[Stoves] Boxing us in (Re: Ron Larson on EPA webinar on stove emissions and air quality)

[Traveller]

Ron:

My time is worthless. If others find the Webinar worthwhile, it may not be
just for examining the box but question the ethics of mindless research for
the sake of propaganda.

I remember Gerry Leach (RIP) challenging us back 19 years ago when
discussing what to do with "renewable biomass for cooking by the poor",
namely protecting trees and using more efficient woodstoves:

a) What is the problem?
b) Whose problem is it?
c) How do you know this to be the case?
d) What have they done about it?
e) How do you know that the solutions you propose will be acceptable to
them?

You know I personally like the idea of biochar, for soil strengthening. As
for cooking in households, I bow to the cooks, not pundits.

I haven't read Michael Johnson. But now that you remind me, someone did
send me a paper a year ago that I ignored. Let me look up. I don't do
science, and I don't deify scientists.

Remember my joke about CoCaMaNy in the HEH discussion just before 9/11? :-)

Nikhil


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

On Mon, Sep 12, 2016 at 10:58 PM, Ronal W. Larson <rongretlarson at comcast.net
> wrote:

> Nikhil:  cc list + 3
>
> I think you are making a good choice.  Given how often you have said you
> know nothing about TLUDs, this webinar clearly would not have been a
> productive use of your time.
>
> Congratulations also on what I think is a new List record - 2707 words (I
> confess I did not read them all) to explain why the webinar would not be
> worth your time.
>
> For others:  I have been hugely impressed by past talks by Berkeley’s Dr.
> Michael Johnson.  Nigel Bruce will be new for me but his name is not.  One
> staff person from WHO, who I now look forward to hearing.
>
> Ron
>
>
> On Sep 12, 2016, at 7:16 PM, Traveller <miata98 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Ron:
>
> I don't do webinars. Nor can most of the 3 billion people we crow about
> all the time.
>
> Such webinars, it is safe to say, are for some 1,000 experts or
> propagandists of the day - not the 1,000,000,000 cooks of today and another
> 1,000,000,000 before biomass stoves blessed by the EPA/GACC priesthood gets
> Miracle Stoves to everybody everywhere.
>
> You wrote: "I suggest waiting until after this webinar to answer your
> questions about WHO and stoves."
>
> I wonder.  The seminar is about modeling, damn the facts (i.e., absence of
> them).
>
> In the first place, Who are WHO? What does WHO know or care about the
> price of eggs, er, dungcakes? Or for that matter anything about fuel
> markets, biomass productivities and uses, poverty? To the extent cooking
> and health are also intermediated via food and nutrition, and biomass fuel
> availabilities and use via local land, water and temperature conditions,
> why doesn't WHO take an integrative view? There's enough money to expand
> research; just stay away from ISO standards as if it is a case of EPA
> rule-making.
>
> Mind you, EPA rule-making has legislative authority and procedures for
> public comment and even litigation. Not this flight of fancy, invasion in
> poor people's kitchens by an army of groupthinkers.
>
> WHO has no business pontificating on household cookstove emissions and
> forecast individual health gains. If it is the GBD gobbledy-gook, me
> reiterate that GBD is not the sum of individuals' burden of disease and
> there is no way to forecast GBD for specific risk factors across cohorts
> and over time.
>
> I write cynically but I take seriously the GBD suggestions that national
> policy makers conduct their own detailed BOD studies. My main question, as
> before, is, what do stove designs have to do without first specifying i) a
> service standard, and ii) how stove emissions are contextualized in an
> overall air quality strategy including all other sources and exposure types
> (indoor and outdoor).
>
> If I were to advise a health minister - nyah, a finance minister - I would
> tell her I remain unconvinced by this new Coalition of the Willing - Global
> Allliance - for a Global War on Bearer-ism. (In Indian English, a
> restaurant server used to be called "Bearer".)
>
> The Bible has a prayer for "convenient food
> <http://standardbearer.rfpa.org/node/43578>". Leviticus 11
> <https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Leviticus+11&version=NASB>
> is about clean and unclean animals and cooking practices, not clean
> cookstoves (that I can find). (For more on cooking in Biblical times, look
> here <http://www.bible-archaeology.info/cooking.htm> and here
> <http://www.bible-history.com/links.php?cat=39&sub=728&cat_name=Manners+%26+Customs&subcat_name=Ovens>
> .)
>
> EPA declared GACC a savior last Octobe
> <https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-employee-selected-winner-2015-service-america-medalcookstoves-initiative-improving>r
> - ""The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves has already improved the
