People are literally dying here, kids born with deformaties due to air pollution in Mongolia.
I feel like a good bit of the problem is the attempt to turn Mongolia into an agrarian economy. It can't support that or cities really. The 20th century was full of people trying to build a certain type of city in spite of the environment instead of in harmony with it, and it's been pretty disastrous.
I don’t know if it’s that’s case in Dubai but I feel like it fits into that category for sure. Massive New York style city in the middle of the desert.
Dubai was literally built from nothing just as a flex for having money, so rich people could hang out and profit off of slave labor.
That mirror city they're planning honestly feels like a monument to mankind's idiocy and hubris.
Yeah. Pretty much. Neo Tower Tunnel of Babel.
Honestly I do not like the aesthetics of Dubai or uae
Las Vegas with slaves and religion
and no blackjack or hookers.
Oh there's hookers. TONS. You just gotta know the right people and have enough money. Same as getting booze.
Oh, there do be hookers.
Also literally the entire country of Qatar.
While both the country of Qatar and city of Dubai are horrible and do exploit slave labor, they exist and came about for completely different reasons and they are not the same situation.
Qatar has been a country for hundreds of years and the first account of their people is from mid-first century AD. Dubai is a city that was built in the last couple decades.
Both of these countries are responsible for the low life style of labourers
Mongolia doesn't have a very large population. Of course the climate doesn't make sense for an agrarian economy, but even if Mongolia would need to rely on some amount of food imports, it is entirely possible to build a functional city on the steppe.
The whole problem isn't that people have tried to build a city. The problem is that the city appeared regardless. Much of Ulaanbaatar is unplanned and just appeared where people set up their yurts (and subsequently also began building small houses). There is no sanitation, no district heating, in those parts of the city.
What needs to be done is to build actual houses with actual infrastructure. The city appeared mostly by itself, but the infrastructure has to be built deliberately.
man what an absolute shame. Mongolian culture is so damn cool and the steppe is such a unique and beautiful place.
I traveled to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia this winter for work and it can get even worse than the picture. As you drive through the city from the airport you see multiple coal plants. They are not on the outskirts but rather smack dab in the middle of the city. The entire city is in a valley and the weather there makes it so all of the smog just settles. As others have mentioned, much of the population burns straight coal in furnaces in their homes which contributes heavily to the issue. The amount of cars and traffic surely doesn't help either. Having lived in LA, I thought I had experienced traffic, but nothing prepared me for Ulaanbaatar traffic. Their public transport is pretty much non-existent.
Dumb question, why didn't they make the plant outside of the valley and use transmission lines?
They are built during soviet era also had no idea city could grow this bigger into metropolis
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1.3y
I’ve been living here 20 years. Yes my life is not very good.
We had an exchange student from there last year and she got an extended visa to come back for college.
Why do your neighbour hated the country, does he have any specific reason
The amount of cars and traffic surely doesn't help either
I'm usually an advocate for cycling, but if I tried to cycle in this smog, I think I'd pass out after a minute or two.
There is no roads for bicycles lmao
Cycling can really improve your overall physical health
What do you do for work that would require you to go to Mongolia?
Selling tyres and coal..
Ironically, instructing on maritime matters.
There are various industries that would require you to work in Mongolia
Things can always get worse than your imagination brother
Well kinda happens when everyone is burning plastic and rubber tyres. My wife went there for work, she said you could smell it in the entire city and it was unbearable.
Yeah, travelled through there December '19 and the air quality definitely was horrible. Other than that, really enjoyed Mongolia, what little we got to see during our short visit.
what about outside the cities?
Drove through in 2009. Most unspoilt place I've ever seen. Hundreds of miles of dirt road and almost no infrastructure. 200+ miles between towns. Mountains, lakes, desert, grasslands. Most stars I've ever seen. Our spare tyres got stolen off our roof on the first night, though, so it's not all good.
Was the tire stolen while you were out in the wilderness?
