[Stoves] Leading questions mislead (Re: Ronal Larson)
Nikhil Desai
pienergy2008 at gmail.com
Tue Aug 30 09:10:45 CDT 2016
Moderator: I changed the subject line.
Ron:
Thank you for indulging me. I wonder if I thoroughly lost you with my
blabber on "leading questions". I learnt the term in drafting legal
testimonies, but the issue is also relevant to survey design. See
http://survey.cvent.com/blog/market-research-design-tips-2/survey-design-pitfalls-leading-questions-and-loaded-words
.
The real question is, who is the survey for and what are you trying to
sell?
Seeking convenient answers is a human weakness; pollsters do it all the
time. No sin, just possibly an error.
Product design and testing, marketing, selling, providing after-sales
service and taking care of both legal and illegal risks, is a serious
business. Even some parts of academia deal with it.
But it seems we have an overabundance of scientism - unwarranted beliefs in
unscientific assertions just because they are uttered by bureaucratic
scientists (I trust ExxonMobil scientists more than USEPA scientists, but
you probably know that already) - and under-enthusiastic customer base.
This is ok, even normal, but not when 50 years of selling to donor
bureaucrats has produced repeated failures,
Oh, well. We sell best what we are good at - promises - to our eager
customer base - ideologues of environmentalism. From saving trees to lives
to climate, we latch on to the fad of the decade. (I have done that too, so
please don't take this personally.)
Today we seek to satisfy the priests of USEPA/GACC cult via catechism of
Protocols of Water Boiling Tests in Laboratories. Tomorrow we could write a
White Paper on Biomass Stoves and Planetary Health. (You see, Lancet would
publish anything, so long as enough heads nod. Look up its reports of
Commission on Climate Change or Commission on Planetary Health.) Why, in
five years you and I could prepare a Progress Report on Biomass Stoves'
Contribution to Sustainable Development Goals of 2035. With enough money, I
could even write a paper that developing countries' transition to cooking
with electricity from modern coal-fired plants (with USEPA-approved BACTs)
reduces the chance of sea level rise by 22 cm in 2200.
I wish I led a cult too. I wouldn't hesitate a bit in writing, "TLUD stoves
save trees, grow bigger gardens, reduce global warming, and make cooks
happier and richer." I could cite customer surveys in support. Convenient
facts always trounce inconvenient truths. Just need to ask the right
leading questions; there are suckers eager to be misled.
Just about as scientific as the Global Burden of Disease report - with
assignation of a single cause of death to some 50+ million deaths a year,
whether or not what doctors' certificates exist and what they say, then
concocting allocation of premature mortality to diseases and risk factors -
but we would need another Bill and Melinda, at least another Harvard.
And certainly more scientific than the USEPA/GACC technique of predicting
exposures, disease and death from lab tests of boiling water on the one
hand and pretentious accuracy of "relative risk" predicted from, well,
questionable surveys, dubious sampling, meta-analysis and all that academic
jazz.
But I digress. Back to TLUD.
I have already said I know nothing about TLUD or for that matter design of
biomass stoves. I wish any seller success so long as the buyer is a happier
cook.
And I don't mean cooks of fancy feasts of self-righteousness for the rich
donors with rich theories.
Who is your customer? What is your service standard? What is the objective?
I raised those questions the very first post this time around, and I
haven't heard a thing from anybody.
Whose problem - and what problem - is sought to be solved, by whom and why?
On that some other time. You asked me to revise your questions, not raise
my questions.
Let me state questions I would like to be asked as a buyer of any
stove-fuel technology. I resent having to answer questions in order to make
some donor and his research consultants happy, but I know we all have to
serve our ladies and lords.
And if you have to sell to governments like our Chaiwalla Prime Minister -
whose picture is on nearly every petrol pump in India, on huge billboards
announcing his LPG scheme for empowering women - you may have to ask
different kinds of questions. If I were his finance minister, I might ask
you, "How many votes can you swing in five years?"
Oh, sorry. Not my questions again. Your questions, assuming you want to
sell something to a cook, with enough money to be able to buy some food
items and fuel for a month at a time (not get them every day or three times
a week), and has enough time for cooking (and not worry about another job
outside home or any household chores or time to read to a child or watch TV
at a neighbor's).
1. How much does charcoal sell for around here? How would you sell it if
you sold it?
2. Do you want to leave a stove unattended for an hour? What times and how
often?
3. Do you like to cut your wood in fine pieces? Or would you buy your fuel
at 10 USc a kilo?
4. When it gets warmer around here, what do you do - get out of the kitchen?
5. What does your garden fetch you? How do you fertilize it? How much is it
worth to you if your cooking produced just the fertilizer you want (because
I say so)?