> lives of 100 million people living in the poorest areas of the world by
> reducing the health risks of indoor smoke from cooking meals over open
> fires and crude stoves." I admire Mr. Jacob Moss' commitment, but this
> assertion is baseless.
>
> Stove emissions and indoor air quality are one thing in Alaska
> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9AUuqTOS90>, another in Peoria, still
> another in Pandharpur.
>
> DfID (in its annual review of EBCC grant to GACC, February 2016) states,
> of planned ISO documents (which will take at least two more years to
> promulgate),
>
> "Together these documents will provide a common terminology for
> communication and when implanted through policies, regulation, and
> labelling programs, will 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." (See here
> <http://iati.dfid.gov.uk/iati_documents/5368271.odt>)
>
> Yeah. Sell dreams. When implanted.. will help.. (Some of us Indians may
> remember Sapnon ka Saudagar.)
>
> 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?utm_term=.bedf78edfb81> (Marc
> Gunther, Washington Post 29 October 2015).
>
> Up in Smoke
> <http://www.caravanmagazine.in/reportage/smoke-India-perfect-cookstove>
> again. EPA/WHO fiddle.
>
> ---------------------
>
> "Using Stove Emissions Data to Estimate Air Quality"?? What stove
> emissions data and air quality where, when? Covering what portion of the
> world's population and what stove and non-stove sources (natural and
> anthropogenic) of which pollutants?
>
> Yeah. Some spotty data here and there, and WHO buys the Global Burden of
> Disease theology. Stove emissions and air quality??? Compared to what
> baseline?
>
> There is no way to rebut Daniel Wilson's assertion I quoted - "while
> emission rate and indoor concentration are mechanistrically linked, indoor
> concentrations from episodic sourcese are not meaningfully linked with
> respiratory intake or uptake. The implicit assumption of today’s standards
> is that a cookstove with lower emission rates will lead to lower indoor
> concentrations of pollutants and will therefore be safer for the user.
> However, this assumption is not necessarily true."
>
> It is just plain impossible for anybody to argue otherwise. Yes, EPA can
> cook up not just emissions from a firebox but air quality from boxes of
> larger dimensions - a one-room home, a three-room home, a 10-room home, a
> 30 square km area with 5,000 inhabitants and 2,000 stoves VIA ASSUMPTIONS.
> Us economist types know how well we can fool everybody with just choosing
> baseless - even untestable - assumptions.  We "get away with murder" just
> like GBD folks did; "assume" is really making an ass of you and me.
>
> I am assuming still - I am always happy to be proven wrong - that the
> EPA/WHO modeling is about some lab derivation of emission profiles - x
> hours at a time, under varying ambient air temperature, humidity, wind
> patterns, over a year so as to adjust for seasonal factors - of particular
> stoves for the purpose of boiling water and derivation of INDOOR air
> quality in some standardized box.
>
> I call this the "box paradigm". With i) a stove as a firebox (like a
> steam engine, forget cooking), ii) home as a box, a la circulation models,
> iii) world and livelihoods in a box, again via global circulation models.
>
> There may also be a closed box a la Nazi ovens. Limited ventilation, as
> the current mania goes. (Is it not remarkable that many long-term indoor
> air pollution and health studies are done in cold regions and without
> chimney use?) I wonder if the Nazis kept records of indoor air pollution
> and premature mortality, albeit planned. (*)
>
> We are all boxed in by this box paradigm. Mindless modeling with
> inadequate data and misspecified equations, then pretending that model
> output are data. The fallacy of misplaced concreteness. (GBD is a prime
> example. Paid for by the Gates.)
>
> When you are caught in the box, you cannot ask questions - or provide
> answers - outside the box. Defining the paradigm is control of the scope
> and structure of argument. When the paradigm itself as fault, it is useless
> for raising valid and arguably more important questions. Such as what I
> asked about the purposes of biomass stove design - service standard (not
> "performance standard" as defined by water boiling tests) and as an element
> of an air quality compliance and exposure control strategy (can't be done
> just by stove redesign.)
>
> Boxing us in is a "fundamental foolishness". Foolishness is a trait,
> individual or collective. If I am seen as a village fool, no person
> confident of his/her wisdom would ask me a question or answer my question.
> (Hint, hint.)
>
> ------------------
>
> I have nothing against stove designers or stove testers; I know very
> little about combustion or stove testing protocols, just that cooking
> experience and nutrition take priority over theories of burden of disease
