China’s African Projects
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| Africa, vast and varied, is on the verge of extraordinary development. |
Editor’s Note: China’s breathtaking transformation of their own country over the past couple of decades is accompanied by robust new Chinese enterprises all over the world. In this report on China’s activities in Africa, the Chinese are seen to be involved in infrastructure projects across this vast continent.
Everything about Africa is writ large - during the past twenty years, as China’s economy exploded, Africa’s population doubled. There are now over 900 million people living in Africa, and collectively the Africans have lower per capita wealth than the peoples of any other continent. But the potential in this vast land mass of over 3.0 million square kilometers - over 20% of the total land surface on earth and second only to Asia in size - is immense.
China brings to the Africans infrastructure projects that are, arguably, at lower cost and with fewer conditions than any other nation. They are now 2nd only to the United States as Africa’s largest trading partner, and according to Columbia University economist Jeffery Sachs, “China gives fewer lectures and more practical help and thus offers Africa something new, a straightforward business relationship between equals based on mutual interest and non-interference in the internal affairs of its allies.”
Whether or not Africa will ultimately benefit more from rapid establishment of more railroads and power stations, for example, with other concerns such as the human rights records of the local governments coming later - has no simple answer. As Zulu Chief Buthelezi once said, “we cannot fight for freedom if we have no bread.” Civil engineering infrastructure is the backbone of wealth, and with wealth inevitably comes the desire and the means to build democracy.
Similarly, environmental challenges are more easily met when there is wealth. Build an aquaduct tunnel north from the Ubangi River to Lake Chad? Some environmentalists might find this horrifying - but if the local nations asked the Chinese to build such a conveyance, they would do it, and they wouldn’t require decades of legal briefs to get it done, either. If water were shipped from the Congo Basin to Lake Chad, all along the way people would have bread, and the depleted aquifers of the Sahel could replenish at last. And with full bellies, people might more easily consider the challenges of planetary stewardship, and the allure of peaceful coexistance. - Ed “Redwood” Ring
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| Sticks note the locations of sunken wells in a dried-up pond in Filtu Woreda, Southern Ethiopia. (Photo: US Aid) |
In January 2008 China’s CGC Overseas Construction Company was to start work on a project to increase water production and distribution in Cameroon’s economic capital, Douala.
The company signed the deal for the project last December. It involves construction of pipe networks, wells and a potable water treatment plant and aims to boost Douala’s water production capacity from 115,000 to 260,000 cubic meters in a year.
The Cameroon project of CGC is just the latest in a series of water projects that companies from China are carrying out in African countries. While some of the companies are engaged in providing clean drinking water in African cities and villages, several others are assisting in building dams and water supply and distribution networks across resource-rich Africa. Though Africa as a whole has plenty of water, a number of cities in various countries across the continent lack direct access to potable water for their populations. The continent’s topography, too, poses a serious challenge in getting water to thousands of villages and communities.
Water is being treated by several countries as a vital commodity for not only ensuring proper sanitation but also for a whole range of socio-economic activities.
The Chinese were not, of course, the first to spot an opportunity here. Many companies from the developed world as well as local firms have established a presence in the water sector. But with the coming of the Chinese, they seem to be losing ground.
Chinese companies may not bring the latest technologies, but they offer a critical cost and labor advantage. They also seem not to be bothered by the rather small sizes of some of the water-related projects in Africa. Political support from Beijing has also played an important role in softening the entry of Chinese companies in Africa.
Western organizations and companies often come in with investments and expertise tied to development and human rights stipulations. Chinese firms are building dams and water treatment plants across Africa, guided more by revenue and diplomatic influence than environmental or human rights concerns.
| ACCESS TO CLEAN WATER PERCENT OF POPULATION 2004 |
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| Source: UNDP Development Report 2006 |
The Columbia University economist Jeffery Sachs, in a conference in Beijing in late 2006, may have summed it up best: “China gives fewer lectures and more practical help and thus offers Africa something new, a straightforward business relationship between equals based on mutual interest and non-interference in the internal affairs of its allies.”
As a result, many African governments prefer to work with Chinese companies, who maintain a hands-off approach in the countries where they operate. There are also reports of Chinese firms offering ultra-small, cheap “micro-hydro” dams, which appeal to water-rich but power-short African nations. The Chinese have technical mastery over these micro-dams, which can generate tiny amounts of electricity from mere trickles of water. Hundreds of such systems are operating in China.
