[Stoves] Libelous allegations by Crispin (and a stove added)

Tue Sep 27 21:30:57 CDT 2016

Dear Nikhil

My definitions of what you have been up to is clearly different from your own. I admire your willingness to think conceptually, out loud, and to speak it as you see it.

I have not been able to do a bang-up job of keeping up because I have to produce outputs now and then. 

Those interested in the version 4 of the GTZ 7 series (GTZ-7.6 if you are keeping score). It is retitled TJ4 because it was adapted to the situation in Tajikistan, not Ulaanbaatar.

Drawings are available here <http://www.newdawnengineering.com/website/library/Stoves/Kyrgyzstan/KG%20Model%204/> . There are 54 files in all. The combustor has been built in 4 countries so far and it seems to be fairly stable even with some dimensional changes to accommodate the available brick sizes. It can be adapted by keeping the hopper and fire chamber the same size and varying the enclosing metalwork.

It is heavy, it is very clean burning, and it likes stone-free coal below 25mm size. It should work with large wood pellets but I haven’t had a chance to try it with measurements yet. The power is about 10 kW and the efficiency (without adding extra chimney) is about 70% at high power, more at low power, obviously (obvious because it has very well controlled air).

+++++++++

On top the regular business: you continue to surprise me with your ability to apply a set of skills methodically to new tasks. Some highlights from below:

>Nor do I ever accuse anybody of manipulating the system to generate funding. Sorry, just not me. 

That was not about you at all. It is about people finding issues to generate headlines and then ask for money to solve. Dr Samer Abdelnour’s paper on the technologization of social problems – basically saying that a stove cannot solve a problem with a social pathology. Cecil calls it ‘techno-cure’. 

You wrote:

a) I do hold the dictum "Do not rush to ascribe to conspiracy that which mere stupidity would suffice to explain"; and,

b) I think everybody has a right to manipulate the system to generate funding; another dictum I hold dear is "The task of public budgeting is to separate weak claims from weak claimants." 

Fully agree, provided that there is no false case (invalid memes) exploited to generate funding for a problem that cannot be solved by the proposed solution.

>You are also wrong that I understand the "health modeling field" very well. 

Coulda fooled me. Did I guess. Knowing enough to know what is possible and what isn’t is a good start. Good grief I wish our students would start with that, instead of finishing with it. I see from the webinar that more than half the observers asked for additional information on how exactly the model worked (meaning the model of exposure). Clearly the communication is partial or people don’t understand what is being explained.

>I did write posts on PM2.5 "relative risk" estimation via "integrated exposure response" and the "super-human" GBD, killing by assumptions. There are only so many ways to do statistical inference, and modeling without thinking is less than what it is made out to be. 

Well that is the impression I get from what is available. I went through the minutes and models of the WHO committee that made the presentation and it is clear the selected model is not their best – so why use it, I asked. 

>What I confess to having done for decades is dealing with energy, environmental, demographic, and economic statistics. There was a time when people did worry about data quality and interpretation. 

Many still do, and they have real money and are expecting a return on the spend ‘at a certain level of confidence’. Seems reasonable. How can we help? By providing answers that reflect the context.

>…That applies to the "inventories" of solid fuel quantities and emissions. These are not direct measurements, but estimates based on sample surveys (if that, sporadically and for limited regions) and assumptions. Similarly, global air pollution "data" are <http://www.who.int/phe/health_topics/outdoorair/databases/modelled-estimates/en/>  model estimates. I have already written how "premature mortality" and DALYs are model estimates. 

Your further contribution hits one nail on the head – the claims for ‘deaths caused’ lifted directly from a quote saying ‘premature deaths’. It is obvious that people do not intuitively understand the difference so it is not wrong to point it out. There is one heck of a lot of difference between ‘7 millions deaths caused by air pollution’ and 7 million people who died having lived a life shorter than it would have been if they were not exposed to any air pollution at all.  The question that hangs over the quote from the Geneva paper is, was the statement from the WHO about ‘deaths’ or did the reporter interpret ‘premature deaths’ as actual killing of people who were asphyxiated (or slower) by air pollution? 