Yes and no. Camping close to the border with Russia; can't remember the border town's name but in Olgii province. So not exactly the wilderness. Something like eight cars in a circle, camped up together. Some cars had tools and possessions stolen out of unlocked boots. We only had the tyres on the roof at the time and the car was locked, so thankfully that was all that got nicked. But it meant we had to drive another thousand miles to Ulaanbaatar under constant threat that a puncture could risk our life; so actually we spent all our time in the few towns we did pass (Olgii, Bayankhongor) finding new wheels. We probably bought back our own wheels tbh.
There is Ülgii on the big google eye that's far west Mongolia... wow.. talk about a far flung place! But good sure enough... there's a street view that goes right through so thank you for that rabbit hole! (I think the single best thing ever created on the web to date is google maps and street view... they do that platform right for me- edit (sp)
You might like /r/GeoGuessr then if you don't know it yet. Basically it's a game that drops you at a random streetview location an you then have to guess where you are. Can be played solo or against an opponent.
Oh no... I'm about to gain 20lbs with that click I fear...
Nice story and that's a funny thought
Judging by what I've read in the rest of this thread, I'm guessing they were burned in short order!
Stayed with a very rural family in the west for around a week. Traditionally the fuel source was dried animal manure. Which is sustainable for a nomadic family. Beautiful country with incredible people. As modernization has happened and more than 50% of the population lives in the capital (pictured in the OP) there just isn't enough manure or electrical infrastructure so they turned to coal in their stoves. It is a sickening smell. There are some companies working on things like catalytic converters for the stoves in the gers but I doubt they have gotten much buy-in yet.
Anyway, it's residential coal stoves, or coal for heat commercially, that makes all that smog? That must stink
Residential coal stoves
Famous for creating London's "pea soup" smog for hundreds of years, until finally they banned coal stoves in the 50s. It still took decades to phase them out and for the smog to go away.
Imagine London 250 years ago!
You don't have to -- just visit the capital of Mongolia and mentally add Cockney accents
Was it Mongolia the place that dude randomly shacked up and they were just smoking weed for a few weeks and the locals offered him a wife to stay?
He said it was a northern town in India. The region is north/northeast India, Nepal, and Bhutan. I don't think Mongolia has as much cannabis in their culture as that area. I worked with a man from Bhutan who said they just grabbed plants from nearby fields and boiled them in milk (yak's milk?) for hours and the whole town would come by for a cup.
Imma need some more info there boss
Say what now?
Tale as old as time...
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1.3y
What the hell are you people talking about? No one in this thread is making any sense...
Link?
Traditionally the fuel source was dried animal manure.
That’s bullshit.
Horseshit actually!
Mongolia is as amazing as it’s rough.
I crossed it west to east self driving via the north road and I’ve rarely felt that small in immense wild and beautiful landscapes. Western US can have this vibe of immensity at points but not like that.
The country offers a diversity of landscapes. Prairies desert forrest canyon mountains…
Mongolia is very sparsely populated. 3.3M people on a huge territory with half living in the capital.
Nevertheless you’ll always find someone around somehow. Even in the middle of deserts there’s always be a yurt somewhere.
People are friendly and helpful. The population is very diverse with a lot of different ethnic backgrounds.
If you are vegetarian or a picky eater you’re in the wrong country :)
The country can be divided into 3 categories:
- The capital where you can have anything western society has to offer
- areas where paved roads reach where you’ll find nice tourist accommodations and shops that are well stocked
- deep Mongolia, where infrastructure can be rare and travelling gets long and hard at times.
Personally my favorite was the last.
Go visit, there is plenty to do and see and a real tourist industry if you don’t want to do things yourself.
I assure you, even Ulaanbaatar is quite the culture shock and far from “anything western society has to offer” for those who don’t travel. Also, most meat tastes gamey, so “western” in name only as far as food lol. Really neat country though!
Can one get by speaking English only, or do you need to know a local language?
You'll want a guide if you're leaving the Capital. It's around $100 a day for most.
A good guide is always worth the cost. Not only for knowing the best places, but for keeping you safe from the tourist traps and scams.
I was about to say.. I'm sure you can find a guide MUCH cheaper than $100 a day. That's pretty good money for mongolia lol.
but, if you're from the US and all the way out in mongolia, you don't want to cut corners on one of the most essential parts. you probably spent a few grand to get there, a few hundred more to have a great guide is probably worth it.
Right, you have to pay enough for the guide to make sure he isn't part of the scam. Half up front, half later.
