[Stoves] News: National Geographic on promotion of gas stoves over improved woodstoves - in Guatemala

[Crispin Pemberton-Pigott]

Dear Tom and Nikhil

I feel that the claims being made about what I consider a very technical matter of ‎attributing specific health benefits in a calculable manner for individuals who adopt a highly improved cooking stove are creating mayhem in the world of stoves.

There are a lot of crooked things done and said about stove performance but this business of aDALYs takes the cake. The claims are cooked up out of nothing material, substantial, or defensibly true.

For six years we suffered through the gerrymandering of the Lima meeting, the IWA and its silly metrics and 'tiers' and what followed. We never had so much as a single conference on the relevance of what has been learned in India and China over the past 40 years, and how manifestly the tiny Western stove community has failed to address the fundamental errors in both technical evaluations, and the absence of meaningful evaluation criteria relevant to the users.

I think a thrust in favour of greater consideration of the users has come from, among others, Cecil Cook first during the ProBEC era, and again in the WB Central Java stove pilot‎ - a high quality conversation which did not take place on this list. Cecil came up with a couple of proposals that are quite radical departures from the 'engineer-centric' evaluations assumed to be taking place during a WBTest. First, he feels that a focus group should be used to do all the pre-screening of products to eliminate those that are silly, useless, bizarre, ugly, cumbersome, fiddly and unaffordable.

Next, having passed muster, stoves can be submitted to the (expensive) process of testing their technical performance. At that point I entered with the SeTAR mantra which holds that a stove does not have an 'efficiency' number, it has a performance curve like a water pump or [fill in your best analogy for a range of answers].

The only way a performance rating can be reduced to a single number is if the product is doing something arguably consistent with its typical pattern of use. Outside that context the numbers mean little, as affirmed by the unpredictable performance of stoves in a different context.

Having accept this reality, which is growing throughout the sector, one comes to the matter of the 'health claims' of the WHO emission rates and all that EPA jazz about concentrations of various pollutants. How is it possible that a proper evaluation of impact on energy and fuel performance is ‎accepted as being meaningful, accurate, predictive, in a carefully understood context, but a health impact can be made based on flights of fancy about 'concentrations' that would make a WBT tester blush?

This is a ridiculous situation. We have an entire sector of international and national development being bent to suit the careers of certain anointed actors who don't wish their preliminary works tossed aside because they overreached, or didn't check their math, or avoided peer review.

This nonsense about a 'WHO' approved PM emission rate 'delivering countable future health benefits for the user' is ‎intolerable. It is junk science.  The objections to it are very technical: concatenated assumptions based on several other layers of assumptions cannot make predictions of the future health of stove users.

It happens that at this time, this discussion is critical. The ISO Draft International Standard for stove testing is being circulated, complete with a set of 'voluntary'‎ emission standards that were forced into it over the objections of the experts. Everyone knows that Berkeley, GACC, EPA and WHO are behind this - they have been for years. This is not new, it is just 'more'.

Nikhil, who observes much about this and other policy matters, is raising the flag of falsity over this abuse of science, trust and position. Which hand, at any of those institutions, lifted a finger to sort this matter out? ‎No, rather, they perpetuate it carefully, consistently, repeatedly, promoting themselves as essential to developing countries and their domestic energy policy decision-making processes.

The bandwagon we should get on is the killing of the WBT, and the tradeable aDALY‎. Then we should get on the bandwagon that puts the user and their context first. We should do it now. It is quite important.

Sincerely
Crispin

‎
Tom:

What you mean is that technical discussions outside of boiling water are beyond the comprehension and that "practical alternatives" to hocus pocus of Kirk Smith's premature mortality claims are to be concocted by different speculative assumptions and misleading models.

Nikhil

------------------------
Nikhil Desai
(US +1) 202 568 5831
Skype: nikhildesai888

On Tue, Aug 29, 2017 at 7:39 PM, Tom Miles <tmiles at trmiles.com<mailto:tmiles at trmiles.com>> wrote:
Nikhil,

The “bandwagon” of this list is sound technical discussion. It is not a platform for your personal crusades. You highlight whatever criticism is convenient for your cause and repeat these same themes without ever proposing practical alternatives. Give use something useful and we might listen.

Tom

From: Nikhil Desai [mailto:pienergy2008 at gmail.com<mailto:pienergy2008 at gmail.com>]
Sent: Tuesday, August 29, 2017 6:50 AM
To: <tmiles at trmiles.com<mailto:tmiles at trmiles.com>> <tmiles at trmiles.com<mailto:tmiles at trmiles.com>>
Cc: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves <stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org<mailto:stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>>; Karin Troncoso <karintroncoso at gmail.com<mailto:karintroncoso at gmail.com>>
Subject: Re: [Stoves] News: National Geographic on promotion of gas stoves over improved woodstoves - in Guatemala

Tom:

Oh, dear.

If you cared to read the NatiGeo piece and what I wrote, it ought to have been evident that it is NatGeo which faults the "efficient stove" for being too small to hold the tamale pot.

