[Stoves] "Wasting time" v. the urgency of "global ISO process" (Re: Cecil)

[Traveller]

I support Cecil's view,

"we are wasting time arguing over global stove performance standards and
tests. We are still in the model T stage of the development of the small
household stove industry. A global ISO process is counter productive
because it is very premature. We need to bring practical role of thumb as
well sophisticated applied stove science and testing to the people who need
stove services, We need simple tried and true test methods that involve the
end users and stove producers. As Crispin has been urging we need
 competent stove scientists who know how to evolve optimized stoves *in
situ.*"


I am afraid while we waste time, marvelous feasts are being cooked to
generate a "evidence base" tailored to block incremental local change - of
the Indonesia, China, Tajikistan, Mongolia varieties - and to do away with
the cook - and her preferences, specific geographies. Standardized stoves
for standardized cooks in a standardized world.

See GACC's Igniting Change
<https://cleancookstoves.org/binary-data/RESOURCE/file/000/000/272-1.pdf>:
"Furthermore, in contrast to other health and environmental interventions
such as bed nets, vaccines, and clean water, few cost-benefit analyses
exist that test the value proposition of clean cookstove use. This is very
important because clean cookstove interventions have many co-benefits –
health, environment, gender, and economic – and when the multiple benefits
of cookstoves are aggregated, *an extremely strong case for their use as an
integrated global intervention is expected to emerge*. "

Yes, you inspect what you expect. Another way of forcing researcher biases
into science. Aggregating "multiple benefits" requires weighting, not
light-headed flights of fancy. An "integrated global intervention"? Yeah,
next year's Clean Cooking Forum should have a draft Framework Convention
for Clean Cooks (FCCC), to be adopted at "Rio+30" in 2022.

Researchers need research grants. Cooks need "better stoves". The two are
entirely separate pursuits.

DfID 2016 review of the Evidence Base to catalyze a global market for Clean
Cookstoves and Fuels <http://iati.dfid.gov.uk/iati_documents/5368271.odt>
(a roughly $10 m grant to GACC, leveraged to $35 m more by USG and Gates
Foundation) shows the importance of "International Cookstove Standards" to
"help consumers and users make informed purchases, allow designers and
manufacturers to affirm product quality and drive innovation, and will
provide investors with a credible basis for evaluating and comparing stove
performance and safety."

The review stresses urgency of ISO work: "The Alliance will need to
carefully manage the timelines around preparation and submission of
standards to ISO. The ISO approval process is based on member voting and
can be protracted. This could  push approvals outside the time line for the
current phase of the EBCC project. An updated and realistic timeline should
be captured within the 2016 workplan (Action by end April 2016)"

and to put World Bank programs in line:

"The Alliance and DFID should ensure that opportunities are taken to
cooperate. complement and add value to these World Bank programmes (Action;
immediate), including optimisation of representation of both organizations
in their respective governance structures (Action: formalised by December
2016)."

A separate post on "applied stove science and testing to the people who
need stove services". (They don't live in donor capitals.)

Nikhil



On Wed, Sep 28, 2016 at 9:43 PM, <cec1863 at gmail.com> wrote:

Well spoken Anil!

I know that Karl Popper made much of Logical Negativism ?as the main dynamic
by which science advances but I disagree with him because most scientists
are too thin skinned to benefit from the public falsification of their
theories and hypotheses. Scientists under attack waste life times and resources
protecting themselves from criticism. The result is that the advance of
science including even stove science such as it is slows down to a crawl.
In big science we still have to wait for the influential big men to die off
to get an entrenched paradigm to change (see the Structure of Scientific
Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn).

So I am personally and methodologically in favor of keeping as many oddballs
and outsiders as possible in the stove conversation. Why not?

When I studied briefly under Karl Popper ?at LSE I remember the emphasis he
gave to the instrument makers of telescopes and microscopes in terms of their
impact on the advancement of science or for the influence of astrology on
Newton's theory of gravity, I recall that Sir Popper viewed the makers of
instruments for observing nature as being more responsible for the
advancement of science than the makers of big theories.

That implies stovers perhaps need to spend more energy devising novel ways of
testing stove performance as cultural artifacts, as consumer products for
cooking and heating, as fuel burners, as air polluters and/or air cleaners,
as employment generators and less time huffing and puffing about - how to
shift big paradigms a bit to the left or right!

My position is that we are wasting time arguing over global stove performance
standards and tests. We are still in the model T stage of the development
of the small household stove industry. A global ISO process is counter
productive because it is very premature. We need to bring practical role of
thumb as well sophisticated applied stove science and testing to the people
who need stove services, We need simple tried and true test methods that
involve the end users and stove producers. As Crispin has been urging we
need  competent stove scientists who know how to evolve optimized stoves
*in situ.*

IMO we do not need more stove, fuel and testing protocol missionaries.
>>
>> Cecil
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