[Stoves] Of legitimacy and credulity (Was: business sickness, Crispin, 21 July 2016)
Traveller
miata98 at gmail.com
Mon Aug 1 12:18:38 CDT 2016
I apologize in advance if any acrimony is reignited. I am responding to
Crispin's post.
----
Crispin says, "There are so many conceptual errors in the evaluation
methods (including the social methods) that were it any other field, the
field itself would have been run out of town. And we wonder why it has
taken so long to gain legitimacy?"
You must be joking, Mr. Pemberton-Pigott.
Whose legitimacy are you thinking of?
Of the Clinton family business, in and out of the government? Why Hillary
Clinton gave clean cookstoves to millions of women around the world
<https://www.hillaryclinton.com/post/why-hillary-clinton-gave-clean-cookstoves-millions-women-around-world/>
?
Or some "top UN official" pleading ‘Make clean cooking part of eco drive’
<http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/environment/developmental-issues/Make-clean-cooking-part-of-eco-drive/articleshow/49431473.cms>?
These thought leaders <http://cleancookingrevolution.com/thoughtleaders/>?
These 20 men who care about clean cooking
<http://cleancookstoves.org/about/news/03-07-2016-20-men-who-care-about-clean-cooking.html>?
Of the United Nations
<http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2016/0527/From-cookstoves-to-forests-UN-puts-eye-on-mending-global-environment>?
The World Humanitarian Summit?
Chef José Andrés proclaiming, "A Cooking Revolution: How Clean Energy and
Cookstoves Are Saving Lives
<https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2016/06/07/cooking-revolution-how-clean-energy-and-cookstoves-are-saving-lives>",
even as Marc Gunther asks, "These cheap, clean stoves were supposed to save
millions of lives. What happened
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/these-cheap-clean-stoves-were-supposed-to-save-millions-of-lives-what-happened/2015/10/29/c0b98f38-77fa-11e5-a958-d889faf561dc_story.html>?"
My own Chaiwalla Prime Minister and his two-bit sycophant who lies through
his teeth claiming "For the first time, the government has resolved to
bring LPG cylinders to these households
<http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/social-programs-under-2-years-rule-of-narendra-modi/article8633316.ece>"?
(Arvind
Panagaria has in mind the promises to bring LPG cylinders to 50 million new
households, those who otherwise used biomass; some
At Prime Minister’s call, one crore richer households have already given up
this subsidy
Before whom? Those who cook are not as credulous as we are credulous enough
to believe. No matter; The Gold Standard
<http://www.goldstandard.org/blog-item/gold-standard-improved-cookstove-activities-guidebook>can
sell green-painted lead to fools ready to part with their money.
We could even appeal to the makers of automatic guns that they can offset
their sins by buying a few million stoves we certify will save lives.
Sorry, that's the topic for my next post, in response to your question on
"monetizing DALYs". (Advance warning - with enough armwaving, you can pull
any birds out of every hat.)
It is, of course, a big deal when stoves become part of "new strategy for
international development" - a "core pillar of American foreign policy"
(compared to failed defense and failed diplomacy). Mrs. Clinton, who
proudly did not bake any cookies if she cooked anything at all, was
combining her husband's consulting fees - er, foundation expenses - and
foreign policy.
Legitimacy is measured in the market place - for research grants or for
appliances and fuels. As for the latter, liquid and gaseous fuels,
electricity, and appliances have gained enough legitimacy and new
applications keep emerging. Why, my favourite is "outsourcing the kitchen"
Shoving errors under the rug- er, in spreadsheets - is human; God may
forgive but auditors and M&E consultants shouldn't. (I suspect a DfID
evaluation of a Teri stoves program grant was jiggered to eliminate
potentially unsavoury findings.) Questions cannot be shoved
---------
(India +91) 909 995 2080
2. Re: Fwd: business sickness (Xavier, Crispin)
(Crispin Pemberton-Pigott)
3.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2016 15:14:00 +0530
From: Traveller <miata98 at gmail.com>
To: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves
<stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>
Cc: Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <crispinpigott at outlook.com>, Xavier
Brandao <xvr.brandao at gmail.com>, Anand Karve <adkarve at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Stoves] Fwd: business sickness (Xavier, Crispin)
Message-ID:
<CAK27e=ni3_stWvLkZ8sVb72qbgO4hzbfV==oD872x+WR-8h+uA at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Xavier and Crispin:
Are you suggesting that we have been selling false dreams - to cooks or to
our masters? :-)
I don't think the customers' or governments' behavior is paradoxical or
irrational.
