[Stoves] aDALYs (Re: Ron, Crispin)

[Nikhil Desai]

Ron:

You delighted me for the second time today by your RWL12 comment agreeing
with Crispin's "last three sentences". I wish you agreed with all four.

I have just attended the Gold Standard Foundation's webinar on marketing
aDALYs. Crispin is on-the-mark, just that I hesitate to ascribe to
crookedness that which mere incentives or ignorance would suffice to
explain.

My principal cites for this claim are

a) The "methodology" they have approved (after all, they have the authority
to approve whatever they want to market); this is available on their
website.
b) A chapter on HAPIT by Pillarisetti, Mehta and Smith (2015 or 2016),
available on Kirk Smith's website.

I urge you and others to read these documents, and discuss their source
data, methods of data collection, and assumptions on this list. I will be
happy to chip in.

If you or anybody else wishes to have my reviews of these, please contact
me independently. I am not yet finished, and I will check my review
(in-text comments) reviewed by some others before putting them out in
public. Give me a month or so.

----

Now, just for the record -

a. DALYs - a byproduct of GBD work - work was started by an economist,
Christopher Murray, who also happens to be a MD that he has not used in
practice. The co-founder of GBD, Alan Lopez, is not an MD. One of the lead
figures in the US literature on PM2.5 morbidity - and environmental health
generally - is C. Arden Pope, a professor of economics. I happen to know
the method and madness of economics, and also of medicine. Please provide a
cite for how many of the 775 co-authors of the latest GBD report are
practicing physicians and surgeons.

(In my experience, practicing physicians have never heard of GBD, which is
a construct of a group of public health academics. Why, I recently ran into
a USAID professional who had completed her PhD in public health at Harvard
2-3 years ago; she hadn't heard of DALYs or GBD either. That hardly proves
anything, for most people.)


b. The war against cigarette smoking began with Joe Califano in the late
1970s - and by many activists in the medical community back in the 1960s.
Murray's GBD work started in 1990, and DALYs computation had nothing to do
with the tobacco war.

c. DALYs and aDALYs are independent, and HAPIT linking of the two by means
of an Integrated Exposure Response curve -- which the authors assert is not
absolute, and can keep evolving - is not defensible. DALYs are for cohorts
dead, aDALYs are for those alive. It is extremely presumptuous to consider
that the the health, disease, and disability profiles of cohorts as
different as those who lived in the US from 1930 to 2015, say, and the
current world population using solid fuels are identical. (My cite for this
- Kirk Smith 1999 piece for the World Bank, cited in my critique last
September of Burnett et al. (2014) piece on the Integrated Exposure
Response curve for air pollution.)


Nikhil





On Wed, Aug 30, 2017 at 4:32 PM, Ronal W. Larson <rongretlarson at comcast.net>
wrote:

> List and ccs
>
> This is a first.  Usually I find something from Crispin to agree with.
> Below - nothing.
>
>
> On Aug 30, 2017, at 10:05 AM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <
> crispinpigott at outlook.com> wrote:
>
> 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.
>
>
> *[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.  *
>
>
> 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.  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.*
>
>
>
> 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.
>
>
> *[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”.  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 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.
>
>
> *[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.*
>
>
> 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].
>
>
> *[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.*
>
>
> 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.
>
>
> *[RWL6:   These tests (ongoing for decades) are comparing stoves for one
> task, not different tasks.  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.  *
> * 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.*
>
>
> 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?
>
>
> *[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.  *
> * Jim’s measurements are not on concentrations - they are on emissions.
> Others (such as at Berkeley) have done a marvelous job of relating the two.
>   I doubt that Jim - a WBT tester - would “blush”.   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.*
> * Still -  Crispin is providing no cites for his beliefs.   *
>
>
> 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.*
>
>
> 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.   We have
> tiers because the Lima group knew that nothing firmer could be justified at
> this time.   I for one believe that less emission is logically related to
> health (as with cigarette smoke - including second hand smoke).    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.  Other less drastic
> testing on animals and cadavers also provides data.  Believable to all but
> a few.*
>
>
> 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.  F**rom my perspective, t**here 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 can’t comment fully on Crispin’s final sentence since I have no idea
> what it means.  But yes - 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.*
>
>
> 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.*
>
>
> 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.  *
>
> * I don’t know the markets where aDALY’s are “tradable” - and doubt one
> exists.*
>
> * Others in any agreement on any of my 12 responses?*
>
> *Ron*
>
>
>
> 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 <(202)%20568-5831>
> *Skype: nikhildesai888*
>
>
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