or maybe the question should be, how much less garbage will we be producing once there's less stuff for us to consume? Will we use stoves to burn our cardboard boxes and used tissues? Or will it be better to bury anything organic in the backyard?

Abiotic oil? So what?

If you read some of the online forums about energy issues you'll see people claiming that oil isn't a fossil fuel after all. Instead they claim that petroleum was formed by other mechanistic geologic processes within the earth. We won't get into a debate here about which theory of petroleum formation is correct, but if you want to read the arguments you can check out the Wikipedia article on the subject.

So what if petroleum is abiogenic? Oil fields and entire nations still reach a peak in production and then enter a terminal decline. And even though some [crackpots] claim that enough oil is formed continually to replentish what we extract, we've still been discovering less and less oil worldwide since 1964.

Some supporters of the abiotic theory claim that more oil lies deeper than the reserves that we've been discovering and producing. If that's the case, is it even feasible for us to extract it? Even with all of our technological advances in the past few decades, it's still virtually impossible to drill a well deeper than 10 km.

So if you're trying to persuade me that peak oil is a sham, you're going to have to try something better.