1. Yes, a "stove" is a part of the "cooking experience", the rhythm,
intra-family power relationships, family budgeting ("home economics")
practices, entwined in peer pressure, etc.
2. Education, perception of "status" (within family, community, and
geographic regions), and high opportunity cost tag on the cook's time (if
pregnant or young mother, widowed sister, so on), influence changes in (1).
Some other intervening variables are location and structure of housing,
availability of partially cooked foods or fully cooked meals outside homes,
family size, location of employment and buying patterns for cooking
materials.
Anybody who has wandered through any part of the developing world can't but
fail to notice how things have changed in so many ways for the poor and
lower middle class people - if nothing else, the numbers have grown,
residential and employment locations and conditions have shifted, average
family size has shrunk (except in certain pockets) and kitchen is
outsourced in stages.
On the other hand, we have been stuck with sorry academic tales of
"household energy" - neglecting modern fuels and electricity - with sad
caricatures of cooking for the poor people. I don't need to name names,
just look at the pictures marketed on one report after another. I am
sometimes so angry, we experts have grabbed the most intimate possession of
poor women - their private space for our pictures, their thoughts for our
surveys and useless theories.
And worse - some model of "standardized" cooking by a "standardized"
combination of fuels, stoves, utensils and rhythm of combustion (stripping
away even fuel quality and nutritional concerns), now to produce some
"standardized" emissions, "standardized deaths and disease".
It is so comforting to talk about how the customer is always wrong and the
expert is always right.
Paradox and irrationality are in the eyes - or eyeglasses - of the
beholder.
Let's write a proposal for a 20, 40-year multi-centimillion-dollar research
project for biomass cooking in 100 poor countries, 100 million cooks. With
multisectoral experts and "big data", real-time measurements of everything,
and instant press releases and videocasts.
Oh. We have been doing that anyway, haven't we? GACC should be given
another contract.
Nikhil
PS to Crispin: I am not quite an idiotic Luddite. I am thrilled by your
"puts out enough power to run a home is a very attractive option" and
"alternatives which often include an engine." Not for the bottom 50-80% of
rural households in SA or SSA yet, but possibly for the commercial users
and the rich. As with climate change, the rich should take the first steps
- a 2-5 kW system with energy storage, highly efficient appliances, and
reliable backup that can take out 30% of the primary energy demand from the
area.
And to Xavier: A good enough stove for local environmental and economic
conditions will find a market. "Willingness to pay" is a vague concept, and
economists don't know a half of it. When girls start demanding that their
future in-laws have private latrines and a good kitchen - clean, with a $15
electric kettle and fan, and a $20 "clean enough" wood stove with a hood,
no dung cakes, boys will fall in line sooner or later. Oh, some day our
girls will do "complete, irreversible transition" to super stoves as GACC
yakkers demand. In the meantime, we have to keep on testing and marketing.
---------
(India +91) 909 995 2080
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2016 01:08:53 +0530
> From: Xavier Brandao <xvr.brandao at gmail.com>
> To: stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org
> Subject: Re: [Stoves] Fwd: business sickness
> Message-ID: <3c20df11-1f69-0598-564c-5ceacf1b50a5 at gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed
>
> Probably, we are more often facing a problem of willingness to pay, than a
> problem of affordability. Without always knowing it.
> In India, people get in huge debts for marriages. In West Africa,
> people get in huge debts for burials.
> Yet they will tell you: "Paying this for a wood/charcoal stove? Are
> you mad?".
>
> Xavier
>
>
> On 7/19/16 8:39 PM, stoves-request at lists.bioenergylists.org wrote:
> > Don't tell people (or even assume) what they can and cannot afford. Make
> > them an offer that is too good to refuse. They might take it.
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2016 15:53:17 -0400
> From: Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <crispinpigott at outlook.com>
> To: "'Discussion of biomass cooking stoves'"
> <stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>
> Subject: Re: [Stoves] Fwd: business sickness
> Message-ID: <COL401-EAS1681BF19A084157DD0890D8B1370 at phx.gbl>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> Dear Xavier
>
> That hits the nail on the head.
>
> People will pay what they can for something that has a positive
> value proposition.