> upon the cohorts past.
>
> EPA says <https://www.epa.gov/air-research/clean-cookstove-research>, "EPA's
> research is making a significant contribution to providing cleaner
> cookstove technology throughout the world."
>
> Hyperbole. But remember, "contribution" is not "causality". "Significance"
> is in the eyes of the beholder, or some crooked econometrician.
>
> Also, "As part of this effort, EPA supports development of *standard
> cookstove testing methods and protocols *through ISO Technical Committee
> 285, Clean Cookstoves and Clean Cooking Solutions. Standards can provide
> incentive for stove developers to innovate and improve stove performance."
>
> The ISO TC effort is just a part of the grandiose dream of the Empire
> Promotion Agency to provide "cleaner cookstove technology throughout the
> world".
>
> Standardizing testing methods and protocols for the manifestly un-standard
> cooking experiences, indoor and outdoor environs, and notoriously
> un-standard human beings (even their oxidation machines)?? Where does that
> take anybody but webinars, I wonder.
>
> For "cleaner cookstoves" to make a "significant contribution" to improving
> air qualities and reducing disease incidence - all other risk factors
> remaining largely unchanged - it will take a lot more than "Stove testing
> to air quality".
>
> EPA further says,
>
> "The scientific contributions by EPA are:
>
>
>    - Improving the health of people in developing countries
>    - Addressing environmental problems with cookstoves such as
>    deforestation when wood is sought for burning
>    - Addressing emissions of black carbon and greenhouse gases that
>    contribute to climate change."
>
> The messiah complex. Publishing papers does not give a right to claim
> causal effect, if any.
>
> An economist or a policy maker would ask, "What do I need to know? Is that
> knowable? What is the point of wasting money on the scientists knowing more
> than nothing but nothing specific?"
>
> Whose knowledge? For whom? What are the opportunity costs in terms of
> knowledge not sought and avoided action opportunities?
>
> This is what makes this whole enterprise "fundamental foolishness" as
> Cecil so aptly pointed out.
>
> We - and billions of people now and in the next 30 years (minus those who
> die, prematurely or post-maturely) - are boxed in by EPA/ISO pretense.
>
> ----------------------
> Questions need to be asked "outside the box". The box paradigm has now led
> to a box mentality.
>
> I already asked,
>
> a. What next? Would somebody talk about cooking deaths and the basis of
> WHO IAQ Guidelines?
>
> b. Or about what service standard a "performance standard" is to be sought
> to linked to?
>
> c. Or whether exposure changes and disease incidence can be predicted over
> the next 30 years with any degree of reliability?
>
> d. Who are scientists accountable to, even when they are (or not)
> accountable to themselves?
>
> e. Would anybody consider going back to the basics - what is cooking, why
> is cooking, who is cooking, how is cooking?
>
> Except for a), none of these are addressed to WHO.
>
> -------------------
>
> I do have more questions, though, about "Stove Emissions and Air Quality":
>
> 1. What is the problem? Whose problem is it? How did it become your
> problem and when do you have to solve it?
>
> 2. Assuming the problem is emissions from cookstoves and exposure to
> indoor air pollution:
>
>    - Define "indoor" and justify with reference to actual data on
>    dwelling, doors, windows, chimneys.
>    - What will the stove(s) under consideration do, when, for whom, how?
>    - How do you model ventilation?
>    - How many years of use by how many people in the home or neighborhood
>    can you model?
>    - How do you define "people" when you start discussing "Using Stove
>    Emissions"?
>
> 3. What is the evidentiary basis for setting IAQ guidelines in terms of
> actual exposure data to cooking and non-cooking emissions and introduction
> of outdoor pollutants indoors? Look at the Dasgupta et al. (2006) paper and
> discuss construction materials, cooking practices, dwelling design,
> demographics, geographic features, as actually recorded.
>
> 4. What are WHO IAQ guidelines worth, to whom, where, when, how? You may
> consider the actual experience with outdoor air quality guidelines and
> measurements in Beijing, Tehran, Washington DC, Johannesburg, or the arid
> plains of western and central-northern India. Some air pollution is
> natural.
>
> 5. What pollutants do you know exist where, based on what data, and how do
> you translate those data into exposures for individuals or classes of
> people?
>
> 6. Where do you see WHO air quality (indoor or outdoor) guidelines have
> been used to develop specific legislation and regulatory program, "air
> quality control strategies", and what is the record in terms of human
> health benefits as empirically measured and validated by theoretical models