Where and how do you book a good guide?
Depends on the country. I'd start looking for a tourist secretariat within the official government institutions. Also, looking at lots of reviews of that city.
You could also hire a recommended guide from your travel agency, if you use one.
In Ulaanbaatar English only is fine. Elsewhere not as much, even young people. Some of the “resorts” and whatnot maybe. You’d be sorted a little better if you know Russian and English.
In cities almost everyone can speak english or russian here
Russian works quite well, I believe.
My go-to thing for "how western would this place feel to me" is to look up "Irish Pub" on google maps.
Ulaanbaatar seems to have NINE IRISH PUBS, and another handful of British pubs.
Like, what the fuck that's more Irish Pubs per capita than most US cities.
The premise of The Grand Tour Mongolia special was to cross the unforgiving wilderness to reach a pub haha
Whoa, that's a useful metric indeed.
The people being in the middle of nowhere at random is hilarious to me. Because I experienced the same thing.
Years ago I was doing the Mongol Rally and our car had a water pump go out. About an hour later this old guy rocks up in a truck about as old as he was and helped us jerry rig a fix so we could make it Ulanbattaar and then simply drove away. Didn't speak a lick of English but it worked well enough.
How’d you get into doing that Rally?
Got drunk with a couple of Swedes and a Brit at a hostel in Tallinn and we decided to do it, basically.
It was a few years later but 100% worth it.
Man I thought I was living my dream till I read this comment
haven't we all 🤷
Nice.
We were lucky to never break down but because we had quite a good set of tools and spares we made it a point to stop whenever we saw someone on the side of the road.
Always funny to see the face of locals when you stop. Once we stopped next to a van who broke its wheel nuts. 3 passengers were getting drunk, 2 were walking toward a yurt a few km away and the driver was trying to fix it. We spent 30min going through all the spare bolts we had but none would fit. We had to leave.
A few days later we met him again at a random roadside restaurant. His passengers were telling us that he had told them about these two random foreigners who had stopped and tried to help.
I believe our secret for not breaking down was that we accumulated enough karma to spare us from disaster.
I got the same feeling travelling through Ugandan and Tanzanian backcountry, there are always people standing around in the most random places in the middle of nowhere, at least the places seemed random to me.
That's really cool. I'm jealous. I've been reading about the early life of Genghis Khan, and reading about the area he grew up in really makes me want to visit. I guess I'll steer clear of the cities.
You'll probably have to go through Ulanbataar, but I want to reassure you that it's much worse in winter - and you are probably not gonna go there in Winter (cold as hell!). I have been to the city a handful of times, but all during summer/spring and it has never been particularly bad - you can tell there's pollution sure, but not worse than so many other places.
For what its worth, at a glance, this could look like Saskatchewan
not flat enough for saskatchewan
The Prairies aren't completely flat. There's lots of sections of rolling hills that look just like the picture above in terms of landscape.
The southern parts of Saskatchewan (eg. the highway) near the Alberta border are hilly prairies just like in this picture
Or Montana except the road is too nice
Here’s a 15 minute documentary of a couple guys traveling to and through Mongolia on motorcycle.
I live in Finland, too, and that video alone has convinced me that I have to go and see it for myself before I die.
One of my favorite episodes/specials of Grand Tour is when they have to build a truck in the middle of nowhere and drive across the country with only a few supplies. I knew next to nothing about the country and truly couldn’t believe how gorgeous it was.
Also just a great episode in general if you’re a fan of the old Top Gear crew.
They do that in Bali too. Burn plastic bottles, flip flops, trash, every night.
I saw this in Cambodia, burning trash and plastic with kids playing next to it. It was pretty shocking to see
My dad does this in rural Alabama so... yeah.
The answer for him is 'it's easier than taking it to the street for trash pickup, and also I kind of like burning things'
India also does that. No idea why. Probably trying to stay warm? But they do that in summers too.
easiest way to get rid of it i guess (besides throwing it in the river)
If government provided proper waste services people wouldn't burn their trash nearly as much. You can see this in the US as well. Tires and washing machines tossed in the woods because the government doesnt give easy disposal alternatives.
