[Stoves] Oxymorons and credentials --- was Re: Off-topic no longer, re: News from Colorado: 'Rolling Coal"

Wed Sep 28 11:43:24 CDT 2016

Thanks Cecil.

Anil

Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute (NARI)
Tambmal, Phaltan-Lonand Road
P.O.Box 44
Phaltan-415523, Maharashtra, India
Ph:91-2166-220945/222842
e-mail:nariphaltan at gmail.com
           nariphaltan at nariphaltan.org

http://www.nariphaltan.org

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 odd
> balls 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
> Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone.
> *From: *nari phaltan
> *Sent: *Wednesday, September 28, 2016 12:31 AM
> *To: *Discussion of biomass cooking stoves
> *Reply To: *Discussion of biomass cooking stoves
> *Subject: *Re: [Stoves] Oxymorons and credentials --- was Re: Off-topic
> no longer, re: News from Colorado: 'Rolling Coal"
>
> Ron and others,
>
> One of the great things about discussion via internet is that if you do
> not like what somebody is saying just ignore it (in face to face discussion
> this is sometimes not possible). You can always divert the attention of the
> group by giving better answers and examples of new clean cooking technology.
>
> The problem starts when people start attacking each other by calling
> names. Then it diverts the attention from the main thing - developing
> solutions for cooking for rural poor.
>
> I am sure the time you spent in digging up the past of Nikhil would have
> been better spent in looking at interesting new technologies for char.
>
> Nature evolves by making the other branch redundant not by pushing it
> down! I am sure most of the members on this list are 60+ years in age. We
> should show some wisdom and not rancor.
>
> Cheers.
>
> Anil
>
> Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute (NARI)
> Tambmal, Phaltan-Lonand Road
> P.O.Box 44
> Phaltan-415523, Maharashtra, India
> Ph:91-2166-220945/222842
> e-mail:nariphaltan at gmail.com
>            nariphaltan at nariphaltan.org
>
> http://www.nariphaltan.org
>
> On Wed, Sep 28, 2016 at 2:14 AM, Ronal W. Larson <
> rongretlarson at comcast.net> wrote:
>
>> Paul and list:
>>
>> I have tried to learn more about Nikhil and found something quite
>> informative (at http://nautilus.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Carbo-Cul
>> t.pdf), with a few excerpts:
>>
>> *  “I am speaking of the cult of anti-CO2 (Carb-o) activists.* ……… *Of
>> course, there was local biomass, which they could use amply, but that
>> wasn’t the object of the NoCarbo Cult. Besides, biomass cooking practices
>> produced smoke and other toxic emissions, which too didn’t concern the
>> No-Carbo Cult, because, its proponents argued, biomass was “renewable”.
>> Just how the CO2 molecules absorbed by a growing tree anywhere can be
>> separated by their origin – this little piggy came from coal, this little
>> piggy from gas, this little from making charcoal and this one from burning
>> charcoal – was not clear to me or anybody.* *…………..  **Hence the
>> No-Carbo Cult. What it promises is so long-term, it has to stress that the
>> calamity is already here, because we are all sinners today and are
>> suffering because of the sins. It treats every molecule of CO2 as a weapon
>> of mass destruction, but only selectively – a very small fraction of the
>> CO2 that goes up in the atmosphere.”*
>>
>> The same climate denying stance is at these sites:
>> http://nautilus.org/napsnet/napsnet-policy-forum/connecting
>> -the-dots-in-an-ocean/  and  http://nautilus.org/napsn
>> et/napsnet-policy-forum/a-tale-of-two-disasters/
>>
>> I think that background is justification also for this list to get into
>> the topic of Internet trolls, where Wiki says this - where I have
>> emphasized some key words:   “In Internet slang
>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_slang>, a *troll* (/ˈtroʊl/
>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA_for_English>, /ˈtrɒl/
>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA_for_English>) is a person who
>> sows discord on the Internet <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet> by
>> starting arguments or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory,[1]
>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll#cite_note-1>*extraneous
>> <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/extraneous#Adjective>, or off-topic
>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-topic>* messages in an online
>> community (such as a newsgroup <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsgroup>,
>> forum, chat room <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chat_room>, or blog)
>> with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into unemotional response