I too wrote in favor of cooking solutions for the poor in terms of
co-benefits of GHG reduction and health in order to please donors and their
research consultants. I will readily do so again if I got a half million
dollars to help move a few billion dollars to the poor to help them buy
fuels and stoves of their choice. I have no problem beseeching the donors,
misleading USEPA bureaucrats; after all, they only have their careers to
worry about, and "happier cooks" are only an incidental co-benefit.
Who knows, if we liberated tomorrow's mothers from the drudgery of cooking
and instead invest in their and their children's education, we might have
some more environmental regulators. Win, win, win!
Nikhil
Nikhil Desai
+91 909 995 2080
Skype: nikhildesai888
On Aug 30, 2016, at 12:16 AM, "Ronal W. Larson" <rongretlarson at comcast.net>
wrote:
Nikhil:
I made six positive claimed points about TLUDs. How about your rephrasing
each to help (or restrain) we who are trying to sell a (claimed) improved
stove?Same request to Cecil.
Ron
On Aug 29, 2016, at 10:01 PM, Nikhil Desai <pienergy2008 at gmail.com> wrote:
Ron:
I know nothing @TLUD, but I won't think much of answers to these questions
one way or another.
But I do consider these to be "leading questions" meant to elicit a biased
answer.
It is tragic to see people falling in the trap of believing themselves by
getting convenient confirmations by means of leading questions.
Am I not correct? :-)
Not that I want to be.
I salute unshakeable faith as the method of 21st Century "science".
Now ask me when I stopped lying.
Anybody out to measure intelligence and desire knows neither. S/he is just
one blind among many in the zoo trying to define an elephant.
Please excuse my impudence. I have no desire - for a biomass stove - nor
intelligence.
As always, wrong questions guarantee wrong answers.
N
Nikhil Desai
+91 909 995 2080
Skype: nikhildesai888
On Aug 29, 2016, at 11:15 PM, "Ronal W. Larson" <rongretlarson at comcast.net>
wrote:
Cecil, Nikhil, list et al:
This is the first time I have understood Cecil’s interview methodology,
where he says below his (and Crispin’s) method was: “..*to minimally tweak *
*traditional stoves* ..” This obviously is biased against TLUDs and
charcoal - making. I contend this also underestimates the intelligence and
desires of the rural cook.
I wonder if any other person doing stove questionnaires or knows of their
existence has ever seen one that asked any question pertinent to TLUDs?
Examples of questions I would like to see asked (and never have seen) are:
1. Would you consider a stove that could be paid off in months from the
charcoal you could make with it?
2. How would you rank the importance of using a stove that you could leave
unattended for an hour?
3. Would you consider buying a stove that could use very small pieces of
fuel?
4. Would a stove that helped address global warming be important to you?
5. Would you consider a stove whose charcoal output could possibly double
the productivity of your garden?
I assume questions are regularly asked about emissions - so TLUDs might
have a small consumer advantage there. But one would have to know the
relative advantage - such as asking about a biomass cook stove that could
be cleaner than a kerosene stove. I doubt such health-related questions
have been asked.
So I ask Cecil (who I have known for decades) if he has ever asked any
stove questions like these above - or ever seen any such? What answers
would he expect? What would Nikhil (who I have also communicated with
decades ago) think would be the answers?
Ron
On Aug 29, 2016, at 11:46 AM, cec1863 at gmail.com wrote:
Greetings Traveller aka Nikhil,
Thank you for your swashbuckling frankness about the fundamental
foolishness of expecting abstract ISO standards, metrics, and household
stove performance tests to lead the stovers and stove producers of the
planet into a paradise of smokeless pollution free biomass cooking and
space heating.
>From where I sit on the sidelines these days I see a tragic perversion of
the potential for a holistic "science" of small household stoves by many
different competing commercial, professional political, gender and
lifestyle interest groups. We are forced to fight the battle of armgeddon
simply to decide what parameters and assessment methodologies can be
trusted to guide the development of simple $10 improved stoves for the 1/3
of humankind at the bottom of the world scrum.
My question is how do we generate a respectful conversations between the
various role players involved in the scrum to innovate, produce and promote
user friendly and responsive improved household stoves that are affordable
and can successfully compete for market share without any subsidy.
That means the end of outsourcing to China and the end of imported stoves
selling for ± $100 with or without carbon credits when there are locally
made stoves being produced, distributed and sold for under $5 by
traditional artisans.
I am a backslid (defrocked) anthropologist so the first thing I do is
investigate the already institutionalized stove technologies and all of the
stove management and fuel use 'culture' which surrounds the TECHNOS with
what used to be called "ethno-science". The mrta-culture between the stove
and the plasma of knowledge and symbols might be referred to as the human
factors which mediate the relationship between stove users and their
stoves. OK. That is where I choose to start. Other professional stovers
have other skills, interests and points of intervention.
