From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
h/t Paul Kolk
Record cold in Mongolia. And guess what the climate fraudsters blame it on?
The strain of exertion spreads across the little Mongolian boy’s face as he grabs hold of a rope fastened around a slumped cow’s neck, bends his knees and heaves with every muscle in his body to pull the animal to its feet.
Dorjoo, four, furrows his brow as he exclaims: “I can do this!” The determined focus in his eyes shows a glint of the optimism needed to survive this year’s bitter, brutal winter in the sweeping wilds of the Mongolian steppe.
But the cow, its ribs visible under its matted brown fur, is too feeble to stand up from the frozen soil where its legs buckled moments earlier.
Lying metres from a horrifying pile of decomposing animal carcasses, its own expression displays exhaustion and a weary embrace of impending death.
The sight of dead and dying animals has become tragically familiar in Mongolia this year as the East Asian nation has fallen into the grip of a slow-onset weather disaster known as the “dzud”.
About 90 per cent of the country has been impacted by the phenomenon – a deadly mix of perishing temperatures as low as -50C, icy winds and layers of heavy snow that have weakened livestock and frozen pasturelands, killing between four to six million cows, sheep, goats and horses since last November.
Officials say this year’s dzud is the worst in decades. Scientists attribute the catastrophe to a mixture of overgrazing and global climate change.
Can the Telegraph sink any lower? Now we are expected to believe that global warming is making Mongolia colder.
The clue to the real problem is the overgrazing comment.
It’s a harsh extreme environment that could only ever support a low number of people living a low impact existence.
Then you have a population explosion.
Then you introduce 10s of millions of goats and sheep in massive commercialisation of farming for cashmere etc.
What could possibly go wrong?
More clues here:
https://www.undp.org/blog/how-sustainable-cashmere-reversing-land-degradation-mongolia
The other Mongolia lie they keep promoting is that climate change is forcing people to move to the main city which is consequently afflicted by massive air pollution, as people burn stuff to stay warm. No, there’s just too many people for the land to support in the way that they lived traditionally.
Your first line “…real problem is the overgrazing…” cold be a major factor. Hunters in North America say that herbivores, deer, elk, etc, don’t freeze if their stomach is full.
Overgrazing is definitely a persistent problem in Mongolia. I worked for several months, winter into spring, on the vast, expansive steppes east of Ulaanbaatar. The grass was almost universally grazed down to a nub by wandering herds. As spring came a green haze of sprouting grass would cover the once brown hillsides, but it would soon be nibbled down to nubbins. Fortunately the grass grows fast and the herders managed to get by that year. But a long-lasting cold season that deprives the grazing herds for an extra four to six weeks could easily be disastrous. My heart goes out to the herding families in Mongolia. They are good people.
Yes severe winter weather can be and always was disastrous. They have lots of words for all the different types of dudz. But up until the 1990s total livestock head was stable, it’s exploded since, meaning increased likelihood of insufficient sustenance.
China. good money from exporting meat ?
My wife and I bought some Australian Cashmere goats back in the ’90’s from
a couple who imported them from NSW. The wife of that couple spent a good
bit of time in Mongolia to try and help them with their cashmere production through
breeding improvements. She gave a few presentations on what she found
while there and I was shocked on how these people lived, very tough life but
as you say good people. If it were possible for them to put up hay their life
would be much improved..
Regarding the air pollution in Mongolian cities: The central part of the city of Ulaanbaatar is heated by coal fired plants that distribute heat and hot water to apartment buildings in town. In the surrounding suburbs most of the population live in hundreds of gers which they heat with a central black iron stove, burning primarily coal, which they can buy cheap or hand-cob out of thin veins cutting through local hillsides. The city is in a natural, shallow, bowl, and the gray smoke just settles in every cold night, and eventually dissipates during the day. So, Ulaanbaatar has always been covered in a haze of coal smoke. People “flocking to the cities” just isn’t happening on a large scale. The growth rate in the capital city was a modest 0.83% over the last several years.
Sounds miserable. Did you see lots of respiratory disease, especially among smokers?
https://www.migrationinstitute.org/blog/steppes-and-the-city-rural-to-urban-migration-in-mongolia
Having worked for about ten years on the air quality problem in Ulaanbaatar I have more opinions than most about why the air quality remains low.