They probably don't have trash service, or even a landfill to drop off trash. There was no municipal pickup at my now-late FIL's house, and he refused to pay a contractor. He burned most of their trash, including plastic, even after it became illegal. I was surprised no one ever narced on him, the smell was so awful.
It was weird, because he was a decent person & good citizen otherwise.
Same thing in Vietnam. Absolute garbage. Never been so thankful for the EPA since seeing and smelling open burn piles in city centers. Republicans and any others wanting to get rid of or diminish the EPA should be forced to live in those conditions for several months first.
I guess that incinerator plant they were supposed to have up didn't happen right.
IDK. My friend said they do have trash service, but it cost money, so most just burn their garbage. I haven't been there in 15 years. Things do change fast there tho.
I live in rural Oregon, US, and my neighbors burn all their trash. Plastics, oil, anything, and everything gets burned. We have weekly garbage service, I'm one of the few (89 residences) that puts a can out each week. They save all the garbage during summer and have massive burn piles in fall once it rains. Have reported them again and again to DEQ, nothing happens.
I was there about 5 years ago. The trash situation was pretty bad and I was lucky to not be on the beach during one of the plastic bottle surges. But we were talking to our driver and he said that there were plans to put up an incinerator plant, maybe Suwung? But that island has definite trash problems, not just from on-island trash but all that junk that comes from Java too. Really sad to see. The place would be so much more amazing, if not for the constant trash issue.
Jeeze they should ban plastic.
It's a problem all over the world but especially there because Indonesia is made up of so,so many small islands forming that archipelago. Because of that each island tends to have it's own process for managing things even if they're part of Indonesia. There's way too much single-use material being used in that part of the world.
Also, culturally, most of Asia and archipelago based South Asia has been traditionally organic-based meaning that materials used by locals were local materials and, while single-use, being organic could be easily disposed of by burning or chopping up and letting it rot out in the tropics. Not so, of course with things like plastics and heavily processed materials. So there's a cultural artifact that needs to be overcome as well.
If you look at most of the tropical regions, this problem exists. In Central America, it most definitely is a problem. The US covers up the problem by burying it but it's not really a good solution either.
Something we really take for granted in the west, especially in the USA which somehow manages to have air quality comparable to a country like Denmark.
https://www.iqair.com/us/world-most-polluted-countries (USA is at the bottom above Denmark, so Denmark is slightly better).
And if the Clear Air Act were to come to a vote today it would never pass with a conservative majority.
No doubt. Oil companies spent billions poisoning all dialogue on climate change that it bled over to anything environment related. Probably only hunters would be a sizeable push back among conservatives since they’re not so divorced from nature. Certainly the libertarian wing would love it, they love their ideology much more than common sense.
Certainly the libertarian wing would love it, they love their ideology much more than common sense.
"Yay I can do whatever on my land!"
Industry poisons local water
"Help me government! But only for my issue!"
Perfect
Worse over, they amplified one conversation the whole time they were poisoning the well. Greenhouse gasses are only one form of pollutant, yet climate change takes up so much of our discourse that everything else might as well be forgotten.
Agricultural pollution is arguably as great or greater of an issue as climate change. The holy grail of climate solutions would do absolutely nothing to stop the massacre of pollinators and decomposers at the hands of our recklessness. It would not remove a single microplastic bead from the environment. It would not restore overfished populations.
There's so many existential issues that we can't even really get a spotlight on because the spotlight has been on one single issue for decades.
I went to a rural college and have a lot of friends who are big into hunting, fishing, camping, shooting, etc. Not surprisingly, the majority of them are also conservative/republican
If you ask them about climate change though, they’ll tell you it’s definitely real because they see it. They buy into a lot of the typical political propaganda their party feeds them but have always pushed back on republican narrative about climate change. I don’t agree with most of their politics but have always had a lot of respect for their love of nature and their desire to protect it.
"CLEAN AIR?!?! HOW WILL THE CORPORATIONS STAY IN BUSINESS?!?!"
WON’T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE PROFITS!?!?
I went to several cities in China in 2001, didn't see a blue sky the whole time I was there. Even on sunny days, the sky was gray.
Last few days were in Hong Kong, and it felt like the most beautiful place I'd ever been. Partially from the city looking so cool, partially because I saw a blue sky again.