>
> >Probably, we are more often facing a problem of willingness to pay, than
> a problem of affordability. Without always knowing it.
>
> >In India, people get in huge debts for marriages. In West Africa,
> people get in huge debts for burials. Yet they will tell you: "Paying this
> for a wood/charcoal stove? Are you mad?"
>
> So, I have been floating a couple of propositions as you know about
> stoves that do more, even if they cost more. One is the provision of
> electricity. I was touring a number of manufacturers in western North
> Carolina over the past week and found one that is dealing with large
output
> Thermo-acoustic generators. These units can put out 200 amps at 24 volts
> and need an input temperature on the order of 700 C which is ideal for
wood
> and coal stoves. I will definitely chase that up.
>
> The point is that a stove that puts out enough power to run a home is a
> very attractive option. One that heats a pan, not so much. Anyone burning
> fuel
> should be very interested in saving money on the alternatives which
> often include an engine.
>
> Regards
> Crispin in warm and sunny Waterloo
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Message: 2
Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2016 14:48:46 -0400
From: Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <crispinpigott at outlook.com>
To: "'Discussion of biomass cooking stoves'"
<stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>
Subject: Re: [Stoves] Fwd: business sickness (Xavier, Crispin)
Message-ID: <COL401-EAS101C54B0E761D7EBD5C735BB10A0 at phx.gbl>
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Dear Nikhil
>Are you suggesting that we have been selling false dreams - to cooks or to
our masters? :-)
What a great question.
Well, on the stove testing front we have been selling false dreams to the
producers, the testers, the ?masters? as you call programmers, and to the
users.
There are so many conceptual errors in the evaluation methods (including
the social methods) that were it any other field, the field itself would
have been run out of town. And we wonder why it has taken so long to gain
legitimacy?
Selling stoves conceptually used to be about saving fuel which meant
producing more fuel-efficient stoves. That went along OK until people
started going ?engineering? without much of a clue about measurements,
metrics and calculations. Until things developed into ?testing methods? we
were sort of doing ok, and by that I mean in the 70?s. We sold ?fuel
savings? when saving fuel was conceptually tied to gas guzzling cars.
Now we sell ?health impacts? which are based on IER?s and DALY?s and GBD
interpretations. Health impacts are notoriously difficult to ascertain with
anything like the precision of fuel saved, even if both are calculated
incorrectly. At least with fuel you get a reality check by watching the
pile of wood disappear, or not.
So, we are still selling false dreams to a similar crowd of customers, but
in new, imaginative ways. Look at it this way: If the stove community can?t
correct things as basic as the invalid metrics of common tests, how can it
correctly predict the impact of health from an exchange of stoves? That
takes real imagination. We have as a community, little credibility among
real scientists at least in part because of the obvious misuse of
scientific tools and persistent conceptual errors about how ratings should
be produced and how health impacts are estimated (or not). Stripes are not
yet earned.
I am by no means giving up, aluta continua, as recent exchanges in the ISO
groups have demonstrated. There is no point in producing a standard that
will sit and rot. What is most encouraging is that the cook and the kitchen
are getting a lot more credit for performance than they have been
?traditionally?. Testing in a realistic context, whether in a lab or out,
is key. If you want to know what a stove does, use it and measure, where
?measure? includes interviews.
We are going to fix this.
Crispin
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Message: 3
Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2016 14:32:11 -0400
From: Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <crispinpigott at outlook.com>
To: "Stoves" <stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>
Subject: Re: [Stoves] Fwd: business sickness (Xavier, Crispin)
Message-ID: <COL401-EAS513164DB94180E96FD6C694B10A0 at phx.gbl>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Dear Nikhil
PS to Crispin: I am not quite an idiotic Luddite. I am thrilled by your
"puts out enough power to run a home is a very attractive option" and
"alternatives which often include an engine." Not for the bottom 50-80% of
rural households in SA or SSA yet, but possibly for the commercial users
and the rich. As with climate change, the rich should take the first steps
- a 2-5 kW system with energy storage, highly efficient appliances, and
reliable backup that can take out 30% of the primary energy demand from the
area.
TAG?s don?t have to be expensive. See Scott Backhaus? 2012 paper on this ?
it is technical but the idea is sound: mass-produced electricity generators
will not remain an oddity for long.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261912003455
Leaps and bounds: the system efficiency rose from <20% to 49%. That is
serious progress in a short time. The Dutch are leading, I think.
Regards
Crispin
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