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

[Crispin Pemberton-Pigott]

Dear Ron

What a delightful set of responses!

There should be lots to digest in a full discussion of the points you offer.

>>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.

>[RWL1:     I see considerable favorable progress.  All four groups that Crispin defines below are doing a good job - on a very difficult task.  Crispin below complains about more than “ attributing specific health benefits”.  Apparently we are to believe that there is absolutely nothing useful coming out of a lot of hard work by many talented stove testing people. ‎

I didn't wrote anything of the sort about all the 'hard work'. I am wondering right from the start if you are following the conversation closely enough. I am pretty sure the phrase 'specific health benefits' is self-explanatory. To make a 'general claim for benefits' is fundamentally different from claiming 'Joe will live 4.15 years longer if he changes to Stove A and uses it for >75% of his cooking.

The former is easily demonstrated for a population which is what DALYs are about. There is nothing behind a claim that a particular person will gain a particular benefit in future, which is what an aDALY is about. Thanks for the opportunity to ‎again clarify that for those who are new to the topic.

>>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.
>[RWL2:  If there a “lot” and “crooked”, you’d think there could be a cite.  There have been thousands of Physicians involved in the Daly and aDaly numbers - for decades.

No, they have not. You also are confusing public health with medicine. The calculation of DALYs is 'attribution to causes‎' not a medical diagnosis. Nikhil covered this well. I said my objections were technical in nature. An aDALY is not the inverse of a DALY. It is a completely different thing. If a smoker dies in a car accident, and the cause was him leaning over to pull out the lighter, you cannot claim that if you convince someone else not to start smoking, you have prevented them from dying in a car accident.

>Surprising that we have such huge international action to discourage cigarette smoking considering that health aspects apparently were believable to almost everyone by now - using the DALY approach in largest part.
The “aDALY” concept is much easier to get at with data on work absences.
I am pretty sure you do not have a clear idea what an aDALY is.
>[RWL3:  I recall that the Lima meeting decision was unanimous (I don’t wish to take the time to look up that cite, but I gave it on this list a while back).   I don’t understand why call anything about stove testing to be “gerrymandering”.

‎For those whose first language is not English, gerrymandering is manipulating the process by which decisions are made to achieve a pre-determined outcome that would not, on balance, have been acceptable without the manipulation. When this is done by the convenors and administrators of the process, it is sometimes called 'facipulation' meaning 'facilitated manipulation‎'. It is also seen when the person chairing the process is an advocate, not a neutral party.

The so-called Lima Consensus was written beforehand and sold on the basis of creating something temporary as a place-holder for ‎something real, or agreeable, or permanent.

'Something' is not a consensus if it has not been examined and discussed openly. For example to accept the WBT calculations and metrics without peer review, something I know is close to yours heart, is to not follow due process. There was no due process, no review, and the WBT was 'adopted' by those who signed, whatever their motive. The decision has no legal basis, no scientific credibility and involved a few people the great majority of whom had a vested interest in seeing it anointed as somehow a valid and useful test method, which it is not.

>The ISO process is open to every country - and is progressing well mostly (I listen in from time to time). India is the site of the next GACC meeting and China has plenty of stove conferences.  China was well represented at GACC’s meeting in Cambodia.  I still know of no place to go to look at the claimed “fundamental errors”.  Why issues of efficiency (tiers) and especially CO and particulate emissions should not be “relevant" is a mystery (that could be solved with a cite).
I am not sure what point you are addressing. How did the IWA reflect the work done in India and China on test methods between, say, 1982 and 2012? The IWA was in great measure written in haste before the meeting, objected to prior to the event in the comment period on several fundamental bases, suffered through about a day and a half of discussion to yield metrics for rating performance that ignored all the lessons from India about efficiency calculation, all the contextually of lessons from China, and has three out of nine metrics that have no physical basis! It is laughable! Oh, and the text says, by careful wordsmithing, that the WBT is valid, and is the default test method for everyone, without review, and while the text permits other methods of testing, they are not valid unless they produce the same metrics calculated in the same manner.
‎
>>I think a thrust in favour of greater consideration of the users has come from, among others, Cecil Cook first during the ProBEC era,...
>[RWL4:  Cecil has reported on this list that he has never asked a question to any stove user about possible advantages of char-making stoves.  And he didn’t think it appropriate to ask.  Similar to asking about the use of cell phones a few years back.  I submit that Cecil should not be considered the world’s best expert on how to improve stoves.  And probably he has been under instructions.
I don't see any claim for Cecil being a stove improver. If you ask him how to improve stoves he, like Nikhil, will tell you to ask the people who use them, and perhaps industrial designers who can bridge the gaps between physical stove scientists and the culturally aware intermediaries who have observed and understand the complexities of domestic energy use.

