[Stoves] PLEASE STOP: Of legitimacy and credulity (Was: business sickness, Crispin, 21 July 2016)

Mon Aug 1 12:22:08 CDT 2016

The previous post was incomplete and was sent in error. I will send a
revised one in a few minutes.

---------
(India +91) 909 995 2080

On Mon, Aug 1, 2016 at 10:48 PM, Traveller <miata98 at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> 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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