Besides undertaking water projects, Chinese companies are also building railways, telecommunication systems, highways and port facilities. The influence of the Chinese is growing by the day in Africa. According to reports, China has become Africa’s second largest aid donor and trading partner, behind the United States. At the moment, there could be as many as 700 Chinese companies active across the continent.
Among the firms well entrenched in Africa is China International Water and Electric Corporation, a state-owned enterprise under the direct jurisdiction of the central government. The company, which has a presence in several African countries, has undertaken projects in Cameroon, Algeria, Tunisia, Sudan and Ghana, where it carried out the rehabilitation of water supply systems in the Volta region.
It has been working in Sudan since 1998, building pumping stations. China Jiangxi Corporation for International Economic & Technical Cooperation, which began working in Zambia in 2004, has sunk over 1,500 wells there.
China Geo-Engineering Company, has been working on the Kabwe water and sanitation project in Zambia, even in the wake of delays by the local government in disbursing its portion of the project funding. The government recently moved to pay some of the outstanding amount it owes to the company in counterpart funding for the project, which runs up to 2010.
China Geo Engineering in late 2005 won a tender to build the water supply network in Mozambique’s southern cities of Xai-Xai and Chokwe. Ten companies or consortia had bid for the conract. Similarly, China Henan International won a tender to supply water in two other Mozambican cities, Inhambane and Maxixe, beating out eight companies. Several Chinese companies working in Africa are importing material, equipment and accessories from back home, helping other firms in China to extend their business. But the growing might of the Chinese firms is causing resentment among its local competition.
In some countries, local industry players have been expressing concern over the ways Chinese firms are dislodging them as preferred contractors, especially for social projects including water systems. They accuse the Chinese firms of resorting to price undercutting to win contracts. But ultimately, China is building infrastructure that is helping to transform Africa.
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| The mighty Ubangi River, northern tributary of the Congo. Just a trickle north from this huge river could refill Lake Chad. (Photo: Pete Chirico, USGS, Wikipedia Commons) |
Additional EcoWorld reports on China:
- Fuel Cell Development in China
Media Hysteria
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| The green land and blue sea of planet earth. Big Sur, California |
Editor’s Note: This latest report on global warming by D. James Guzy is yet another well reasoned and well researched analysis that makes clear the emphasis on CO2 emissions is based on highly debateable precepts.
As a matter of principle we publish these analyses by global warming skeptics. To put it mildly, it is astonishing that most media continue to largely ignore - or discredit - any information that runs counter to global warming alarm. The least they might do is cast the skeptics as the voices of moderation, instead of “deniers” and “flat earthers.”
Here is the basic algebra of global energy today: Over 80% is produced through combustion of fossil fuel, and global energy production needs to double in order to allow emerging nations to achieve a decent standard of living. It is unlikely - if not unthinkable - that we can make absolute cuts in total global CO2 output within only a few decades without collapsing the global economy. Ref. “Fossil Fuel Reality,” and “Environmentalist Priorities.”
The good news is - if you are paying attention - we are not necessarily going to destroy the planet by increasing atmospheric levels of CO2. New observational data is not reinforcing the alarming scenarios, despite many high profile studies that continue to make those claims. Consider:
- New satellite data that can do 3D imaging of clouds indicate
water vapor forcing may be a negative feedback, causing cooling
instead of warming.
- New ocean buoys are returning data suggesting the ocean,
overall, is marginally cooling for at least the last five years.
- A recent study published in the journal Nature predicts the earth will be cooling for at least the next 15 years. (Ref. “Next Decade May See No Warming.”)
The truth is the many general circulation models do not have the ability to predict global climate trends. They are being constantly revised and to assert their scenarios are a certainty is ludicrous. And while humans may indeed have the ability to affect global climate, these changes may be due more to tropical deforestation than because of rising levels of CO2.
It is grossly irresponsible for scientists and journalists to abandon their innate skepticism when so much is at stake. They should understand the large international corporations, the U.N., government agencies everywhere, associations of government workers, huge swaths of the scientific and academic community, myriad non-profit organizations, trial lawyers and insurance companies all stand to benefit from policies enacted in the name of global warming mitigation. This is the hidden agenda, likely creating futile and destructive policies based on flawed logic.