My contribution to a hopefully respectful conversation with fellow stovers
is informed by decades of AT based self help develop projects in South
Africa. My bottom up development process was guided and informed by my
effort to answer this question: how do we collaborate with partners and
potential beneficiaries so as to get the greatest possible benefits for the
largest number with the smallest possible intervention and at the smallest
possible cost per brnefit/beneficiary????
Unfortunately, the thrust of BIG AID and BIG DEVELOPMENT agencies
(remember Big Nurse in One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest?) is to massively
intervene from the top down and in the process massively disrupt the
traditional stove/fuel/pot/kitchen layout/producer/
marketing "system". It is worth pointing out that there is an indigenous
stove/fuel culture and economy in place that has been cooking food, heating
homes, making and selling stoves, and supplying fuel for many generations.
I only have one simple suggestion about a possible master strategy: slow
and steady change strategy will radically out perform the massive
disruption strategy that is favored by Big Development.
Crispin and I combined to propose and demonstrate the feasibility of a
stove improvement develpment process in Mongolia and Java that involved
using stove science to minimally tweak traditional stoves so that their
emission and efficiency performance eventually approaches the high
stardards of an EPA approved clean cookstove.
IMO such high standards are bureaucratic impositions that needlessly
disempower the stakeholers and role players in traditional stove/fuel/producer
systems.
For me as a old man observing the counter productivity of the stove wars in
places like Sudan and many other places in Africa, Asia and the Pacific. If
we are to make real progress in the small stove/biomass fuel economy it is
necessary for all role players to take deep breaths, cool off,
depoliticize, speak kindly to colleagues, and grow the common ground that
unites us all in our quest for an infinite series of apprpriate "good"
little cooking and heating stoves.
Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone.
*From: *Traveller
*Sent: *Monday, August 29, 2016 10:13 AM
*To: *neiltm at uwclub.net
*Reply To: *miata98 at gmail.com
*Cc: *Discussion of biomass cooking stoves
*Subject: *Re: [Stoves] forced draft (Re: A Karve 13 August)
Neil:
Thank you. I learned a little about biochar from a "stover" friend, guru
from decades ago - Stephen Joseph - back in 2008 but then lost track. I am
glad to read from you that there are consumer products now that you
consider "So versatile".
It is a gross error to ignore versatility and flexibility, and buy into the
USEPA propaganda of Water Boiling Tests. GACC could be a Faustian Bargain.
Except perhaps to those who pay the Clinton Foundation to play at the gala
performances of WJC and HRC.
I wonder if WHO Is fooling EPA - that its IAQ guideline is to be taken as
Moses' Fifteenth Commandment (all others can be ignored, just like WHO's
OAQ guideline is) - of EPA is fooling WHO - that its ratings based on a
silly test protocol for emission rates and area modeling will somehow
translate into mass acceptance and reduction in premature mortality. (There
will always be premature mortality; the GBD people will find something else
to blame it on, for example boredom with academia.)
Versatile. Durable. What a breath of fresh air, compared to the
intellectual smoke of Washington, DC.
If we are to continue this "cobenefits" paradigm - the pretension of saving
trees, lives, and climate - we might as well add in the co-benefits of
biochar, and assign value to customer satisfaction. The customer is
sovereign, not the expert class engaged in mutual back-scratching.
Nikhil
---------
(India +91) 909 995 2080
On Sat, Aug 20, 2016 at 5:56 AM, <neiltm at uwclub.net> wrote:
> On 19 Aug 2016 at 19:25, Traveller wrote:
>
> > I remembered how some charcoal fires used to be run with a hand
> > blower. I found a modern version on Amazon.in, here
> > <http://www.amazon.in/Grill-Blower-Charcoal-Grills-Fireplaces/dp/B011
> > 7F268 0>
>
> These can sometimes be purchased for as little as one GB pound in pound
> shops in the UK (and a little more on ebay), and are excellent for
> starting or reviving volcano kettles when there is no wind and/or
> reluctant fuel, or for reviving a TLUD which has gone out, by simply
> blasting it into the top until the flame rekindles well enough to
> sustain, or less urgently applying it gently to the bottom outside
> airholes which can help a flagging NDTLUD revive sometimes. I use it as
> an occasional 'rescue' in other words. Sustained use of it would be
> tedious as well as occupying both hands. They seem surprisingly durable
> as well. I've had the same one for years.
>
> Just cooked a nice omelette on one of the Chinese NTLUDs using very fine
> dry wood chip - almost chain saw sawdust size. This restricts the
> primary air nicely for a lengthy sustained moderate heat, but there is no
> possibility to add fuel at the end of the batch to keep it going, yet
> even such micro char successfully fuels our BBQ. Using much larger fuel
> allows for indefinite burn time whether beginning the burn as a TLUD or
> not. So versatile these stoves. Much as I enjoyed the Reed fan woodgas
> campstoves, I no longer take them on trips now, but still use them
> occasionally at home.
>
> Neil Taylor
>
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