I moved from Mongolia to US and in couple months all my breathing problems and coughing went away.
It’s even hard to breath normally here can you imagine?
I had a professor in college do some air pollution control work in Mongolia years back, she would tell stories of kids playing with mercury beads from droplets that would fall from the smokestacks.
A Soc prof of mine in graduate school did his fieldwork studying gold miners in the Amazon. He told a story of talking to some independent miners about the dangers of using mercury (they added it to water that presumably contains traces of gold, which precipitates out and then they burn off and reclaim the mercury). They told him that the idea that mercury was dangerous was a lie spread by the big mining companies to scare off the independents, and one guy to prove their point took a big swig of the stuff from his bottle.
And he lived to the ripe old age of 33
Must be a member of r/WallStreetBets
On a similar note, I saw Brazilian TV interviewing a local gold digger, who was very rude to the reporters about the idea of mercury being in fish and poisoning indigenous peoples since, according to him 1- mercury is not toxic and 2- he eats fish frequently and is yet to see a drop of metallic liquid inside one. Things on the Brazilian Amazon were improving pretty fast, but it all went downhill during the last 4 years due to budget cuts and populism
I wouldn't be surprised if a short temperament was a side effect of heavy metal poisoning.
I’m not a doctor, but some quick internet search shows symptoms of mercury poisoning can be decreased intelligence, memory impairment, insomnia, emotional lability (uncontrollable emotions), anxiety and a bunch more. Wouldn’t surprise me at all that these people heavily affected by mercury poisoning would have issues controlling their temperament.
Basically it's a shiny liquid that turn brain dumb like goo.
Lula is often cited as a populist figure and his history on these things are good, so I'd just say reactionary politics.
Holy shit
Apparently ingesting mercury, while not ideal, is far less hazardous than inhaling mercury vapors.
Yeah, gold dissolves in mercury. You then heat it to turn the mercury into gas and reclaim the gold. Kids in school would play with the stuff not even that long ago, until they found out it makes you lose your marbles.
In elemental form, mercury is not that dangerous.
When lost in a stream, it finds its way down to the gravel or worse, muddy bottom. When acted upon by bacteria, mercury is converted to methylmercury, which readily is picked up by the food chain, becoming concentrated though biological magnification so that fish are heavily contaminated in the fatty bits. We come along and eat the fish and get poisoned.
So the guy drinking elemental mercury sees almost no effect, generations later are affected.
We'd like to hear more stories about your insane professor who had a stint in the Amazon jungle. Sounds like a crazy version of Indiana Jones
He showed us one picture that he took out of the front of his little Cessna-type airplane as it was just touching down on a remote airstrip. It shows another plane touching down on the other end of the strip at the same time. He said the two pilots then played chicken and it was the pilot of the other plane that wimped out and took off again to avoid the impending crash. He said his pilot was laughing and looking at him instead of at the other plane and he was sure he was going to die.
His name was Chuck Wood and he threw me out of class one time for saying "how much wood could Chuck Wood chuck if Chuck Wood could chuck wood?" Great professor, no sense of humor. This is him.
There should be a proper research team in every University
I'm currently in Bishkek. I feel ya. Here's a recent AQI value...
Holy hell, only seen that during the worst of fire season. Is this common in cities? How much does pollution travel to the rest of the country?
I didn't know AQI went that high. wow.
I went running during 500 AQI once when there was some nearby wildfires. I was coughing up gunk and felt like it took my lungs a solid 2 weeks to recover afterwards.
That was a bad decision.
I went to ullanbattar in winter a few years ago, it's minus 40°c and people burn anything they can to stay warm. especially coal. Also there's a huge power station slap bang in the middle of town. Aaaaand the city is basically a big basin without much wind, so the pollution sits down in it like this photo. The government subsidises toyota Prius in a thin effort to reduce pollution, so people drive them everywhere including some hectic ice roads Super interesting place to visit.
Holy cow.. that looks scary!
