[Stoves] Asking the right questions??? Re: forced draft (Re: A Karve 13 August)
Traveller
miata98 at gmail.com
Thu Sep 1 12:11:32 CDT 2016
Dear Paul:
Don't you feel hesitant asking for for too much around here - not wanting
to be misunderstood? :-)
But I do understand the bit about wanting to be an anthropologist, a
businessman, an US army soldier, a religious minister, or engage in social
service.
And I also completely agree about new technologies needing imagination.
Just that imagination is not enough. Bloodthirst, rich "uncles" or angel
investors, pliant staff, sheer luck, and friends in high places - WJC and
HRC - may also help.
I am trying to write a paper on incubating social entrepreneurs of new
technology products for the "Bottom of the Pyramid" market. Seems to me
that such a thing itself is a social entrepreneurship business, and needs a
combination of charity and commercial finance.
Whatever questions are asked of customers, I suggest thinking of what
questions stove designers may be asked by a) charity bureaucrats, high on
theoretical dope, or b) bankers.
I think dealing with bankers is far easier. Those are the questions we need
to think about. I think GACC will gladly help. They have been doing
interesting stuff on financial innovation. (Waiting for public output.)
You know, donors would tell you - like the did to Dr. Karve - that chimneys
only put pollution outside. As if exposure rates are the same.
There are a few questions I would like to ask such donors. But I know the
answers are pre-cooked and packaged for home delivery.
---
Jobs and Gates weren't the only ones in their markets. They survived, and
their survival stories are not that pretty. (Steve, RIP. I only mean
survival within this life on earth.)They were college dropouts. (I was
kicked out. A badge of honor, after having been on Dean's Honor List.)
Why on earth do we have to justify improvement in the lives of the poor in
the name of saving the earth? And that too to USEPA and US Department of
Clinton?
Have we all become hellfire and brimstone evangelists? (I would, at a
price. You see, I also want to be a businessman and a religious minister.)
Bowing to the altar of Gore the Son of God, counting a hundred Mother
Hillarys, sacrificing my brothers and sisters today in pursuit of high-cost
energy so as to guarantee a better future for the great-great-grandchildren
of St Nick (Stern) and Sant Pachauri?
Steve and Bill didn't have to market to USEPA. Pay a few million dollars to
please bureaucrats with religious zeal to regulate everything in sight
everywhere, even poor people's kitchens.
Oh, well. Let the Congress pass another Appropriations bill.
Another question has come up - "Can a house where wood is burned for heat
really be called green?
<http://www.treehugger.com/energy-policy/can-house-where-wood-burned-heat-really-be-called-green.html.>
(Treehugger,
1 August 2016)
Nikhil
On Aug 30, 2016, at 12:15 AM, Paul Anderson <psanders at ilstu.edu> wrote:
Dear all,
I totally agree with Ron's message below about needing to ask the right
questions.
Asking our target (needy, impoverished, etc.) people what they would want
in a stove sounds logical, but would they "imagine" asking for stoves that
make char, or use small wood, or have a rather constant flame for 40
minutes and longer? Maybe. But probably not.
Back in the 1980s, when personal computers were just getting started (Apple
IIe, MS-DOS, etc), if you had asked educated Americans what they wanted for
personal communications, they would NOT have answered with words like
wireless internet on handheld small phones that take pictures, send text
messages, and do Google searches. Dick Tracy's two-way wrist radio was
still futuristic. Should Jobs and Gates and others have been told to just
give the people what they ask for? Improved products virtually REQUIRE
someone to bring the new things to the masses. Are the masses ready for
the new items?
Paul (what is below is a bit off topic, but you might find it
interesting. More important to read Ron's questions in his message below
mine.)
In college I seriously considered majoring in anthropology (simplistic
definition is studying the way people/societies are) but rejected it
because I wanted to help people gain improvements, essentially changing
their lives (I hoped for changes for the better), not staying as they are.
By the way, I also rejected majoring in business because too often profit
motives are too dominant and self-serving. I also rejected careers in
social work, medicine, military (3 yrs in Army), and religious ministry. I
ended up as a univ. professor for 30 years.
Do not misunderstand me. ALL those careers are and can be very worthy.
And preserving the status quo or making only small changes MIGHT be better
than major changes, sometimes.
Doc / Dr TLUD / Prof. Paul S. Anderson, PhD
Email: psanders at ilstu.edu
Skype: paultlud Phone: +1-309-452-7072
Website: www.drtlud.com
On 8/29/2016 10:15 PM, Ronal W. Larson 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
>
_______________________________________________
Stoves mailing list
to Send a Message to the list, use the email address
stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org
to UNSUBSCRIBE or Change your List Settings use the web page
http://lists.bioenergylists.org/mailman/listinfo/stoves_list
s.bioenergylists.org
for more Biomass Cooking Stoves, News and Information see our web site:
http://stoves.bioenergylists.org/
_______________________________________________
Stoves mailing list
to Send a Message to the list, use the email
addressstoves at lists.bioenergylists.org
to UNSUBSCRIBE or Change your List Settings use the web
pagehttp://lists.bioenergylists.org/mailman/listinfo/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org
for more Biomass Cooking Stoves, News and Information see our web
site:http://stoves.bioenergylists.org/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.bioenergylists.org/pipermail/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org/attachments/20160901/73962208/attachment.html>
More information about the Stoves
mailing list