[RWL5:  If I as a user or a group want to reduce my fuel consumption - I believe efficiency is exactly the right parameter to measure and report.  And heath issues are also related to the amount of emissions - which is known from the tier placement.
‎How do you define 'efficiency'? As the WBT does? Or how the TC285 WG1 does? Or how India does in their national standard? Technical details matter.

To make a claim such as a specific health impact from an 'amount of emissions' requires establishing the metric: emission rate? Maximum emission rate? Exposure to those rates? Average 24 hr exposure to some 'rate'? You can't leave the details to someone else. When making a claim as specific as 'this tier stove produces this health response' you need a huge amount of information that does not yet exist, and even if it did, you cannot 'calculate' an aDALY using it.

>[RWL6:   These tests (ongoing for decades) are comparing stoves for one task, not different tasks.

In fairness, the task is nearly useless if we speak of the WBT, unless people happen to cook that way. ‎If the math involved is defective, or there are conceptual errors negative the validity of the metric, the test is meaningless. That is why the WBT should have been peer-reviewed by experts before it was proposed as a test method in the IWA.

>Different users and different tasks doesn’t invalidate great work by people like Jim Jetter - over many years.  I have seen no one ever propose a better single task than heating water.

That comment alone indicates the parlous state of stove testing in the West.

>Also,  I believe there is considerable correlation between lab and field testing results.  It should be no surprise to anyone that the lab results are lower when you watch how little time is spent away from flame tending.
Do you have a citation for the lab and field test correlation? The ISO discussions have frequently mentioned the lack of such correlation, with many experts noting there is no expectation‎ that such correlation should exist. The frequently heard comment that, 'a stove that tests well using a WBT tends to do well in the field' is testament to the fact they often don't, and certainly do not match performance numbers in the details. In short, they may (or may not) be 'generally better' but a Tier claim is a specific performance claim, not a general wave of the hand.

If a lab test cannot predict performance in the field, the test is inappropriate for rating the expected future performance in use. It means a better and more realistic test is needed. I have been saying that for more than ten years.

>[RWL7:   I intentionally mentioned Jim Jetter’s name above because he works for EPA.   It is disappointing to see Crispin call EPA measurements of pollutants “jazz”.  Sounds eerily reminiscent about arguments on the health impacts of cigarette smoking.


Cigarette smoking is a good example. See above about claiming to have prevented someone's death.

>Jim’s measurements are not on concentrations - they are on emissions.

Please reread my post. The WHO emission target is an emission rate which is predicted to deliver a concentration. The health argument is based on the concentration, which is based on an EPA concentration, which is based on assumptions of exposure that automatically come from a concentration, and the assumption that all PM2.5 is equally toxic‎. You have yourself indicated above, twice, that smoking is more harmful to health than other forms of exposure to smoke, implying that all forms of PM2.5 are not equal. You disagree with both the EPA and the WHO!

Others (such as at Berkeley) have done a marvelous job of relating the two.

I do not agree. They have made 'heroic assumptions' about fuel type, mass burned, emissions, concentrations, exposure, inhalation, health impart, and attributable mortality. There appears to be no actual data underlying the emission rate targets.

>... The talented folks that I know and respect in going from emissions to concentrations clearly know what they are doing - as seen in published cites we have mentioned many times on this list.

How would you know if they know what they are doing? Have you reviewed the Single Box Model used by the WHO to calculate the concentrations from the emission rate? It is sophomoric in its pretenses. KK Prasad was doing far better work at Eindhoven in the early 80's.  ‎What have they been doing for the last thirty years?
>>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.

