Museum Piece

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More reductio ad absurdum. Yes - I know it's apples and oranges, and comparisons are often odious, but Frank isn't one to pull a punch.

Here's the link

Elsewhere - Rising sea levels bring an end to 30 years of conflict

And...in case you forgot .... NEW WEBSITE GOING LIVE THIS WEEKEND> www.marcrobertscartoons.com

Vox Pop

Nobody knows what everyone needs to know, so nobody agrees to do what needs to be done because everyone's clinging to convenience instead of facing the possibilities

The Future is Another Country

So much mud is being thrown that the slightest speck sticking to a labcoat seems enough to persuade Joe Public that the bigger scientific picture is irrelevant and that it must, therefore, all boil down to moustache twirling evil-doers Mwa-haar-haaring under ill-gotten showers of public gold. We do love a soundbite. So I guess it must be OK if the glaciers start to disappear in 50 years, not 20, and the African harvests collapse in 40 years, not 20, and if a quarter of Holland is lost to the sea, not a half. That'll be fine. Nothing to worry about. Party on dudes.

Lest we forget - it was the IPCC and the UEA themselves that brought their own errors to the attention of their peers.

Birds of a feather?

The bluefin tuna goes the way of all fish.
Flexible family arrangements can be found everywhere.

I'm trying out this new layout style for the strip - it'll fit better with the new (imminent) site. Hope you like it.

Surface Reflection

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

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

More nails in Satire's coffin

Truth is far stranger and dumber than fiction.

Noel Lynch brought the Tesco idiocy to my attention thus;

"Today's Guardian has a half page advert for TESCO. It is headed 'Turn lights into flights'. It shows a low energy light bulb and says that if you buy it you can get a clubcard voucher that you can turn into 60 Airmiles. So that's save a small amount of energy by buying a low energy light bulb and then consume a large amount of energy by flying an extra 60 miles. Doh!"

Quite so.

The Earth Hour folk drop a bollock with Alanis -really quite breath-takingly numb of them.

The Masters of the Universe would rather not be regulated, thankyouverymuch

We're probably all fucked now.

OPEC denies any part in Climate Change


An excellent cartoon from Martin Rowson in the Grauniad

Not a good week, on the whole. A lot of Obama-fueled Gordon Brown-nosing, coupled with a handful of pseudo-anarchist wankers playing to a phallanx of pseudo-journalistic cameras made for a poor display. Too much kettling and containment and predictably OTT PCs. A couple of non-committal half-statements at the end of an economists communique may quickly fade away.

Here's an excellent lecture by Dieter Helm. Succinct and informed and inarguably respectable.
(thanks to Marc Hudson)

Comic Strip Violence

No cartoon today.
I went for a long walk in the hills with friends today (which was blustery and exhilerating, despite my left knee protesting loudly for the last 5 miles) and came back to peruse the comments on Andy Revkin's DotEarth blog on the New York Times website - wherein he was kind enough to link to my Bang Bang You're Dead cartoon. I appreciate the exposure and his kind words. But I was surprised by the amount of vitriol coming my way in the comments stream. Apparently some people object to cartoon violence. As you can imagine, I was dumbfounded by this revelation and naturally whipped myself mercilessly before falling to the floor in a horrified swoon.
What can I say? I cannot undo the evil I have done, but henceforth Frank will employ only the medium of fluffy bunnies to make his points. We wouldn't want to upset anyone, would we? Or... maybe I could conduct a poll to find out what acts are appropriate to depict in a cartoon. Your participation would be appreciated

Should Frank primarily rely upon:

a) fluffy bunnies?
b) kids saying the funniest things?
c) hilarious misunderstandings?
d) embarrassing visits from clergy?
e) golf related accidents?
f) knob gags?

I'll do some urgent rummaging through old Gambols annuals to see how it should be done. I'm sorry. I'm a very bad man.



Or, on the other hand- fuck 'em (in a deeply caring and consensual fashion) if they can't take a joke.

Age of Stupid - People's Premiere

Not a cartoon as such, just an earnest suggestion that you all drop whatever you're doing tomorrow and seek out a cinema that's showing the Age Of Stupid. Click on the widget to the right. No excuses now.

...and a little reminder about Earth Hour

Media Friendly

All the usual stuff.

You know the drill

News Corpse

Yes. It seems that Uncle Rupert will henceforward be using the unfathomable might of his media empire for good rather than, well, ...the other thing

meanwhile...In the spirit of quantative easing I went down to my local gargantmart with some freshly minted banknotes of my own design, in order to stimulate the economy. They didn't seem to appreciate the sound financial wisdom of my actions and there was an ugly scene involving a lot of shouting, some custard and a security guard. There's no helping some people.

In the news - there's a lot of stuff about Rainforests
and a lot of stuff about biofuels

How long must we sing this song...?

I saw somewhere that a minor celebrity spat had blown up over something of nothing, and saw it as an opportunity to introduce Frank's grand-daughter, Judi, (who we shall be seeing from time to time) and to have a pop at St Bono
I'm not suggesting that Bono is one of (Swiss Astronomer) Fritz Zwicky's "Spherical Bastards" (it is clear what they are whichever way you look at them), but from certain angles.....