It is the duty of anyone influencing global warming policy - from individual voters to international journalists and world leaders - to personally and continuously survey all the facts and keep an open mind, or science becomes religion, and journalism becomes propaganda. - Ed “Redwood” Ring
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| The Pacific, greatest of oceans. Will climate change arouse her to unprecedented fury? |
Arctic summer sea ice registers the smallest aerial extent in history, Greenland and Antarctica ice is melting at accelerating rates, paleoclimate proxies indicate current warming is unprecedented for thousands of years, and your community will be under water by the end of the century. We are within a decade of the tipping point of irrecoverable warming.
These sample headlines in recent months can compel the unknowing to follow the leading alarmists’ cries for CO2 action. Even agnostics and some cynics resign themselves to heed these cries as an insurance policy just in case there is some chance of climate impact. We are bombarded every day with alarmist global warming headlines, giving credence to scientific consensus and draconian mitigation policies. Are these headlines distorting reality? Yes. And worse, they are often completely false.
Furthermore, the media fails completely to report the gathering research which contradicts anthropogenic (man-made) global warming hypotheses. The last year, in particular, has been a landmark year for research and observational data advancing the theory that natural forces, over anthropogenic forces, are far more responsible for the global warming we have experienced in the last thirty years. I will give examples of what has been overlooked. These recent studies begin to shed light on how tentative the science is behind man-made global warming theories.
Why do these studies go unreported and non-discussed? There are three reasons. One, environmentalists and some leading scientists are pushing global warming as a moral issue. The media are loath to be portrayed as apostates. Two, global warming mitigation policies give public policy makers and advocates means to expand their power base. Three, perhaps most importantly, the U.S. government’s global warming science grant budget is approximately $5 billion a year. Scientists and other vested colleagues are afraid of losing money. If their research does not support the pursuit of populist global warming studies, they can lose grants, tenure, publishing space and more.
I will give examples of recent compelling research that gives a completely different perspective on global warming. There is a healthy debate on man versus natural effects on climate, and there is no scientific consensus on global warming.
Amidst all the talk about the last couple decades being the warmest for thousands of years, little attention has been made to what global temperatures have been for the last several years. Since the big El Nino year of 1998, the average global temperature has not risen. An interesting example is to take this past January’s global temperature and note the difference between this temperature and the temperature from January of 2007. Next, note the temperature difference between December of 2007 and December of 2006. Repeat for each previous month. Once a year’s worth of temperature differences is noted, calculate the average difference. Comparing yearly average temperature differences, the data reveals that the earth has been cooling since 2001. 1998 has been the warmest year, the global temperature since 1998 has been relatively flat! I am the first to admit that looking at a decade’s set of data is not statistically significant enough. We probably need another seven or eight year’s worth of temperature data to be statistically significant. However, the trend is clearly not at an alarming or uncontrolled warming rate.
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| Will these rocks be submerged beneath rising seas? |
It is possible that we are headed for a cooling, let alone worry about warming. The earth is embarking upon solar cycle 24.
We are experiencing the end of solar cycle 23. Solar cycles track the sun’s magnetic activity through sun spot activity. The intensity of the solar cycles correlates to the number of sun spots. Sun spots modulate the solar irradiance that that reaches the earth and each solar cycle is on average, eleven years duration. Solar cycles, which have been tracked since the mid eighteenth century, are typically strong and short, indicating more solar irradiance on the earth, or weak and long, indicating less solar irradiance on the earth. Solar cycles 21 and 22 (from the late 1970s to the late 1990s) had high numbers of sun spots and lasted less than eleven years. In conjunction, the earth experienced higher temperatures with these more intense solar cycles. Solar cycle 23, ending now, is at least thirteen years long. This, along with current very low sun spot activity (sometimes zero sun spots) harbingers a very long and weak solar cycle 24. Compelling research has been published within the last year correlating the earth’s temperature with the number solar cycle sun spots: the more sun spots the higher the temperature. The bottom line is that soon we will experience a real cooling!
Temperature measurements are even under scrutiny and reevaluation. No scientist is arguing that we have not been experiencing a warming, but there is emerging questioning on how much we have warmed, particularly in the last thirty years. Pat Michaels and Ross McKitrick last year came out with a paper critiquing the IPCC (the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) temperature data base it uses (from 1979 to 2002). One of the big debates in climate science (yes, there are many debates in global warming science and no universal consensus) is how much to ascribe socio-economic effects into temperature measuring algorithms. As an example, urbanization through streets, concrete, steel, etc. causes a profound temperature increase. This is the urban heat island effect. Socio-economic impacts are non natural impacts on temperature.
