Talking of daft security checks - I've banked with NatWest since 1976. About 2 years or less ago I failed a security check to execute a transaction because "I" got my date of birth wrong. The idiot I was speaking to could not conceive that I might know my dob and another idiot at NatWest might have input it wrong when entering it onto a computer system some years back! It's not hard to see why they almost (and arguably have) bankrupt the UK!

I was surprised to discover that within 24 hours of leaving my last company Facebook had changed my employment status.

It makes me wonder what other personal details are changed by outside forces completely beyond one's control.

JerryChicken wrote:There are large populations living in areas of the Middle East which only one generation ago were considered uninhabitable due to a complete lack of fresh water - they seem to be managing quite well now to the extent where they produce enough water to spray it on golf courses rather than drink the stuff. Its never a problem when a population is inventive enough to want to exist where water naturally doesn't. Indeed, they're OK for now, but they're running out of water pretty rapidly. I don't dispute that they have the money to do something about it, I mean, if you can run an oil pipeline through several continents, then why can't you do the same with water? But I doubt they could complete something on that scale in the time frame needed. Similarly, in the South West US, they can't build the reservoirs required in time to prevent a catastrophic crisis. http://thewaterproject.org/water-in-crisis-middle-east

JerryChicken wrote:There are large populations living in areas of the Middle East which only one generation ago were considered uninhabitable due to a complete lack of fresh water - they seem to be managing quite well now to the extent where they produce enough water to spray it on golf courses rather than drink the stuff. Its never a problem when a population is inventive enough to want to exist where water naturally doesn't. Indeed, they're OK for now, but they're running out of water pretty rapidly. I don't dispute that they have the money to do something about it, I mean, if you can run an oil pipeline through several continents, then why can't you do the same with water? But I doubt they could complete something on that scale in the time frame needed. Similarly, in the South West US, they can't build the reservoirs required in time to prevent a catastrophic crisis. http://thewaterproject.org/water-in-crisis-middle-east

The less people know about me the better. As convenient as it may appear having adverts for things related to things I looked for on the internet magically appear on my browser sends a shiver down my spine. It's bad enought that I get 5-6 phone calls a day relating to records of my non fault accident or PPI that I need to claim and 5 or 6 emails a day from people trying to talk to me about payrol or CRM services I badly need (as I "unsubscribe" to one another commences).

They want us to perform all our financial transactions on line and at the same time open up as much access to what we do on line to almost anyone who wants to sell us (or at least say they want to sell to us) something - for our own benefit of course - because they are just responding to what "we" have asked for. It's like walking into a shop and putting your wallet stuffed full of all your money on the counter by the till while you browse the store.

Well, depending on whom you believe. A huge, global currency collapse is being engineered, so the banks, and their governments can implement a global electronic currency, thus, giving them access to every piece of information on everybody.

Really? Have you checked what international bodies such as the UN say on fresh water depletion and its likely consequences? Or that well known font of eco-hysteria - The Pentagon? Parts of the Middle East get by because they can afford to blow huge amounts of cheap fossil fuels on technologies such as water desalinisation. But the costs of running of such are prohibitive and many countries just can't afford the investment.

In the United States cities such as Las Vegas are on the point of drying up and withering away. The local reservoirs linked to the Rocky Mountains are practically exhausted. The last time I checked they were trying to secure water rights from as far afield as Washington state.

The agricultural belt of America (not to mention all but the South-Eastern tip of Australia) is entirely dependent on fresh water pumped from subterranean aquifers which are also close to the point of exhaustion. Once this water is gone it's gone for good. Or at least - for the next few hundred thousand years which is around the time it takes to replenish them naturally. Certainly no amount of water desalinisation can even hope to compensate for the loss.

Take the total agricultural yield of Mid-Western America and Australia out of the annual food chain. That's starvation - on a massive scale.

Of course, this is nothing compared to the calamity which will befall us once we reach the point of Peak Oil. No amount of "human invention" will be able to cope with the cold realities of fossil fuel depletion. Even if you could fit a nuclear fission reactor or hydrogen fuel cell to a car - where are you going to get the resources from to make all the components derived from fossil fuels (i.e. plastics, rubber etc.)

Where will the fertilisers or the pesticides we are now entirely dependent upon to cobble together the world's annual food requirements come from? Ditto medicines. And nobody will be squandering what precious little reserves they have left on ludicrously positioned urban developments such as Vegas or the host which have sprung up in the Arab Peninsula just so the inhabitants can all continue enjoying their splendid swimming pools.

When you say "can't afford" you really mean "won't afford just yet", but as can be seen in the Arabian states when they absolutely need desalination then its affordable, your two examples of the USA and Australia aren't really examples of two nations who will not be able to afford more imaginative methods when and if the time comes, for now there is a less expensive option, thats all.

Or are we saying that within a few decades a doomsday scenario will make the developments in the Arabian states turn in to ghost towns of a Mad Max style and those populations will be clamoring to get into the UK where it pisses water out of the sky for 250 days a year ?

That's assuming that the US, and Aus will be able to afford it when the time comes, and it won't be too late to renew the supply.
If you take a look at the US economy, and all the other debt based, consumer economies in more detail, it's clear that debt levels can't be maintained and the bubble will burst, and it will get very messy indeed.

Hey, take it up with the UN. I'm only voicing a small subset of the serious concerns they (and other groups) have been ringing the alarm bell on for many years now.

Your argument seems to go something like ... "everything will be ok, because human beings are smart and we'll invent some technological fix which will be able to supply all our needs at an affordable price".

Unfortunately, as the popular science writer and anthropologist, Jared Diamond, points out - there are any number of human civilisations throughout history which faced resource crises of all descriptions and simply collapsed.

This reminds me of the argument I regularly used to hear in the seventies which claimed we'd be producing unlimited quantities of free energy from nuclear fusion by the turn of the century. Now, I don't know precisely how many kilowatts of juice fusion has churned out in total by 2015 - but I doubt it would supply one small town with enough to last a week. At best a workable, affordable fusion reactor seems the best part of a century away. Meanwhile serious resource depletion is hitting us RIGHT NOW.

The point is - unless you can actually point to an even halfway usable technology which can replace the colossal quantities of fresh water we've just frittered away you'll forgive me for retaining my scepticism.

I see the problem as less to do with debt than resources and growth. With unlimited quantities of resources (specifically energy) it's theoretically possible to carry on with a debt-based economic model indefinitely. Western economies are entirely dependent on growth - unlimited growth. But in a resource-finite environment it's only a matter of time before the upward momentum of growth hits the intractable downward spiral of resources and their depletion.

You only need look at the population statistics over the last few hundred thousand years to quickly gain an appreciation of this truism. For many thousands of years population seemed fixed to a few million inhabitants with the number of deaths broadly matching the number of births per annum. It's only around the Renaissance period when the trend began its ever-quickening acceleration to what we see today. It was at that period when we first began to really see the benefits from cheap, condensed forms of carbon-rich energy laid down during archaic periods of the earth's history. Go back a hundred years or so when petroleum products really hit the market and population growth really does kick into hyperdrive.

Population is no different to any other inflationary bubble. Take away the fuelling agent (literally and figuratively) and it'll burst.