标题: How China Used More Cement in 3 Years Than the US Did in the Entire 20th Century [打印本页] 作者: choi 时间: 3-25-2015 16:31 标题: How China Used More Cement in 3 Years Than the US Did in the Entire 20th Century 本帖最后由 choi 于 3-25-2015 17:38 编辑
"China used more cement between 2011 and 2013 than the US used in the entire 20th Century [1901-2000].
About cement consumption: "Smil got his estimates from the US Geological Survey, whose figures for the American use of cement in the 20th Century are below. * * * In comparison, China used around 6.4 gigatons of cement in the three years of 2011, 2012 and 2013, as data below from the International Cement Review, an industry publication based in London, shows. US Geological Survey [specifically Hendrik van Oss] estimates on China's cement consumption are similar
"Beyond China's incredible urbanization, there are a few more facts that make the cement stat even more believable. As Goldman Sachs pointed out in a note, China’s population today is only about four times as large as the US, but it is 15 times as large as the US was in the early 20th Century, and nine times the size of the US in 1950.
"The world also experienced a shift in building materials over the 20th Century. In 1950, the world manufactured roughly as much steel as cement; by 2010, steel production had grown by a factor of eight, but cement had gone up by a factor of 25. And where many houses in the US are made of wood, China suffers from a relative lack of lumber [But this is not the reason Taiwanese government decides against wood (typhoon), to the disappointment of US, which wants Taiwan to import timber].
"low standards for construction quality mean some of China's concrete buildings may have to be knocked down and replaced in as little as 20 or 30 years. According to Goldman Sachs, about a third of the cement that China uses is low-grade stuff that wouldn't be used in other countries.
My comment:
(a) The WP blog is based on an old twitter of Bill Gates (dated June 12, 2014): "The most staggering statistic in @VaclavSmil’s new book: b-gat.es/1oYsC7G."
The link connect a blog:
Bill Gates, Have You Hugged a Concrete Pillar Today? (under the heading "The Stuff of Modern Life"). June 12, 2014 www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Making- ... amp;WT.tsrc=Twitter
(introducing a book by an historian: Vaclav Smil, Making the Modern World; Materials and dematerialization. Wiley, December 2013.
Quote:
"He [Smil] argues that the most important man-made material is concrete, both in terms of the amount we produce each year and the total mass we’ve laid down. Concrete is the foundation (literally) * * *
"One material that I [Gates] have a personal interest in is paper (which comes in a distant third in terms of annual production, behind cement [No 1] and steel).
"Thanks to technical advances, we can make major industrial products like steel and cement more efficiently than ever. On average, making a ton of steel today takes a third as much energy as it did in 1950, and produces 10 percent less carbon [dioxide].
* There is no need to red the rest of Gates' blog.
(b)
(i) US population according to US Census Bureau--1900: 76,212,168; 1950: 151,325,798
(ii) United States Census Bureau
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Census_Bureau
(Formed 1903; Headquarters Suitland [about 1 mile southeast of Washington, DC; named after state senator Samuel Taylor Suit], Maryland; "Between 1790 [the first census] and 1840, the census was taken by [US] marshals * * * The Census Act of 1840 established a central office which became known as the Census Office [the immediate predecessor of Census Bureau]")
(c)
(i) Global Cement Report. International Cement Review, undated
................per capita cement consumption ....total cement consumption
US ...........425kg .........................................120 Mt
China .......915kg ........................................1.2 Bt [billion tons]
Taiwan ....660kg .........................................14 Mt
(ii) The data are from year 2006, for simplicity--though for some countries 2008 (but not after) data are reported.
To create the table above, I compile the data from individual country in the Global Cement Report (GCR). www.cemnet.com/GCR/