By Paul Homewood
h/t Robin Guenier
Another preposterous “blame it on global warming” video from the BBC:
Mongolia: A toxic warning to the world
All over the world cities are grappling with apocalyptic air pollution but the small capital of Mongolia is suffering from some of the worst in the world.
And the problem is intrinsically linked to climate change.
The country has already warmed by 2.2 degrees, forcing thousands of people to abandon the countryside and the traditional herding lifestyle every year for the smog-choked city where 90% of children are breathing toxic air every day.
Population Reporter Stephanie Hegarty finds out why.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/science-environment-47673327/mongolia-a-toxic-warning-to-the-world
Air pollution is terrible in the capital because of the burning of raw coal, used for heating during the bitterly cold winters.
The video claims that this is made worse by migration from the countryside, forced by global warming.
In reality, the population of the capital, Ulaanbaatar has been growing rapidly since the 1920s, and now numbers 1.3m.
http://worldpopulationreview.com/world-cities/ulaanbaatar-population/
As with societies around the world, this has in part been due to migration from the countryside.
Mongolia’s population has also been growing rapidly due to increasing lifespans:
http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/mongolia-population/
None of these have anything to do with climate change.
Hegarty interviews herders in the countryside, who say that bad winters have impacted their herds in recent years, making life more difficult for them. But bad winters are a fact of life in Mongolia.
They even have a name for them – “zud”. According to Wiki:
A zud or dzud (Mongolian: зуд) is a Mongolian term for a severe winter in which large number of livestock die, primarily due to starvation due to being unable to graze, in other cases directly from the cold. There are various kinds of zud, including white zud, which is an extremely snowy winter in which livestock are unable to find nourishing foodstuff through the snow cover and starve.
There are different types of zud:
- Tsagaan (white) zud results from high snowfall that prevents livestock from reaching the grass.[4] It is a frequent and serious disaster that has caused a great number of deaths.[5]
- Khar (black) zud results from a lack of snow in grazing areas, leading to both animals and humans to suffer a lack of water. This type of zud does not occur every year nor does it affect large areas. It mostly happens in the Gobi Desert region.[4]
- Tumer (iron) zud results from a short wintertime warming, followed by a return to sub-freezing temperatures. The snow melts and then freezes again, creating an impenetrable ice-cover that prevents livestock from grazing.[4]
- Khuiten (cold) zud occurs when temperature drops to very low levels for several days. The cold temperature and the strong winds prevent livestock from grazing; the animals have to use most of their energy to keep warm.[4]
- Khavsarsan (combined) zud is a combination of at least two of the above types of zud.[4]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zud
Despite these problems, animal stockholdings have increased sharply since state regulation of the sector was eased during the 1990s.
http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#compare
Stephanie Hegarty condescendingly refers to the air out on the steppes as pristine. But life there is hard and absolutely brutal, so it is little surprise that inhabitants there prefer to move to the cities.
Ulaanbaatar is going through the same process of economic development as western cities did a century or so ago. And the answer to their problems is the same – economic development, which allows them to clean up their environment at the same time as improving standards of living.
The BBC film mentions that the city would like to move away from raw coal, to cleaner processed coal. But, as ever, it is a question of cost.
Hegarty’s final remarks are simply ridiculous. Talking about the air pollution, she says:
This is extreme, almost apocalyptic. But the problems Ulaanbaatar is facing are being repeated all over the world. And unless we get a handle on the types of fuel we use, rapid urbanisation and climate change, this kind of pollution could become the disturbing norm..
Quite what climate change has to do with it, she does not explain.
As for her claim that this will become the norm, the reverse is true. Across the world, cities are managing to improve air quality. And they are doing it by better technology, not by stopping using fossil fuels.
Ulaanbaatar may need help in catching up. But there is currently no alternative for the Mongolians but to carry on burning coal, which they have in plentiful supply. Certainly the idea, which is implied by Hegarty, that they could replace it with “clean energy” sources would end up with most of them freezing to death.
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March 24, 2019 at 01:12PM
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