MARC ROBERTS CARTOONS

Wind and Water

2009-07-15T07:37:00.003Z

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

More Noxious Emissions

2009-07-14T12:11:00.001Z

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

2009-07-13T15:34:00.007Z

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

2009-06-26T07:49:00.002Z

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

2009-05-19T05:19:00.002Z

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?

2009-05-17T10:30:00.005Z

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

2009-05-15T12:22:00.004Z

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

2009-05-13T21:40:00.005Z

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?

2009-05-11T18:36:00.003Z

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

2009-05-10T18:40:00.004Z

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

2009-05-08T17:58:00.003Z

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

2009-05-07T20:57:00.003Z

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

More Noblesse Oblige

2009-05-06T19:11:00.006Z

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

2009-05-04T15:04:00.005Z

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.

2009-05-01T17:25:00.003Z

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

Elephants in da house

2009-04-30T17:50:00.001Z

I didn't have room for the elephant.

We're going through the housekeeping like there's no tomorrow, borrowing ourselves into the middle of next week, whilst the tabloids bark nonsense. Oh well, what's the worst that can happen?

Some interesting background to the swine flu pandemic, from Craig Mackintosh

Surface Reflection

2009-04-29T18:55:00.004Z

Whilst the world's media squeal about Swine-flu and worry about the sex lives of the rich and famous, some other stuff has happened

Al Gore has been talking about Black Carbon particulates, whilst temperatures at the top of the world soar. The Himalayas enjoy L.A. like pollution levels and record CO2 recordings. Burning down the planet may have something to do with it.

To combat this the only wind turbine factory in the UK closes down whilst the US steams ahead

Perhaps we need to look at why we behave this way, and how we can stop it.

Meanwhile the oil shale monster ratchets up a perfect storm (thanks to Susan Anderson for this)

And the squillions at stake for the nuclear industry prompt the usual shenanegans

Divine Interventions

2009-04-27T19:20:00.002Z

The old sunspot chestnut raises its head again, threatening to give comfort to the denialists and maybe temporarily mask some of the unpleasantness so it can all crash down on us at once.

We at Throbgoblins International all trooped off to our local independent cinema yesterday, to watch "In the loop" and duly laughed our collective teeth loose. I mention this because the Westminster Prince of Darkness has set up a rival energy and climate power-base to scupper environmental legislation on behalf of business, in a manner befitting an Ianucci satire.

Power Play

2009-04-26T19:00:00.007Z

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.

Creative Differences

2009-04-25T13:13:00.001Z

Shock-horror. It seems that the big polluters actually suppressed evidence and denied the conclusions of their own scientific advisors! Who'd have thought it. Shocking and wholly unexpected. I, for one, am shaken to the core that such paragons of civic and environmental virtue would stoop to such shit-splattering levels of sociopathic deceit.

Meanwhile, our fellow creatures continue to vacate history apace, whilst the diverse inheritance of evolution gets reduced cut by cut to what biologists refer to as "fuck-all".

More shock horror as humungous hive-building is seen as potentially risky strategy

The text of Al Gore's statement to the House Subcommittee on Energy and Environmnent, (courtesy of Climate Progress)

From each according to their ability?

2009-04-24T16:38:00.006Z

The wealthy in the UK are throwing all manner of hissy fits at the very idea of paying their fair share to help pull our collective fat out of the fire. They are once again threatening to leave the country in droves unless we all pucker up. Perhaps a concerted drive is needed to finally establish a clear distinction between the concepts of 'earn', 'receive' and 'deserve'. These people are deeply confused.

From each according to their ability. To each according to their need.

As the emissions of rich nations continue to rise, the push for carbon capture picks up steam in a last ditch attempt to create tools to save the likes of orchards, fish and humans from the consequences of habitual greed.

The spying game continues...

Equality and Diversity

2009-04-22T19:36:00.006Z

As indigenous peoples worldwide are variously disenfranchised, de-iced and supplanted by agrobusiness and rip-offsets, their representatives gather to ask for some justice.

Meanwhile, great rivers turn to wadis worldwide whilst others are dammed to a future of post-glacial dribbling.
Oh - and the land's turning to shit

Should anybody soaked in the western press coverage be interested in triangulating a more thoughtful response to Ahmadenejad's UN speech, the full text is here.

"The Lotto way of thinking"

2009-04-21T18:49:00.002Z

No time to piss about

Slim down

Long Term Plan

2009-04-20T19:42:00.001Z

The brain seems ill-equipped to deal with what it has to deal with. Oh dear.
No wonder we forget the maths about electric cars and ignore sinking islands and bury our heads in disposable trash. No wonder we hold our breath for "clean" coal and look on the bright side of neo-colonialism.

And yet...

...and then again...

Industry Exhales

2009-04-18T18:20:00.003Z

Ern is, perhaps, identifying a little too closely with his industry interests. He's not alone.
The US EPA paves the way for significant legislation by deciding that CO2 is hazardous to human health and well being, whilst The Uk gov't promises a massive investment in CCS infrastructure, whether it exists or not.

Ice and water continue to make the news