[Stoves] load of carbon negativity on the backs of the poor/ Re: what causes warming deosn't matter

[Lanny Henson]

Paul,

I don't have any new ideas about climate change other than an opinion about cooking stoves as it relates to biochar and climate change.

For me the idea that you can change the climate, with cooking stoves, just doesn't seem reasonable. 

Even if adding the charcoal as biochar to the soil were to make a difference in atmospheric CO2 levels, 

I don't believe anyone so poor, as to cook with wood,  is going to bury their charcoal, because charcoal is worth more than wood they just gathered or paid for.

If there is any charcoal left from a fire, it can be burned along in the next fire,  or can be burned in a stove made just for charcoal .

A good flexible stove should burn either or both.

If burying charcoal as biochar is to be a fix for climate change, it is going to need to be done on an industrial scale by more affluent people, people with big machines.

Since appeal to emotion has become part of the debate, here is mine.

Who are we to add this load of "carbon negativity" on to the backs of the poor with our charcoal making but not charcoal burning stoves?

The poor need stoves that can burn both wood and charcoal efficiently.

Lanny Henson



----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Paul Olivier 
  To: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves 
  Sent: Thursday, August 22, 2013 6:36 PM
  Subject: Re: [Stoves] what causes warming deosn't matter.


  No one denies that designing stoves that impact human health in a positive manner is important. But if we can design stoves that meet goals relating to human health and the environment, then it makes sense to do so. And it make sense to discuss the design of such stoves on this stove list. There are broader issues involved than just human health. Let us go back to this phrase that appears in a GACC document: tier 4 stoves "stretch goals which achieve significant health and/or environmental goals." And within the same document, under global environmental goals, mention is made of reducing the emission of greenhouse gases. Is CO2 not a greenhouse gas? Does it not warm our planet? Does some of it not end up in our oceans and make it more alkaline to the extent that it harms many forms of aquatic life? The real work on the ground is not just what happens in a kitchen. It is also what happens when sea levels begin to rise, when one third of the Mekong lies underwater, when oceans acidify, when shellfish die, when glaciers melt, when polar bears no longer have a home and so forth. As we broaden our vision, we just might end up designing much better stoves.


  Many thanks.

  Paul Olivier




  On Fri, Aug 23, 2013 at 2:10 AM, <rbtvl at aol.com> wrote:

    I have been silent.  but.....  It doesn't make any difference what any of us think about the source of global warming.  I happen to think humans have caused it.  but so what?  What I think doesn't matter.  Not in the least.  My work with the women in the field, doing the best design and distribution work we can do, saving them three afternoons of menial wood gathering labor every week, getting the smoke out of their houses,  preserving for a while their disappearing forests, doesn't depend in any way on whether I think it is getting warmer because of a century of industrialization in the northern hemisphere, or because of some other reason.   We design for less fuel burned, for less emissions of all kinds inside and outside, especially where people are breathing, don't we?.  My analysis of the impact of the industrial revolution is hardly relevant.

    back to work.  come on!

    bob

    Robert V. Lange
    Maasai Stoves and Solar





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  -- 
  Paul A. Olivier PhD
  26/5 Phu Dong Thien Vuong
  Dalat
  Vietnam

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