Following the dzud of ~2002 and particularly 2006-7 the population of the capital essentially doubled in a few years as starving people whose herds had been wiped out came to stay with relatives in the city. This is easy to do because they bring their homes with them. It takes 1 pickup or 5 camels to move a ger. Setup is 1.5 hrs.
A government program to settle everyone, not just herders, provided either an unserviced town site or 20 ha in a rural area. Many people, one way or another try to get both but there is a preference for the city because there is a chance for cash work there, or poverty to the point they cannot rebuild the herds.
There is an animal grant program which you will see kick into action in the coming weeks to restock herders. There are manifold funds to assist. There are many willing helpers. This winter was really catastrophic because of extreme temperatures, not like 2006-7 when it was caused by a sudden melt then re-freeze which puts an ice cap over the grazing. That is the most common cause of a dzud. This year, pure cold. To claim it was caused by global warming is an insult.
The burning of raw coal was banned in the city about 5 or 6 years ago. A large semi-coking plant was built west of the city and it produces semi-coked briquettes which are sold subsidized to the population. They burn them in stoves not designed for semi-coke and the result has been nearly no improvement, with initial deaths in the dozens from CO poisoning because the heating systems were designed for fast burning lignite, not smouldering semi-coke. A stove modernization project started years ago and some $150m was spent subsidizing lower emissions stoves, including the establishment of a stove development centre. An example of a public domain, high efficiency, extremely low smoke stove can be downloaded here. https://tinyurl.com/ykft2sx9 Build one. Some variations are in production in Poland, Kyrgyzstan and South Africa.
A major reason for the poor air quality is old cars from Korea and Japan. (It is also the graveyard of the second hard Japanese Prius.) The number of cars went from ~50,000 in 2008 to >450,000 in a few years, like 7 or 8.
As noted above, UB is in a valley. The power stations do not contribute significantly to poor air quality They vent above the inversion layer. The pollution is from cars, coal and wood fires, and windblown road dust and ash dumps. The local lignite has very fine ash.
In winter there is an inversion every night and if the sun fails to break it up, typically about 11 AM, it sits like cold air in a grocery store freezer. Day by day the smoke accumulates in the air until the concentration exceeds 3000 micrograms PM2.5 per cu m.
In our research we found that it is not the total mass of coal burned that is the problem, it is the number of ignitions per day, so the air quality in November is worse than January because it is NOT cold enough to keep the stove on all day. The coldest day of the winter is typically one of the cleanest because even the poorest are running the stove all day.
There are so many misbeliefs about the causes and solutions to the air quality that progress has been difficult. After the stove replacement program the air quality improved 45% in 18 months. Old vehicles are a big issue. Like, 1990’s era Hyundai’s staggering along and ancient Russian trucks.
Mongolia is just south of Irkutsk and if you follow the record breaking cold there, you can appreciate how extraordinarily cold the rest of central Asia is. If it often below -60C. Unbelievable that anyone can keep animals alive in such conditions. There is a lot of skill involved. So far this winter, 9% of the nation’s animals have died. Find a fund, help a herder. They are wonderful, generous people.
To be fair to the Telegraph, it publishes sceptical views on a frequent basis, Matt Ridley being just one columnists.
Judging by Guardian standards alarmism is rare and, I guess, designed to offer a ‘balanced’ perspective.
No editor could seriously have published this without being tongue in cheek, unless they work for the Guardian of course.
And to think that the Telegraph once gave Geoffrey Lean a full half page every week 😬
…a slow-onset weather disaster known as the “dzud”.
It has a name, meaning it is a known phenomena?
Yes, it is a periodic disaster, that has happened many times in the past.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zud
Yass, yass, . . it’s happened in the past. But in days of old, it was a “natural” phenomenon. Nowadays, it’s caused by sin. SIN! SIN!
Particularly sin by foreigners in faraway nations, who insist on doing awful, awful, things like driving SUVs, heating and cooling their homes, manufacturing products, and — God forbid! — raising and grazing animals for meat and dairy products, so the people can eat something besides gruel.
