[Stoves] Jamaican cooking

Tue Apr 5 17:08:18 CDT 2011

Dear Ron 1 (how’s that?)

>The main addition I think important here is to respond to this statement today in your reply to Otto.

Otto:  ">They do not mentioned anything about the prosessing of the biomass into charcoal will release greenhouse emissions and loose about 50-60% of the energy content in the fuel."

Crispin:  " I think the assumption is that people involved in the stove business already know how charcoal is made."

RWL:   My assumption is that how it was made never appeared in anyone's efficiency calculations - despite their probably not knowing for any particular batch - and probably not caring.  

I have tackled this several times head on and no one responds, ever. I guess either they agree that I am correct or they have no answer, or they don’t care.

Unless the thermal efficiency of the entire operation is taken into account, including the making, transport and use of charcoal and wood products, they cannot be fairly compared. What I have seen instead is the repetition of the unsupported statement that all charcoal production is bad, that it is all wasteful, implying that no technology exists that can make it competitive with wood at any scale, that the ‘emissions’ from charcoal making are high and that this consists mostly of particulate matter that would not be created if it were burned as wood. The argument is unbalanced.

Obviously these popular memes are bunk, or someone would show me calculations that differ from those I have several times provided on this this list. 

The transport of charcoal is very efficient per MJ, far better than wood and it matters a lot. Many people transport huge amounts of wood using diesel engined trucks and it is not efficient to do so. It is not an accident that people in the biofuels energy business choose to transport charcoal instead of wood. Because it is efficient.

Consider also the potential of technologies because there is no point in looking backwards cherry-picking bad practises as some here seem to prefer, railing against what is obviously sub-optimal, then talking only about efficient wood and other processed biomass stoves. Why the prejudice against charcoal? Because that is all it is. 

>The use of charcoal for cooking is an abomination and should be as much outlawed as is the growing practice of outlawing charcoal production.  

That makes no sense to me both as an advocate of system efficiency and as a use of law to enforce one’s misinformed whims on a largely poor, long-suffering population.

>My own experience with charcoal in Sudan is that charcoal making/use has ruined that fine country.  

The same can be said of cattle in many countries. Sudan suffers from far more than the making of charcoal and it will continue to until the war is resolved. War is not good for the environment. People do what they can to survive, including selling charcoal made badly, on the run. Banning charcoal in Sudan would be like banning food for rural dwellers hiding from the next attack. Life is not so simple.

One can improve lots of things - maybe even buggy whips - but we should be talking here on this list of something other than sub-optimum solutions.  

Name one. I have.

>With charcoal-making stoves, the users can make money - not expend it.  

Burying charcoal in the ground in not ‘making money’. It is taking money from huge international traders whose business case rests on the feeble and shrinking claims that the world is going to roast from our emissions of CO2, a fable inflamed daily by such as wish to profit from the trade. Statements such as “This is for the sake of the forests and of the atmosphere and global warming” often underlie narrow personal agendas.  I am surrounded by them. BTW it is now officially called ‘climate disruption’ to imply that mankind has ‘disrupted’ the climate and made it go hotter/cooler/wetter/drier/stormier/calmer all at once. And snow more, but less.

Forests increased in area, should be harvested sustainably and the energy in them used efficiently, without prejudice. 

The globe is presently not warming http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/05/global-temperature-still-headed-down-uah-negative-territory/#more-37362 and according the Dr Phil Jones (the famous one from the Climate Research Unit, University of East Anglia) has not been warming since 1995. I trust his opinion, he’s been keeping the keys. 

If your stove technology selection is based on global temperatures you might want to read the thermometer: “The global temperature has fallen .653°C (from +0.554 in March 2010 to -0.099 in March 2011) in just one year.” The tropics have cooled 1 deg C in the past year as a 30 year cooling cycle kicks in on cue. http://www.drroyspencer.com/2011/04/uah-temperature-update-for-march-2011-cooler-still-0-10-deg-c/ and really good temperature graphs showing what the heating season will be like in N America and Europe in the coming 30 years is contained in the excellent presentation http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/05/courtillot-on-the-solar-uv-climate-connection/#more-37311 (Prof Vincent Courtillot, professor of geophysics at the  <http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universit%25C3%25A9_Paris_VII_-_Diderot&prev=/search%3Fq%3DVincent%2BCourtillot,%2BDirecteur,%2BUniversit%25C3%25A9%2BParis%2BDiderot,%26hl%3Den%26prmd%3Divns&rurl=translate.google.com&twu=1&usg=ALkJrhg-8U4AfUlbHEZagPHonF1DwvgFig> University Paris-Diderot and Chair of paleomagnetism and geodynamics of the  <http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_universitaire_de_France&prev=/search%3Fq%3DVincent%2BCourtillot,%2BDirecteur,%2BUniversit%25C3%25A9%2BParis%2BDiderot,%26hl%3Den%26prmd%3Divns&rurl=translate.google.com&twu=1&usg=ALkJrhhUddtL3vfeKBqyepoBSxVzGvhonw> Institut Universitaire de France. We have to build stoves that match the climate. We are responsible to know what on Earth is going on.

Stovers: beware getting your snout too far into the carbon feeding trough. It’s a day that will be followed by night.

Otto: it would be interesting if you could provide some calculations showing whether Chris Adam and I are or are not correct about the system efficiency and emissions of a modern charcoal making and cooking industry.

Stovers: there are thousands of documents railing against the evils of smoky, inefficient paraffin (kerosene), but it turned out to be the stoves, not the fuel.  Thousands more rail against coal as a rich, inevitable source of PM, yet it is the stoves that fail to burn them. Other thousands of articles scream about the choking, gasping women and babies who burn wood, that medieval fuel of cavemen, yet it is the stoves that are the problem. “Dung has only an 85% combustion efficiency!” yells another. Yet it was the open fire that caused it.

Does anyone see a pattern here? All are solvable problems when correctly described and addressed.

People blame goats for destroying the land. In fact they are the only animals left that can live after the cattle have destroyed it with their hooves and bulk. Goats are the clean-up crew, not the real problem. Mismanaged forests become depleted, no matter what the ultimate use of the biomass. We have to see the forest, not one dis-favoured tree.

Regards

Crispin

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