Meanwhile of course plain old water is more fundamental to human and biological life that any form of external energy. Our bodies are structured water - 75-80% wate.
No water no life.

Everybody knows that the most of the world is confronted by a humungous water supply problem. And that the ever increasing human numbers and the consequent world-wide demand by everyone to live the "good life" as defined by TV advertisements and glossy magazines, is exascerbating this situation.

Such is an inescapable zero-sum game which no kind of technological cleverness can turn around.

Daffy Duck

Water supply problem? After two years of flooding you are seriously pushing water supply issues? What water shortages where?

Boy oh boy Cheryl, do you ever need a cold shower!

Twice recently I’ve tried to entertain a bit of discussion with you but you won’t be drawn into it. You won’t come back and defend your nutty statements. So I won’t try here.

Alright, I’ll let you go have that shower!

Curmudgeon you've been watching too many repeats of 'Top Gear'. If there's so much new oil how come unleaded petrol is now $1.50? The world is on a volume plateau of 85-90 million barrels a day but a lot of that like biofuel and tar sands is less energy rich than petroleum. There's also the slight problem of 2 bn people who want to drive cars but don't have one. That could be why they are heading to Australia in leaky boats to join our happy motoring society.

Even if we stay on the liquid fuels volume plateau for a few more years the price of everything like food and transport will keep going up. When fuel production declines then what? I'm not seeing too many battery powered semitrailers on the road. Things must go bad, it's just a question of sooner or later.

Hasn't abiotic oil been discovered? They're making it in Russia using some microbes. Big oil doesn't want the process released because they will be out of business.

The green movement and AGW have been so good for Big Oil; they have stopped exploration and made oil relatively scarcer and allowed prices to increase.

And what about thorium? Generally there is enough uranium in the oceans to power humanity for a million years.

And gas, and fusion and ZPE. Anything except wind and solar.

And remember individual prosperity is the best social contraceptive, assuming there is no religious imprimateur operating in the society, which stops prosperity anyway, so if people are rich and not religious they will generally have less sprogs.

And cheap, reliable energy is the only way of achieving prosperity.

What a misery guts article!

Curmudgeon - I did say that most of the the world has water problems - this in an undeniable fact. Even mainstream hard-headed economists (even The Economist Magazine) and techno-realists know that this is the case.
In fact I did not even mention Australia.
But dont let the facts get in the way of your blinkered ideology.