Land use change, fossil fuel consumption, irrigation, population growth are other examples of socio-economic impacts on temperature. A robust temperature measurement algorithm should have no data dependent on socio-economic variables. The current database the IPCC uses employs an questionable algorithm to cross correlate neighboring temperature grid cells and applies a mere 0.05 C bias for the urban heat island effect. Michaels and McKitrick employed a more robust socio-economic analysis to conclude that the IPCC database not only underestimates socio-economic impacts on global temperature, but inflates temperature measurements two times! Up to one half of today’s observed global warming may just be an artifact of the measuring methods. It is difficult to argue with their results because they compared their temperature measurement data and the IPCC measurement data with socio-economic variables. Michaels and McKitrick discovered that the IPCC data set has correlations with socio-economic trends while their data set has no dependence.
Last year, Craig Loehle published a paper which reassessed temperature paleoclimate proxy data sets going back 2000 years. One of the big debates in climate science is proof of the existence of significant temperature swings designating the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), 1000 years ago, and the Little Ice Age (LIA), 300 years ago. This debate is highly significant, particularly related to the existence of the MWP. If the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age did not occur, or only experienced minor temperature fluctuations, then, as the man made global warming protagonists contend, today’s temperature level is the warmest we have experienced for at least a couple thousand years. This supports the theory that the global temperature is inherently stable and today’s temperature level is unprecedented, on the precipice of a runaway condition (refer to the infamous hockey stick temperature graph).
If the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age did occur, then, as the skeptics contend, this would validate the theory that earth’s climate and temperature are naturally cyclical and variant, with the MWP having been a couple degrees Celsius warmer than it is now. The proxy data sets that show no MWP and LIA are highly dependent on tree ring data. Tree ring proxies are the most controversial of all temperature measurement data sets because of the requirement of significant subjective interpretation tree ring growth influences.
Loehle’s paper extracts robust temperature proxy data sets. Loehle takes 18 data sets selected to give a geographical distribution of the earth. Each of the data sets comes from data that was published in peer reviewed journals. Each of the data sets comes from disparate paleoclimate proxies, such as ice cores, boreholes, stalagmites, etc. And, most importantly, the data sets contain no tree ring proxies. Loehle tried to create an objective case as possible. His analysis, indeed, yields the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age temperature cycles. It seems the only way to eliminate the MWP and LIA is to include data dependent on tree ring proxies. Steven McIntyre of Climateaudit.com has done extensive research on temperature proxy data and shows how all graphs that eliminate the MWP and LIA have a core set of similarly interpreted tree ring proxy data. Loehle’s analysis further lends credence to the theory that global temperatures are naturally cyclical.
Steven Milloy of Junkscience.com describes the interesting example of the cyclical nature of our climate. From January to July, the earth warms by four degrees Celsius. This four degree rise is much greater than the 0.75 degrees Celsius rise the earth experienced during the 20th century. However, the earth does not reach a state of uncontrolled warming, it naturally cycles cooler from July to December with its natural feedback systems.
The debate is on!
In further reports I will provide examples of what the mass media is not reporting to you and how recent studies are discrediting anthropogenic global warming hypotheses.
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| Icebergs at Cape York, Greenland Will they all melt into a warm and angry ocean? |
Additional EcoWorld features on Global Warming:
- The Debate Goes On, Marc Morano
- A Case Against Climate Alarmism, Dr. Richard Lindzen
- 35 Inconvenient Truths, Lord Christopher Monckton
- Interview with Roger Pielke, Sr., EcoWorld Exclusive
- Glacial Acceleration, Paul Brown
- Global Warming Priorities, Dr. Edward Wheeler
- Rebuttal to Inconvenient Truth, Marlo Lewis
- Inconvenient Skeptics, D. James Guzy
- Global Warming Facts, Dr. Richard Lindzen
- Is There a Basis for Global Warming Alarm?, Dr. Richard Lindzen
- Global Warming Alarm, Dr. Edward Wheeler
Also reference over 80 Editor’s posts on the topic of global warming:
- Global Warming Posts, EcoWorld Editor’s Blog
