[Stoves] News: On-the-ground research reveals true impact of cook-stove emissions in India
Ronal W. Larson
rongretlarson at comcast.net
Sat Dec 16 22:31:56 CST 2017
Nikhil: A few comments below.
But first I also specifically asked about your reaction to the AGU article by Chris Mooney. No comment about health impacts of forest fires?
> On Dec 16, 2017, at 6:45 PM, Nikhil Desai <pienergy2008 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Ron:
>
> You are making a strawman out of me and relishing demolishing it, burning it.
>
> Enjoy!!
>
> 1. You: "And the thousands of paper supporting BOD have no “theory or facts”? You must have stopped looking."
>
> *** Yeah, right. I only questioned the GBD from HAP, WHO estimates in 2012. I gave you and the list link to WHO's method and results. If you see "data" there, prove it. **
[RWL1: I tried to find something but your reference is too vague. I am now reading this report
http://www.who.int/healthinfo/RGHS_MeetingReport_March2017.pdf?ua=1 <http://www.who.int/healthinfo/RGHS_MeetingReport_March2017.pdf?ua=1>.
How about pulling out a few sentences that prove your point, and we’ll compare to mine. And I’ll read your prior cite.
What are your thoughts on the SDGs and health goals that I see there? All bogus also?
>
> 2. The "one study" I mentioned was discussed at the EPA/Winrock webinar recently. Write to Jim Jetter or John Mitchell or Elisa Derby or wait till Winrock uploads the webinar on its website.
[RWL2: I listened to that webinar and thought it was great. Let me know what you disliked when it is out. Wr, why don’t your write them - because I have no idea what this “one study” was about.
>
> 3. See Grant's thesis here <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265361292_Emissions_of_Rural_Wood-Burning_Cooking_Devices>. Kirk Smith's 1999 note to the World Bank should be on his website. My reference to Grant’s thesis being on the methods for measuring concentrations, not emissions, was incorrect.
[RWL3 I met Grant in Johannesburg in 2002 and probably read it then, because I thought he looked quite knowledgeable I stopped reading the Thesis this time after the first two sentences: “Approximately 2,500 million people are exposed daily to emissions from biofuel-burning cooking sites. Respiratory disease, which is the main cause of death in developing communities, is linked to these emissions.”
How about giving one or two sentences that supports your reading of this thesis? Shall we waste Grant’s time by asking him whether he supports your version of stove health issues?
I also can’t believe you are asking me to go Kirk’s website to prove something on stove health issues that supports your non-causation, anti-WHO theory.
Nikhil - you have gotten desperate in proposing support cites. I’m willing to waste some time in hopes you will stop the Don Quixote activity.
4. The reason I don't like the IWA metrics of efficiency and PM2.5 is, there is no statement of the problem and there is no theory of change. Prove me the alleged worldwide deforestation and desertification, climate change, ill health, and sexual violence caused by inefficient and smoky use of solid fuels.
RWL4: Please cite something anybody ever said to support that really curious argument.
The rest of this paragraph below is also unfathomable - zero logic. The next sentence is covered by my point RWL1. We should believe you because some future report “might” give you the evidence?
I suggest it is time for you to stop this line of attack against the obvious positive relationship between stove emissions and health impacts. Your argument is identical to that made by the cigarette industry; they eventually gave it up and you’d be wise to do the same.
Ron
I have already pointed out that WHO has no data on health and I haven't yet found any data on the other three evils either. When GACC publishes its report on this 8.8 million British pounds research project by DfID - here <https://devtracker.dfid.gov.uk/projects/GB-1-203036>.- we might get the evidence I am looking for. Anybody can attribute anything to anything else; the glib and the gullible enjoy a great marriage.
>
> Nikhil
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Nikhil Desai
> (US +1) 202 568 5831
> Skype: nikhildesai888
>
>
> On Sat, Dec 16, 2017 at 6:52 PM, Ronal W. Larson <rongretlarson at comcast.net <mailto:rongretlarson at comcast.net>> wrote:
> Nikhil and list:
>
> Besides the following responses, the front page feature article today in the Denver Post concentrates on health aspects of forest fires - one scientist saying their emissions are probably more hazardous to health than coal-fired power plants (in this country). This from the just concluded AGU conference, I’d like your reaction to this piece written by science writer Chris Mooney (originally printed one day earlier in the Washington Post. The article is at: http://www.denverpost.com/2017/12/15/wildfire-smoke-deadly-csu-researchers-say/ <http://www.denverpost.com/2017/12/15/wildfire-smoke-deadly-csu-researchers-say/>
> There are four scientists quoted here on the relationship between smoke and health; why should we believe you and not them?
>
> Bit more below
>
>> On Dec 16, 2017, at 2:01 PM, Nikhil Desai <pienergy2008 at gmail.com <mailto:pienergy2008 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>> Ron:
>>
>> Thank you so much. I will read that paper. I don’t have any opinion on health rationales [RWL: Huh? No opinions?
>
>
>> because what is usually strewn around as “burden of disease" has no basis in theory or facts.
> [RWL: And the thousands of paper supporting BOD have no “theory or facts”? You must have stopped looking.
>
>
>> Why are you so paranoid about criticism of WBT though? WBT is for lab testing of efficiency and emission rates, with a fixed fuel type and energy content, and actual emission rates can differ. It would be no different with other lab test methods; lab is meant to be a controlled environment and an abstraction from reality.
> [RWL: I’m sure I have said this numerous times.
> 1. I am strongly driven by concern over climate change.
> 2. We must take carbon out of the atmosphere - very quickly. Wind and solar are not enough, even if 100% overnight.