>> [2] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll#cite_note-PCMAG_def-2>
>>  or of *otherwise disrupting norma*l on-topic discussion,[3]
>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll#cite_note-IUKB_def-3> often
>> for their *own amusement.**”*
>>
>> Managed lists have a way of dealing with this behavior - fortunately.
>>
>>
>> On Sep 27, 2016, at 1:06 PM, Paul Anderson <psanders at ilstu.edu> wrote:
>>
>> Crispin (and Nikhil),
>>
>> 1.  "Clean stoves" and "clean fuels" are not oxymorons any more than
>> "happy housewife" would be.
>>
>> 2.  You wrote:
>>
>> Unlike most of us here, he [Nikhil] has been in the trenches in
>> Washington at a high level for decades and knows how the system is
>> manipulated to generate funding by popularising the latest fad.
>>
>> I did not know of his credentials.   This is probably a good time to
>> generate some credibility.  Easiest might be to post a resume, but a short
>> description might be sufficient.
>>
>> Paul
>>
>> 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 9/27/2016 10:47 AM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott wrote:
>>
>> Dear Paul
>>
>> I think Nikhil’s complaint is that the concepts of ‘clean fuels’ or
>> ‘clean stoves’ are oxymorons. There is no such thing on either score.
>>
>> As you are well aware, and have demonstrated in person, if a ‘clean TLUD
>> gasifier’ goes wrong, there is a huge amount of smoke coming out until it
>> is re-lit. So it is only clean under certain circumstances and with certain
>> fuels, perhaps even only a certain *size* of fuel.
>>
>> Nikhil seems to be calling ‘BS’ on the alarmist thing when that alarmist
>> thing is supported by vapourware and numerical puffery.
>>
>> Unlike most of us here, he has been in the trenches in Washington at a
>> high level for decades and knows how the system is manipulated to generate
>> funding by popularising the latest fad. I guess there is some merit is
>> saying ‘that is how it works’ at least these days, but it does not
>> compensate for the deliberate misrepresentation of facts in order to scare
>> people into handing over the piggy bank.
>>
>> It seems everyone but everyone in this field is aware that only a
>> combination of operator, fuel and product has an assessable ‘emission’ or
>> ‘fuel’ metric. So let’s not beat around that bush. The forecasts (of which
>> there are very few) of future impact on the public, especially public
>> health or the destruction of forests which are the two major topics in
>> regulations and project documents, have not been very accurate. The
>> prediction to the Ulaanbaatar government that their air quality would
>> continue to get worse if they didn’t ‘ban the burning of raw coal
>> completely’ was a major forecast of doom. The population of the city grew
>> faster than expected, the expansion of burning raw coal expanded, the
>> stoves were replaced with ‘middling’ technical features and the air quality
>> improved more than the scenario that required they ‘ban coal completely and
>> replace everything with ‘clean fuels’.’
>>
>> The emergence of Rwanda as a charcoal-sustainable country while
>> continuing not to ban charcoal as the primary cooking fuel – even in the
>> absence of any substantive stove replacement programme – is another example
>> of failed calamitous prediction. Everyone knows we are supposed to decry
>> charcoal as a cause of blah-blah-blah. Now we have in Laos a wide scape
>> roll out of the lighting cone (SNV) that reduces emissions dramatically,
>> saves fuel and is cheap. No change in the stove at all. Nor the fuel. Next
>> they can follow in the footsteps in Rwanda and produce enough fuel on
>> private farms to feed the need.
>>
>> We have not talked about Chad (I think) and how they turned their
>> charcoal industry into a profitable, sustainable enterprise owned by the
>> communities. That is another amazing example of how changing the
>> administration of fuel can create wealth and jobs and sustainable biofuel.
>> It didn’t require the change of stove or fuel or people. Just how they
>> worked together.
>>
>> There is a lot of room for self- examination here. Nikhil is on the right
>> track with this modelling of health impacts. He, unlike most of us,
>> understands the health modeling field very well.
>>
>> Caution is advised
>> Crispin
>>
>>
>>
>> Nikhil,
>>
>> Your message is based on playing with words, trying to make "Clean
>> Cookstoves" into a silly term because there can be fuel issues.  Of course
>> there are fuel issues and stove issues.  That does not make the topic silly.
>>
>> If this was just silly stuff, I would not have spent 15 years of my life
>> helping to bring TLUD stoves to the top of the solid biomass stoves.
>>
>> If you  think that clean cookstoves are silly and not important, then you