I don't know how to cook tamales, and won't speak whereof I know nothing, unlike the Berkeley crowd. If STI's stove was too small and the user had to cook on open fire once a month.

Rather, my criticism was aimed at the ludicrous Kirk Smith et al. campaign against "stacking", mindless recitation of WHO SFC "Guidelines" (based in turn on Smith, et al. cookery of facts), and the goose chase to ""determine whether the use of gas stoves improves air quality and the health of children."

What is indefensible cannot be justified by repeating the lies a thousand times. This WHO/IHME bandwagon is against the principles of this group, against the poor, a gravy train for researchers whose work cannot be laughed at enough.

But someone has to read first.

Seems to me Radha Muthiah knows whereof she speaks.

Nikhil





On Aug 19, 2017, at 11:48 AM, <tmiles at trmiles.com<mailto:tmiles at trmiles.com>> wrote:
Nikhil,

We are patiently waiting to see what Nikhil Desai will personally contribute to the health and welfare of people like those described in the National Geographic article. I am sure that Stove Team International would appreciate a generous donation.

I am proud to say that Stove Team International is lead by my cousin. Like similar NGOs, she and her partners and supporters personally donate substantially each year to reduce trauma and improve the health conditions that she previously worked as a volunteer to remedy. Instead of just picking out what is easy to criticize from a limited article, visit the families who are using the various stoves and see what they think of Stove Team. Your opinion doesn’t matter to them. They see the improvement in their lives. They are satisfied customers. If they weren’t, Stove Team and the many generous organizations like them wouldn’t still be in operation after several years.

These organizations and their beneficiaries have clearly been helped by the focus on stoves and health. The benefits to family health are usually the impacts of improved stoves that users most cite. Set aside your personal war on Berkeley and GACC for a moment. What is your plan to improve their health? How would it differ from what is being done? Since you seem to be more concerned with money than with the livelihoods of the individuals, how would you fund such an effort?

Tom

From: Stoves [mailto:stoves-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org] On Behalf Of Nikhil Desai
Sent: Saturday, August 19, 2017 7:21 AM
To: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves <stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org<mailto:stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>>
Subject: [Stoves] News: National Geographic on promotion of gas stoves over improved woodstoves - in Guatemala

A nice piece of "Crisis Reporting", after WHO declared solid fuels use as a global crisis. NatGeo will go much farther in moving minds than GBD and HAPIT.

This story is really about "stacking" and dose-response mechanisms.
"Their efficient woodstove, a knee-high concrete cylinder donated by an aid group called StoveTeam International, is too small to support the tamale pot. So, as she does about once a month, Perez has fired up the old wood-burning stove, a crumbling, chimney-less brick ruin whose smoke pours directly into the unventilated kitchen. Everyone notices the smoke, but it’s a familiar annoyance—and compared with the daily challenge of affording food and fuel, it’s a minor one."

So what does the UC-Berkeley research do - instead of putting the focus on "efficient woodstove" being only one type and size, going wild that "the indoor air pollution was still far above guidelines set by the World Health Organization."

Not the general guidelines but the particular guidelines for Household Fuel Combustion, influenced heavily by the Reviews and blessings of UC-Berkeley team in the first place. As part of the war against solid fuels, which they (and WHO) DEFINE to be "dirty".
There is the usual reciting of globalization mantras:
"Wood-burning household fires and inefficient stoves cause broader suffering, too. The firewood trade promotes deforestation and also provides cover for timber smuggling, since wood from rare trees can be hidden among logs from more common species. The smoke from cook fires pollutes the air outdoors as well as indoors, especially in cities. And as a major source of black carbon—a sunlight-absorbing pollutant—the world’s billions of household fires are also thought to be accelerating the effects of climate change, speeding the disruption of monsoon cycles and the melting of glaciers."
But the GACC CEO's frankness is admirable -
"Muthiah and other stove experts emphasize that there is no single ideal stove or ideal fuel, as every household, every community, and every culture has different needs and priorities: a stove designed for rural Guatemala may well be completely impractical in Nairobi."
If so, why bother with ISO "international standards" exercise?

I for one don't think an international research team is warranted to "determine whether the use of gas stoves improves air quality and the health of children." Of course it does that and much else. It is the precise quantification, and its applicability in quantitative forecasting, that I find to be morally repugnant and waste of public money in creating unproductive research jobs.
"Thompson and a network of collaborators are now expanding this research to India, Peru, and Rwanda, studying how gas-stove adoption—and associated improvements in household air quality—affects the health of mothers and children."

Next -- HAPIT for cats? (I loved this attached picture).

N

Three Billion People Cook Over Open Fires With Deadly Consequences<http://www.nationalgeographic.com/photography/proof/2017/07/guatemala-cook-stoves/>: In Guatemala, locally made cookstoves are helping combat toxic smoke—but economics and tradition keep many people from using them. By Michelle Nijhuis, August 14, 2017. National Geographic



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