>There is no "knowledge" to claim that is not subject to qualification and debate. 

Agreed. There is no measurement that does not have an uncertainty about it. To get an ‘answer’ from a calculated output one has to ensure the uncertainties is not so large after propagation that we can’t bank on the result. 

[big snip]

>The authors then derive their Table 18.18 Burden of disease from use of solid fuel, 2000 (p. 1476) and Table 18.19 - Use of solid fuel and exposure to its smoke: estimates for 2000 and predictions for 2010 (p. 1480). 

Then…

>NOT [the] WHO. 
 <http://cleancookstoves.org/about/news/03-25-2014-who-7-million-deaths-annually-linked-to-air-pollution.html> 
"GENEVA ¦ 25 March 2014 – In new estimates released today, the World Health Organization (WHO) reports that in 2012 around 7 million people died - one in eight of total global deaths – as a result of air pollution exposure. <http://cleancookstoves.org/about/news/03-25-2014-who-7-million-deaths-annually-linked-to-air-pollution.html> "

>This is sheer hype. Or to repeat from one of my prior posts - "Insanity, folly, deception, and faith or plain error."

>Words matter. Without words, numbers are dumb. In my view, a proper statement could be 

"In new estimates released today, the WHO reports that air pollution exposures were associated with premature mortality of about 7 million in the cohort that died in the world in 2012. Attribution of deaths to diseases and diseases to risk factors should not be interpreted as causality, even for statistical lives lost. We do not have enough evidence on the exposure intensity and duration of the 55 million or so people who died that year, nor have we identified the interactions among risk factors and variations across different populations across regions, income levels, sex, age, or mobility profiles. We do not have enough evidence to assess whether risks due to air pollution exposures are reversible and if so, how. Nor do we have enough evidence that any particular intervention would lead to a specific reduction in risk at individual level." 

So who gets the funding? The one who shouts that 7 million people were killed by air pollution or the one who claims their lives were probably shortened because we are pretty sure air pollution has consequences?

>A. Forecasts of burden of disease are subject to many assumptions and qualifications. But so are all forecasts. The fault is with the consumer of forecasts, not the producer. (Hey, I did my share of forecasts.) Be a smart consumer; some of what is served up by WHO/EPA or GACC is charred bananas. Examine assumptions, including your own. 

Noted.

>B. While Rwanda did not "ban charcoal as the primary cooking fuel", I think it did ban use of charcoal for industrial purposes - in particular, a brick kiln in what was then the outskirts of Kigali. In 2004, a colleague who had worked in Rwanda before the genocide in 1994 returned and helped start sensible biomass energy strategic choices. The government reduced or eliminated the duties and taxes on LPG - around 2008, I think - which also made a difference in urban settings (household and commercial). 

I think it did, actually, some years ago. I will have to check. It usually comes and goes. Like Haiti, it is and always probably legal to make and sell and obviously use charcoal if it was from wood grown on a farm. It is perfectly OK to stimulate the private sector of create a domestic resource. What you may notice (Cecil did) is that people who have LPG don’t use it for heating water. That is often done (Lusaka for example) on charcoal even in wealthy households. In Java everyone uses at least a little LPG if it is available – even in places where you think it is impossible to get it there. They also (70%) use wood to heat water even if they cook with LPG. Thus it is not simple. In an attempt to encourage change we (CSI Indonesia) offered incentives to anyone who could make a dedicated water heater – even if it only ran on pellets – provided the efficiency was really high – more like a regular gas water heaters. It was a perfect opportunity for TLUD’s because the fuel load can be matched to the task at hand. Not one product was submitted in that category, so far. 

C. Charcoal has long been a promising business opportunity at a commercial scale. There is some waste wood, and trees can be grown profitably. In many parts of the world, charcoal is transported hundreds of miles. 

That is what is so inspiring about AD Karve’s work on charring waste biomass to produce a high quality fuel. He even produced the extruder and the Sarai stove to go with it. That is a museum quality piece of work – to be studied.

But he is promoting charcoal consumption – very offensive to some. Shall we forgive him too? :) 

Crispin

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