Glass half empty

As 9 out of 10 firms ignore their supply chain emissions in calculating their climate impact, and the daily hate gets alarmed at something other than immigration, we hurtle towards Copenhagen without effective brakes

With thanks as ever to Dr Glenn Barry and Climate Ark for sterling work in digging up the links

Wipe-Out

Toilet humour. I know. It's not big. It's not clever. Some sophisticated souls pull their faces over material like this and end up looking like a bulldog licking piss off a thistle. They think it devalues the currency. I pooh pooh such notions.
Anyway...American's dedication to a luxury defecatory experience leaves virgin forests depleted, with a nagging feeling that they could have done so much more with their lives. Maybe they could have been the mainstay of continental water equilibrium. Rather water than water closets. Maybe in another life.

The Age of Enlightentertainment

Apparently this blog no longer materialises on some browsers. I suspect Ern has wedged a sabot somewhere in the gears.
For those few who remain....

The media don't take this stuff seriously. It's not good for business and its simply not sexy -so no matter that we're pumping it out faster than ever or that we're going to be left holding frazzled stalks of nowt come harvest time - we'll wait untill we're staring down the barrel before we think about dodging the bullet. We'll sell more ads that way.

Levelling the Land

Monbiot has waxed historical with this

Somewhat sluggish this week, me.

Never Mind the Bullocks (yet again)

I'm re-upping these because the old link doesn't seem to work with some browsers.



And I suppose this would be as good a time as any to link to George Monbiots article on the nuclear option, which links to a lot of information we probably need to be aware of.

Char wallahs

BioChar seems set to be a nice little earner for those unable to fill their boots with biodiesel. But before everybody runs away with the idea that this is some sort of tried and tested technology, lets have a little look at the downside, shall we. (with thanks to Almuth Ernsting and Rachel Smolker)
Especially in light of the unsettling ups and downs of the palnet's forests, the state of the larder and the urgency of the task

This is something of first for Throbgoblins International:
Of all the links we have included over the past year we have never had occasion to link to that great British arse wiper, the Sun. But there's always a first time, and their splash coverage of "The Age of Stupid" can be seen here.

Safeguarding our way of life

The instinct of crisis hit government classes throughout time and across continents seems to be to keep the people down and dumb. This seems to be a default position of power and it is no surprise to see it exercised against green dissidents, despite the fact that their concerns are widely shared within the establishment itself.
So, as the Andes gets ready for structural readjustment, the food supply dries up and the North Atlantic gets ready to tip us all over into more interesting times, we are encouraged to distract ourselves with boffin-magic and unreachable stars

Meanwhile we dump our shite out of sight and out of our minds,

Much ado about nothing

Things get worse and get worse quicker, and the media fudge and the businessmen run for cover.

Lots
of
bad
news
today

...so I'm posting a curate's egg of a cartoon, putting my feet up and watching some crap TV

Glaxo, baby

GlaxoSmithKline CEO Andrew Witty seeks to rebrand the Pharma giant with a raft of humanising proposals

Throbgoblins International let out a round of applause, a gasp of disbelief and a burp of rather tart cynicism.

Feeding The Hand That BItes you

There's been a lot of debate lately about whether this or that extreme weather event - from China to Australia - is a symptom of Global Warming or merely a surprisingly large cluster of normal freak events. Are these disasters the last of the rare disasters or the first of the common disasters? This seems to me to be like asking - whilst under violent assault - whether one's assailant is the familiar local nutter or a scout for the rampaging army of zombie psychopaths that are on their way to ravage your neighbourhood but at present are still some miles away enjoying a breakfast of griddled brains in a nearby town. The fact of imminent zombie invasion should surely be focusing our minds rather better than it is. But the general consensus seems to be that, untill our shopping malls are actually being over run with slavering mutants, there is no need for any action that might interfere with the day's business.

Changing the lightbulbs in the mall isn't going to stop an army of zombies. We may need to choose a different battlefield

Trading Places

The carbon market, being as bolloxed as every other market, has screwed the price of carbon into the ground. One result of this is that the contribution to emissions reductions made by Germany's world-beating renewables industry is offset by the ease with which less scrupulous players can get their hands on the newly liberated excess permits - thus enabling carbon spewers to party like there's no tomorrow.

We're old hands at this

Beast Market

Seeing as the markets have done such a wonderful job of securing a safe and happy future for everyone, the British Conservative party suggest leaving the safeguarding of bio-diversity in their caring and capable hands

It'll drive us all mad in the end, but some folk have got off to a head start, (short sighted dinosaur politics in the North of Ireland? - who'd've thunk it?)

We begin to say goodbye to Asian water supplies, Indian rains and the salamander

End Daze

As Australia burns in a record breaking drought -(as does China and, soon, California) - James Lovelock advocates a Churchillian battening of national hatches, whilst others man the barricades.

On an entirely irrelevant note...
1) Pop has not only eaten itself, it has been violently sick down its shirt, and

2) The missing Dark matter sought by physics can be easily accounted for by adding up all the invisible elephants in all the rooms in all the houses of our glorious civilization

Burning Man

Renewable energy, - if it is to be resilient enough to manage the transition from carbon based mass consumption to a sustainable future - must be accessed through a technology based on materials in plentiful supply. There's no point basing it on kryptonite or on materials that are prohibitively costly to access or convert. There is only so much platinum (or uranium, for that matter) to go around.
The idea that we can carry on regardless and simply substitute another power source for our present ones is foolish in the extreme. Carbon was a once-only offer. The party's over.

Energy is an expression of labour and time. What human or horse muscle can achieve in an hour pales beside the work rate of carbon fuelled engines. We have created a global culture that is entirely dependent on more labour and more time than is available without burning fossil fuels. When the fossil fuels are no longer available, and the alternatives prove inadequate to the immense and wasteful scale of our chosen way of life - how will the powerful seek to satisfy their "needs" for additional labour and time? In the time honoured tradition -of enslavement and conquest? How will the powerful deal with those who compete with them for labour and time? In the time honoured tradition of enslavement and conquest.
We are a predictable species, by and large (give or take the odd black swan moment)

There is no alternative energy source that can meet our "need" to have our cake and eat it too.
Reduce. Re-use. Recycle

One might add - Re-Design

Singularity

Fresh from mapping the ocean floor for our surfing pleasure, Google now joins forces with NASA to create a "SIngularity University" to ride that steep learning curve and maybe get us the jet-packs we so richly deserve

Elsewhere - being profoundly bolloxed gives the Australian government pause for thought.

Cartoon Capture and Storage

I could have gone for a serious exploration of the food crisis, or a sober appraisal of the possibilities of solar technology...... but I went with a fart gag with a poop punchline. Come the revolution humour will be resilient and sustainable.

There is no such thing as clean coal.

Fox Trot (?)

And lo - Darkness is upon the face of the waters pretty much everywhere you look, whilst Australia maintains its historically low tolerance of humans. Is it any surprise that Uncle David Attenborough should feel moved to take a small swipe at biblical half-wittery in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species.

Jonathan Porrit also speaks out about the elephant in the room.

A price is put on life.

Elsewhere, disappointingly, - Jim Hansen declines to support those struggling against airport expansion - declaring it an irrelevance in the face of the real problems - which centre around coal. Of course Jim Hansen is not a man whose opinions one dismisses lightly - and he no doubt has well considered reasons - but we at Throbgoblins International consider that the cultural significance of the conspicuous carbon consumption of habitual frivolous air travel makes it a crucial target in the struggle for a resilient and sustainable post-carbon society.
Mr Hansen will no doubt be on Michael O'Leary's Chritmas card list this year