More Noxious Emissions

The first new Frank for a while. I'm still a bit rusty so I thought I'd start with some good old, reliable toilet humour, (and plagiarise some Polyp)



George Monbiot riffs on a Government report concerning it's offset-based carbon reduction targets.

Still warming up

Throbgoblins International are still warming up after our prolonged break. Our efforts at uploading for the new website have been flummoxed by our own staunch technical incompetence. Never mind.
Here are some old retreads to celebrate the publication of a report heralding the end of civilization as we know it via the usual routes of greed and apathy, and a CBI plea for more clean coal tech . The last one is a a very early Frank and has a generous helping of gratuitous violence to outrage those without access to reality.




( For Readers not of these shores, who may not recognise the reference;- Jeremy Clarkson is an oil-based life-form and UK celeb who broadcasts half-wittedly on his deep and abiding love of cars.)

Consuming Society

Hello. Throbgoblins International have had a somewhat longer break than anticipated due to the strangely determined incompetence of our broadband provider. But here we are again. Frank has rusted up a bit over the past month or so (as have I) and it may take a little time to get us both back in working order, but the planet seems largely as we left it so I'm sure we'll have plenty to complain about it once we're oiled up a bit. In the meantime, here is an Only Planet strip that originally appeared in New Internationalist magazine.



Over the next few weeks I've got my work cut out inputing the last of the data into the new all-singing, all-dancing website created by Graeme Sherriff at edible ecosystems, to whom I owe a bucketfull of thanks. Graeme's done a fabulous job for a pittance, grappling with unreasonable demands and a technically befuddled client, so I hope I don't screw it up. The idea is that I'll transfer everything over and gradually phase out the blog in favour of the new format. It's very user friendly and enables tag and character searches and all manner of wondrous goodies that I have yet to bend my head around. The grant I received last summer from Artist's Project Earth will finally bear fruit.

Be of good cheer

A short(ish) break

We at Throbgoblins International will be taking a short break of a few weeks or so. We're busy packing our worldly goods into boxes and moving house, in an effort to transfer an ever larger proportion of our wages directly into the holiday budgets of hard-pressed absentee landlords. We like to do our bit. Thus we don't have time to indulge in our usual obsessive cartoonery. Instead, we will be spending all our after-work hours getting increasingly annoyed by the amount of crap we have accumulated, and the amount of books we haven't read yet. I'm sure you'll both manage. See you sometime in June.

Meanwhile, here are some links

George Monbiot on Police suppression

The Guardian begins to get the hang of it

Bigger pictures required

The dangers of hive living

Bent As A Nine Bob Note?

At last, a climate related link to the dismal tale of graft that has engulfed the two-faced pocket-liners that we entrust with our collective well being. Apparently they're a sorry shower of bent bastards. Imagine my surprise.
Oh - did I mention incompetent?

The circle is broken, etc...

From John Hart's B.C. - There's a lot more (metaphorical) truth in this than any of us would care to admit

On The Rebound

Researchers suggest that our self indulgence might cancel out our cleverness, as we consume more of what we save in a "rebound effect".
Which is, apparently, a variant of the Jevons parradox (thanks to Marc Hudson)
What price water and food when there's no water and food.

Elsewhere, Russia reserves the right to wage its own wars for oil; the planet becomes increasingly unbalanced; marine wildernesses go the way of all fish.

Some fine urban pollution materials here, at Urban Emissions.info

I haven't been through this, but it looks very interesting - Recalibrating the Law of Humans with the
Laws of Nature: Climate Change, Human Rights, and Intergenerational Justice.

Active Listening

Burnout is bad for the environment.

Update -
Some links on ecopsychology - courtesy of Janet Alty

The Psychlotherapist

Ecopsych

Mary-Jayne Rust

Ecotherapy

Wilderness retreats

There are ups and there are downs, and then more ups and more downs. Keeping a level head is tricky. Maybe we should spend more time in the garden.

"To get credit for preserving the ocean or avoiding deforestation is like getting credit for not beating your wife," Tony Haymet, director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California, (climate feedback)