> for specific geographies over a 10-20 year period?
>
> 7. How can you forecast future premature mortality, burdens of disease,
> and relative risk without also taking into account the changes in food
> economy, land and water management, health care service access and quality,
> dwelling types and designs in different environments, and exposures to all
> air pollution, natural or anthropogenic?
>
> ------------------------------
> Without an overall air quality strategy, individual "New Source
> Performance Standards" are, ahem, "hot air". Something EPA is skilled at.
>
> EPA also knows money buys loyalty. Money buys mouths. Money buys
> convenient untruths and shuts out inconvenient truths.
>
> I have so far had great respect for WHO work on "social and environmental
> health". I have used their (multi-agency) draft (never finalized) 2012
> report on social and environmental health and climate change in papers and
> presentations for my clients.
>
> Why, I have even used USEPA help and advocated the use of "advanced
> stoves" - pictures courtesy EPA contact (thank you, EPA) - for human
> capital development policies.
>
> BUT I stop at endorsing at the EPA/WHO/ISO "voluntary performance
> standards" shenanigans.
>
> This smacks of another instance of a favorite game in Washington, DC
> lobbyist circles - "Making fool enough of enough people long enough." (I
> played that game too, for EPA via contractor work. That's Washington.)
>
> I suspect - pardon my ignorance and lack of peer-reviewed research - that
> EPA has made fools of WHO. Just as we are all made fools of by rank abuse
> of GBD.
>
> This is blatant intellectual imperialism. The flag and the fakery go
> together.
>
> Scientism is murder by intellectual smoke. Presumptuousness, pretense,
> perfunctory knowledge.
>
> These webinars are training in evangelization for the Church of the Earth
> Savior.
>
> I also evangelize. Then I see facts on the ground and questions from folks
> like Xavier, Dr. Karve, Anil Rajvanshi, Crispin, Sujoy, Anurag Bhatnagar.
> Not questions worth nagging WHO with.
>
> WHO - anybody who spends public money for supposedly public good, not just
> pleasing a future boss of the world - ought to be concerned about high
> reputational risk associated with engaging in this "Using Stove Emissions
> Data to Estimate Air Quality."
>
> Go ahead. Make ovens with limited air and limited ventilation, and ask for
> research. (*)
>
> Nikhil
>
> ----------
>  [*] "In 1943, the building department of the Auschwitz concentration camp
> (Zentral-Bauleitung der Waffen-SS und Polizei Auschwitz) wrote a latter to
> the Prussian Institute for Water, Soil and Air Hygiene. Referring to a
> correlating request of the local authorities, it asked whether the
> institute would be ready to write an expert report; the project in question
> was "the construction of a heating plant at the Auschwitz camp." The
> institute, eager to get as much work as possible in order to demonstrate
> the indispensability of its staff, was generally willing to write such a
> report. Consequently, it asked for a map that showed the environs of the
> projected plant within a radius of five kilometers. That may explain why
> the report was never written. This exchange of letters was perhaps the most
> obscene type of communication that one could imagine in the field of air
> pollution control. It is not clear whether the "heating plant" was in fact
> a crematorium (though it is worth pointing out that the letters were
> written at a time when the SS started to use the large crematoriums of the
> Birkenau extermination camp.) But to even think of air pollution control in
> the context of these camps is grotesque. *This communication is stark
> evidence of one of the great ambivalences of the Nazi era: the unsettling
> coexistence of monstrous crimes and bureaucratic routine*." (p. 118, How
> Green Were the Nazis?: Nature, Environment, and Nation in the Third Reich,
> Franz-Josef Bruggemeier, Mark Cloc, Thomas Zeller, Ohio University Press,
> 2005. Emphasized text prompted me to reflect on the continuing "unsettling
> coexistence of monstrous crimes and bureaucratic routine" today. Playing
> fiddle in labs, boiling water.)
>
> Outdoor crematoria also show that if air pollution causes death, deaths
> cause air pollution: Funerals, weddings skew South Asia emission figures
> <http://www.natureasia.com/en/nindia/article/10.1038/nindia.2013.137> Subhra
> Priyadarshini, Nature India, 19 October 2013.
>
> "It turns out that the funeral pyres alone could be contributing as much
> as 92 Gg/year (Giga grams per year) of light-absorbing carbon aerosols.
> This, they say, is equivalent to almost 23 percent of the total
> carbonaceous aerosol mass produced by human-burnt fossil fuels, and 10
> percent of biofuels in the South Asian region."
>
>
> It may be easier to clean up cremation and even get clean power: A dead
> heat - crematorium to sell power for National Grid