If we just punish all the sinners, and deprive them of their pleasures, the climate will improve, and the pastures of Mongolia will never turn brown again. (Wink, wink.)
Is that you Greta?
Speaking of witch, Greta was recently detained in the Netherlands for blocking traffic but was let go, perhaps something to do with her $18 million net worth.
So is the Doom Pixie merely associated with Extinction Rebellion, or has she become a fully fledged Doom Cultist?
She’s reeling in more climate change, and by climate change I mean big bucks.
So the climate alarmists blame the cold on human-caused climate change. They can’t really make a connection between CO2 and cold weather, but they claim there is a connection, anyway. So they are sadly misinformed, or they are lying about the situation.
I’m thinking/guessing that El Nino is the cause of the cold weather over Asia this winter.
The El Nino circulation brings mild air into the United States from the Pacific ocean which keeps the United States warmer and I think another reason for this warmer weather is the El Nino circulation blocks most of the cold arctic air from coming into the United States and this blocking mechanism pushes the cold arctic air to the opposite side of the globe where it hovers over central Asia and puts them in a deepfreeze.
It would be interesting to see if El Nino’s and Mongolian cold dzud disasters coincide in time.
Once again, Climate Change explains both high AND low temperatures. It’s a completely unfalsifiable hypothesis.
Wet, dry, more storms, less storms, it does it all, the Swiss Army knife of theory.
“Now we are expected to believe that global warming is making Mongolia colder.”
Of course- that will prove that the scientists of the ’70s forecasting a new ice age and those now forecasting climate change were both right- as global warming gives us that new ice age. /sarc
Haven’t you lot heard about anthropogenic CO2 holes like Ozone holes?
Is there a proven connection between CO2 produced by Man’s activities and Ozone Holes?
Last I heard it was CFCs, HCFCs, HBFCs, Halons and a number of others but not CO2.
You heard it here first so naturally I need a suitable grant to study this anthropogenic hole crisis and tie it in with the dooming. Initial computer test modelling points to a chronic lack of windmills and atmospheric mixing. Big inflation reduction moolah will firm this modelling up.
Yes, but the Mongolian trans sex workers are fine with the cold? Also, remember that another area is above average so when you average…you get …average.
A few said, “baa.”
Those would be the bleating lefties then!
Record boredom – of the narrative and the mental gymnastics required.
Instead, he [Dr John Holdren] said, “we should call it ‘global climate disruption.’
https://www.science.org/content/article/lets-call-it-climate-disruption-white-house-science-adviser-suggests-again
“Global Climate disruption”
Naw, sounds too much like plain old weather events….”disruption” doesn’t sound deadly enough…
How about “climate bullshit”?
Seems fair to me
they should use the great plains to erect massive wind and solar farms. nothing else is going on there anyway
The obvious solution is for Mongolia to burn more coal. The increase in CO2 will make the temperature warmer, and the grass will grow faster and more abundantly as well./sarc
Good point. Those treeless grassy plains was how much more of the planet was during the low CO2 ice age.
This is the natural result when newsprint is bombarded with wokerons.
“Can the Telegraph sink any lower?” Don’t temp them!
It seems to me its just a ‘stringer’ article pushed by a reporter Khaliun Bayartsogt. in Mongolia who works in “Mongolian Center for Investigative Reporters ”
It was a template story for the Global Warmists
Makes me wonder how many official weather stations are in Mongolia?
There are 17 GCON (Global Climate Observational Network) meteorological stations in Mongolia, however some have siting issues similar to the ones in other countries (see the recent UK article and previous US articles).
“some have siting issues”
You mean they have been put where it gets really, really cold ! ? 😉
Just one, located in East Anglia, or maybe Penn State so Piltdown Mann can keep his eyes on it.
Definition: Micro climate – 30 year average of weather for a locality or region.
Hence weather affects climate. Todays weather replaces the 30-year old entry.
Conclusion: climate does not affect weather.
The climate scandal chose 30 years (micro climate definition) rather than the 100,000 to 100 million global climate definition because there was not data from way, way back (not exactly true).
Now alarmists are flipping the script.
May we always live in interesting times (adapted from an old Chinese curse).