>[RWL8:  This (“anointed actors”) is ad hominem and highly derogatory.  Again no cites to justify any part of the three allegations.
I don't see you having any issue with ad hominem ‎content. What is your point?

>>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.

>[RWL9:   This is a mis-statement of what is “approved”.  Tiers are given - only ranges on the emission levels that have been released.

The emission rates were drafted by a WHO committee. They are therefore WHO approved.

The tiers have no physical basis. They are not based on known or predictable health outcomes. They are not based on 'emission levels', they are 'emission rates'. 'Levels' would refer to concentrations. Please study the details.

>We have tiers because the Lima group knew that nothing firmer could be justified at this time.

Nothing firmer can be justified at this time. There is basically no data, only assumptions. Waiting five years and them make the same assumptions is not 'science' or progress.

>I for one believe that less emission is logically related to health (as with cigarette smoke - including second hand smoke).

Agreed. It is logically related. Now, put specific numbers on a specific change in emissions, and make a valid assertion about how it will affect a particular individual's future life expectancy.

You can't. That is the difference between a DALY and an aDALY.

‎>There is more behind this belief in the harmful inhalation of cigarette smoke than WHO use of death and illness statistics.  For instance, CSU is even now testing inhalations from stoves with volunteers.

Why? I can answer that: because no one knows the effects of stove smoke on humans, to anything like the extent we know about the statistical consequences of tobacco smoking.

>>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'.

>[RWL10:  This continuing reference to “the experts” is weird.  I know quite a few of those participating on the various ISO panels as well as Crispin’s “ expert” detractors.  From my perspective, there is no comparison in either numbers or expertise.   The intent here is to claim better expertise from his “the experts”  (un-named) than those many of us know from “Berkeley, GACC, EPA and WHO”

I am not sure what you are comparing. Anyone who shows up at ISO meetings is given the appellation 'expert'. My intention was to state that the same groups who have driven the WBT forward as an 'international test method' have done so for years, while avoiding any serious review of it. ‎Papers published on the WBT's inner workings universally, without exception, point out its many serious shortcomings, the most recent being Riva's analysis of the uncertainty of the results, something confirmed by multiple field evaluations.

Apparently the GACC feels they are 'past the WBT'. That is good news. They join a pretty large crowd living elsewhere in the world.

>...we are (thankfully) getting closer to an international decision on a voluntary standard, so one would be greatly surprised if “not new” and “more” didn’t appear.

There are no 'international standards'. There are ISO standards that may be adopted, modified or not, by national regulatory bodies.

>>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.
[RWL11:  Again totally ad hominem - still without a cite (and cites are plentiful in the “voluntary” standards backup documents).  Not sure why Crispin found it appropriate to put “voluntary” in quotes.   I was equally disturbed by Nikhil’s recent flippant reply to Tom Miles - and will get to that ASAP.  I deemed this response more critical.
I am still looking for content in your response. It is clear you are not well versed in the critical issues of what is being proposed: that changing a stove will deliver a predictable health consequence for the user, and that a $ value can be placed on the health change.

That is what I wrote about, and the past problems associated with the persistent promotion of methods and claims that do not stand up to scrutiny.

>>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.

>[RWL12:  I started by saying I could agree with nothing in Crispin’s message.  But I do agree with the last three sentences.   However my original blanket objection stands, since Crispin’s first sentence advice is 100% opposite from mine.  The WBT IS valuable and should stay until replaced with something better - with agreement from other than Crispin’s “the experts”.   All “the experts” I trust are advocating continued use of the WBT.

Can you provide one citation from a published article that explains why the calculation methods in the WBT are valid? Can you cite something that shows the low power emission rate of CO is dependent on the mass of water in the pot? Zhang 2014 proved is doesn not, confirmed independently by Jim Jetter at the request of the GACC. This indicates a) the paper got their attention, b) that it made an important claim and c) that the claim is true.

>I don’t know the markets where aDALY’s are “tradable” - and doubt one exists.

Don't undermine your status as an ISO TC285 expert. We need all the help we can get.

Who here knows the estimated value of an aDALY? It's more than you think.

Regards
Crispin
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