Slashdot Mirror
Can We Live Without Concrete? (cnn.com)
A combination of cement, water and ground rock or sand, on the surface concrete might seem crushingly mundane. Yet it has defined construction in recent centuries and with it, in part, modernity. From a report: But do we need to re-evaluate our concrete habit for our sakes and the planet's? Production of cement is disastrous for our biosphere, while the degradation of many concrete buildings has some construction experts predicting a colossal headache in the future. There are myriad proposed solutions, such as changing the way we make concrete, creating sustainable alternatives or doing away with it altogether. But would we want to live in a world without concrete? And what would that world look like?
"We make more concrete than anything else, any other product, apart from clean water," says Paul Fennell, professor of clean energy at Imperial College London. One 2015 report estimates that each year approximately three tons of concrete are used for every person on Earth -- roughly, 22 billion tons. To put that in context, a recent study estimated that 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic have been produced, ever. Manufacturing cement, concrete's binding agent, is energy-intensive, Fennell says. Ordinary Portland cement -- the most common form in concrete -- is produced by baking lime in a kiln and emits approximately one ton of carbon dioxide for every ton of cement. Concrete production is responsible for approximately 5% of global man-made CO2 emissions, according to the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.
"We make more concrete than anything else, any other product, apart from clean water," says Paul Fennell, professor of clean energy at Imperial College London. One 2015 report estimates that each year approximately three tons of concrete are used for every person on Earth -- roughly, 22 billion tons. To put that in context, a recent study estimated that 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic have been produced, ever. Manufacturing cement, concrete's binding agent, is energy-intensive, Fennell says. Ordinary Portland cement -- the most common form in concrete -- is produced by baking lime in a kiln and emits approximately one ton of carbon dioxide for every ton of cement. Concrete production is responsible for approximately 5% of global man-made CO2 emissions, according to the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.
Agenda 21 - that's what all this is about. They kinda have to beat around the bush for awhile so as to make the idea of depopulation more palatable. For heaven sake, what will the wealthy elite do once robotics tends to all their needs? Oh, those pesky poor humans are just fucking up the planet. Get rid of them...right??
Concrete is the reason we can build things higher than four stories.
Why do you propose changes to make everyone's life worse?
Figure out a way for life to actually be better. That's what you did in the 1970s when there was air pollution and water pollution. Air pollution was a problem, not a fear about a possible problem.
Fund some research to create something better than concrete if you want something better than concrete.
Don't ask us to give up living modern lives and mire ourselves in artificial poverty. That's not something Americans or Asians will do. Europeans might.
HEMP?
I got to ask, do you have a pretensioned hemp beam design in your hip pocket or are you smoking your product too much?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
FIVE PERCENT of global CO2 emissions for cement production. Reinforced is one of the most useful, versatile, and inexpensive construction materials we have devised. I wish to reduce co2 emissions - targeting something that far down the stack seems stupid to me given its utility. Much better gains in CO2 reduction can be made elsewhere (power generation and transportation).
Silence is a state of mime.
The post is based on a false premise: that CO2 production is inherent in making concrete. There is already a process to not do that. Further, most of the CO2 is made from generating the heat to make the concrete. Most of that CO2 production is low-hanging fruit to eliminate.
This is just more chicken little chicken shit.
Hempcrete will float in a bucket of water
With sea level rise, that may not be a bad thing. Just let your home float away rather than get flooded and live wherever it lands.
We use concrete because concrete is cheap. Really, really, cheap. You can get similar results with other materials for many applications but there are few materials that are as readily available, easy to use, and inexpensive as concrete. Come up with a material with usable performance and a similarly low price point and you can be sure we would use a lot of that.
FYI one ton of concrete is a piece roughly 0.42m^3. So they are saying we each use a piece of concrete about the size of a desk each year.