The Only Planet 'toon below originally appeared in this month's New Internationalist

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.

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

Ursine Defecatory Patterns

Ah - boffin humour.
I don't wish to put all the onus on scientists here, but in an age of profound stupidity they are the ones whose answers stand between us and biblical catastrophe. The UK government appears to have misunderstood the climate science on aviation emissions, misreading it as a license to dish out backhanders left , right and centre. George Bush and his entire administration totally failed to get a grip on any of the science that came their way in eight years, and we have the evidence of that faith based idiocy all around us.
Climate science is complicated stuff. it's not weather. It requires that people actually focus their entire attention throughout a series of complex, multi-clausal sentences. The challenge of science is to get the bewildering intricacy of complex systems into a 5 second sound bite that can be jammed into the most resistant skulls at the end of long pole whilst the rest of the head chugs slushies and watches porn. Maybe the new Obama administration can spin one..

Thanks to Marc Hudson, Matt Bright and Cassidy Irving.

Good link in DarkOptimism's comment below

Icarus Ascending

The UK gov't tries to cover up the scandal of the Heathrow expansion with the fig-leaf of a (rhetorical?) tagged on Rail hub, but a hub without spokes does not make a wheel.

The punchline is, perhaps, a self-indulgent echo of my favourite series of Labrats cartoons - A little self contained AGW parable. A small thing, but mine own.

Goodbye 2008

This cartoon originally appeared in Nature Reports; Climate Change and remains theirs - (so this is one that can't be reproduced without their permission.)

There's been a lot of the usual end of year ruminations in the press and over the web. It had been my intention to post an exhaustive review of the year myself, but, on reflection, that is probably best left to others

However, I would like to thank all those who have supported the Throbgoblins project over the past year. It's taken up a quite obsessive amount of my life and has on occasion felt like a shocking waste of time - but it has attracted some positive feedback from significant quarters and this tempts me to keep the ball rolling into 2009.

Thanks to
Marc Hudson, Dwight Towers, Sarah Irving, Polyp, Graeme Sherrif, Chris Brazier and all at NI, Rob Harrison and all at ECRA, Andrew Revkin, Artist's Project Earth, Craig Mackintosh, Leslie Berliant and Chris Tobias, Olive Heffernan, Gavin Schmidt, Mel Rimmer, Glen Barry, Cartoon Kate Evans, Chris Webster at Satellite 360, Joe Romm, Dave Hampton, Janet Alty, Niel Bowerman, Adam Corner, Rob Honey, Seppo Leinonen, Neuroskeptic, Robert Zverina, Sam and Chris at Carbusters, Aubrey Meyer, Lucia Ortiz, "Author", Rosamund Raha, Cath and Nathan at Rebel Soul Cafe, Mark Jeanthau, Diana Korchien, David Castle, Adie Nistelrooy, Brian Leslie, Almuth Ernsting, Arwa, Calvin Jones , John Harrison , Ian Angus, Art not Oil, Neale Upstone, Stuart Jeffery, Andy Dunn, Stuart Monckton, Mr Moai, Susan Anderson, Sharon Leavy, Sandra, Chris, Em and, of course, Nye, and anyone I will undoubtedly have missed out due to my increasingly porous memory. The patience of all of you who I bombard with unsolicited e-mails is also greatly appreciated.
Thanks to you all for your support and encouragement

Reckoning

The Police are obliged to fess-up to the gross inaccuracy of their public scare-mongering, and Ministers are obliged to apologise for misrepresenting baton-happy bullying as "proportionate"
The IEA are obliged to fess-up to the gross inaccuracy of their energy forecasts
Bush's chief environment advisor is obliged to fess-up over his country's responsibility in the scuppering of a worthwhile climate deal - but doesn't

From Poznan, via Elisabeth Rosenthal via Andrew Revkin at DotEarth;-

Prodipto Ghosh of the Indian delegation berated wealthy countries for their “refusal” to “experience a minuscule loss of profits” to help poorer nations cope. He continued: “In the face of the unbearable human tragedy that we in developing countries see unfolding every day, we see callousness, strategizing and obfuscation.

Fame and Fortune

It was a toss up today between Gore's call for a serious focus on real issues and this story about refrigerating beaches in Dubai for the comfort of the scum of the earth. In the end I decided that the Dubai story satirised itself.

Meanwhile, the UK's limitless capacity for incompetence scuppers what few good ideas we have, whilst the wealthy slowly switch religions to temper their guilt.
Elsewhere ETA's self-serving, masturbatory logic excels itself, and some spy the beginnings of a youthquake.

Hillary Benn breaks ranks on Heathrow

Visionary Genius

George W Bush is busying himself making the World safe for dengue fever and nuclear waste by dismantling environmental safeguards as fast as his little brain will carry him. Why wait for the end of the world when you can buck-wheats it today, at your own convenience?


Mutant malarial cockroaches riding enormous rats?

For a more positive view of what can be done, DotEarth has abundant links

("Buck-wheats" is a"Things to do in Denver when you're dead" reference - meaning a deliberately agonising execution.)