> 3. The best means I have found for CDR is biochar (based on social acceptance and economics - exemplified by Julien Winter’s report from Bangladesh - re improved NPP)
> 4. The lowest cost biochar I have found is via char-making stoves (today - could change). This char/stove stove connection is not limited to TLUDs - thinking also Nat Mulcahy and possibly Norbert Senf.
> 5. The best way I have seen to promote char-making stoves using major funding groups (mainly health oriented) is through the well established and accepted system of Tiers
> 6. The Tier system today relies on the WBT.
> 7. Char-making stoves excel at the WBT (which is not “an abstraction from reality” - the results are reproducible.)
>
>>
>>
>> I brought in "protocols" because just as there stove testing methods for supposed "performance metrics" (scrupulously eliminating the cook and the cooking method, so as to promote expert control in support of expert theories), there are also different methods and equipment for measuring pollution concentrations.
>>
>> If I am not mistaken, this is what Graham Ballard-Tremeer did his PhD thesis on, circa 1998 at the Uni of Wittwatersrand. It was quite a revelation to me that reported indoor air pollution measurements came from use of different protocols or no protocols at all.
> [RWL: I’d like to see a cite on that (look for Grant not Graham). I just skimmed through his paper from 2000: http://www.hedon.info/docs/IAP_interventions.pdf <http://www.hedon.info/docs/IAP_interventions.pdf> , which makes a strong case on the need for stove improvements for health reasons.
>
>
>> Kirk Smith also wrote something similar in 1999 - how few actual measurements had been and not comparable over time and across location.
> [RWL: Dr. Smith supports the WBT. I believe also Tiers.
>>
>> Most recently, as I may have noted elsewhere today, I discovered that only one study has measured emission rates for a particular stove using different fuels and that all other multi-fuel tests have been with the three-stone fire. (I can’t imagine how anybody can simulate a three-stone fire, which has survived over millennia simply because it is so fuel-flexible and versatile.)
> [RWL: I know of one on different fuels and will be reporting on it - using a TLUD. What is your study? The three stone fire measurements provide the definition of the lowest tier. One doesn’t simulate the 3-stone fire - one builds one in the lab. Yes the three-stone fire has virtues, but not on efficiency and emission metrics (and especially being able to make money while using.)
>>
>> You may have noticed that it's not the WBT I don't care for - hadn't, in 1983, and see no reason to change my view - but the metrics. They are meant to rationalize expert research grants. Academia is a different world from that of budgeting and policy decisions.
> [RWL: The metrics look fine to me. Which don’t you like? In my experience, budgeting and policy decisions rely heavily on academia.
>>
>> Could the Washington University researcher on seeds Bedigian by any chance? Jatropha seeds have been mentioned as a fuel option - I think direct burning as well as esterification.
> [RWL: You can make money today using these seeds in a TLUD - just the right size and shape, I believe. A.nyone tried them? (Their poisonous character needs testing. But there are plenty of seed types around
>
> Ron
>>
>> Nikhil
>>
>> On Sat, Dec 16, 2017 at 3:30 PM, Ronal W. Larson <rongretlarson at comcast.net <mailto:rongretlarson at comcast.net>> wrote:
>> Nikhil and list:
>>
>> The (non-fee) paper is at https://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/17/13721/2017/acp-17-13721-2017.pdf <https://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/17/13721/2017/acp-17-13721-2017.pdf>
>> The supplement at https://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/17/13721/2017/acp-17-13721-2017-supplement.pdf <https://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/17/13721/2017/acp-17-13721-2017-supplement.pdf>
>>
>> Looks like a credible paper - but not one I am going to read carefully as it is only related to traditional chulas. Seems to have a somewhat different means of monitoring the pollutants - in the field. I doubt one can use this paper to downgrade the WBT.
>>
>> I am going to guess you won’t like the paper as it is full of health rationales (for India).
>>
>> Re repeatability, I am working up more on fuel shape, which is a main feature of the L’Orange et al paper. Fuel shape also not covered in the TLUD paper I noted with the 10% efficiency that Crispin has since commented on.
>>
>> Twenty years ago we had some fine comments from a Professor at Washington University - who (I vaguely recall) was interested in some seeds that performed well for cooking because of their high oil content - that had no other use, because they were poisonous.
>>
>> Ron
>>
>>> On Dec 16, 2017, at 9:01 AM, Nikhil Desai <pienergy2008 at gmail.com <mailto:pienergy2008 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On-the-ground research reveals true impact of cook-stove emissions in India <http://indiacsr.in/on-the-ground-research-reveals-true-impact-of-cook-stove-emissions-in-india/>. India CSR Network blog, 15 December 2017
>>> "We conducted real-life cookstove tests and burned a wide variety of biofuels, cooked different meals in a number of varying ventilation situations, then recorded the resulting emission levels using high-tech particle measurement devices.
>>>
>>> Once the data was crunched back in St. Louis, the results were startling: In some cases, more than twice the emission levels were detected when compared to the previous lab findings, revising what people thought they knew for decades about this pervasive and dangerous problem."
>>>
>>> I wonder what protocols and fuels were used, and also whether they only measured emissions but also concentrations and tried to model the two.
>>>
>>> Or whether the alleged "previous lab findings" are comparable or this research team is just boasting.
>>>
>>> I hope the revisions are not as shoddy as the history. What people thought they knew was what they chose to or were instructed to believe.
>>>
>>> Related press release at Engineers work to fight pollution at home, globally <https://source.wustl.edu/2017/08/engineers-work-fight-pollution-home-globally/>, Erika Ebsworth-Goold August 11, 2017. Haven't yet located the full paper.
>>>
>>> Nikhil
>>
>
>
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