Worst part is our corrupt government doing nothing about it
I visited in October of 2012. It was stunning how smoggy Ulanbattar was. We heard it was from the poor families who burn anything to heat their homes in the winter, especially tires. I can only imagine if the average air pollution to be so bad it’s got to be so much worse inside a home burning tires. Hopefully some change can take place. To my recollection it’s the most polluted city in the world :(
Never underestimate how much the wealthy will blame the poor for their own malfeasance. It's like in the US where people are blamed for long showers during droughts when the agriculture industry wastes more water than the human mind can comprehend.
Government does not care about the welfare of the citizens
I agree that this is very scary for all of us, I will not wish anything like this for anyone
Worked with a woman from Mongolia. She told me about her childhood, cooking meals in her home over a burning tire. I did not bother to ask why she came to the states.
Do they not have wood? I’m genuinely curious why this is a thing
I spent a week driving around Mongolia and I remember seeing my first tree on the fifth day. It's just bare grasslands as far as the eye can see.
There are big forests in the north but most of them are protected natural parks from what I recall.
Why can’t they plant any trees?
An ignorant question
No budget, and tree ninjas. I kid you not, we have a profession called tree ninjas. These people drive smaller version of pickup truck called “amijirgaa (roughly translates to livehood) and illegally harvest timber from tree farms or protected areas and sell them. So operating tree farms gets costly. Also we illegally export shit ton of timber to China.
Steppes are almost entirely grassland.
This is also why "sky burial" is common in Tibet. There's not enough wood for cremation.
Wood is expensive. Tire you can go to garbage dump and find 2-5 for free and it burns longer
I assume wood was not an option. I did not ask though.
I did not bother to ask why she came to the states.
Bigger tires in the states = bigger meals.
Mongolia needs a better energy solution and fast.
Sadly, logistics make this almost impossible to realise.
There was a joke in USSR about being sent to build roads in Mongolia as an endless struggle of punishment, a step better than actual Gulag. I heard there were talks with China to build oil purifying factory, but thats to adress fucked up prices on gas and thats it.
That's sad
New Delhi is ditto. In the worst days the air quality index touches 600. Avg air quality is 200-300.
Delhi has reached 999 in the past, which is apparently the highest the monitors could measure.
Oh I clearly remember that day when it was 900-1000 for a day. It will definitely have long term effects on us. Delhi is a furnace. Alas our politics is not about the environment, education and health services rather Hindu Muslim crap.
Insane. What kind of air filter can even be used in such conditions??
During wildfires I sealed up as much as possible and built a Corsi box, but that may not be best for the climate and supply chain in Delhi.
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1.3y
When I travelled Delhi it was 999 and we had warnings on our phones telling us to stay indoors
Not great, not terrible.
3.6 Roentgen not great, not terrible.
You know, I don't think I've ever met anyone from Mongolia or of Mongolian descent before.
Well that’s because of mongolians are not that many in count, we are 3.5m as in population, also vast majority of us are too poor to travel around anywhere besides china or russia occasionally and that’s it
I remember reading somewhere that there are more ethnic Mongolian in China than actual Mongolia.
I met a guy doing a school swap programme in NZ while I was a pool lifeguard.
Dude came from country where there are no large, easily accessible bodies of water for miles and miles, to a place where you are never more than 45 minutes from somewhere you could drown.
He decided to TEACH HIMSELF how to swim and absolutely nailed it. Started off slow, asked all the lifeguards tips and tricks of how to get comfortable with water, started getting his hair wet and blowing bubbles.
After 20 weeks he could swim 8 lengths without stopping and would spend up to two hours a day at the pool. Genuinely a nice guy
Mongolia only borders two other countries, Russia and China, is located very far east, is counted as a lower-middle income country, has a population of ~3.3 million people, of which a big percentage still live at the very least a semi-nomadic life. Now I know there is a significant ethnic minority of mongols in the region of inner mongolia in China, but it’s not weird that you don’t meet a lot of mongols based on these facts.
This is Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia.
It gets very cold in winter.
On the coldest days of the year, daily average of PM2.5 pollution levels reach 687 micrograms per cubic meter — 27 times the level WHO recommends as safe. The most important source of air pollution comes from coal-burning stoves in the “ger” districts (informal settlements) during the cold season.
I also suspect the geography to play a part here, possibly surrounded by mountains so the smog has nowhere to go. I have lived myself in a city with a smilar geography.
