Number one in a series of, well, probably one. Nevertheless, makes yer fink, no?
From The Oil Drum.
The comments thread on the post at the Oil Drum is, to someone who never thinks about the wonders of cement, mind boggling. Did you know that there are 7-level residential high rises in Yemen made from mud-brick that have lasted for 500 years? Neither did I.
Wow. Assuming 1kg of C02 is generated for 1kg of portland cement produced (I think that was the gist of the Oil Drum post, Wikipedia says ~0.8), 1.3 Gigatons/yr is 21% of China’s total C02 emissions (6.2 Gigatons/yr according to Wikipedia).
Who knew.
My prioritized life goals are 1) Solve world hunger, 2) Fix global warming, and 3) Create an eco-friendly replacement for portland cement. I might have to combine 2+3 to make new top priority category and feed the world later 🙂
I’ll leave world peace to others… that is a hard problem.
I seem to remember an interesting-if-true story back in the mid 70s that due to some over-enthusiastic central planning in Colonel Gowan’s Nigeria there was enough cement on order to cover the entire country to a depth of 6 feet. Has a similar calculation been performed for China?