Tuesday 9 February 2010

Mongolia Suffers the Worst Winter in Living Memory



Mongolia is the 19th largest ad the most sparsely populated independent country in the world, with a population of around 2.9 million people. It is also the world's second largest landlocked country after Kazakhstan. The economy relies on agriculture and mining mineral resources and 80% of its petroleum products are imported from Russia.

The country is high, cold and windy. It has an extreme continental climate with long, cold winters and short summers, during which most of the rain falls. In 2002 about 30% of households lived from breeding livestock.

About 20% of the population live on less that $1.25 a day.

This winter, the worst in living memory, half the country's entire livestock could be wiped out. Livestock cannot break through the ice to reach the grass and herders are incurring horrendous debt buying animal feed they can't afford.

The Mongolian government has appealed for food, medicine and animal food to help the most unfortunate, but will the world hear them with Haiti still uppermost in people's minds? China and Russia should be offering help but international agencies need to become involved as time is vital to save lives.

There is no evidence that any climate scientist predicted such a winter for the herding families who live in the remote mountain regions of south western Mongolia. But of course excessive snow shows the climate is cooling, not warming.

Update: Richard North has more research on the 'Dzud' which means 'winter disaster'. It's certainly worth a read.


7 comments:

Oldrightie said...

The UN and it's discredited IPCC are a bunch of crooks hired by The Bilderbergers to create a myth that is doing more harm and costing more resource than the disasters they have predicted!

subrosa said...

When I was writing this OR I was thinking even if a fraction of the 'climate change' was given to these people then it would make the difference between life and death.

Strathturret said...

Oldrightie.

I'd starting taking the pills if I was you.

You'll be telling us next it was Prince Philip on the grass knoll with a white Fiat Uno under orders from a worldwide Jewish conspiracy.

Vronsky said...

There is only one tree in the Gobi desert. A friend of mine ran into it with a car.

subrosa said...

I was looking for other videos for this Vronsky and there was one called "A Mongolian Drive" I think it was called. Very short but rather good. The photographer couldn't have been on the road your friend was - there wasn't a tree to be seen.

Apogee said...

So where are all of the worlds charities offering to raise money, or our government offering to give aid money to help these people?
Or is there no press/political mileage in it for them?
We will wait and see.................


D.

subrosa said...

All I've heard about it was the brief Sky report and Richard North's piece Apogee. Not another word in the MSM.

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