>> are writing to the wrong group of people.
>>
>> Paul
>>
>> 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 9/27/2016 9:13 AM, Traveller wrote:
>>
>> Teddy:
>>
>> Thank you. That news item has great relevance to this list.
>>
>> There are no "clean car engines" per se; their alleged cleanness or
>> "emission rates" depend on fuel quality.
>>
>> Which is why "Clean Cookstoves" - global alliances or blogal dalliances -
>> is a silly term.
>>
>> There are no "clean cookstoves" per se; only in combination with fuels,
>> and in the context of operating practices and local environment
>> (ventilation, wind, ambient air quality, other sources of emissions ranging
>> from food and smoking to open waste.)
>>
>> The scientist collective at the ISO 2012 IWA on cookstoves (Guidelines
>> for evaluating cookstove performance
>> <https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso:iwa:11:ed-1:v1:en>)
>>
>> ""recognizes that the quality and type of fuel used by a testing centre
>> may impact the emissions of a cookstove. Because of that, the International
>> Workshop on Cookstoves recommends that testing centres document the key
>> physical and operational characteristics (e.g. fuel, moisture content, pot
>> size and shape) of the system."
>>
>> Whatever little I know suggests that temperatures and air flows determine
>> the ratio and composition of PICs and that at relatively low temperatures
>> and irregular air flows, fuel chemistry plays a critical role. But there's
>> nothing here about chemical composition.
>>
>> Is it any wonder folks go mumbling about "solid fuels", "dirty fuels"?
>> (More on that later.)
>>
>> WHO/GBD claims on the "global dataset for cooking fuel use" are bubbly
>> champagne - or dope - served up to minors. (Remember the song "Goodnight,
>> farewell" in Sound of Music where Liesel asks for her first taste of
>> champagne?)
>>
>> Let me put it bluntly - WHO has manufactured a "global emergency" based
>> on non-existent data and questionable intelligence. (Burning Opportunity
>> <http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/204717/1/9789241565233_eng.pdf>,
>> marketing the GBD adventure of killing by assumption as a global health
>> emergency
>> <http://www.ccacoalition.org/en/news/new-who-report-household-air-pollution-driving-global-health-emergency>
>> )
>>
>> Clean Cookstoves are dirty business.
>>
>> I for one do not believe one needs convincing evidence to act on reducing
>> pollution exposures of vulnerable populations. The challenge is not
>> compiling reams and reams of dubious data and faulty forecasts - of YLD and
>> YLL - but to please the cooks.
>>
>> Ron here thinks I have soured on science. Living in Washington, I am
>> familiar with the politics of science and the science of politics. What is
>> going on is corrupting intelligence. There is an emergency in "global
>> health", namely, it has little to do with individual health.
>>
>> Nikhil
>>
>>
>> ---------
>> (India +91) 909 995 2080
>>
>> On Tue, Sep 27, 2016 at 8:16 AM, Cookswell Jikos <
>> cookswelljikos at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> What a story....similar to this gem is a story in todays newspaper
>> regarding air pollution from bad fuel rejected by the EU and dumped in the
>> African market -
>>
>> ''The high-sulphur fuels also have a knock-on effect, rapidly destroying
>> emission-reducing technologies in vehicles, according to Rob de Jong, the
>> head of the UNEP transport programme. “So if you buy a vehicle that’s a
>> couple of years old and import it into some of the African countries, the
>> technology in there – sensors and filters – all gets spoilt, and these
>> cars, which are potentially very clean, are destroyed in a couple of tanks,
>> and for the next 20 years will be belching smoke. It’s important to
>> understand the tragedy of this,” he said. This in turn increases emissions
>> of fine particulate matter, which can lodge deep in the lungs, causing
>> cancers and other health problems.
>> Read more at: http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/business/article/20002175
>> 48/dirty-diesel-rejected-in-europe-exported-to-africa''
>>
>> I certainly hope something like this cannot happen with LPG cooking gas
>> or that all those generators in Lagos and Accra are not pumping smoke into
>> the kitchens with induction stoves :(
>>
>> Teddy
>>
>>
>>
>> *Cookswell Jikos*
>> www.cookswell.co.ke
>> www.facebook.com/CookswellJikos
>> www.kenyacharcoal.blogspot.com
>> Mobile: +254 700 380 009
>> Mobile: +254 700 905 913
>> P.O. Box 1433, Nairobi 00606, Kenya
>> Save trees - think twice before printing.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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