There are reports of birth defects, fetal death during winter, and generally children souffering the most from all this.
It's very bad.
But nowhere have I seen a statement that "Almost every new born kids have abnormal deformaties", i.e. birth defects in over 50% of births.
OP, it's bad enough as it is; by stubbornly sticking to such exaggerated statements you are hurting your cause.
Pm 2.5 at 687. Los Angeles averages moderate air quality at 70. 687 is insane!
During the worst wildfires a few years back when the Portland area was being blanketed from multiple sites we hit perhaps in the 400s. I couldn't see across the street and can't imagine nearly 700 and from industrial sources no less.
this used to be London in the 1800s.
Thousands were employed to sweep coal dust off everything.
According to historical data found here we hit 487 at the peak. I remember it breaking 500 though, so I'm not sure how accurate this is. I remember spending a lot of time reading about air quality at the time, and on those dates Portland had the worst air quality in the world, followed by San Francisco and Seattle.
700 is ridiculous. I can't imagine living with that.
We had 512 in Portland during the 2020 fires. I spent a fair amount of time that week in my bathroom with a wet towel under the door. I couldn't go outside for days.
I bet there’s some thermal inversion going on, keeping the air from circulating upwards
Yes it looks like a dramatic mountain valley not unlike Salt Lake City which has some problems with this as well(not on the same scale)
I grew up in Boise and the word "inversion" is the fastest way to trigger us.
But nowhere have I seen a statement that "Almost every new born kids have abnormal deformaties", i.e. birth defects in over 50% of births.
That headline definitely doesn't say "Almost every"
I just loved the Grand Tour special from Mongolia. Did not realize this was an issue.
Also, The Hu - Wolf totem is a straight banger.
I was today years old when I learned that Mongolia is this polluted. I thought it was a country with beautiful landscape.
It is. It’s just the capital that’s this bad. Having experienced the unimaginable beauty of the countryside, i truly wish that the capital could be the same
God I'm ignorant. This is the first time I've ever seen a picture of modern Mongolia. I assumed they didn't advance with everybody else and just lived in huts or something. Fucking moron I am
A large percentage of people do still live in gers (yurts), at least part time, but of course modern life has seeped in many places. You'll see gers with a solar cell on the roof, a TV and mobile phones inside and a motorbike parked outside.
It looks like earth on the film WALL-E 
Everyone thinks this pollution is only in some far off land and doesn't effect us where we live. This spreads all over the entire planet. This pollution is an ALL OF OURS problem.
This needs to stop now.
This is basically England 150 years ago no? Every country goes through Industrial Revolution stage cuz fossil fuel is just that efficient at generating money. The only way to stop is spend billions to help them skip this stage and transition to clean energy.
fossil fuel as some of the highest energy to weight output ratio. it also just comes out of the ground and can be burned as is.
150 years? The Great Smog of London was only 70 years ago in 1956 and that event was estimated to have killed up to 12,000 people.
Did you know the Great Smog of London happened in 1952? I just read that in another comment from u/A_Soporific and had to verify because I always thought all of their smog was about 150 years ago. Blew my mind.
When I talk to people about environmental issues, I use this and Singapore as examples.
Even if you don't believe the planet is warming up at an unsustainable rate, or that man isn't the cause, everyone can understand that smog is bad. It's not always a global environment issue. Pollution affects your local environment as well, and we should really do all that we can to stop it.
Leaded fuel and CFCs are also great examples with direct cause and effect that are easy to explain.
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1.3y
👁️🤏 👁️🤏 I’ll use my credit card
Hm. My common image of Mongolia is beautiful, clear steppes and pristine landscapes.
Not that this is super unusual in industrial cities with few environmental regulations but it is just not what I imagine when I think of "mongolia"
Just one city, and all the rest are just above your imagination
You know those environmental protection laws some politicians claim are just getting in the way...?
I remember seeing this video a few years ago.
https://youtu.be/qlJbMKHR3Wc
Ulaanbaatar is the coldest capital city in the world, and a lot of the people still live like nomads even there, so there's a lot of wood and coal burning in homes in the winter.
You can't provide infrastructure in the mountains when a lot of people live like nomads.