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)

Con-Fusion?

Whilst the usual oodles and squillions change hands across the boardroom tables, the actual hardware upon which we are apparently doomed to depend turns out to be a bit shit.

It seems we only stop shitting in the kitchen when we're constipated

The part of the brain that finds cars irresistible seems to be missing in my case, so I'm probably embarrassingly late with this. The Honda hybrid is called the Insight. Oh how we laughed.

Bad Dream Time

Global warming is bad for your health - particularly if you're an aboriginal Australian, a Pacific Islander or a polar bear

The British police drum up a bit more business for themselves

Excellent climate commons piece from Gavin Schmidt at Real Climate

Infernal Combustion

Frank is feeling a little better today. Thanks for asking.

While the UK entrenches itself up to its neck in car culture, the scientific world debates whether it is best to starve us all and destroy our biodiversity in the name of biofuel or bio-electricity - whichever gives most miles per acre. Motorists, as ever, expect to be coddled through without inconvenience.
Those on two wheels had better watch their backs.

So many choices, so little accurate information.

What price action?

China and Italy invest heavily in renewables

Block

Some days are better than others. Still, you can't have everything. Where would you put it?

More Noblesse Oblige

Prince Charles continues to use his position a lot more wisely than the rest of the anachronistic rabble from which he hails. Frank may have been manning the anarchist barricades for 40 years but he now, somehow, finds himself in bed with Chuckles. Life, eh?
This cartoon is a modestly amended regurgitation of a very early Frank strip, which is as much as I can manage today.

In the wind....designs improve and the promise of increase abounds (outside of the lamentably poorly served UK) and even the mafia are keen to get involved!
Hell - even the French!

In the water...anacondas

McFly 23 is out and about in Manchester, teaching elephants to tapdance

Fuel Dump

It might need a revolution in the water-heavy way we process our own waste, but there's a lot of potential here, isn't there? If we need a massive infrastructural rearrangement, why not make it inherently sustainable.
If I'm talking shite, please tell me. (Please see very informative comment by Anonymous (Dr. J. Singmaster), below)

Elsewhere - despite continuing improvements in the technology, the "demand" ( now there's a can of semantic worms) for wind turbines declines .

An early-doors pointer to the potential problems we might face, should a nuclear future coincide with further economic collapse; Will capital run for the hills when the bills outweigh the profits and the dangers are on someone else's doorstep?

Once more unto the beach, dear friends.

As a recent poll shows that even those who profess concern about climate change have no intention of cutting down on the jet-fuelled beanos, and as Portugese Men-o-war swarm into the Med' in the latest incursion by the jellied masses, I am tempted to yet again repost this (slightly amended) old chestnut.

Meanwhile - US consumers seem a little more ready than we in the UK to foot the bill. Something to do with leadership, perhaps?

Efforts are made to streamline and revolutionise energy