> <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/energy/8917633/A-dead-heat-crematorium-to-sell-power-for-National-Grid.html>: A
> crematorium is planning to become the first in the UK to generate
> electricity to sell to the National Grid - by using heat from its furnaces.
> James Copping, Telegraph (UK) 27 November 2011.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ---------
> (India +91) 909 995 2080
>
> On Wed, Sep 7, 2016 at 6:17 PM, Ronal W. Larson <rongretlarson at comcast.net
> > wrote:
>
>> Nikhil and list:
>>
>> This just came in for 5 days from now.  Happens to be heavy on WHO.
>>
>> The key link  is
>>
>>
>> This webinar
>> <https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/6749480047610317058>
>> which takes you to:  https://attendee.gotowebinar.
>> com/register/6749480047610317058
>>
>> I suggest waiting until after this webinar to answer your questions about
>> WHO and stoves.
>>
>> Ron
>>
>>
>> *Using Stove Emissions Data to Estimate Air Quality:*
>>
>> *An overview of World Health Organization current modeling approaches and
>> future plans*
>> *Tuesday, September 13, 2016*
>>
>> *11:00 AM - 12:30 PM EDT / 8:00 AM – 9:30 AM PDT*
>>
>>
>>
>> This webinar
>> <https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/6749480047610317058> will
>> provide background on how stove emissions can be related to concentrations
>> of indoor air quality and vice versa. The modeling approach to be described
>> is the same as that used for the development of the emissions guidance in
>> the International Workshop Agreement 11:2012: Guidelines for evaluating
>> cookstove performance
>> <https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso:iwa:11:ed-1:v1:en>; and the WHO
>> Guidelines for Indoor Air Quality: Household Fuel Combustion
>> <http://www.who.int/indoorair/guidelines/hhfc/en/>.
>>
>>
>> In addition to describing how the model can be used to estimate air
>> quality or derive emissions targets, the presentation will include
>> background on the WHO’s work on providing guidance in the household energy
>> sector and planned future activities.  These future activities include
>> expanding the model’s capabilities (e.g., accounting for stove stacking),
>> as well as providing an interactive web version of the model for which
>> regionally-based data can be input for more relevant local application. The
>> webinar will conclude with a discussion on policy implications, and the
>> interpretation and application of performance targets.
>>
>>
>> *Webinar speakers include:*
>> Heather Adair-Rohani, Technical Officer, Department of Public Health,
>> Environmental and Social Determinants of Health, World Health Organization
>>
>>
>> Nigel Bruce, Professor of Public Health, Department of Public Health and
>> Policy, University of Liverpool; Consultant, World Health Organization
>>
>>
>> Michael Johnson, Senior Scientist, Berkeley Air Monitoring Group
>>
>>
>> *Register today **HERE*
>> <https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/6749480047610317058>*!* Webinar
>> participation is free. For the web portion, a high-speed internet
>> connection is required. *The webinar technology allows attendees to
>> listen to audio through their computer or by phone.* Additional log-in
>> information will be provided upon registration. For more information on
>> this webinar, please contact: moderator at cookstovesandindoorair.org
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sep 7, 2016, at 1:36 PM, Traveller <miata98 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Clean Cookstoves Need Better Performance Guidelines Daniel L. Wilson, LBNL
>>
>> http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acs.est.5b05628
>>
>> "However, while emission rate and indoor concentration are
>> mechanistrically linked, indoor concentrations from episodic sourcese are
>> not meaningfully linked with respiratory intake or uptake.4 The implicit
>> assumption of today’s standards is that a cookstove with lower emission
>> rates will lead to lower indoor concentrations of pollutants and will
>> therefore be safer for the user. However, this assumption is not
>> necessarily true."
>>
>> Amen.
>>
>> What next? Would somebody talk about cooking deaths and the basis of WHO
>> IAQ Guidelines?
>>
>> Or about what service standard a "performance standard" is to be sought
>> to linked to?
>>
>> Or whether exposure changes and disease incidence can be predicted over
>> the next 30 years with any degree of reliability?
>>
>> Who are scientists accountable to, even when they are (or not)
>> accountable to themselves?
>>
>> Time to bring on lawyers and economists to examine proper use of
>> taxpayers' money. (Foundations are subsidized via tax exemptions.)
>>
>> Would anybody consider going back to the basics - what is cooking, why is
>> cooking, who is cooking, how is cooking?
>>
>> Nikhil
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>>
>
>
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