Many a slip...

NEW WEBSITE UP AND RUNNING - PLEASE CLICK HERE



Thanks to TheMshyPea for his help with this

The World Bank stores up trouble whilst focusing on the bottom line

Waste Not Want Not

Where there's muck there's (an absence of) brass

That's not the only recycling going on.

Fairtrade solutions in troubled times

Wind and Water

The UK governmentt promises more green jobs, whilst factories close; and algae gets another cash injection. Can green slime save the day?

This another shameless re-tread of old, slightly crusty material from the Throbgoblins International compost bin

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.

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.

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

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?

Power Play

The UK Government's chosen sites for nuclear reactors include one already occupied by a wind farm. Another will be sited on the already over-crowded grave of satire.

Meanwhile, the rush to palm oil and biofuels receives some small knock-backs, and Shell seem to be up to their old tricks again, this time a little closer to home.
Gilded sociopaths bugger off, and law enforcement has a laugh at our expense.

Our complications have complications

The Only Planet cartoon below originally appeared in this month's New Internationalist magazine. Go buy it.

Any Questions?

Nuclear sites are posited and arguments are made and consumption of electricity continues to expand, replacing one problem with another

Carbon trading and carbon offsets turn out to be less than the panaceas they were sold as. I for one am deeply shocked.

Two takes on coral evidence of rapid sea level rise

When you can't trust Auntie, you have to look further afield

Peak

Can't stop....busy!

Idea from Dwight Towers

Socially unacceptable

Ed Milliband seeks to shame NIMBYs into following the cuckoo into silence, while German researchers tell us that money is a drug. Who knew?

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

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.

Carried Away

Frank doesn't often get infected with enthusiastic optimism, but he's been listening to Frank Turner CDs and Barack Obama speeches so it had to happen sooner or later.

There are figures of every kind being hurled around at the energy summit in Abu Dhabi -amongst them these.

The electric car lobby still need to explain where all this extra capacity will come from - things being as they are. Lifestyle is still not on the table, it seems.

A figure of Speech

I've been tediously going through all last year's cartoons to put them on a database for the new website (which WILL happen, honestly) and came upon this one, from September - which I'd forgotten about. It was originally published in Ethical Consumer Magazine. Whilst not wildly news related, it still holds water (!)


Contrasting sides of China compete for posterity - via Climate Progress and DotEarth

The US senate shows its contempt for the people of Gaza, whilst calls increase for an apartheid-style boycott of the Israeli state

Today's news features the welcome and long overdue re-education of the head of ExxonMobil, who has finally thrown in the towel and admitted that yes - we've screwed the climate. Hallelujah. But his main thrust seems to be trying to head off international action by putting the onus on domestic taxation - which is a safe bet in a recession. Once a Sith Lord, always a Sith Lord. Cartoon on this tomorrow. Just thought I'd mention it today

Honesty and Realism?

Whilst Israel's formidable military machine visits ruthless collective punishment upon Gaza - an action that is a bitter insult to the sufferings of history and is condemned around the world ......
Sir John Harman calls for realism and honesty as we move into a renewable energy future, whilst GazProm underlines the point by freezing the extremities off of winter-bitten Europe.

Even the trees are against us.

Those of us with an excess of options on our potential menus are asked to consider our options a little more carefully

No Claims Bonus

Bradwell nuclear power station leaked like a cullender for years and nobody seems to feel responsible, whilst civil servants collude with government and the Sellafield mob to make sure they never need to say sorry in the event that their leaky buckets of toxic sludge go boom.
What's that you say? Too 1970s? Maybe. We at Throbgoblins International are aware that our choices about power are somewhat constrained -what with humans being a greedy and somewhat addled bunch, disinclined to switch anything off. So of course we must consider some short term fixes that would be best left alone in less pressing circumstances. But we don't think it unreasonable to ask that the mad dog be effectively chained.

Elsewhere Dubya's penny drops, for the briefest of moments
and
the Stanstead Plane Stupid protestors get their wrists slapped after their fine work of December 8th.

No New Coal

I missed this at the time. A lone anonymous protestor single handedly shaves 2% off our emissions by temporarily knocking out a turbine at Kingsnorth. How audacious. Desperate times - desperate measures

There's some good news for indiginous peoples land rights

and some bad news for everybody else

Running on empty

The Eu agrees to not bother on car emissions until it suits the car industry

The Brazilian government agrees to destroy the rainforest at a slower rate

Meanwhile an invasive creature with a tactic of constructing interlinked super-colonies, whilst exploiting other creatures and over-running the environment, makes a nuisance of itself. It's lasius neglectus - superants!
It seems a bit rich for humans to take exception to such a strategy. We make so much of it, ourselves

George Monbiot whistles in the wind

Another senseless re-up

Fashion victims

Consumers will pick up the bill for the green energy revolution. I suppose it will make a change from picking up the bill for the beach houses of speculators or the yachts of oligarchs - or even the long lunches of share-holders.
Personally I find most people's houses unbearably hot in winter, and most people's energy consumption really quite bafflingly high. If you want to sit around in your underwear eating ice-cream in the dead of winter whilst watching a 12 foot home cinema and tumble-drying your thongs, then yes -you will have to pay for it. Tough.
The vulnerable must be protected - that should go without saying -and capital should be policed for abuses, but the days of cheap energy are over. Get over it.
How did people imagine it was going to happen? Magic?
These are cultural as well as practical and political problems

Speaking of winter in the north of England; A few inches of snow and the world grinds to a halt around here. We are now so completely encased in the mental and technological bubble of our fabricated lives that the fiction we inhabit is bolloxed by entirely predictable seasonal variation. God help us when the real weather hits.

Here's an entirely predictable seasonal repost;



Thanks once again to Andrew Revkin at DotEarth at the New York Times for his support.